Coming Out - Part I

This is part one of a five-part series on coming out. Please feel free to read parts I, II, III, IV and V.

Yondalla, my blog-buddy from Thoughts from a Fostering Family, has written a series of posts about coming out. She's written about coming out as a mother of gay kids, and the experiences of her son David, her son Evan, and what it means to be their mother. I thought her posts were terrific, and originally I was simply going to leave a comment on her blog. I realized, though, that there's enough to say on this subject that it warrants several of my own posts.

For a time, I experienced heterosexual privilege. In high school, college and after college I exclusively dated men. I was in several long-term relationships (the average length being about four years) and was even married once. People smiled when I said things like "my boyfriend," "my fiancee," or "my husband." If I held my partner's hand, nobody looked at me funny, snickered or made snide remarks. I didn't have to worry about who was watching, or consider my safety before engaging in a public display of affection. I just did my thing.

Despite being accepted and being perceived as "normal," I was profoundly unhappy in those relationships, but couldn't really put my finger on why. I just knew that something was wrong. I dated men, not because I wanted to, but because it made my parents happy*.

I did what was expected of me, even though I had a clue that something was not right. During the second semester of my freshman year at college, all the clubs gathered in the common area of the campus. I remember walking through and looking at all the booths, wondering if I should become more involved in campus life. When I found the table for the gay student union, I stopped at a distance and stared for the longest time. I wanted to go talk to them, but I didn't really know why. I didn't think I was gay, but I had already realized that I wasn't like everyone else. I really wanted to stop and say hi, but I was too afraid. I could hear the voices of my parents' disapproval ringing in my ears. I turned around and went back to my dorm, and avoided the commons until all the booths were gone.

I think then I knew, but was afraid to admit it to myself.

After my first year in school, I dropped out for a while, worked, and became involved in the first of several long-term relationships. I lived together with a writer for about four years, broke up, graduated from college and then married a teacher. I instantly realized my mistake, but stayed together for about three and a half years, because it was the "right" thing to do. Eventually, we divorced because he was having an affair and I later lived with a disabled man for another four and a half years. Every relationship was stormy. We fought about a variety of things: money, sex, household chores, and my femininity (or lack of it). What we were really fighting about was that each man who lived with me expected me to behave like a "real" woman. Instead, I turned out to be a female-bodied person with a very male mind and attitudes. Not surprisingly, we clashed.

When my last relationship ended in a stormy fashion that I still regret, I decided to take a break from dating. I needed to get my head on straight and figure out why all my relationships were failing so miserably. I was celibate for three years, and then got back into the dating scene. I thought maybe my problem was that I needed to focus on dating Jewish men (where previously I dated non-Jews), so I got on a Jewish dating site and started looking. Blind date after blind date went nowhere. I gave up, assuming that I'd be single forever. I blamed it on the fact that I wasn't pretty enough and that, at the time, I was poor. It never occurred to me that these men were picking up on the vibe I was overlooking.

My moment of realization came from a suprising place. At the time, I was working for a really dysfunctional company, and my department was in constant turmoil because two of the main players were constantly butting heads. Our manager tried team building exercises, which everyone hated. We all hated our jobs and (mostly) hated each other. Finally, in desperation, our boss forced the entire department to see a corporate psychologist.

The psychologist turned out to be completely ineffective as far as making us work better as a team, but she made one comment that stuck with me. She was talking about corporate relationships, and my ambivalence towards staying with the company. I was thinking about my personal life. "Only you know what will make you happy," she coached. "Be the person you want to be, regardless of what everyone else is doing."

I nodded and said nothing, but at that moment, my life was forever changed. "I want a wife," I thought to myself. Suddenly I realized why things weren't working. I finally figured out why, three tries and twelve years later, I'd never managed to find a relationship that worked.

Not long after, I met FosterEema in a chat room. We long-distance dated (I drove four and a half hours every weekend to visit because she didn't own a car) for a period of five months. We decided she'd move in with me and she started looking for a job. Eventually, we couldn't stand the distance any longer and she moved in with me, jobless. Fortunately, she quickly found work, and we started our lives together. There was no wedding, no fanfare. Our relationship was formalized when she locked the door to her apartment and dropped the keys into the mail slot. That act symbolized our "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for sickness and in health" moment. Our "honeymoon" consisted of driving four and a half hours and going to bed early because I had to work the next day.

* The truth is, I really didn't make my parents all that happy with my choice in men. They complained about every one I ever dated, though the amount of griping I heard about the guys with whom I was involved paled in comparison to the amount of ostracism I received when I brought home FosterEema.