Coming Out Support Group
This community is dedicated to the challenges that gay men and lesbian women face, both between the partners in a relationship and from other influences (family, society, etc.). Find support and talk to others who may be facing the same challenges, and share your experience.
There are a ton of Coming Out videos on YouTube. If you have privacy with an Internet connection, I’d recommend watching many of these. There are people who describe their Coming Out process and even some who post ‘Live’ recordings of their Coming Out to friends and family members. These videos are very informative. They demonstrate the range of reactions that people have gotten when they have Come Out in their own, individual situations.
Once you are truly comfortable with yourself, then you can consider opening up to other people. (In the most favorable of circumstances, this presumes that you aren’t involuntarily ‘outed’ by someone else – i.e. your parents, friends or siblings find website activity on your computer or social account activity that might give you away or you let something slip to someone – but you can usually explain things like that away ONCE by saying it was a mistake, a ‘phase’ or simple curiosity.) Not to scare you, but the Coming Out process is almost always a very long one overall. For your immediate friends and family, it may be a quick or slow process. For example, it may be a year or more between Coming Out to your first confidant and telling anyone else. Then, as you go through life and meet new people, you often have to Come Out all over again to make sure everyone understands the same bottom line, but that gets easier and easier with time; it’s just really annoying sometimes to have to do it.
I found it helpful to make a list of people that I felt should know. I figured once I was out to the people that I cared about the most and whose love and/or friendship I valued the most, I mostly didn’t care if/when/how anyone else really found out.
I eventually found it easiest and best to come out to my straight best friend first because I knew him well enough that I was very certain about how he would react to the news (although you can never actually be certain about how any individual will react until you confront them with it; people can surprise you – fortunately, in my experience, most of the time, the surprise was in how openly accepting they were when I was expecting at least some hesitation, if not fearing outright rejection.) Not that it was easy (after all, you feel exposed and extremely vulnerable whenever you confide something so personal and private to another individual) – I must have danced around the subject for over 10 minutes, while he kept listening but started to get a bit impatient, before I could finally blurt it out. He just laughed a little (gently, not meanly), told me he wasn’t really surprised, was honored that I had chosen to confide that in him and told me that it didn’t change anything in our friendship. If you have someone you feel that you know very well and trust them to be the most likely person to continue to accept you for who you are (a best friend, a sibling, a distant relative, etc) – AND whom you know you can trust to keep your secret while you continue to Come Out at your own pace – that is probably the best place to start.
After your initial Coming Out, as I said above, it may be a while during which you adjust to your new comfort level – that someone else knows and is okay with it and that gives you a great boost of self-confidence and self-worth – before you tell anyone else.
Parents can be the hardest people to tell. Mothers usually know or have a good idea in advance (unless they put up mental blocks and refuse to consider the possibility). But talking to parents about sex, in general, is uncomfortable. Telling them that you are not heterosexual can be literally emotionally terrifying, even if you are certain or pretty sure that they will continue to accept you for who you are – the child whom they should love unconditionally. Many people choose to Come Out face-to-face with one parent first – the one who is most likely to be accepting. Some people write it down or send a text. Personally, I prefer face-to-face so that there is no confusion and no one thinks I’m just joking.
I hope some of this may be of help to you.