Do you blame your parents?

I'm pretty sure my parents knew, not as a kid but as a young adult. My mom had conversations where she assured it would be fine with her. The best a parent can do is make a comfortable place to come out. My mom isn't the type to drag me out of the closet. Maybe I will come out to them this weekend and we will find out if they knew. I tried last weekend and chickened out.

 

I don't blame them for not realizing it, as I would probably be offended for them acting on stereotypes. I admit, I am quite bitter towards them for their past bigotry, tearing a seemingly unmendable hole between us, despite their actions to redeem. The only way I think I could fully forgive them is by receiving both an apology and complete acceptance of any choices I make as a homosexual, which is unlikely due to their being fundamentalists.

 

I don't really blame them, because they were already older when they got married/had kids, and I suspect there wasn't much useful information available at the time, and certainly not when they grew up. That was the era when it was considered a mental illness, and acting on such desires was a crime.

 

I can't blame my mother (father was out of the picture) for that, God knows I blame her for other things...we can be so merciless with our parents.

I am a father to three kids, each one will perceive things differently, each one will take what I do and interpret it differently. I am gay and was gay then too, there were signs but my mother and I were both "guilty" of not interpreting them correctly.

Kids are not blank slates, they come with a certain "baggage", with beginnings and signs of their own destinies, as it were. As a parent I just stand back sometimes in awe as to how my kids know what it is that they are, if I let them be who they are, then it is easier, if I struggle against it, they will still be who they are or they may choose to please me and then become who they are later...

Speaking only for relatively "normal" parents, the main directive is keep the kids safe, sometimes this leads to the wrong decisions...but the motives come from love, and I can't blame a parent for that.

 

Spaceman,

Well I have not told my parents yet. But the two friends I have told, said they knew from first meeting me (as an adult) and were perplexed as to why I was married to a woman. I also had the same stereotypes, plus I was super well behaved, straight A student, into cooking and gardening as opposed to sports or playing sword fighting with sticks or cowboys and indians. And I didn't date girls. My wife, who asked me out when I was 23, was the first girl/woman my parents ever saw me date. So, if I ever do Come Out to them, it will be hard to believe them if they said they were clueless. But maybe like my friends they knew something was different but not exactly what and just perplexed at my behavior and how to deal with it. No one in my family is gay (or at least out and gay) on either side of the family, so they likely had very little exposure to gay people and thus not familiar with the signs. Plus, as they were raising kids in an era where being gay was not as accepted by society as it is now, they probably didn't want to consider the fact I might be gay for all the difficulty that would lead to in life at that time.

 

Wow, GW, I think of this notion, though I have never been a parent. It sort of implies that kids are predestined, though life experiences will influence some forks in the road. A lot of people grew up to be exactly the people you expected them to be. Very few turned out to be markedly different people, and those few were either unremarkable people who catapulted to great perches in life, or people that had everything handed to them on a silver platter and threw it all away.

Some of it is genetic tendencies in families. I look at kids of a sibling, or cousins, or their kids, and it follows a predictable flow. It's eerily familiar in some cases.

 

Greatwhale offered you an incredibly insightful response. Made me want to jump out of my chair and shout "YES!" I doubt what I've got to offer can compare, but I do know that my response comes from the heart. I'm feeling incredibly emotional at the moment.

"We" in the Later in Life forum, may be particularly sensitive to this question, because we are both products of our upbringings and progenitors to the upbringing of others. We are, at the same time, passing judgement on our own parents and in the wash, passing judgement on ourselves. How do we balance the two?

I ask myself, what impact did my parents have on my life - well, that's easy, shoved me so deeply into the closet that I didn't even realize I was in there - then ask myself, how in turn have I affected my own children?

Well, I can, quite honestly say that as a mother of two boys, I have repeatedly, throughout their lives, expressed to them how sincerely I hope that if they ever so much as entertain the thought of a same sex attraction, they will not only feel comfortable with the thought, but that they not judge themselves for it. That I would encourage their own explorations into their own sexuality, and feel that they would benefit from exploring their own desires - as long as they do it in a safe and respectful manner.

Now, to cycle back from what I hope I've become to your original question. My own parents. Everything I am I attribute to my own desire to satisfy their expectations. As the youngest of three children, the eldest of two whom were not only disappointments, but complete delinquents, it fell to me to satisfy all of our parents' expectations. And I did. It still kills me to disappoint them.

 

Yeah, that sounds familiar. Although to be fair to my mother, she definitely suspected and did give me the opportunity to say something, but by then the closet door was nailed shut--from the inside. I think for my high school football hero father, having his oldest son even give the impression of being gay was a long-term nightmare for him, although more than once, I've wondered if perhaps he had a few of those feelings himself, and having me there just slapped him in the face with them, over and over again.

I was the OLDEST child--and the oldest GRANDCHILD as well--and I spent my entire childhood meeting and surpassing all expectations. I really don't know if I could have even begun to accept being gay if they were still alive.

My parents were the products of THEIR parents, who were in turn the product of their own....I know enough of my family's history to see how the neuroses of one generation spawned new ones in the subsequent generations. They certainly contributed to my situation, but I guess realistically, I can't hold them completely responsible. I could have said "the hell with you all", but I didn't. For better or worse.

 

My "Mother" knew. Being a lesbian was the worst thing I could be @12. Got the gay beat down. She refused to hug me & I was not allowed to ever hug my sister.
It was be strait or be totally alone.

 

One day before I came out my mom actually asked me straight up if I was gay. I told her no technically I wasn't lying because I'm bisexual. But then when I told her she was like "makes sense because when you were little one christmas you went for the girl toys and your sister went for the boy toys." lol.

---------- Post added 9th Nov 2013 at 12:14 AM ----------

Wow that's horrible. I couldn't imagine living like that. I'm sorry.:eek:

 

My writing tonight moved from EC to a very painful letter to my mother. Spurred by completely different reasons, but related nonetheless.

As I re-read that letter once complete, one portion particularly resonated with me as a reminder of this thread, and I felt compelled to share it here.

You raised me to be a better, well educated, intelligent mother. I have dedicated the majority of my adult life to taking care of my children. Now how do I take care of myself?​

 

Having come out to my parents, this week no less, they were taken off guard. I don't blame them, for this anyway. I do find that I have some issues that I need closure on, but they are related to my early childhood and the sh*t of their divorce, unresolved issues and illusions that they had a "good divorce." It wasn't, my life was hell, and it certainly did not help me deal with myself. But I can't blame them, eventually, you just have to own who and what you are and go on. Put the childhood to rest. Stop looking back too closely. All of that just gets in the way of moving forward. At least, that is what I think.

 

Your situation is almost exactly the same as mine, except about them trying to redeem. I'm still disowned.

Rose27, when you said "Got the gay beat down. She refused to hug me & I was not allowed to ever hug my sister.
It was be strait or be totally alone."

I can relate to this too, but not at 12. My mom was totally clueless about me, and during Thanksgiving 5 yrs ago informed me that she had set up a date for me with "a good provider" because "You were in college for 4 yrs and still could'nt find a man to marry." Also,"It's for your own good, you don't want to be trying to find a husband and having babies when your 40, or turning into a spinster with 8 cats." I finally came out to her, and after getting a lot of crap about it, she told me I was no longer her daughter, that I wasn't welcome in her house. When my brother, who thought he was helping, came over and said, "What if I told you I was gay? Would you throw me out too?"

Instead of giving him crap, she just collapsed on the floor and started wailing, asking for the Lord's help. My Dad just shook his head at this like my mom was crazy, and said to my brother, "Your gay?" My brother said, "No, I'm not gay, I was trying to make a point." Then my sister said to me, "Thanks for upsetting Mom. Couldn't you just've stayed in the closet?"

When I at the house that following December, I was in the living room interacting with my 3 yr old niece, since I was no longer allowed in the kitchen. The only reason I was allowed in the house at all was because of my Dad. She happened to come out and see me, went over to my neice and scopped her up, taking her into the kitchen. My sister then came out and put my niece down on the floor. I asked her what happened. She said,

Mom: "You need to get your husband to watch her. Did you know ------- was talking to her?"

Sis: "So?"

Mom: "Well, you know she's one of those dykes, right?" Like my sister could forget Thanksgiving

Sis: "Yeah, so?"

Mom: "So?"

Sis: Mom, she's living with an adult woman. She isn't into little girls."

Mom: "How do YOU know? If she's into one perversion, who know what others she's into."

 

Yeah sldanlm, that one crosses the line, there are things that are definitely unforgiveable; for me, it was a bastard stepfather.

Disownership (if there is such a word) goes both ways. It's not just kids who need parents, after all, parents had kids for a reason, they needed to have kids too...your mother has pretty much forfeited any reconciliation. Just sad.

 

My oldest son is gay. I suspected from the time he was a small child that he was. Nevertheless it took me aback when he told me this gem at age 12. It is not because I didn't love him that I was shocked, it was because I was a fundamentalist Christian at the time. Because of his honesty I was able to loosen the constraints that religion (that kind at least) had on my life and walk away from that restricted way of thinking.

I did not have a relationship for the next ten years (he told me right after I had walked out my my second husband). My first relationship after that was with a girl who is, as we speak, dying of cancer. My dad approved immediately but my mom was more difficult to deal with. I came out to her in my early twenties and I went straight back into the closet.

Do I blame my parents? No. I was a tomboy through and through and I fought any attempts to feminize me. Being the soft butch that I am, I'm sure that seemed perfectly normal for me to them. I think that after I came out to stay they looked back and thought - "Well that makes sense!".

 

Well, personally I can't really blame my parents for not noticing. After all, I was perfectly able to avoid noticing it myself, and I had access to much more signs and information that would have proven I was gay.
If I was capable of fantasising about guys and watching gay porn exclusively and STILL convince myself I was straight, then I can't exactly blame them from discovering it just because I showed a lack of interest in girls.
And, apart from two people, no one I've ever told ever mentioned having a clue, so I'm going to assume it was just hard to read even for relatively neutral people.

On the other hand, the timing on me figuring it out for myself was rather conspicuous. It happened about a month or two after I moved out to live closer to work. It was pretty much the first time I ever spent more than 24 hours at a time without friends or family. So while I can't exactly prove it, I do feel that there must have been some subtle (if unintentional) reinforcement going on to "keep me straight".

 

I blame them for not being open to possibly having a gay son. I may not have gone through so many years of denial. OTOH, it's water under the bridge. Holding on to blame just makes you bitter. I try not to be bitter.

The one therapist I had equated homosexual with sex offender. That really pissed me off.

 

One of the chief causes of negative emotions is the good ol' blame and guilt cycle. There are two elements to this:

1) justification: we feel justified, we have reasons to feel anger, fear, doubt, self-pity, it's not our fault!

2) identification: we have a hard time separating who we are from the actual situation and so our identity gets all wrapped up in the blame/guilt game

Negative emotions are on the scale of being without responsibility which is the same as lack of control or freedom.

Positive emotions, on the other hand are in the realm of responsibility, i.e. control and freedom.

Negative emotions need constant feeding, i.e. feedback loops to remind you constantly of the past, i.e. that which cannot be changed.

Positive emotions involve responsibility which looks at the present and the future, always asking: "what can we do from here?"

Fact is, we are free to choose the quality of our emotional lives. Free to chose who we will associate with and who will no longer occupy our minds.

It's easy to be enraptured in our sufferings; the blame game is an industry that keeps the legal profession alive! But being stuck in negative-land is just that, being stuck with a lot of emotional energy being drained into spinning our wheels.

Never forget the past, just avoid being shackled by it!

 

thats deep