Hello there, I write to seek advice on my boyfriend's coming out. We're approaching the 3 year anniversary of our relationship which is next month, and he is still not out of the closet to his family. They are in another country, so it does not necessarily impact our day-to-day relationship - he is out of the closet to certain people in our city, and I spend time with some of his friends as his 'boyfriend'. However, there are times that things are difficult between us. He has a zero social media public policy. Yesterday I was prompted by Facebook that we first connected three years ago, and yet the section underneath was void of any common posts because there is nothing that we have tagged each other in. I have always respected this wish of his but it has always meant that in ways I am also publicly in the closet. Essentially, I am a ghost to his Facebook friends. I am not exactly wishing for us to have timelines full of #couplegoals style posts, but what stings is that he does have some gay friends who he has tagged things with in the past, so it seems as though he would be willing to be seen doing things with gay people, just not me. This is something I am going to raise in the conversation next time I speak to him, but for the sake of this post it is a bit of context. When I sent him a screenshot of what I saw with a sad emoji attached, he replied saying that we have so much more in common than that and that he is working on it slowly. I told him that I am not convinced he is happy and that I am worried about him, and since this was over text he began to back into a corner and I told him that we would continue this conversation later in person (which will be tomorrow). Just after our one year anniversary, I came out to my parents for him as I was hiding spending weekends away from home every week, going on holidays with him, and generally just that I was really happy in my relationship. He was proud of me and supportive, and a few months later he told me that he did want to do the same, and when he would go back home to his family he would tell me that he intended to come out. This never of course happened, and over the course of half a year or so this repeated a few times. Eventually, he would fly back home and no longer mention wanting to come out. This is still the case. My boyfriend will also be 26 next month, and although he very much loves them, he is independent of them enough that it would not affect his physical or financial safety. His parents are religious and from a small town in Italy where unfortunately being gay is not accepted, and even more unfortunately is very hard to keep hidden and when word spreads around, those who are associated or supportive of it are usually ostracised. His father from what I have been told is definitely homophobic, his mother is somewhere in a grey area. His father is also very unwell and his health is very temperamental, and I suspect that he does not want to throw a shock like this into the complicated system. I am very conscious of not pushing him to essentially make a decision between his family or me because I do not want to be resented if things go badly. However, it is obviously difficult for me to deal with at times. I do support him and as I am the other half of our team, I do everything I can to keep a lid on things because regardless of his not coming out I love him. I am just unhappy feeling at times like a ghost, or a dirty little secret. It also can play into insecurity sometimes, since I know that if he wanted to go out behind my back and cheat on me, it would be incredibly easy for him to hide my existence from them just like his family. The problem however is that I am in a predicament in this because I feel as though I cannot express my negative feelings when they arise because it means I'm pushing him a little bit more into having to make the decision. Worse, I feel like if I would get to the end of my tether and ask for the relationship to be called off, that he might react impulsively by jumping into the deep end and doing it which would create a huge mess. To briefly end quite a long post, it feels at times like I am a ghost and I cannot make a legitimate move to help relieve this situation. This closet is definitely a small, constricting one. I would appreciate any words of advice or stories of similar situations that might help me gain some clarity here. Thank you.
Hi Sek, Not really sure what advice to give you but I sympathise greatly. We struggle so hard for self-acceptance and the acceptance of others that hiding ourselves from anyone can feel like a real set back, like we have achieved nothing - even when it is for such a good reason as you have. I think you have to accept that resolving this is going to involve some stress for your boyfriend because he is the one who is hiding a part of his life - and I'm not judging, it is difficult but if he is insisting then the practical problem is that he will have to adjust his behaviour. I don't really know of anything specific to suggest but it sounds like you do need to talk to him but maybe you could make it clear that you aren't expecting him to make any changes but you want him to know how this is affecting you and how it makes you feel. You basically want him to know the strain that this is putting you under without necessarily requiring him to take any particular action yet. Would that be fair to say? Sorry, I don't have something specific but hopefully some other members will have some additional advice.
