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I am 19 years old and in need of advice and insight. My parents are the first set of people I’ll ever open up to about my sexuality. Ever since then, they have berated me for it and they’re outright ignoring it. How do I make them accept me?
Honestly, it’s not within your power to change their mind. There is really not much you can do. It’s sad and awful and even tragic. The child needs to decide that his/her happiness is in fact more important. He/she needs to move forward. And It’s best if they find a therapists’ support in this journey. It’s important in this context that the child have another person of authority to help them see that the parent’s perspective that rejects their identity, isn’t overriding or defining who they are. Because at the end of it all, their sexuality is just a fragment of who they really are.
I’m sorry that your parents are struggling so hard to understand you, and that you’re internalizing their struggle even as you rail against it. But you might not have to lose each other over their terror and your pain.
You see, just as they don’t understand you, you don’t understand them. I’m in no way condoning their hurtful and intolerant behavior. Instead, I’d like to shed some light on what their internal experience might be like, so that no matter how you decide to move forward, you’ll be coming from a less injured and more centered place.
The truth, your parents’ reaction began long before you were born. It started where most parent-child relationships begin, which is to say, in your parents’ fantasies. Most people who want children have certain ideas, developed over the course of years, about what it will be like to raise a child, and who that child will be. And most of the time, parents-to-be don’t realize how specific these expectations they’ve been carrying around really are. Your parents aren’t trying to torture you or cause you pain — they’re trying, in their misguided way, to save you from pain.
Perhaps they think that being homosexual means that you will face prejudice and hatred — and sadly, because homophobic people are out there, they may be right. It won’t be easy, but if you give up now, you will never get to see how the story unfolds. It might also be that they will never understand.
Honestly, it’s not within your power to change their mind. There is really not much you can do. It’s sad and awful and even tragic. The child needs to decide that his/her happiness is in fact more important. He/she needs to move forward. And It’s best if they find a therapists’ support in this journey. It’s important in this context that the child have another person of authority to help them see that the parent’s perspective that rejects their identity, isn’t overriding or defining who they are. Because at the end of it all, their sexuality is just a fragment of who they really are.