I'm out to a lot of friends (at least the ones I see semi-regularly), but I feel like I'm in this weird limbo with everyone else. I used to be fine with having it on a need-to-know basis, but for the past year or so I've been feeling pretty done with the whole semi-closeted thing. I'm tempted to just post about it on Facebook to get everybody up to speed. On the other hand, I'm shy and don't feel ready to draw that much attention to myself. I also worry about making my ex feel exposed, as his recent past is of course entangled with mine. If I had a girlfriend I'd just say that and let people connect the dots, but I can't see myself dating anyone seriously in the near future. How do you guys handle this stuff? Or did the news just spread so that you didn't need to address it with everyone? Any advice or insights?
I just kind of let the cat out of the bag and let it run. Pretty much everyone knew in pretty short order. But that was like 25 years ago and it was news-worthy in a way that I'm not sure it is any more. For a lot of people I was the first openly gay person they knew, so, yeah, people talked. I'm not sure it would work that way any more. I have always kind of assumed that it would. Then about a year ago we got a new mortgage officer in my office. She was split between two offices and one of the days she was at my office was the day I generally take off so a couple months in we really had only had a handful of conversations. But we're a chatty office and I just assumed. Then one day my husband came up in conversation and, while she didn't have a problem with it, she was visibly surprised. Obviously people don't talk it up quite the way I thought...
I am going to come out over Facebook gradually. I feel like a big announcement is not the kind of attention to the topic that I want because I don't want to have 50 million conversations about it AND I don't want my friends who I haven't picked up the phone to call and come out to to think that I am dissing them by not coming out to them in a more personal way. I don't mind talking about it, and I feel very positive about being a lesbian overall. However I still have these waves of fear and shame and self doubt and pretty much only want to talk about being a lesbian to people that I know will be 100% supportive for right now. I tried to come out when I was young and it awkward at best and very painful at worst and it is very hard for me to think about right now and I for sure 100% don't want to talk about How things were back then at all. I will eventually when it isn't so painful. ANYWAY a few years ago I had a crisis of faith and was baptized Mormon, ugh that was a mistake, I didn't tell a lot of people because my family is another religion and most people would have flipped out on me. Instead I liked some pages on Facebook and eventually when I told my brother he said he already knew from Facebook and the pages I liked and groups I was in. So I am planning on doing a gradual coming out on Facebook. First liking the basic pages like human rights campaign that most people who support LGBT rights like and then getting more specific to lesbian specific pages that a straight ally probably wouldn't be that into. There is really no way of me knowing how this goes unless someone asks me about it. But that's my plan. Hope that helps.
I love that plan! There are several gay pages I'd love to like and get updates on, but not-gay me wouldn't. I may employ this strategy.
