Accepting myself at 40 and how to start living

I’d feel like I don’t need to hide anything from them anymore. Being truly myself. But is that worth the risk ? Still struggling with that one …

 

Thanks ! Good to get another perspective as well. The thought of maybe one of the kids also struggling with their identity has crossed my mind, and I’d want to avoid them to struggle as much and as long as I have for sure.
The other day I had a conversation with one of my daughter about sexuality and how that works these days among young adults. Great talk and when I talked about bisexuality and it being a scale that was something she hadn’t thought about like that before. It would have been the ideal moment to come out to her if she had been my only child. The kids are close so I don’t want to do it kid per kid as that would mean they need to keep the secret from their siblings until I have talked to them all. Don’t want to put them through that and I do want to be the one from whom they learn about it. So that then means finding an opportunity to get all 3 together and broach the subject. And do I do it with my wife or without ?
and when I asked my wife about it she’s more in favor of not telling them. Aaargghhh this is not simple …

 

No, definitely not "simple," or easy. Btw, i have been through this. i came out to my adult sons and i too had a wife that didn't want me to tell them. Beyond that, my story is different than yours in many ways. Strong religious underpinnings and a wife who rejected me as "sick and sinful" and "needing to repent," So, my situation is different, with some similarities.

Heteronormative is the presumed default setting. We don't discuss it directly with our kids and, as a result, it becomes assumed. How many of us go through life conforming to or allowing that assumption about us and remaining unseen and unknown?

To me, the bigger question is not whether to tell your kids, but how you do it if you do. For instance, one thing you can help circumvent is how they might feel a sense of betrayal, or having been lied tom or just a sense of loss (tied to security i think). They may have a sense that the person they thought they knew is gone. There can be a sort of grieving. i think a lot of that can be overcome by helping them understand why you hid that part of you in the first place, how in a real sense you were hiding from yourself as well. But it's only a part of you, and all the other parts they know are still there and real.

If you come out, and your wife is part of that, i think it's important to understand why she doesn't want you to tell them, to peel back the layers and not just accept a cursory answer to that question.

 

That was what I was getting at when I asked if your kids were all straight. If one of them wasn’t, that’d be an extra reason to come out. For mutual support. If they’re all cis & straight, it’s more of a thing you choose to do for yourself rather than for them. But, they are adults after all. I guess at some point people transition from a parent-child relationship to a friends & equals relationship?

 

Thanks. Yes the relationship with your kids does evolve, but you stay their parent and will worry about their well being for the rest of your live.

 

Thank you