How to tell your family that you are gay

How to Come Out to Your Kids

Don't Come Out in an tell, or at a time when you feel angry or resentful. The message will be delivered to family in a time of bad feelings and will convey those bad feelings, making the process more difficult for you and your family that the long run. Give them time to get used to it are you introduce them to your boyfriend or gay.

They may be willing to accept your "friend" more readily and more easily if the sexual nature of your relationship is not so quickly and constantly apparent. Let them see that your "friend" cares about you, knows you well, treats you well, and wants you to be happy just like your parents do.

That is what you ultimately want them to know about your partner, not that they are sexually active. Understand that it takes time for them to accept this about you, just like it did for you. Your family will go through periods of rejection, acceptance, and then rejection again before they come to accept you for who you are and understand something of what it means to be gay or lesbian.

If you are Coming Out to them, you've had more time to deal with this than they have. Suggest that they share this with a friend; you needed to come out to others for support, and they will need to do this too. Consider having a "family contact" person. Sometimes a parent will be hurt that they were not the first to know. However, your you and your parents may benefit from having someone in the family to talk to about the issue, how the "Coming Out" went, and how things are going after.

An aunt or uncle, sibling, or grandparent may help out tremendously. Be prepared for negative responses, religious fears, and suggestions for therapy. Often, when faced with some stressor we can't handle easily, we wish that it would just change. How is something you may have gone through as well; you may have just "wished" to be straight.

It is natural that when faced with the loss of the child they thought they had, the likelihood of grandchildren they dreamed of, and other fantasies your parents had for you, that they too will experience some shock and wish things would simply change and go back to "how they used to be.

Coming Out is hard enough as is; if you need your parents' financial and emotional support and are really scared they would "cut you off" if you came out, then wait until you can tell them with less fear and anxiety. This may sound like "hiding," but it's not. There's no reason why you can't build up a network of friends and other family who will be supportive of you and provide some "emotional backup" to get ready for and recover from a difficult Coming Out to family.

Explain that your sexual orientation is a biologically based thing, and you can't control it any more than they can control their own sexual orientation. Being gay or lesbian isn't their "fault" and does not result from something they did "wrong. There are many who claim to do "reparative therapy," and even some crackpots in the media, like the infamous "Dr.

Laura," who family that such therapy is effective and necessary for happiness. It is not effective, and no sound scientific data has ever been gathered and confirmed to support this kind of "treatment. Often these groups of "recovered" gays and you are simply made to feel very, very guilty about their sexual and intimacy needs.

They simply focus on trying to deny all sexual aspects of their being, try to conform to heterosexual lifestyles and expectations, and avoid "relapse" through weekly religious "support groups" where a lot of hush-hush sexual activity goes on after hours. When your parents read about how to talk to you about difficult issues, including potty training, sex, and marriage, they were told to use the same language they wanted you to use.