Something I have struggled a great deal with in the process of coming out and reassessing my spirituality has been dealing with the many relationships built up over 20 years of being an active Latter-day Saint. After hiding my sexuality for so long, and trying very hard to be the "strong" one, the "orthodox" one, it has been extremely difficult for me to face telling my LDS friends that I am gay and that I no longer have the testimony that I once had. There are a couple of my LDS friends who know, but even there the friendship has drifted since I am no longer an active church participant. LDS life revolves so much around the church and church members--at least, mine certainly did--that it is a bit like being on a merry-go round...once you jump off, the people who are still on it quickly become a whirl of colour and sound that is impossible to focus on or communicate with. And it is hard for those on the merry-go round to communicate with those who are not on it.
The other problem is that I am conflict-averse. Odd, given my choice of career (law), but nevertheless true: I hate conflict with others, especially people for whom I have strong feelings or with whom I have close ties. I remember in my first year of university having a big argument with one of my best friends from high school who was attending the same university as me and lived in the same student residence as I did. He resented my plunging into the LDS young singles life and let me know he thought it was foolish. I ended up avoiding him for the rest of the semester, even skipping certain classes to stay away from him. It was really stupid, created needless pain, and ended up wrecking a good friendship which, while it later was rekindled, was never the same thereafter.
I feel like I have chosen that route again...rather than face my fears and tell my LDS friends that I am gay, I push them away. I hate doing it, but I guess I am too much of a control freak who wants to not be in the vulnerable position of opening myself up to others when I don't know how they will respond. Sure, some will probably be supportive, but I expect others not to be. The people I have told about my struggles with depression have had mixed reactions; those who have themselves experienced depression were the most supportive, along with those who had close family members who had experienced it; others really were pretty clueless, representative of the great misunderstanding and fear of mental illness. I fear worse reactions about revealing that I am gay. After all, while I have been working through this for nearly 3 decades, they will be hearing it for the first time, and may want in some cases to come to the rescue on their white horse, urging me to try harder, to go to reparative therapy, to find a nice girl and settle down, etc. etc. etc. In one case I find particularly hard, I dated a girl that I asked to marry me, with the support of her parents who were, apart from her, my friends. I have a lot of history with this family; how can I now tell them I tried to marry their daughter and sister and drag her into the potential nightmare of later discovering she had married a gay man? I sometimes wonder if she rejected my proposal because she sensed something was amiss in my sexuality. Maybe she noticed my lack of enthusiasm for kissing, something I had never done before her and which she pushed me to do, and which did absolutely nothing for me (no shooting stars or anything like that...sound surprising? haha) Still, her family was on my side to a great extent, so to hear this now would be hard for them and could result in some really bitter recriminations.
I think some of this fear I have and/or need to control others' reactions to me stems perhaps from childhood experiences with my father, who could get very angry and whose anger was out of my control and could not be mollified (you just had to wait for him to cool off). I think I grew to try to avoid other's anger by putting myself down before others had a chance to do so. My reactions now are, I guess, a continuation of that type of behaviour, only in a different guise perhaps.
I really need to change this about myself, because it has been creating a lot of stress for me that I don't need. But I know it will not be an easy pattern of behaviour to break, and I need to be patient with myself. I am grateful for each day I have to try to make little steps forward, with the hope that these little steps will eventually be the mile I need to travel to overcome this. And every worthwhile journey takes time and effort, and begins with a first few hesitant steps, to be followed one hopes in time by more confident strides. As John Kennedy said in his inaugural address: "All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."
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3 comments:
I'm so sorry you have to go through this, Mark! I think every gay man struggles with telling their family and friends, since you run the risk of complete rejection. Unfortunately, my closest LDS friend who "came out" has minimal contact with his LDS friends, although his LDS family, with time, have come around quite well.
In the end, though, by NOT telling them and pulling away you're giving yourself the same result as rejection without the possibility of a pleasant surpise acceptance.
When I came out (1984-ish), I was fortunate to still be at Concordia and joined a gay men's discussion group, which became an instant family/friends (although my family was quite supportive). We all read a book about coming out which suggested playing a game called "the rejection game". When you went into a bar, you had to pick out a guy you felt was "out of reach" and SURE to reject you. Then, you had to go talk to him. If he rejected you, then you had completed the night's task. If he DIDN'T reject you, then you had to continue pickout out people until someone finally did. The point, of course, was two-fold: first, to show you that rejection doesn't hurt as much as we think it will, and, second, to show that you might be surprised at who does (and doesn't) reject you.
Clearly, rejection of people who have known you and been part of your life for years is different than rejection from a stranger, but in a way it all goes hand-in-hand.
So, if you're taking a poll, I vote for you telling your friends and giving them the option of accepting or rejecting you, rather than you making the decision for them. :-)
Mark,
Thanks for this post. It resonates.
Of course, because of the circumstances of my life, I had to push through the rejection in order to survive. I was released as an LDS bishop three months before I came out to my wife. One year after I was released, I went public with my marital situation, my sexuality and my loss of faith in the Church (which seemed the most troubling of the three things to many of my LDS friends).
Now, as I'm into my second year as an out gay man, I'll add my vote to Barry's and say give your friends a chance. Many of my LDS friends have stuck with me. Many of these people have known me for decades and some of them knew me as their bishop. Some will distance themselves. Some will end their relationship with you. Some will probably disparage you out of earshot. Ultimately, that says more about them than it does about you.
Good luck.
Thanks to both of you, Barry and Chris, for your comments. I know you are right, but it is still tough. I really admire your courage, Chris, for taking the bull by the horns and getting on with it.
Barry, that "rejection game" is one I ought to force myself to play, because I have big time issues with fearing rejection. I had the problem back when I was closeted and trying to date women, and I thought when I came out that the problem would go away. Well, it did to some extent, in that I have been much more bold about approaching guys than I ever was with women, but I don't do anywhere near enough. The "rejection game" does sound like a very clever and effective to help one get over that problem.
By the way, Barry, I think the odds are high that we have met each other. I was in my first year of undergrad at McGill in 1983-84, so if you were at Concordia around the same time, odds seem pretty good to me that we were in the same ward, or at least the same stake. If you want, e-mail me.
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