COMING OUT TO MY PARENTS ON FACEBOOK

By Mikey Carr

Despite having identified as some mixture of gay or bisexual since my late teens, I avoided coming out to my parents until last year. I’d always been open about my sexuality with anyone who asked (and some who didn’t) however when it came to my parents I never brought it up – except on occasion when debating marriage equality where I would out myself with such hyperbole I was always taken to be joking.

You see being raised in Sydney’s waspish Eastern Suburbs, I’d always felt that when it came to coming out to my parents, the sordid details of my dalliances with men were just a little too full on for them to handle. I always saw myself waiting until I met a guy I wanted to settle into a long term relationship with to tell them.

That never really happened, my interest in men eventually proving to extend not much further than sharing their friendship and their beautiful beautiful cocks. What followed was a brief attempt at heterosexuality before once again re-installing Grindr (I deleted it for the 6th time last Nov lol) before ending up where I am today – a bisexual man in an open relationship with an amazingly understanding girlfriend who I love very much.

Deprived of my imagined erotic ultimatum, I wasn’t quite sure what to do about ’coming out’. I was with a woman but still sleeping with men and having been asked to write about my experiences didn’t want to hide anything from my parents. On the other hand my sex life is mine to share with who I wish, and I didn’t really feel it was any of their business. And I didn’t want to talk to my parents about sex face to face. That was a big factor.

Despite the fact my parents have always supported me, and we share a very  honest relationship, having to sit them down and explain the situation seemed like far too awkward and confronting a conversation for my coward heart. And so, deciding that I needed to tell them for my own piece of mind but was still too afraid to face them, I did what so many deadbeat guys have done before and wrote a private message on Facebook.

It worked like a dream.

Both of my parents took the news well, and while my mother did write me a heartwarming rebuttal in defense of monogamy, they were the textbook example of how you’d hope your parents to react. My dad was especially understanding, replying with a many emoji littered message of support post scripted by a confirmation of his own burning heterosexuality.

This made up for all the awkward comments on my photos and the endless stream of viral videos, cat memes and articles denying climate change they usually funnel into my inbox.  Social media, forever a source of social intrusion in my life was for once helping my keep some emotional distance around myself.

As an adult I stopped needing my parents approval a long time ago. Beyond not wanting to keep something from them, I had no desire to begin discussing my sexuality with them and social media was the perfect tool for me to carry out my emotionally repressed confession. Sure I should probably be adult enough to talk to them openly about it without the digital barrier of social media, but considering how open I am in all other parts of my life, it’s nice to have a little part of it where my sexuality isn’t always up for discussion/debate.

In a time when all we seem to hear about social media is how it is tearing society apart, here it was helping me communicate with my parents and bringing us closer together. While some might argue that point, citing the fact we have still yet to speak about it face to face as evidence it’s only served to cement our separation I don’t see it that way. I see family much like government power, which is to say it works best when it’s core branches are kept separate.

It does all sound a little Brave New World, people today using social media to effectively edit their relationships without having to actually confront each other face to face, but isn’t that more liberating than it is isolating? Social media doesn’t stop me from going to see my parents tomorrow and initiating the kind of open-hearted discussion movies and television tell us we should have, it just give me another option. And if more and more people are choosing that option I say bring it on, it’s worked great for me.