HDYFRN How Do You Feel Right Now?

Ironhide wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Jezo wrote:

Ironhide wrote:*Resists urge to post GRCade's obligatory response to everything*

Do it. I need to better my understanding of the culture here.

It’ll be either “gooseberry fool on her tits” or the simple “have a wank”.

The latter.

Tit shitting is too much for the newbies to handle just yet, maybe next week.

What about an external hard drive?

Minoru wrote:Watching Coronation Street with my mother, listening to her make homophobic comments ever time the gay girls are on screen. I'm so tired

I don’t mind them but I can’t stand Sean, poor Sophie but maybe she would have poor look if she looked further than the street she lives on!

Wrathy wrote:yeah that’s tough. I want to say most people who are like that are doing it purely because they’ve never had to deal with it in an adult way. People are a lot more blasé about things when they don’t think they’re offending anybody. That said I don’t want to make false promises or anything. Sometimes you’ve got to go through hell and risk everything to get to an acceptance of situations like this, and sometimes it simply doesn’t get better. It’s not easy in the slightest.

Yeah, I can see that. It's like, I want to believe that she'll be cool with it. She's my mum, she cares about me, she doesn't want to intentionally hurt me. But then I remember some of the unpleasant things she's said over the years, some of them directed specifically at the thought of me being gay, and I just don't know how she'll take it.

RichardUK wrote:I don’t mind them but I can’t stand Sean, poor Sophie but maybe she would have poor look if she looked further than the street she lives on!

I don't watch that often these days but yeah, I find Sean a little annoying too. Ironically my mum is mostly fine with him; flamboyant gay men probably get the least flack off her. Lesbians seem to get the brunt of her homophobic comments, which...makes things tough.

Well yeah, gay people are okay. Lesbians are just disgusting.

Jezo wrote:Well yeah, gay people are okay. Lesbians are just disgusting.

Don’t let Oblomov Boblomov hear you saying that.

Minoru wrote:

Wrathy wrote:yeah that’s tough. I want to say most people who are like that are doing it purely because they’ve never had to deal with it in an adult way. People are a lot more blasé about things when they don’t think they’re offending anybody. That said I don’t want to make false promises or anything. Sometimes you’ve got to go through hell and risk everything to get to an acceptance of situations like this, and sometimes it simply doesn’t get better. It’s not easy in the slightest.

Yeah, I can see that. It's like, I want to believe that she'll be cool with it. She's my mum, she cares about me, she doesn't want to intentionally hurt me. But then I remember some of the unpleasant things she's said over the years, some of them directed specifically at the thought of me being gay, and I just don't know how she'll take it.

RichardUK wrote:I don’t mind them but I can’t stand Sean, poor Sophie but maybe she would have poor look if she looked further than the street she lives on!

I don't watch that often these days but yeah, I find Sean a little annoying too. Ironically my mum is mostly fine with him; flamboyant gay men probably get the least flack off her. Lesbians seem to get the brunt of her homophobic comments, which...makes things tough.

I had a similar situation when I came out to my dad and it was really tough. I thought he would take it bad, and he did. I couldn’t go home and feel the same, it very tangibly damaged my relationship with him. it also damaged my education and caused me to become suicidal, to the point where counselling saved my life. I nearly failed my university year. We didn’t do much as speak for a couple of months. it was very difficult for everyone.

so, on a practical level... be prepared for the worst case scenario. sometimes it does go wrong. I was lucky because I could spend the rest of the year at university around friends and wasn’t around that environment. But also bear in mind the following advice.

To a large extent I think the problems could have been avoided if I wasn’t so cautious around him in the first place. My mum had known for years and I think the fact I couldn’t trust my dad contributed to the hurt he felt. I had logical (and apparently jusytified) reasons for not confiding in him at the same time but ultimately this did more harm than good. The trauma of coming out and everybody getting used to what was happening at the same time was not easy for anyone to deal with. coming out to him so relatively late must have felt like a massive insult and it wasn’t a good way to go about things from my perspective.

i don’t know what I would do differently but it’s much better now. It recovered and we’re on great terms again. My main regret is waiting so long, because it allowed me to move on with my life and be more comfortable with myself (though this was the start of that process, by no means was it a solution itself). It was almost four years ago now. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done but I wish I’d taken the plunge earlier and approached it better.

Feel free to PM me if you want to talk any more about it.

I find it so hard to comprehend being angry or disowning a kid because of their sexuality. I don’t want to say nasty things about Wrathy’s dad, but I just find it so bizarre to risk losing your relationship with your child over something that they cannot change and that in the scheme of things is so irrelevant.

Having said that, my 1 year old threw a bowl of food onto the floor last night, so he is very very very close to me disowning him. One more time and he is getting thrown out to fend for himself.

Jezo wrote:Lesbians are just disgusting.

Now that just depends on the type of porn you're watching.

Vermilion wrote:

Jezo wrote:Lesbians are just disgusting.

Now that just depends on the type of porn you're watching.

That’s true. If the girls have a cup each then it is fine. If they are sharing a cup then avoid.

Moggy wrote:I find it so hard to comprehend being angry or disowning a kid because of their sexuality. I don’t want to say nasty things about Wrathy’s dad, but I just find it so bizarre to risk losing your relationship with your child over something that they cannot change and that in the scheme of things is so irrelevant.

Having said that, my 1 year old threw a bowl of food onto the floor last night, so he is very very very close to me disowning him. One more time and he is getting thrown out to fend for himself.

Generational thing + my dad is from God's Own Protestant Ulster and had a very dim view on LGBT issues generally. Plus he never really knew anyone in the community in a meaningful way so for him it was always a subject of ridicule if not contempt. And I guess most overwhelmingly after 20+ years of raising a kid, you get expectations about what their future will look like, and what that's going to look like for you (grandkids, etc). I think it's probably a very difficult thing for any parent to confront, particularly in cases like mine, where I was very conscious of what I was doing from about the age of 16 and proactively trying to hide any signs of it.

I don't blame him for it and I don't hold it against him.

I don't get how anyone could disown their own children just because of their sexuality, they're still the same person regardless of whether they're straight, gay, bisexual or any number of identifiable genders.

Just accept it and get on with your life, you only get one.

Wow, some tough situations going on in here. I share moggys view and get a bit angry for you guys going through this sort of thing. I get there's a generational thing going on here, but I just can't support a parent making their child feel bad about their sexuality.

To offer an alternative view minoru, every gay friend I have ever had has said that their parents were shocked but supportive.

Really hope when you choose to do it things go ok.

Moggy wrote:Having said that, my 1 year old threw a bowl of food onto the floor last night, so he is very very very close to me disowning him. One more time and he is getting thrown out to fend for himself.

I bet he laughed as he did it as well. Unforgivable.

Albear wrote:Wow, some tough situations going on in here. I share moggys view and get a bit angry for you guys going through this sort of thing. I get there's a generational thing going on here, but I just can't support a parent making their child feel bad about their sexuality.

To offer an alternative view minoru, every gay friend I have ever had has said that their parents were shocked but supportive.

Really hope when you choose to do it things go ok.

This is really important & appreciated. I (unsurprisingly) know a lot of people in the LGBT community nowadays and the vast, vast, vast majority of people didn't have anything like the difficulty I did.

It's not an easy journey but at the end it's totally worth it.

It's good to know your experience is hopefully in the minority, wrathy. I'm just sorry you had to go through it. Im sure this sort of thing will become easier in future years as we progress.

Are things better now or is there still a rift?

Karl wrote:

Moggy wrote:Having said that, my 1 year old threw a bowl of food onto the floor last night, so he is very very very close to me disowning him. One more time and he is getting thrown out to fend for himself.

I bet he laughed as he did it as well. Unforgivable.

He wasn’t laughing for long.

Albear wrote:It's good to know your experience is hopefully in the minority, wrathy. I'm just sorry you had to go through it. Im sure this sort of thing will become easier in future years as we progress.

Are things better now or is there still a rift?

Thanks. ^^ Yeah it's pretty much recovered now. I wouldn't say it's the same but by design I guess that's what you expect anyway.

Wrathy wrote:I had a similar situation when I came out to my dad and it was really tough. I thought he would take it bad, and he did. I couldn’t go home and feel the same, it very tangibly damaged my relationship with him. it also damaged my education and caused me to become suicidal, to the point where counselling saved my life. I nearly failed my university year. We didn’t do much as speak for a couple of months. it was very difficult for everyone.

so, on a practical level... be prepared for the worst case scenario. sometimes it does go wrong. I was lucky because I could spend the rest of the year at university around friends and wasn’t around that environment. But also bear in mind the following advice.

To a large extent I think the problems could have been avoided if I wasn’t so cautious around him in the first place. My mum had known for years and I think the fact I couldn’t trust my dad contributed to the hurt he felt. I had logical (and apparently jusytified) reasons for not confiding in him at the same time but ultimately this did more harm than good. The trauma of coming out and everybody getting used to what was happening at the same time was not easy for anyone to deal with. coming out to him so relatively late must have felt like a massive insult and it wasn’t a good way to go about things from my perspective.

i don’t know what I would do differently but it’s much better now. It recovered and we’re on great terms again. My main regret is waiting so long, because it allowed me to move on with my life and be more comfortable with myself (though this was the start of that process, by no means was it a solution itself). It was almost four years ago now. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done but I wish I’d taken the plunge earlier and approached it better.

Feel free to PM me if you want to talk any more about it.

I'm sorry you had to go through all that but I'm glad to hear you're doing better now. I haven't been in a very good place recently and that all sounds pretty familiar. I still live with my parents and rely on them financially. While I'm confident they'd never throw me out or anything, if it lead to tension, I don't have any other support system, or anyway I could really deal with or get away from it.

I do feel guilty for worrying sometimes, like maybe I’m not giving her the benefit of the doubt, but then she’ll say something, and I’m like, oh, is she really going to be okay with this? I don’t want to give the impression that my mother is a terrible person, she does her best and she's not even as homophobic as many, I’m confident I would never get disowned or anything. Maybe she will take it fine, that's very possible, but serious denial/anger is also a strong possibility and I’m just not mentally in a place where I can deal well with that if it’s the case. There doesn’t seem to be much benefit to it at the moment, either. I’m not likely to get a girlfriend anytime soon so it just feels like, why take that risk, you know?

Albear wrote:Wow, some tough situations going on in here. I share moggys view and get a bit angry for you guys going through this sort of thing. I get there's a generational thing going on here, but I just can't support a parent making their child feel bad about their sexuality.

To offer an alternative view minoru, every gay friend I have ever had has said that their parents were shocked but supportive.

Really hope when you choose to do it things go ok.

Thanks. That’s kind of the reaction I hope for, it's just difficulty because I've grown up hearing her say these things and my brain has trouble trying to process that. Like, even if she does accept it, there's always going to be that level of knowledge that this is a negative thing to her, even if she never says it.

Damn, I'm oversharing, aren't I?