Telling Your Parents About Your Sexual Orientation

In the SHM Community forums, Joanne responded to one member about her problem on how to tell her parents that she is a bi. She wrote:

mirmi,

You've covered a lot of ground since you first showed up here! Awesome movement on your part!

Have you heard from your parents at all? Are they living together or are you dealing with two separate and non-communicating parties?

I'm lesbian, have been out foe years and personally have discussed coming out stories with about a hundred people. One thing I learned with all this is the reaction you initially get is rarely the one that you'll get 5 or 10 years down the road.

That goes both ways, from both extremes to middle of the road. Parents who are overly cool about it first often are putting up a front that covers the belief that if they don't react negatively, you will just pass through this "phase" and move forward without a hitch. Over time, when they see that you don't move out of the phase, the negativity starts creeping in.

Those who react negatively eventually realize they can't scare or threaten you out of your orientation, so they calm down.

Then you have everyone in between. And of course, you have some parents who stay at their polar position, and don't ever budge, but are rare and speak more to their own pathology or religiosity than anything else.

The other thing you might do at this point is send them a book or internet articles and print articles, whatever, about parents of kids coming out. Back in my day, the best book to give to parents was called, "Now that You Know". There's also an organization called "PFLAG" that is by and for parents, families and friends of lesbians and gays. They are to be found in almost every big city, have meetings where parents can go and talk to one another, and all kinds of print materials and can plug parent's into local resources.

Today, I'm sure a Google search will help you find something useful. Sending them somethign every other week might be a good clip, depending on their reaction. If they are open to it, more often, but I'd ask them if they'd like to read something before I filled their email box with stuff right away.

You might start that search right here in the SelfhelpMagazine, the publication that supports us in this community support forum, for articles that can be of use to you.

If you don't find anything that will help you for them, you might find something of use to you. I really like the one by Dr. Gail Bernstein called something like "35 going on 13".

She also did a lot of short but great Q&A. Of everything in the magazine, those Q&A are my favorites.

I am not sure that this forum will let me copy and paste URLs in here, but I'll try. If it doesn't work, go to the magazine's home page by using the navigation links at the bottom of the page, go to article, then GLBT.

Spread the Word!

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