This message was sent to me a while back, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I realize I don’t have to “do” anything with it, except share it with you.
The writer so clearly wants to tell her story. And I think she would appreciate your thoughts and reflections. Feel free to leave a comment here.
Hi, there.
I am a 40-something, happily married, mother of two (daughters.)
I am also an only child of a man who I believe to be gay. He is also still married to my mother.
I have no idea how or why they have remained together all these years, other than to explain that denial is a very powerful thing.
One can never explain the chemistry of any relationship and my parents have things all hunky-dory between them. They have been in a marriage since 1960 and I certainly have never seen them fight — with each other.
But growing up they fought with me. Starting at a very early age, I was “their enemy.”
The two of them were vicious toward me. I was the great ruiner of their lives. Growing up my world was ruled by not one, but two very histrionic drama queens. Needless to say that while I love them, I think there’s a reason we live on other sides of the country. They were charming. They were integral parts of the local school and the local church. My mother was flakey in a deliberately “Edith Bunker” kind of way, and my father was charming and controlling in a Felix Unger kind of way.
As I grew older, my father’s “gay hints” got more and more bold. In-my-face bold and ludicrously obvious. Just trust me, without stooping to listing the facts, I have pretty much always felt he was not like the other dads.
Growing up did a number on my self esteem. I didn’t have any siblings and so much anger and loathing was directed at me growing up…It’s taken a long time to figure out and work at forgiving the roots of it all.
Many of his closest friends and or family members said that at one time or another he had “confessed” to them that he struggled with being gay.
I looked to my mother growing up, for clues about what it was to be a woman, or a wife…But, this was challenging since she is not someone you’d call very “adult” about her own sexuality; she’s always been “gender neutral.” So trying to figure out what their real relationship was based on clues from her was impossible. And then there was her constant babble about how “lucky” they were to have what she still calls “the perfect marriage.”
Anyhow, for some inexplicable reason, one day while visiting my parents I decided to talk about what to me was always “the elephant in the livingroom.”
I asked to speak in private with my Dad and I just felt like I needed to reach out to my father honestly for once, before I flew 2000 miles home the next week. Life was short and I wanted to make sure that, as I put it to him, that before either of us died that we for once had a real conversation about this.
I was nervous, but I took a risk and asked if the reason he and I had such a rocky relationship growing up had anything to do with him being gay. I then told him if he’d ever had decided to have come out of the closet, that I would have been his biggest supporter.
He didn’t bat an eyelash. He didn’t even stop to think about before he responded “But, I’m not gay.”
That was it. So calculatingly neutral, it felt slightly hostile.
Then he asked me what I meant about all those “hints” I thought he had dropped through the years.
And I realized the sheer comedy of it all. I hadn’t counted on him to NOT to respond honestly to my honesty. I never imagined he would not welcome or be touched by my reaching out to him. Every time I rehearsed this scene in my head, he was always grateful or relieved…Not distant or still in denial.
There was a joke in all this, but it was on me.
He wanted to put the focus on him. It was still all about him. Even though my offering an olive branch about a possible explanation for our terrible relationship growing up, he just kept the focus on himself.
He only said, self-pityingly, “Oh. I’m sorry you think your childhood wasn’t happy.” And immediately wanted to know more about specifically why I would ever assume he was gay.
It worried me. Not that I’d outed him, to him. But, that he was so committed to lying to his only daughter that I worried he might actually be crazy.
Also, it angers me still. I got a childhood that was, at best, largely ignored by my parents bottomless need for attention, and still I’ve kept the doors of communication open. I have “played along” with the lies and the image we all present to the world, when the truth was so much uglier and harder to handle than anyone could imagine.
And now, after all this time, I gave my Dad a chance to address roots of our relationship but also, maybe, discuss his feelings about himself honestly, for once.
On a deeply inner level I’m mad at them both about how their parental choices shaped the person I am now, but the adult in me laughs about it because that was then; and this is now.
It does anger me that he felt closer to other people to share his sexual identity crisis with them, and not with me — his only daughter — even though I’m the one who’s been there for him all along, and who will continue to be there for him. That does bother me, but what did I expect?
He does not want to be close to me and I have to accept that. I am not going to change anyone that doesn’t want to change.
I am no longer a child. I am not at all dependent on their moods or their love or my security. I am on my own now. So, I don’t have any rights to demand any truth from him.
Do I still think he’s gay? You bet.
Did I think my own candid openness was going to change him? Yes. Was that naive or arrogant of me? Naturally.
Did it change anything in my relationship with my father? Nope. It’s like the conversation never took place.
But, it did. I know it did, and he knows it, too.
We didn’t have any life-changing bonding over my bringing up the subject, but the fact remains: it could have.
It could have, and he denied that moment.
And that is what he will take to his grave.
I hope my story is of value to someone, somewhere.
And if a parent out there is debating whether or not to “come out.” Always come out.
Just. Be. Honest.
Always tell the truth. It may feel impossible at first, but I can’t tell you how toxic lies are…To yourself and to your children.
Don’t screw up your relationship with your family. Be honest otherwise you lose credibility and respect from those who are closest to you. Don’t risk that.
I hate lies. And I hate that I think I’ve been lied to.
What’s worse, I guess, is that there’s no real proof of the lie other than what my gut tells me.
I do not respect my father for refusing to meet me out there on the limb, but without his willingness to open up, who can say what the situation really was about?
After all, I’m his only daughter but that doesn’t entitle him to tell me everything about himself. What hurts is knowing he has “shared” these kinds of stolen conversations with others. Just not me.
And that stinks. But, that has nothing to do with his sexuality, that has to do with his willingness to love and be loved.
Of course, without any confirmation or proof that he “was gay” all of this is an assumption.
Perhaps it has to do with my ability to love and be loved, too.
And the sad truth is, unless there’s some kind of death-bed confession, this “deep issue” is forever going to something I’ll either feel guilty about or continue to feel hurt by.
Or I could just get over it. Which is, as we all know, never as easy as it sounds.
However, again, the moral of this story is that I do think every parent needs to honor children’s need for truth. And if that leads to uncomfortable conversations, so be it.
