Breaking the Cycle of Shame
The last person I needed to come out to was my teenage son.
Once I finally accepted my bisexuality, I only felt the need to come out to a small group of people close to me. My wife was first to know and was planning on telling my closest friends and my mother. But, there was one other person I felt it was important for me to come out to, my teenage son. I wanted my son to be sure that however he identified himself, he would have my total support. But I also felt this need because I knew how much it would have helped me, at his age, to know I knew multisexual people…in my own family.
While I was growing up, 30+ years ago, open discussions on sexuality were minimal, yet my mother was actually more progressive than most. There were always sex ed books around along with her repeatedly telling me that I could ask any questions. But I never did. I kept my sexual education to what was in those books and what the people around me said. Within these observations the only sexualities that ever came up were gay or straight. There were no other options ever talked about and that made me feel like a freak because I didn’t fit either of those.
In school, among my classmates, I liked girls. I wanted relationships with them. I wanted to kiss girls…and I did quite a few times. So I thought that meant I must be straight. Right? But what about this desire to want to go down on guys…and the fact that I actually did quite a few times? I had no desire to kiss guys though, so that meant I must not be gay. Right? I told myself that I liked girls how I was “supposed to” but because I also wanted to go down on guys I figured I was somehow confused. No. Not just confused, messed up, maybe even broken.
Our household had a Newsweek subscription and I very clearly remember skimming the 1995 bisexual issue. At this point I’d just hit teenagehood and had already had a few sexual experiences with other guys my age, yet I still didn’t connect this term “bisexual” to what I was. Despite it staring me in the face I still didn’t think bisexual was a thing I could be. Or, maybe, I just did not admit it to myself.
Was this lack of connection only because I didn’t feel exactly the same way about guys as I did about girls? Was it because I was just in denial? Was it because I was scared? I do not remember a specific single reason at this point. It was likely all of them.
I was scared about what would happen if my acts were found out by my family. I was scared about what would happen if I was actually gay. I was conscious of how the family talked about that one gay uncle differently than all the other relatives. It wasn’t that anyone spoke in a derogatory way against him but he was just different. I didn’t want to be different. I knew I was already different because of my ADHD and that was too much.
No matter where I went to school, I was an outsider who did not act exactly like the other boys, who did not fit in well with the norms. I didn’t even fit in with the other guys in the ADHD class so I knew that wasn’t my only issue. Looking back now I recognize how hard I tried to fit in as much as possible, which meant being as masculine as possible. Still, I never fit in. I was constantly holding myself in check to make sure no one saw me doing anything “gay” like showing any non-masculine emotions, thinking anything was pretty, or having compassion for any living thing (I never understood hunting/killing for sport). I was still an easy target for bullies.
A few more hookups with peer guys early in high school wound up being the end of it. After I witnessed an assault at school, I told myself that I couldn’t go on like that and expect not to get beat up, or to ever have a girlfriend, or not be rejected by my family. The desires did not go away but I repressed them. The remainder of high school through college, I experienced several bouts of confusing feelings for guys (which I now understand were romantic) but I didn’t want to explore those feelings and I never did anything physical with a guy again.
Twenty or so years after that last encounter in high school and 10+ years into my marriage, something hit me like a ton of bricks. My grandfather passed away, but that wasn’t what hit me so hard. We were not close and he had abandoned the family so there was nothing personally lost. What hit me was a conversation I overheard where my grandma said he had issues dealing with his bisexuality. Wait what?!!!
Within an instant of hearing this, it was like seeing several puzzle pieces of my life fit into place quickly. This was the first person that I had ever known to be bisexual. This was now a real concept that could exist in my mind. I started to understand him and even empathize with him which I hated because he was not a good guy. He was abusive in all the worst ways and I didn’t want to be anything like him. I didn’t want to have issues with my marriage, with my wife, like he had with my grandma. So I stuffed it down deeper than ever before.
A handful of years later, I received another shock. My mother came out as pansexual. Within this coming out she mentioned this new term fit better but she had been bisexual her entire life. Again I had a moment of, wait what?!!! I had no idea my mom was bisexual. I racked my brain trying to remember. I could recall plenty of cis-men she was physically affectionate with but I couldn’t think of a single instance of her seeming attracted to a person of any other gender.
Talking it over with her recently (when I came out to her) she said she thought she was very open about not being heterosexual. Maybe I am just oblivious to obvious things if they are not spoken directly to me but, still to this day, I do not have any memories of this.
A few days after I came out to my wife, when we discussed if/how/when I should tell our children, my first reaction was that I didn’t want my bisexuality to be a big deal. I thought I could just make passing comments and let it be “obvious.” But then I realized that this is exactly how I grew up. It wasn’t obvious. And I recalled how much pain I had in my youth thinking that I was a freak because I didn’t fit into the only options I saw around me: straight or gay.
Coming out to my son was one of the hardest things I have done as a parent. I was so nervous, but not in the way I was before telling my wife or my friends. I wasn’t worried that my son would reject me, but I was afraid that I would say the wrong thing, that I might confuse him even more than he maybe already was. But I wanted to sever this generational cycle of shame. I do not want my son (or younger kids) to ever feel broken in the ways I did.
I started off telling him that I don’t care who he ever wants to be with as long as they are nice to him. I beat around the bush a bit as I was nervous but finally I told him, “I grew up liking people of different genders…guys, too.” Other than his eyebrows raising he seemed unfazed. I like to think this was a sign that my wife and I were already on the right track with parenting on this topic.
It was a relief to come out to my son but I do not feel like having one conversation can be the end of it. I think it is important for me to occasionally speak up in ways that reaffirm that even though our kids see me monogamously married to their mom, I’m still bisexual. I want to be so open that my kids will never be shocked one day well into adulthood because it wasn’t obvious enough that I’m not heterosexual. I want to break the generational cycle of shame that started with my grandfather (or maybe even earlier) and ate away at me for so many years. I hope that my choice to live more “out” will mean my kids never feel like they need to hide their true selves.
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