When your not specific...you get toast.

[eggwards]

Well, damnit.

First, my Dad sends an email back, stating that he will probably be out at the gun range on Sunday. This is nothing new, he works on training other members of the sheriff's office for their ammunitions tests. This is a problem, but not a big problem. Besides, it's Easter Sunday, I don't think too many people will need his help at the range.

The bigger problem is this. Sunday Nights, I often have dinner with the folks. When I said I wanted to do lunch on Sunday, I didn't want to cause suspicion, so I didn't say, "without Mom, please."

So guess what happens...Mom calls tonight and leaves a voicemail. "I don't know if we can do it, but why do you want to have lunch on Sunday?"

Oh brother, someone shoot me now.

Comments

[endogenousardor.livejournal.com]

Y'know, when I read your prior post, I completely misread the part about your grandmother's funeral and your mom being "out of the picture." For some reason I confused the two and thought that your mom was deceased.

Now that I'm clear on the fact she's certainly alive and kicking, I'll now pass along another piece of advice I got from many of my "out" friends when I was planning on coming out to my parents. They suggested that one of two things will happen if you tell one but not the other - either your Dad will tell your Mom anyway, in which case excluding her may come back to haunt you; or, he won't tell her, in which case you'll be putting him in a kind of closet by asking him to keep such a secret from his life-partner, especially if he normally relies on her for emotional support when dealing with major life events.

Secrets are bad for relationships, right?

Remember how difficult it was living with that secret yourself? How it impacted the way you dealt with people you didn't think knew your secret, even close friends or siblings? How it totally impacts the way you interact with your parents today - the distance it's created, the awkwardness, the sheer effort it requires to manage what they know and how they feel? You risk putting him in a similar emotional space in relation to your mom when you ask him to keep the secret. In telling just him, are you truly taking a step out of the closet, or are you asking him to take a step into yours with you? "Shhhh.... shut the door. Mom might hear."

For me, the right decision was to tell them both at once, in the comfort and security of their home, because I recognized that I had for years been manipulating the emotions of both of them, not just one. For years I had been expending incredible energy and effort to make sure that neither of them felt disappointed, or felt angry, or felt betrayed, or felt disgusted; all so that I wouldn't have to deal with my own emotions - the shame in having mislead them for so long, the guilt of not producing grandkids, my fear at being rejected for being an abomination, and my simple lack of desire to deal with potential recrimination or hysterics.

Of course, all of the above said, I must tell you that I had other friends tell me to ignore everyone's advice on the matter of coming out (except for their advice, of course) - that I was the only one who truly knew my parents. That I best understood the dynamics of my relationships with each of them, and their relationship with each other. That I was the one to make the best choice on the right way of telling one or both - or neither, for that matter. My oldest oldest gayest friend (someone you probably knew in the drama dept at UH) put it simply: "Just listen to your heart, honey, and screw all the mouthy fags. I have." Then he cackled gleefully.

So you might want to just ignore everything else I've said and take Dan's advice instead.

[xanaducub.livejournal.com]

I remember the Queer Duck episode when he tells his parents.

"Mom, Dad, I'm gay."

I do not think that there is a simple easy or painless way of doing this. I don't even think that Hallmark has a card for this either. Shame.

[bassbehr.livejournal.com]

Well, there is no easy way to do what you are going to do. Unfortunately, my mom found a porn magazine in my dirty laundry. ....whoops. She asked about it as we decorated the Xmas tree three years ago. My dad found out a month ago and had the pleasure of meeting Michael mrh745i a week later. It's just not an easy thing. *HUGS*