Does your family embrace you being gay?

[Walker1]

So, I was watching this cute south asian gay couple and they have a few videos. This one stuck me as they had the mom of one of the guys and she was so accepting and embraced her son and son-in-law.

 

My family took a long time and still some just won't discuss my orientation, but are ok -which is fine I figure straight people don't talk about their sexuality all day long. I don't hide it. But it just makes me wonder, how much easier it would have been if my family was this accepting and not take years for them to accept. They weren't nasty like those people who ship kids off to conversion centers, but definitely not accepting and our family dynamics-no one talks issues, just bury your head in the sand and don't discuss it and assume it is not there! . Lot of issues have been festering for decades like this. It just got me thinking , how many have very accepting families who embrace all aspects of you and don't blink an eye?

 

Edited December 1, 2019 by Walker1

[thickornotatall]

My parents knew early on. As a result I was given a first class education and a great deal of latitude. I heard them talking about a friend of mine ..a neighbor boy in my classes. He took dance lessons.. They were sad that his parents gave him a very tough time.

My first real boyfriends Mom thought I was a good influence and always asked him to be more like me...Hahaha!

[+ FrankR]

Embrace is a strong word.

 

Back in the day far more families refused to acknowledge children with a different orientation, especially those with a strong religious belief.

 

Things have gotten better in some respects. In others, not so much...

[Guest]

Thank God I grew up in an atheist family! :D

[marylander1940]

Yes... but I also think it's because of having no children of my own they wonder who will be in my will.

[Guest]

Yes... but I also think it's because of having no children of my own they wonder who will be in my will.

OK. I'm confused by this post. Who's they?

[Guest]

Embrace is a strong word.

I have a very hug-y family.... We're a 2-kiss family at all family gatherings, including cousins.

[amused1]

When my parents found out they decided to have me "fixed". With the help of friends I packed my things and moved several states away. I had no direct contact with them for the next 2 years.

 

In the decade that followed I visited once a year. Then, a family crisis required me to spend an extended period of time with them. This necessitated a truce of sorts.

 

We now live in a state of detente.

[+ FrankR]

OK. I'm confused by this post. Who's they?

I believe @marylander1940 is saying that his family only accepts him as they wonder/hope to make it into his will...

[+ WilliamM]

Yes... but I also think it's because of having no children of my own they wonder who will be in my will.

 

Must be very frustrating, @marylander1940. Are you sure?

[+ oldNbusted]

It was always a source of tension when I still lived with my Dad, before I turned 15 and bounced. Sometimes, things wouldn't work out and I would be homeless for a while, but that was better than going back. He would corral me for holiday visits, I realize now, just to make it look like he was still taking care of me. But even that was a problem because they would pester me with questions about girlfriends. I told him one time if he wanted me to go with him again, he needed to make them stop because if he didn't, I knew a sure fire way to shut them up, which he begged me not to do. After I was legal, contact dropped off and now I haven't talked to any of them for decades. I have no idea if my parents are still alive or not and don't much care.

 

Funny story, after high school, one of my classmates went to work with my Dad. It turned out Dad was reading books to try to 'understand' homosexuality and thought talking to someone my age might help him understand attitudes in younger (presumably straight) people. He was talking to my classmate as a straight peer. But, this particular classmate was secretly gay, and what my Dad did not know was that we knew each other, although we never hooked up. So when I would see this guy at a gay bar, he would fill me in on the latest research my Dad was doing. I told him to tell my Dad he didn't need to understand it, he just needed to accept it, but I don't know if that ever happened. Fun times!

[+ WilliamM]

It was always a source of tension when I still lived with my Dad, before I turned 15 and bounced. Sometimes, things wouldn't work out and I would be homeless for a while, but that was better than going back. He would corral me for holiday visits, I realize now, just to make it look like he was still taking care of me. But even that was a problem because they would pester me with questions about girlfriends. I told him one time if he wanted me to go with him again, he needed to make them stop because if he didn't, I knew a sure fire way to shut them up, which he begged me not to do. After I was legal, contact dropped off and now I haven't talked to any of them for decades. I have no idea if my parents are still alive or not and don't much care.

 

Funny story, after high school, one of my classmates went to work with my Dad. It turned out Dad was reading books to try to 'understand' homosexuality and thought talking to someone my age might help him understand attitudes in younger (presumably straight) people. He was talking to my classmate as a straight peer. But, this particular classmate was secretly gay, and what my Dad did not know was that we knew each other, although we never hooked up. So when I would see this guy at a gay bar, he would fill me in on the latest research my Dad was doing. I told him to tell my Dad he didn't need to understand it, he just needed to accept it, but I don't know if that ever happened. Fun times!

 

At age 15, I was far more concerned with getting a good education so I could survive on my own. I argued with my parents, but was focused on an excellent college or university. My dad graduated college. My mother didn't finish high school. That background helped a lot

Edited December 1, 2019 by WilliamM

[+ oldNbusted]

At age 15, I was far more concerned with getting a good education so I could survive on my own. I argued with my parents, but was focused on an excellent college or university. My dad graduated college. My mother didn't finish high school. That background helped a lot

 

You argued with your parents about your sexuality? Not entirely clear what part of my post you are responding to since you quoted the entire thing. More concerned than what?

[+ Archer]

No, they don't.

[marylander1940]

OK. I'm confused by this post. Who's they?

 

nephews and nieces mostly

[+ poolboy48220]

My youngest sister (one older sister, two younger) is gay. I wouldn't say my family "embraces" our gayness, but it doesn't come up a lot at family gatherings.

[OneFinger]

After I told my parents I was gay, the relationship became very "cold". But things warmed up and stayed that way for the rest of their lives. Never had a problem with aunts, uncles or cousins.

 

Had a wonderful experience this June at Utah Pride. It happened I was in Utah that week and mentioned to my straight niece I was going. (She and her 2 boys share my Utah house with me.) Her immediate response was to ask if her family could go with me. So, we loaded up the car and headed down to Salt Lake City for the parade and festivities.

 

I was so excited to go to Pride with 3 generations of my family. FYI, my niece's oldest son (15 this month) told us in August he is bisexual. Not sure if Pride gave him the courage to come out to us. But I think that could have been a factor. He also told us he had his first boyfriend last school year and school staff / classmates knew. No one in the family blinked and for us, it's no big dealing. That's also the attitude / way it's handled in the school.

[+ pdxleo]

The word "detente" is an accurate depiction of my upbringing. Parents were divorced, Mom had custody, every other weekend at Dad's except when he was working out of town (railway engineer), so 98 percent of life was at Mom's. Eldest child of six, both parents eldest children of their families also, so life was lived under the microscope of a lot of folks- we lived across the street from Mom's parents, in a small town. Looking back, it was a recipe for disaster, could have turned out really ugly.

 

I'm fairly sure Dad figured it out first, unless Mom put him up to this: He would leave old Playgirl mags and such n the seat back pocket of the Celica for me to find on the weekends that he was in town for visitation. I must have been 9 yrs old, about 1973, I don't recall being particularly effeminate as a kid, but who knows- anyway, I guess he thought it might help me figure things out. I always read them in the back seat, left them in the car at the end of the visitation. Didn't think about taking them back to Mom's with me.

 

Forward a couple years- age 11, in 1975 &76. Dad is remarried, new wife is NOT interested in having reminders of her husband's previous marriage, so visitation becomes a one-to-two hour outing every three weeks or so. Thus, no surreptitious magazine viewing anymore. I had a morning paper route to earn my own ducats; as long as I put half in my savings account, and show Mom the bank book proving the deposit, the rest of the money is mine to spend. I found that, if I added a copy of Playgirl to the few things I would pick up at the 24hr Osco Drug on Saturday mornings at 5AM-( that's where the paperboys picked up their papers, their covered loading dock), the cashier never gave me any guff. The mags were behind the counter, below the cigarette rack, and even at age 11, I was close to six feet tall, so I guess they assumed I was of age- aah the Seventies!

 

Altho I was tall, puberty was not quite finished for me, so after looking at the mags I would throw then in the trash bin. Then one weekend at my friend Mark's home, I was introduced to the concept of masturbation, solo and mutual, and things became much more clear! So the mags started coming home with me, sometimes after a few days with Mark, sometimes right away. With many younger brothers in the house, privacy was not on the house menu, so Mom's solution was to give each of us a metal tool box and a combination lock. The things we wanted to not share with brothers went into the locked box, and GOD FORBID anyone break into your brother's box!

 

Little did we know that she had kept a copy of the combinations for herself "just in case you forget". I didn't tell her when I suspected that Mitch had gotten my box open, and I swapped locks with my school locker. And because I was generally a good boy, I never gave her any reason to need to see inside my lockbox, unlike my brothers- who each had their boxes opened after some transgression or another, and finding smokes, knives, etc. She had made a couple of us open the box in front of her, but Donnie refused to, so she just opened it herself, boy was that a surprise! Anyway, the lock box idea died away, but I still had mine deep in my closet, filling slowly with printed proof of my (and slowly growing circle of confidantes) increasing sexual awareness

 

Of course it all comes to ahead finally- Easter Sunday 1976. Dad is in town, and Grandma wants the have all the grandkids over for Easter brunch. Mom bundles all us kids into the VistaCruiser to take us across town to her ex-mother-in-law, warning us to be on our best behavior, "don't you DARE embarrass me in front of your Gramma Dottie!' When we got home, we scattered after changing clothes. Before late supper, Mom calls out, "I want all your dirty clothes to do laundry, Lennie come help me."

 

So we gather things in my little brothers rooms, the she heads into my room (being the oldest I had my room to myself) and goes straight into the closet. Calls out with a tone to her voice, "Lennie, get in here!" I see that my lockbox is out in the middle of the closet floor, not where I left it on the top shelf, and the lock hasp has been twisted off, the now useless lock hanging off to the side. "You wanna tell me about what's in this box?", she says , with a cold edge in her voice that I don't ever remember hearing before- she sounds like when Grandma Lena has been drinking and wandering around the neighborhood. It dawns on me that she has taken the opportunity of having all the kids away from home for a full afternoon to do some snooping (in a way I can;t blame her, we are a wild bunch) .

 

Looking back through a forty-plus year lens, I can tell that this might have been the first time I felt, well, ashamed of being myself, in a way. Sure, I'd been made ashamed of some things in my childhood, as anyone would- that's how you raise a kid, gotta make them see right from wrong, punish when needed. Going back and apologizing to the toy store owner after stealing a Matchbox car, telling the neighborhood girl who is a thalidomide victim that calling her a flipper girl was a bad thing and I'm sorry. and many others are what turn savage untamed children into productive upstanding citizens. But this was different. Feeling ashamed of WHO I was, not just something wrong I had done, having to be judged as a "bad person" about something that I was beginning to see was going to be a permanent fixture of life. I now see that I aged from twelve to eighteen that day, there was no going back.

 

I spent the summer of 1976 taking a bus downtown Tuesdays and Fridays, talking with a therapist that my parents arranged. At first my walls were tall and strong, but eventually he helped me see things in reality, that life was going to be hard and I would need all my intellect to find my way thru to adulthood. As a twelve year old patient, he would have to report our findings to my folks,but he managed to do it in away that satisfied Mom and got her off my back. I was locked down hard that summer, but when school started (freshman year high school) the "detente" began, and what would now be called "don't ask, don"t tell" became the norm. Mom, new step-dad, and brothers moved across town my senior year, I stayed behind to finish with my graduating class, and then at sixteen,it was off to college in the Bay Area- another story for another time

[+ E.T.Bass]

I decided if they rejected me when I came out I would move away and cut them out.

 

But they sort of got it. Could be worse.

 

My Mom became a volunteer at the AiDS service office in town. Perhaps that was some kind of magical thinking that her service would bring me good karma. I guess it worked.

 

The brother that lives in Colorado and screams lock her up while watching Fox News allowed me to stay at his place with a "friend". But he clearly believes marriage equality is an example the Constitution being hijacked by reactionary judges. I haven't asked him how it is having a gay governor.

 

I moved away from the homeland anyway, after I came out, eventually to a place I said I would never live. But one can't predict life's circumstances. Karma I guess.

[+ E.T.Bass]

The word "detente" is an accurate depiction of my upbringing. Parents were divorced, Mom had custody, every other weekend at Dad's except when he was working out of town (railway engineer), so 98 percent of life was at Mom's. Eldest child of six, both parents eldest children of their families also, so life was lived under the microscope of a lot of folks- we lived across the street from Mom's parents, in a small town. Looking back, it was a recipe for disaster, could have turned out really ugly.

 

I'm fairly sure Dad figured it out first, unless Mom put him up to this: He would leave old Playgirl mags and such n the seat back pocket of the Celica for me to find on the weekends that he was in town for visitation. I must have been 9 yrs old, about 1973, I don't recall being particularly effeminate as a kid, but who knows- anyway, I guess he thought it might help me figure things out. I always read them in the back seat, left them in the car at the end of the visitation. Didn't think about taking them back to Mom's with me.

 

Forward a couple years- age 11, in 1975 &76. Dad is remarried, new wife is NOT interested in having reminders of her husband's previous marriage, so visitation becomes a one-to-two hour outing every three weeks or so. Thus, no surreptitious magazine viewing anymore. I had a morning paper route to earn my own ducats; as long as I put half in my savings account, and show Mom the bank book proving the deposit, the rest of the money is mine to spend. I found that, if I added a copy of Playgirl to the few things I would pick up at the 24hr Osco Drug on Saturday mornings at 5AM-( that's where the paperboys picked up their papers, their covered loading dock), the cashier never gave me any guff. The mags were behind the counter, below the cigarette rack, and even at age 11, I was close to six feet tall, so I guess they assumed I was of age- aah the Seventies!

 

Altho I was tall, puberty was not quite finished for me, so after looking at the mags I would throw then in the trash bin. Then one weekend at my friend Mark's home, I was introduced to the concept of masturbation, solo and mutual, and things became much more clear! So the mags started coming home with me, sometimes after a few days with Mark, sometimes right away. With many younger brothers in the house, privacy was not on the house menu, so Mom's solution was to give each of us a metal tool box and a combination lock. The things we wanted to not share with brothers went into the locked box, and GOD FORBID anyone break into your brother's box!

 

Little did we know that she had kept a copy of the combinations for herself "just in case you forget". I didn't tell her when I suspected that Mitch had gotten my box open, and I swapped locks with my school locker. And because I was generally a good boy, I never gave her any reason to need to see inside my lockbox, unlike my brothers- who each had their boxes opened after some transgression or another, and finding smokes, knives, etc. She had made a couple of us open the box in front of her, but Donnie refused to, so she just opened it herself, boy was that a surprise! Anyway, the lock box idea died away, but I still had mine deep in my closet, filling slowly with printed proof of my (and slowly growing circle of confidantes) increasing sexual awareness

 

Of course it all comes to ahead finally- Easter Sunday 1976. Dad is in town, and Grandma wants the have all the grandkids over for Easter brunch. Mom bundles all us kids into the VistaCruiser to take us across town to her ex-mother-in-law, warning us to be on our best behavior, "don't you DARE embarrass me in front of your Gramma Dottie!' When we got home, we scattered after changing clothes. Before late supper, Mom calls out, "I want all your dirty clothes to do laundry, Lennie come help me."

 

So we gather things in my little brothers rooms, the she heads into my room (being the oldest I had my room to myself) and goes straight into the closet. Calls out with a tone to her voice, "Lennie, get in here!" I see that my lockbox is out in the middle of the closet floor, not where I left it on the top shelf, and the lock hasp has been twisted off, the now useless lock hanging off to the side. "You wanna tell me about what's in this box?", she says , with a cold edge in her voice that I don't ever remember hearing before- she sounds like when Grandma Lena has been drinking and wandering around the neighborhood. It dawns on me that she has taken the opportunity of having all the kids away from home for a full afternoon to do some snooping (in a way I can;t blame her, we are a wild bunch) .

 

Looking back through a forty-plus year lens, I can tell that this might have been the first time I felt, well, ashamed of being myself, in a way. Sure, I'd been made ashamed of some things in my childhood, as anyone would- that's how you raise a kid, gotta make them see right from wrong, punish when needed. Going back and apologizing to the toy store owner after stealing a Matchbox car, telling the neighborhood girl who is a thalidomide victim that calling her a flipper girl was a bad thing and I'm sorry. and many others are what turn savage untamed children into productive upstanding citizens. But this was different. Feeling ashamed of WHO I was, not just something wrong I had done, having to be judged as a "bad person" about something that I was beginning to see was going to be a permanent fixture of life. I now see that I aged from twelve to eighteen that day, there was no going back.

 

I spent the summer of 1976 taking a bus downtown Tuesdays and Fridays, talking with a therapist that my parents arranged. At first my walls were tall and strong, but eventually he helped me see things in reality, that life was going to be hard and I would need all my intellect to find my way thru to adulthood. As a twelve year old patient, he would have to report our findings to my folks,but he managed to do it in away that satisfied Mom and got her off my back. I was locked down hard that summer, but when school started (freshman year high school) the "detente" began, and what would now be called "don't ask, don"t tell" became the norm. Mom, new step-dad, and brothers moved across town my senior year, I stayed behind to finish with my graduating class, and then at sixteen,it was off to college in the Bay Area- another story for another time

 

Thank you for this. Sure brings up feelings, like the first time feeling shame about it.

[+ Charlie]

I came out to my parents when I was 19, and we never discussed the subject again; it was something that was simply passively understood from then on. They accepted my friends and my partners, but never inquired about the nature of the relationships. The fact that I was gay never changed my loving relationship with my parents in any way that I was aware of. I occasionally picked up hints that my mother hoped I might change some day, so she could have grandchildren, but by the time she came to live with my partner and me after he and I had lived together for 25 years, she knew her role was mother-in-law. I was an only child, so I never had to navigate the subject with siblings. As for other relations, most of them probably understood, because I was never badgered with the "So, when are you going to get a girl friend?" kind of discussions. When I finally did marry my partner in 2013, the warmest congratulations I received were from an elderly female cousin.

 

My partner was sexually repressed until his late 20s, when he finally left the family home. His domineering father died not long after that, and his quiet mother never inquired about his personal life, though she undoubtedly understood the nature of our domestic partnership. He had three younger brothers, and the next brother (6 years younger) also wasn't out until his late 20s; he has also been in an openly gay domestic relationship for many years, and he and his partner were much more actively engaged with the mother than we were. The two younger brothers were straight, but seemed to accept the model set by their two older brothers and their mother. One brother died in his 40s, and his wife was never comfortable with her gay brothers-in-law and their partners; her children have also been distant from us. The youngest brother and his wife, and their two adult children, are the family members we both are closest to now, and we are also close to a couple of my spouse's cousins. My straight brother-in-law is actually the executor of my will as well as my spouse's. It surely helps that everyone in my spouse's family is well educated and no one is religious, except the distant sister-in-law.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Charlie

[Fridolf]

In a word: no.

[marylander1940]

[+ WilliamM]

 

Thanks

[RealAvalon]

Embrace is a strong word.

 

Back in the day far more families refused to acknowledge children with a different orientation, especially those with a strong religious belief.

 

Things have gotten better in some respects. In others, not so much...

Was that your experience?