How to respond to a coming out?

Coming out is a situation in which a person stops hiding their own sexual orientation or gender identity.

For the person who decides to come out, it is often an event that divides life into a before and an after. In terms of importance, it could be compared to, say, the birth of a child, or finishing school, or moving to another country. For the person who comes out, it can sometimes be dangerous, especially in those societies where the level of homophobia remains high to this day.

For the loved ones of a person who comes out, it can above all be frightening and confusing. Some may sense danger as well, if we are talking about a society with a high level of homophobia. Often the loved ones of a person who comes out feel as though their life has collapsed, and they find themselves at a loss. This gives rise to anger and misunderstanding. Anxiety arises for the health and safety of a loved one who is now known to have an identity that society does not approve of.

People often do not know what to ask, what the right thing to say is, or how to behave at all now. People who come out usually prepare for it for a long time. They weigh all the arguments for, the arguments against, and the risks.

Why does a person come out?

Some people decide to live what is called a double life — that is, to show one picture of themselves to their family and close ones, and to present another picture of themselves in a limited, sometimes closed circle.

First, living a double life is very burdensome. A person has to be under constant tension, and this leads to rapid exhaustion, both emotional and mental.

Second, it is hard to live knowing that your own family does not really know you, does not even see you. They see some other image of their son, or their daughter, or another close person, and you have to match that image — otherwise you will get neither attention, nor love, nor support, none of what we take from our families.

And another reason people dare to come out is the sense of openness and ease that comes from living with your partner and being able not to hide your family life. Many LGBTQI+ people build families and have children while at the same time hiding their relationship from their parents. Sometimes such families have to invent stories that a partner is a friend, a godfather, or a godmother.

What should parents do?

The first thing you need to do is calm down. After that you will need more information. Try to find sources of such information, perhaps online. There are dedicated organizations that work with the parents and relatives of people who have come out or who belong to the LGBTQI+ community. It would be very helpful to find other people whose relatives have also come out. When you see that you are not the only one, that there are other people going through the same thing as you, you feel noticeable relief.

In any case, I would advise being on your loved one’s side: “I am with you, I am for you, even though it is hard for me right now, my life has collapsed, I do not know how to react or how to live at the moment; while I am in this period of confusion — it will pass, I will find the answers to my questions — but I am with you all the same, even if right now I cannot be the way I always am.”

Why does this happen? Because the plans for your daughter’s or son’s future really have collapsed too, and it is worth understanding that these were your plans, not theirs. The fact that you had built some future for yourself and hoped that one day it would come true, and now you see that it will not, is your own inner problem, one you will have to work out with yourself — and your children are not responsible for your emotional states, or for the fact that you cannot cope with them right now.

How can you support yourself during this time?

Try not to see what has happened as a misfortune. See it as an event that has unexpectedly entered your life and that you need to learn to live with.

I would also advise against ignoring this event. If we do not talk about it and avoid touching on the subject, it will not stop being there. And if it is still hard for you to talk about it, you can calmly and simply tell your child, or another family member who is coming out, that you cannot talk about it yet, but that you will later on.

I would also advise against taking the position of “let’s wait it out until it passes, it will pass.” Perhaps you are dealing with something like bisexuality — and then, indeed, a person’s partner may change from a man to a woman or from a woman to a man, and the situation will seem to look “normal.” But if you are dealing with transgender identity or homosexuality, the person will most likely remain in their identity, in the form in which they present it to you. And to hope that it will pass is like pretending that what is happening to them now is false, wrong, pathological, or somehow not right — and that is the same thing as non-acceptance.

Take care not to get stuck in the stages of denial, guilt, and pain. These stages are natural when something in our life collapses, even if it is only our beliefs about our children’s future. We naturally pass through the stages of denial, unwillingness to come to terms with it, pain, guilt, and so on. If you notice that this period has been going on for several months and is not coming to an end, it would most likely help you to turn to a psychologist or psychotherapist with whom you could move out of the place where you are stuck.

Phrases to avoid

There are also phrases and expressions that people who come out may hear from their relatives, and these words are painful, they can hurt a person.

I have gathered a few of these expressions, and I want to talk with you about them too.

“So how long have you had this?”

Rest assured, it has definitely been a long time. If a person comes out, they have been living with it for a while. When they hear a phrase like this, it means they are seemingly being accused of something, or that the truth of how they feel about themselves is being called into question.

“Why don’t we go see a specialist, or a priest, a guru, someone?”

This demonstrates what is called a pathologizing stance — that is, you are telling your child that something is wrong with them, that it is an illness, or something of the kind. Sexual orientation and gender identity are not an illness; they are a normal variant in the development of human sexuality and gender identity, and to try to correct what is normal is not merely senseless, it is also unethical.

“Maybe you just imagined it? Are you really sure that this is how it is?”

Usually a person lives with their identity for a long time, and if they have dared to tell you, it is very likely that they definitely did not imagine it.

“What did I do to deserve all this? What are you doing to me? So this is what I raised, to my own misfortune?”

Such phrases blame the child, or the person, and effectively hand over the responsibility for your difficulties. It is you who cannot cope with the situation right now. It is you who cannot overcome your own emotional difficulties right now. Your emotions and your feelings are entirely your responsibility, and if you are struggling, the child is not to blame for that. If you cannot work through certain states on your own, you probably need a professional’s help. Your child, of course, is not a mental health professional and should not have to treat your emotional problems.

“This is a sin. This is immoral.”

If your child has told you that their sexual orientation or gender identity is what it is, they have most likely thought many times beforehand about how it will be received and about how society looks at it — and if immorality or sinfulness as a category worried them, they would most likely have come to you with different questions and in a different context, and perhaps not to you at all, but to other people who could give them support on that front. When parents say this, they seem to hope that the child will hear them and come to their senses, but in reality it will only add guilt toward you and that same excessive, unnecessary responsibility that it is unethical to hand a child — again, for your own feelings.

“What am I supposed to say at work now? What will the neighbors or the relatives say now?”

Likewise, the child should not have to answer for your feelings about what relatives will say and how you will handle it. It may be unpleasant, but experience shows that in most cases people take the news that someone they know has a sexual orientation or gender identity beyond heteronormativity fairly calmly. If this question troubles you, you most likely need help learning to support yourself — learning to stand more firmly in the knowledge that you are living the right life, and that you do not have to be convenient or to be the way other people would like to see you.

“Well, at least it’s not drugs.”

This phrase may sound like a phrase of acceptance, but in reality it is dismissive and pathologizing, as if a person’s gender identity were the same as drugs, only a little better — and it is not. These concepts should not be put side by side at all.