Dealing with difficult parents who don't understand my sexuality

Hey folks,

It's been a long while since I've been on ReachOut, but I thought it'd really help for me to talk things out 🙂

Just a little overview ... Things have a been challenging for me for the past 2 years regarding my sexuality. I've

had a lot of trouble with my parents, particularly my mum, about being gay.

I'll be honest that things have been up and down, and I just don't feel I'm getting the support and understanding from my parents that I usually would.

Back in February, I came out to both my parents and this was a big big moment for me. On the surface level, they seemed supportive. It was WorldPride month and I really had some great opportunities to attend LGBTQIA+ events and have a good time.

Now that WorldPride is finished, I feel like I'm back to the way things were prior to the event. I've found it hard to talk openly to my parents about my sexuality and they've just gone back to how they were last year too.

To be fair, my parents haven't made home that much of an open supportive space. Every time I bring up that I'm attending a queer related event, they are so discouraging me to go. Of course if it's a "straight" event, that's totally fine, but going to a gay event is always challenging for them to accept.

My mum in particular is very overprotective and has been my whole life. I get that I'm an only child and quote un quote "the most important thing to her". But it makes it so frustrating when she tells me what I should and shouldn't do, especially anything queer related. She just has this apprehensiveness every time I'm interested in a gay event, thinking I'm in danger or something, which is totally untrue.

Today was particularly hard, because last Mother's Day, I felt really repressed about my talking to my mum about my sexuality. We both got into a big fight and I felt depressed for sometime.

And today, just having Mother's Day, it's been upsetting to see that things with my mum haven't changed that much. She's totally aware that I'm gay, but lacks to have any understanding of what it means to be gay and that I want to be apart of the LGBTQIA+ community. She's always making comparisons between me and other people, which is really unproductive.

Another thing that gets down is that I find it so hard to make friends and that I really want to connect with people who get me. My mum says that I should go out to places and not stay home, but then she turns around and says it's not a good idea to go there (e.g. an LGBTQ event) and that I need to be careful. How am I suppose to make friends if I can't go out?

I keep going round in this motion of meeting up with people, like my current group of friends, and then falling into this spiral of socially isolating myself because of my parents disapproval.

I'm just so tired of having to deal with this on my own. I don't have the energy to get my parents to understand me and I honestly wish they would stop being so overprotective and just let me live my life.

Their approach to parenting is so counter productive, because the more they try to 'protect' me and shelter me from the world, the more I want to break free and move out of home. They both had protective parents and left home very young, so I don't understand why they are doing this to me as well.

I really hope that I can find some peace and understanding between my parents and I. I do love them both very much and I'm so grateful for all the things they've done. I just wish they'd put in the effort to acknowledge who I am, that I'm a mature independent person, who needs to make their own decisions without their control.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my post. Just by releasing these feelings onto the page has really helped me. I'd greatly appreciate any advice you may have and I look forward to hearing from all you lovely people 😊

Much love,

DrummaBoy 🥁