What's your thoughts on being cautious?

Hi!I'm a 26 year old male who has many thoughts about sexuality, what it means to belong to a sexual minority and how to act upon it. I live in a country that is seen as very liberal but still I know of no place in the world (except from maybe Castro, San Francisco) that seems to be more or less free from hate crimes and discrimination. Not to mention all the daily prejudices that gay and bisexual men have to face, even in 2016, despite of all the progressive political battles that recently have been won in the western world. (Of course this is true also for women, but since I'm a man myself I focus on men here).Having this in mind, I've come to the conclusion that I want to take on a "cautious" approach towards my sexuality. My family and closest friends know about it but I never mention it to others. And there are moments when a big part of me feels like I want to tell, but I stop myself because I think about the necessity of being cautious. For instance, this has led me to call my boyfriend "a friend" and to talk about gay people as "they" rather than "we" when the subject is being discussed at work and in other situations. And on social medias I never give any information whatsoever about my relationship status, when others post about their boyfriends, girlfriends, wives and husbands quite frequently (being 26, I get a lot of wedding and baby pictures on my feeds...)As I always end up self-analyzing, I can't help but thinking that this cautious approach is just a way for me to rationalise underlying feelings of fear and shame that I know I shouldn't still carry at this age. If that's the case, that I still feel fear and shame, then that makes me feel really pathetic and maybe that is why I like to think of my approach as just being cautious (which to me sounds more rational and more like common sense, the way things still are, even in 2016). And who knows? Even if things have gotten better maybe it will all turn backwards and become worse again with all this uprise for extreme conservative ideologies all over the western world...Does any of these thoughts make sense to you? Is there someone out there who can recognize this reasoning or who has meaningful advises to give me? And how do you yourself reason about the importance of being cautious?I'd be very thankful to read your thoughts about this!Thanks for taking the time reading all this. I really appreciate it.