Auntie SparkNotes: I’m Lying to Everyone About My Orientation

Hi Auntie SparkNotes,

I’ve got a crush on my best friend. Tale as old as time, but it gets a lot more complicated. My parents are extremely Catholic, and while they aren’t homophobic, they are probably transphobic, and I get the feeling that someone being gay is something they don’t understand, and should I ever come out, they will probably say the sort of well meaning thing that completely ruins everything, or Google what to say.

I include these details because my friend (let’s call her Zero) and I are both female. Zero, on the other hand, is raised by her mum, who is Catholic in name only, extremely relaxed on LGBTQ+ matters, and I prefer being at Zero’s house to my own. I’m afraid of what will happen whenever Zero talks to my parents, because she and I are internet writers and role players, and my father is a computer technician, and thus hates the internet community. (Saying I have an account on a website would be translated to him as: My daughter has given some rando all her information, and our house will be broken into and she will be kidnapped, raped and murdered.) I have never given personal information out online because my internet life is like a haven, where I don’t have to worry about realities like my family.

Zero came out in the middle of last year, and I spent half a year since then convincing everyone that I wasn’t gay too. This was a particularly difficult task because I was questioning both gender and sexuality at the time, and Zero was the first gay person most of them had seen, and we are very similar in a lot of ways. Also I have no friends really except her. Over the summer I came out to myself as bi. Through several traumatic experiences, I have become a little like a clam- I don’t share anything—and so my already horrifyingly difficult task of turning round and explaining that I was wrong before, and I am Bi, is a million times harder. And telling my parents is starting to feel like walking on water. The few friends I have all know, including Zero, who now has an Internet boyfriend who used to be her girlfriend and lives in America. I feel like if I hadn’t been so slow and cautious in figuring out who I am, we might have got together, and then I would have had a way of coming out that is increasingly feeling like my only option.

In short, my life is a can of worms, and I am lying to everyone about who I am.

Hey, no you aren’t!

Which is where I’m just gonna jump right in, Sparkler, with the most compassionate of corrections: You’re not lying to everyone about who you are. That’s not true in the least, okay? You are simply not announcing everything about who you are to every last person on earth right this minute.

And that’s not just a different thing, but a very normal one. Your sexual orientation isn’t unimportant, but it’s just one part of your identity, and it is both reasonable and sensible that you’re being selective about how and with whom you share it. Why wouldn’t you? You’ve only just barely figured it out yourself. And while it’s good that you’ve felt comfortable enough to tell your close friends about your orientation, you are not required to come out to anyone, on any schedule. That’s true no matter what, sweet pea. It doesn’t matter if you previously claimed to be straight, or if you took longer than some to decide that you weren’t strictly heterosexual. And despite how you may feel right now, I promise, you have not lost anything here. You will have countless opportunities between now and adulthood (not to mention during all the years thereafter) to come out in a way that is right and comfortable and totally authentic to the person you are.

And while dating this one particular girl might have been nice for you for other reasons, the one thing it’s not is a missed opportunity to come out. When it comes to proclaiming your identity, the right option for you is first and foremost one you’re ready to take, and you weren’t ready to date your friend. You still had things to figure out! Important things! Things you needed to get a handle on before you could reasonably hope to date anyone, because we all have to be comfortable with ourselves before we can expect to be comfortable with another person! Do not begrudge yourself the time it took to do that work. It was good and it was necessary.

And now, you’re going to want to sit down and grab a beverage, because you have some thinking to do. The truth is, this problem of yours is actually a series of smaller, separate issues that might seem related, but really don’t have much to do with each other—and you’re going to have to deal with each one individually in order to get anywhere. There’s the issue of your coming out, which we’ve already talked about. There’s the issue of your feelings for your friend, which you can reveal to her or not, depending on how hard you’re crushing and how prepared you are for the possibility of being rejected—which is a risk, obviously, although not an inevitability. (Yes, she’s already involved with someone, but you have the benefit of being a person she knows, likes, and can actually touch. So if she does dig you romantically, you’ve got a more than decent shot at wooing her away from Mr. Interwebs.)

And finally, there’s the issue of your parents. And much as I sympathize with your nervousness about coming out to them, I also have to gently suggest that your worries on this front are way overblown – and that they perhaps deserve less worry a little more credit for what you describe as their most likely reaction, which is not to disown you, or dismiss you, but to research how best to support you. If that’s really your worst-case outcome, you’re in better shape than most. And while you might wish your folks were intuitive enough about LGBT issues that they just knew what to say—or that they were more like your friend’s less devout, more relaxed mom—you could also do much worse than to have parents who want to say the right thing, even if they have to ask the internet what the right thing is.

None of which is to say you have to come out to them. You don’t. Your sexuality is your business, and the choice to have that conversation is entirely up to you. And if you choose not to talk about it, that’s totally okay. You have every right in the world to keep some things private, or even secret, from your parents—which includes the specifics of your sexual orientation, but also includes things like your feelings about Catholicism or your penchant for online role playing. Choosing what to share with your folks is an essential part of growing up, and it’s both normal and healthy not to share everything with them as you get older, and begin to make your own decisions about who you are and how you want to live. And whether you share this aspect of your identity with them now, later or never—and whether you share in whole or in part—you can have faith that things will work out for you the same way they’ve worked out for so many LGBT kids before you, even the ones who were slow to know themselves or had less-than-perfect families to come out to. You’re going to be fine.

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