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Dealing with my parents after realizing the damage their homophobia has caused

Discussion in 'Family, Friends, and Relationships' started by Drowning806, May 26, 2023.

  1. Drowning806

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    Hey, right now i am struggling a lot with my internalized homophobia, of which i was as in denial about as about my homosexuality itself.
    My upbringing was quite harsh, and while i cut ties to my abusive mother i have a good supportive but somewhat emotionally distant and judgmental contact to my father, he tried his best since i cut ties to my mother, before she prevented any kind of relationship to develop, but he never really admitted his mistakes and as a child always supported her abuse and did not protect me at all, i think deep down he feels guilty about this, but he simply wishes to compensate for it by being financially supportive and trying to provide me with (unasked for) guidance while sweeping under the rug what happened.

    Since i am finally working through accepting my homosexuality, i start to see how i have been taught and signaled in a very subtle way that my homosexuality was something that made me deeply flawed and has to be fixed by my parents.
    My mother desperately tried to diagnose and categorize whatever it was that made her feel that i was deeply flawed and a horrible worthless human being worth of repair and fixing, and send me to doctors from a young age, always giving me different labels such as adhd, autism and whatever in order to put into words what was her sentiment of me being her source of misery and pain.
    She regularly humiliated me and when she had put me into crying the mask came off, and she shamed and ridiculed me for being a 'whiny faggot'.
    While i am not sure about how much of the abusive and hateful attitude especially my mother had towards me to my homosexuality, it does stain the relationship to my father right now.

    While he always made himself believe that he was accepting, there are a lot of small details i remember of him trying to nudge, influence me or educate me away from my homosexual tendencies in a very subtle way.
    There are some examples, but the examples i can talk about sound so minor and incidental that i even feel embarrassed about mentioning them as having caused me not accepting myself.
    Still, when i think back, i feel like there has to be a lot more subtle signals and conditioning happening from my parents towards me that did not make me feel like homosexuality was not acceptable but even kept me in denial.
    There has even been a habit that formed into an automatism of my father subtly conditioning me when i seemingly showed interest in women, while signaling his disapproval against any men i showed any kind of interest in.
    He finally got rid of this habit last year, after me strongly protesting and me telling my parents that my schizophrenia has most likely been caused by me being in denial about my homosexuality.
    Still, my mother was visibly upset after refraining from doing so, and seemed to non-verbally urge him to continue with this.
    When i was having my first crush on the singer of a German boy-group in elementary school, my father suddenly decided to give me a gift coupled with a very rare sign of emotionality and appreciation, he made me a cd of a rock band he liked to that seemed more masculine and was more in line with who he wanted me to be.
    The message to me felt like he really cared about me, and in retrospective it seems like this rare sign of appreciation was simply a grown man manipulating his emotionally vulnerable son into not loving men.

    About at the same age, i was with my parents at a book store and ended up buying a book, called 'demon' with a bio-hazard symbol on its cover. While i of course did not think anything about it as a child, except for what a cool and dangerous book, i always wondered why my parents allowed me to buy such a violent and brutal book at such a young age since they were usually very strict about the kind of media i was allowed to consume. i wrote it off as them not caring about it since it was a book, but in retrospect, i think they simply liked the idea of me being confronted with homophobic symbolism that the cover and narrative of this book was charged with. And it did work, i psychologically shifted my homosexual tendencies to the outside, and was now afraid of the 'demon' who was hidden somewhere beneath and should not be freed under any circumstances because he only wants to kill, and in the end can only be conquered by violent suppression and finding the right woman.

    There are a lot of other small and bigger signs about the homophobic environment i grew up, but i think the thing that makes it the hardest for me was how subtle all of it was, to me, it looks like there was no pressure at all to not be gay from my parents and that i simply 'made the decision' by myself, but i strongly feel that this is not what happened at all.
    Before i went to the mental hospital for depression as a teenager, i had made an old forum post that telling someone on the internet about my problem, and it was something along the lines of 'i am not gay, but i know if i was my father would really have a problem with it' so while it is very difficult for me to pinpoint or to prove that my parents were homophobic to me, it seems very clear to me how this affected me.
    Also, when i was having the talk with a woman at the mental health institution in order to decide if i will go there, she asked me 'you do want to have a girlfriend one day, don't you?' which strikes me as kind of weird, maybe it was just her being hetero-normative but for me this was exactly what convinced me to go into this facility and then there decide to fall in love with a girl.

    Maybe this is just me, looking for a scapegoat for why i denied my true self and desires for so long, but at heart i do not believe so, i think my father was a homophobic pig, hiding his own sentiments behind the agenda of my more and a lot more violently homophobic mother and this has made me very sick.
    I feel like he preferred every kind of torture and self-destructive behavior i engaged in a lot over me admitting my homosexuality to myself.

    Maybe i am simply distracting myself from facing my own internalized homophobia right now, but i do not know how to deal with my father anymore. I told him i do not want to talk to him right now and need to work through some things, but i know that when i confront him about this that he will simply deny everything as he usually does when confronted with any of the abusive i have suffered. And to be fair, it is quite easy to deny. All i have is some assumptions, a nice cd, my feelings and a book with some degree of symbolism that nobody else talking about online seems to read as homophobic.
    But i do hate him right now, and deep down i feel like i have a right do do so.
     
  2. Nameerf76

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    That's a lot to deal with! I'm sorry you're going through this.
    One thing I would say is I think it's normal for us to feel a bit guilty about our internalized homophobia or for being in the closet in the first place but it's important to remember it's not your fault! Society IS heteronormative and at best and homophobic at worst!
    My parents were so distant that I didn't have these issues but I did have a violent, neglectful, weird upbringing and my parents have swept everything under the rug - never mentioned ANY of it and I am angry at them for the harm they caused me and my siblings and how they act like nothing happened. They even joke about how my sister learnt to swear before she could talk normally - like it's a cute, funny childhood story...
    So I understand that feeling! I think it's ok to be angry at them and it's ok to have a break from them - even a permanent break in some cases!
    My two pieces of advice would be - don't beat yourself up about the internalized homophobia - that's an unavoidable (I believe) side effect of growing up in a mainly hetero world - it's just something to work on and not blame yourself for.
    And try not to feel guilty about needing a break from your parents - you need to look after yourself.
     
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  3. Jamez76

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    Both of these posts were very good reads! Personally, since my father is gay, I have never had a problem with him and in fact, I came out to him as bisexual years ago. My mother on the other hand, was very judgmental and opinionated about such issues! She caught me reading the joys of gay sex book once as a teenager and the level of guilt she bestowed on me was astounding! “Why are you reading that book? Don’t you like girls? Don’t you want me to have grandkids someday?” I had no choice but to make up a lie and say I was just curious about the matter. My mother and father divorced when I was 3. But dad hadn’t come out yet. After catching me reading that book, she said, “You want to be just like your father? (Being cynical) I had no idea what she was talking about. But I knew that this book hurt her deeply so I suppressed these feelings and did everything I could to lead a “normal” heterosexual life! and right now, 25 years later, I am questioning that decision. Which is why I sought refuge here on EC! So thank you for sharing your story!
     
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  4. idkwuttoput

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    my parents arent as bad as some but i can definitely understand having homophobic parents, my dad literally doesnt want me to hang out with so many girls (mainly my sisters and best friends who feel like sisters) because hes convinced theyre making me soft (his words not mine) so hes been making me work for his roofing company and telling people that hes "working him (me) like a man." also i get the parents denying thing, once my dad got druk and we got in a screaming match which ended in him trying to get me to hit him (cant call CPS if i hit first) afterwards he didnt say a word about any of it for a week and when he finally did mention it he told me it was my fault.
     
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