Thank you for the kind words. You are welcome to reference my comment. You are right that premature outing is a risk, but the whole point of deferring is that the likelihood is low of a guy being willing to confront and overcome his bias without experiencing his ability to love and be intimate with someone he categorizes as “other”. It is the unexpected experiences in life that cause us to challenge our beliefs and biases. I like to believe I’m a much better man, husband, and father than I was thirty years ago, and as evidence I submit that I would not have chosen many of the experiences that have most shaped me.
We all deserve love. You deserve love. I hope that when the time is right and you tell your boyfriend that his love for you is stronger than whatever bias he may have and if it isn’t, then he wasn’t the right guy.
The one other thing I would say is that overcoming bias doesn’t (usually) mean it necessarily disappears, certainly not right away. Decades of reinforced thought patterns and behaviors don’t get erased by one moment of decision. Neural pathways have to be rebuilt and it takes time. So if your guy is the one and he’s willing to fight through his bias with you, I urge you to be patient and loving in return when the inevitable slips happen and he says or does something where his bias shows through. I’m a better man very much because of the grace shown me by my wife as I have slogged through rewiring my own brain — it’s not always been pleasant, but here we are after all these years in a stronger relationship than we could ever have imagined.
Just as a funny side note — her sister cried (not happy tears) when we announced our engagement, her maid of honor told her she was making a mistake to marry me, my best man offered/suggested to help me escape from the church before the wedding, and my brother didn’t want her coming between us but was sure “blood is thicker than water”. Ha! It’s been a long strange trip but we are still on it together.
