I lived a really, really private life for a lot of years by which I mean I was a homemaker and my relationships were mostly friends and family. I did not have a paid job for most of that time, so I did not have a boss, coworkers, clients or some other relationship to "the public."
So a lot of MY stories are stories that can potentially give you private info on other people. This fact has made it challenging to learn to write in a way that says something meaningful and true and useful without writing in a way that makes everyone who was ever close to me want my head on a platter.
If you are coming out of the closet -- or want to -- and people close to you are opposed to that or uncomfortable with it, the odds are good that a large part of their concern is how this reflects on THEM. In most cases, how you frame it can help address that issue without keeping you trapped behind a wall of silence.
In some cases, you may need to talk with them and help them sort their baggage. In most cases, you will want to try hard to avoid cheap jokes where people close to you are the butt of the joke.
I think people are BORN gay. I don't think they BECOME gay. So I would suggest you NEVER joke that "So-and-so -- my ex -- TURNED me gay."
I think it's factually incorrect, so I think it puts out bad info that harms the LGBTQ community, and I think most people would see that as a sick burn against a specific person. An undeserved, untrue sick burn never speaks well of the person giving it and unless you have some extremely well-known public beef with them -- a la "He beat me and this went to COURT and he's doing time for it" -- it's just a bad idea all around.
In my youth, I was big on self-deprecating humor. In high school, I was one of the smart kids and everyone knew me and me telling jokes at my expense was intended to put other people at ease and help me come across as down-to-earth and approachable and it seemed to work in that context.
Then I graduated, got married, moved away from my hometown and people who didn't know me as "one of the smart kids" tended to interpret my self-deprecating jokes as me having low self esteem. There is no good rebuttal to that assumption. No, you cannot say "Actually, my self esteem is fine. In fact, I think I'm WAY SMARTER THAN YOU, thus THE JOKE." or something along those lines.
It was a bad habit and I had to eventually learn to stop doing that.
Some people crack jokes when they are stressed out to try to break the tension. If you are that sort of person, I advise you to think long and hard about exactly what kind of jokes have some hope of being a good idea while you come out of the closet. It's a situation where personal baggage and general homophobia out in the world can readily collide and go very bad places, very quickly in a way that creates a mess you may never really live down.
As noted elsewhere, I recommend scrubbing your language of terms like mother, father, sister, brother, my first boss etc. If that information is NOT pertinent to the point of the story, leave it out. Say "someone I know" or "a relative of mine" rather than (specific term that identifies a specific person).
If your parents are having a hard time with it, I recommend you educate them and let them know you being gay has NOTHING to do with how they raised you. You may ALSO need to make sure to tell OTHER PEOPLE the same thing so your parents don't feel personally maligned by your announcement that you are gay (or trans or whatever).
If you have a large enough public footprint, you may want to START talking about your belief that "people are just BORN this way" well before you tell the public "I'm gay/LGBTQ." That's the best way to head off some need to "rebut" stupid remarks from people.
If you are coming out "late" in life or after establishing some kind of substantial public reputation, sit down and WRITE OUT your NARRATIVE of how you concluded you were gay and then set that aside untouched and intact and rewrite multiple new versions of it until it no longer implies "My mother is a bitch" or "My ex turned me gay" or anything else blamey, finger-pointing or ugly about anyone.
Unless you have some ALREADY on-the-public-record beef with someone, keep your private arguments private as much as possible -- NOT specifically for the sake of someone you may feel has hurt you to some degree but FOR YOUR SAKE. Your personal friction with them WILL NOT improve by inviting a long list of outsiders to weigh in on a PRIVATE matter.
It's FINE to talk about FEELING not accepted by people close to you and FEELING hurt by that or similar. You do not have to whitewash your story.
But if you are NOT cutting ties to them and walking away and telling the whole world "This person is just no longer a part of my life because they simply cannot accept that I am LGBTQ." then make a distinction between YOUR PERSONAL FEELINGS and STRUGGLES vs what THIS SPECIFIC PERSON DID.
Someday, you may decide they really were wrong and bad and may want to tell the world that. But while you are still sorting things out, less is more when it comes to tying specific people to YOUR narrative in the mind of the public.
If they didn't want you to come out and you CHOSE to not come out in part because of that, write out ALL THE OTHER REASONS you CHOSE to go along with their plan. Don't just play the victim card and pretend it's ALL THEIR FAULT.
Someday, you will be able to publicly speak with nuance about it and say something like "I felt like it was all them but it really wasn't and I see that now. I had a lot of fear and it was easier to just tell myself I was afraid of THEM than accept that I had a lot of other concerns going on."
Until you have it clear in your mind where to draw such lines, try to keep such personal beefs as private as possible so YOU have maneuvering room for sorting it out. It will NOT make your life better to establish a reputation as someone just looking for someone to blame and not willing to own your part in it.
You can start READING the stories of OTHER LGBTQ individuals to help you think things through so you can speak and act with confidence when you are ready. Seek out whatever sources of info make sense to you. I will suggest that Reddit has a number of LGBTQ forums where you can start reading up to start wrapping your brain around this whole thing.
If you have some need to keep up appearances for a time, if possible it's best to be honest with anyone who is playing a part in that. Try to not lie to them nor use them.
Natalie was a beautiful woman and famous actress and she hid her age. She was often seen in public with very handsome young men on her arm, so when she told her friend she hadn't had sex with anyone since her own surgery, her friend interjected "But what about all these guys you DATE?"
Natalie told her those weren't really dates. It was just part of keeping up appearances for the Hollywood scene and, furthermore, most of those young men were gay.
You will never know who is a potential ally if you aren't honest with them. A real ally will be more valuable than someone hoping for love and ending up feeling lied to, used and publicly humiliated should you ever actually announce it publicly.
It may help to talk about "I need a plus-one for this work-related event" rather than "I need a date." There are ways to be honest without spilling your guts about everything and without giving people the wrong impression.
So a lot of MY stories are stories that can potentially give you private info on other people. This fact has made it challenging to learn to write in a way that says something meaningful and true and useful without writing in a way that makes everyone who was ever close to me want my head on a platter.
If you are coming out of the closet -- or want to -- and people close to you are opposed to that or uncomfortable with it, the odds are good that a large part of their concern is how this reflects on THEM. In most cases, how you frame it can help address that issue without keeping you trapped behind a wall of silence.
In some cases, you may need to talk with them and help them sort their baggage. In most cases, you will want to try hard to avoid cheap jokes where people close to you are the butt of the joke.
I think people are BORN gay. I don't think they BECOME gay. So I would suggest you NEVER joke that "So-and-so -- my ex -- TURNED me gay."
I think it's factually incorrect, so I think it puts out bad info that harms the LGBTQ community, and I think most people would see that as a sick burn against a specific person. An undeserved, untrue sick burn never speaks well of the person giving it and unless you have some extremely well-known public beef with them -- a la "He beat me and this went to COURT and he's doing time for it" -- it's just a bad idea all around.
In my youth, I was big on self-deprecating humor. In high school, I was one of the smart kids and everyone knew me and me telling jokes at my expense was intended to put other people at ease and help me come across as down-to-earth and approachable and it seemed to work in that context.
Then I graduated, got married, moved away from my hometown and people who didn't know me as "one of the smart kids" tended to interpret my self-deprecating jokes as me having low self esteem. There is no good rebuttal to that assumption. No, you cannot say "Actually, my self esteem is fine. In fact, I think I'm WAY SMARTER THAN YOU, thus THE JOKE." or something along those lines.
It was a bad habit and I had to eventually learn to stop doing that.
Some people crack jokes when they are stressed out to try to break the tension. If you are that sort of person, I advise you to think long and hard about exactly what kind of jokes have some hope of being a good idea while you come out of the closet. It's a situation where personal baggage and general homophobia out in the world can readily collide and go very bad places, very quickly in a way that creates a mess you may never really live down.
As noted elsewhere, I recommend scrubbing your language of terms like mother, father, sister, brother, my first boss etc. If that information is NOT pertinent to the point of the story, leave it out. Say "someone I know" or "a relative of mine" rather than (specific term that identifies a specific person).
If your parents are having a hard time with it, I recommend you educate them and let them know you being gay has NOTHING to do with how they raised you. You may ALSO need to make sure to tell OTHER PEOPLE the same thing so your parents don't feel personally maligned by your announcement that you are gay (or trans or whatever).
If you have a large enough public footprint, you may want to START talking about your belief that "people are just BORN this way" well before you tell the public "I'm gay/LGBTQ." That's the best way to head off some need to "rebut" stupid remarks from people.
If you are coming out "late" in life or after establishing some kind of substantial public reputation, sit down and WRITE OUT your NARRATIVE of how you concluded you were gay and then set that aside untouched and intact and rewrite multiple new versions of it until it no longer implies "My mother is a bitch" or "My ex turned me gay" or anything else blamey, finger-pointing or ugly about anyone.
Unless you have some ALREADY on-the-public-record beef with someone, keep your private arguments private as much as possible -- NOT specifically for the sake of someone you may feel has hurt you to some degree but FOR YOUR SAKE. Your personal friction with them WILL NOT improve by inviting a long list of outsiders to weigh in on a PRIVATE matter.
It's FINE to talk about FEELING not accepted by people close to you and FEELING hurt by that or similar. You do not have to whitewash your story.
But if you are NOT cutting ties to them and walking away and telling the whole world "This person is just no longer a part of my life because they simply cannot accept that I am LGBTQ." then make a distinction between YOUR PERSONAL FEELINGS and STRUGGLES vs what THIS SPECIFIC PERSON DID.
Someday, you may decide they really were wrong and bad and may want to tell the world that. But while you are still sorting things out, less is more when it comes to tying specific people to YOUR narrative in the mind of the public.
If they didn't want you to come out and you CHOSE to not come out in part because of that, write out ALL THE OTHER REASONS you CHOSE to go along with their plan. Don't just play the victim card and pretend it's ALL THEIR FAULT.
Someday, you will be able to publicly speak with nuance about it and say something like "I felt like it was all them but it really wasn't and I see that now. I had a lot of fear and it was easier to just tell myself I was afraid of THEM than accept that I had a lot of other concerns going on."
Until you have it clear in your mind where to draw such lines, try to keep such personal beefs as private as possible so YOU have maneuvering room for sorting it out. It will NOT make your life better to establish a reputation as someone just looking for someone to blame and not willing to own your part in it.
You can start READING the stories of OTHER LGBTQ individuals to help you think things through so you can speak and act with confidence when you are ready. Seek out whatever sources of info make sense to you. I will suggest that Reddit has a number of LGBTQ forums where you can start reading up to start wrapping your brain around this whole thing.
If you have some need to keep up appearances for a time, if possible it's best to be honest with anyone who is playing a part in that. Try to not lie to them nor use them.
Schafer was secretive about her age. She reportedly never revealed her true year of birth to her husband during their marriage. For many years, her birth year was generally given as 1912. Few people believed this; yet her actual year of birth of 1900 (which was not discovered until after her death) surprised even her intimate friends. She was reportedly also a breast cancer survivor, which she withheld from her fans and friends.Following her death, Natalie Schafer was memorialized in a show documenting her life to some degree. A personal friend told the story that when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and didn't want a mastectomy, Natalie removed her shirt and showed her the scars from her own mastectomy -- which the friend had not previously known about -- and told her "They used to cut much deeper than they do now" and convinced her friend to get the life-saving surgery.
Natalie was a beautiful woman and famous actress and she hid her age. She was often seen in public with very handsome young men on her arm, so when she told her friend she hadn't had sex with anyone since her own surgery, her friend interjected "But what about all these guys you DATE?"
Natalie told her those weren't really dates. It was just part of keeping up appearances for the Hollywood scene and, furthermore, most of those young men were gay.
You will never know who is a potential ally if you aren't honest with them. A real ally will be more valuable than someone hoping for love and ending up feeling lied to, used and publicly humiliated should you ever actually announce it publicly.
It may help to talk about "I need a plus-one for this work-related event" rather than "I need a date." There are ways to be honest without spilling your guts about everything and without giving people the wrong impression.