Family of Choice

Family shit happens. I think this is particularly so for a LBG (Late Breaking Gay). We all knew that the shit was going to hit the fan when we came out of the closet. Someone or several someones in your family will get upset. Someone is going to be unhappy or hurt or critical or try to fix you or at the very least, someone is not going to understand.

People's reaction after you come out isn’t forever and I am not suggesting that you need to abandon any hopes of having family after you came out but sometimes people just don’t deal well with a married man coming out.

For a teenager who is coming out this can be a terrifying time and is often dealt with very badly by one or more of their parents. Of course LBG’s (late breaking gays) are grownups and hopefully can better deal with that kind of rejection. Besides, we normally have a long time to worry about how everyone is going to react. We may even find that most folks reaction isn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be. But some will react badly.

Just as an example and the event that precipitated this particular blog: my brother called me last night. It was the first time I had talked to him in twenty years. I don’t know why he didn’t talk to me all that time and I don’t know why he called this time. I have tried to contact him before and then I gave up.

We weren’t close when we were little. He was two years older than me and bigger than me and he liked to beat up on me. But when we grew up and got married and had kids our families would get together and we got along fairly well. But then I moved my family to Minnesota and he moved his family to Texas and then he was divorced and then he just dropped off of the face of the earth. He didn’t stay in touch with his kids or anyone else in the family.

Now I have always speculated that he and I were both molested when we were kids and he just reacted differently than I did. I may never know. But I am sharing all of this because we need family and sometimes as gays, especially LBGs (Late Breaking Gays) we may need to turn to “family of choice.”

I think this is imperative for a LBG (Late Breaking Gays). We need family, oh we may be burned out and maybe we just need some alone time. Maybe we need time with that new special someone but we also need family.

Families love unconditionally. Family accepts us warts and all. Family is there when we need help.

So it may be that your new “family of choice” is friends from the neighborhood or church friends or your partner or a mixture, but you need them.

Take the time to find your familty of choice and cultivate them and make them real family.

You deserve it buddy.