2017. március 20., hétfő

Peeking out of the closet in Trump country

I am 31 years old (I know, old to be coming out) living in deep red Oklahoma City. OKC isn't a small southern town and there is a thriving gay community here, but the overall atmosphere is quite bigoted. I am saving to move but its unlikely I'll be able to for three more years.I was out and openly gay before in 2009-10, but my dad is a fundamentalist Baptist preacher and my entire family is about as homophobic as it can get. I am not going to go into all the details, as that would be another post, but I'll sum it up by saying that coming out before and what it did to the relationship with my family is the most traumatizing thing I ever experienced. It ended with them manipulating me back into the closet and into conversion therapy. If I was to peek out of the closet now, I would have no other choice but to disown them if they found out if I wanted to live a happy life. Believe me when I say they would never accept it and would die before they do. Therefore, I would have to live a double life until I was at the point where I could cut them off.There is a second layer of complexity to this in that the friends I have, who are not religious, are still homophobic (it's part of the culture here). Thing is, they have some close gay friends and when they are around, my friends seem accepting. However, being in the closet, I know the kind of things they say about gay people behind their backs, and it's more than just a little homophobic. Thing is, if I went to gay bars/events, I could very likely run into some of these people (the gay friends of friends). If that happened, my friends would find out. One guy in particular would not be able to keep it a secret. For me to come out very well could be the end of my friendship with the only friends I have right now. I don't think I could lose my family and my friends at the same time.Has anybody else been in this kind of situation and if so, what would you do? Moving somewhere more gay friendly is my ultimate goal but as I've stated, it's still a few years before I can do that. In the meantime, the easiest thing would just be stay in the closet and ride it out, but I am also not getting any younger. Further complicating this is the fact I am nearly asexual (though very much romantically attracted to men) and am more interested in romance/relationships than sex, which makes casual hookups to "scratch the itch" unappealing to me. However, I don't really want to throw away three more years of my life until I can move. Thoughts?

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