How to Come Out, How NOT to Come Out

or Everything Rainbow Amoeba Ever Thought about Coming Out and that Turns Out to Be Way More than You Ever Wanted to Know, including the story of Why Her Mom Rejected her Asexuality for So Long.

But first, an apology.

It seems I have not been able to keep either my New Year resolution or the promise I made in my last entry – I did not update before January 19. I have good reasons (a very difficult exam session, much more challenging than I expected, and some personal difficulties that put this blog lower on my list of priorities for a little while) but still, I did not keep my word and it annoys me. I really want to be the kind of reliable girl who always does what she said she would do, and most of the time I can be trusted to keep my word – but not always, and whenever that happens I feel bad about myself.

Now, the promised update.

I see that my blog has been accessed twelve times in the past week from this conversation about coming out on the LiveJournal community about asexuality (which reminds me that I have a LiveJournal account that I never really use and that maybe I could try to remember what the password is and join that community some day, but that is another matter). That reminded me of a draft I had written a while ago about coming out, and I thought it was time to edit it, rewrite it and publish it. It was the only way I could update anyway, because the past weeks have been so difficult for me that I could not think of a topic to write about here.

My first coming out experiences

When I first discovered I was asexual, I wanted to tell the whole world – but I did not know how.

I wanted to tell because it made me so happy – not the fact that I was asexual, but the fact that I had figured out my orientation, that I was no longer taking it for granted, but that I had seriously thought about it and had found an identity that fit me and that I was comfortable with. I was happy because I felt I really knew who I was, and because it had been very difficult to accept at first that I was not who I thought I was, but now it was over – I understood and accepted who I was. I had not often felt so elated and so relieved in my life.

I did not have a very specific person I wanted to tell – it felt like a wonderful secret (like when one has just fallen in love, I suppose) that made the world look brighter and it seemed I had to share it with everyone, tell them how happy I was and why, tell them that my life had changed and I was a new person and I had never been so glad in the previous 21 years of my existence. I felt like telling it to every person I met, you know, like “Hi, how are you doing?” “I’m great, I’ve just discovered I’m asexual and this is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me!”.

Obviously, I did not tell anyone that way.

I wrote about the first time I came out to someone in person on the blog Coming Out Stories on Coming Out Day. It was not, though, the first time I came out. I first came out to a friend via email/LiveJournal.

I had been writing that I was confused about something and needed to figure it out, and eventually I wrote that I had figured it out and that I felt happier now. The one friend I shared these entries with commented that she thought she knew what I had figured out, but was not sure I was comfortable talking about it and did not want to force me to share it with her if I was not ready. I had, in fact, been hoping that she would ask for an explanation (I had been writing these entries so that she would become curious and ask) so I wrote back that I was fine talking about it. It turned out that she thought I had found out I was a lesbian – but when I corrected her and said I had found out I was bi-asexual, she was really happy for me and understanding about asexuality (it seemed she had already heard about it from someone else). It was the best coming out one could dream of – I only wish that all my in-person coming out experiences had been like this one.

The second person I came out to was also a  friend. This time it happened in person, and this is the story I told for Coming Out Day. It did not go as well, because my friend did not believe me when I told him about asexuality, but in the end he did say he felt honored that I had trusted him enough to tell him that. It was a pretty good experience too.

I do not remember all the ways I came out to people. Most of the time, it went well – some people were probably not convinced, but they did not reject my orientation either, so it was not too bad. Some asked questions, some said they thought someone else they knew might be asexual too.

And then, there was my mom.

What actually happened with my mom

If you have read some past entries in this blog, you probably know that, although my mom reacted positively when I formally came out to her on Coming Out Day, she had rejected my orientation rather violently on previous previous coming out attempts on my part.

I am not sure, though, that I ever told that story  – or, rather, these stories – in detail. I kept repeating that my mother could not accept my orientation and that it made me unhappy and frustrated and eventually gave  me the energy and the motivation to write this blog (something for which I once thanked her for here, and for which I am still grateful today, although I do prefer things as they are now).

The truth is that her rejection of my asexuality was probably mostly due to the fact that I made a total mess of my first attempts at coming out to her.  I am not saying that every time someone rejects your orientation (be it asexuality or something else) it is because you did not choose the right way to tell them – sometimes it is your fault, sometimes it is the other person’s, sometimes it is simply not the right time or the right place. But in my case, it was probably mostly my fault.

What happened was that I was too eager to tell her to do it properly. I did not really prepare for it. I was so impatient to tell that I did not explain it correctly, and especially I did not explain how important it was to me and how happy I was about it. I was nervous, over-excited, and my mom interpreted that as fear, embarrassement and unhappiness (something she told me later made me realize that, but too late) and concluded that this was something difficult for me, something that was making my life hard and that I was accepting for (probably) stupid reasons instead of trying to find what really made me happy and who I really was.

The problem is that I found out about my orientation while I was studying abroad. I came home two months and a half later, feeling that I was a totally different person (first because I had been away for a year and that many things had changed me anyway, but then also because of this new awareness of my orientation) – but my parents did not see it. Here I was, still amazed that I was interested in girls too – I seemed to me that I had been given permission to notice girls in this new way, since now I was aware of it – and happy that I had found out what my orientation really was, what I really wanted or not in life, and my parents talked to me as if I was still the same girl they had driven to the airport with a huge suitcase a year earlier.

This new knowledge was still very raw, too, and it seemed to me that I saw the world with new eyes, and it was both exciting and a bit painful too. I was annoyed with magazines that promoted heterosexuality (and all that is supposed to come with it, like committed romantic relationships and sex) as if it was the only possibility, I was annoyed not to find anything in the world that surrounded me that fit with the way I identified. I suppose that part of it was simply culture shock due to my returning to my home country after spending a whole year away – I went through about six to ten months of mild depression afterwards anyway, although I only understood how bad it had been once it was over and some people told me how hard it had been for them to see me that way. But there was also the fact that I felt I had changed, in many ways, during that time away, and the biggest change, I thought, was becoming aware of my orientation. In a word, I felt like I had not come back home, but had arrived in another planet – and I was the only one who was aware of that.

I had to tell them, but I did not know how.

I tried to attract my mother’s attention (we had begun sharing an apartment together a few weeks after I came home) by commenting upon everything I did not understand anymore in the world. It surprised and annoyed her more than it made her curious, though. She asked me what had happened to me to make me that way, but she asked it in a critical tone that clearly meant “what is wrong with you?” and that was not the introduction I needed.

Eventually, I realized I would never manage to find an apportunity to tell her, so I went to the French AVEN boards, found the text of an article about asexuality that had recently been published in a newspaper (I thought she would trust the information more if it came from an external and neutral source), printed it and gave it to her, saying that I would like her to read it and talk about it with her later. She nodded, put it aside and kept doing whatever she had been doing. It was not what I expected at all – but I did not know how to tell her that it was important to me and that I really needed to discuss this with her..

She did read the article, and I do not think it convinced her. When she eventually (a few days later, while we were waiting for a bus in Paris) told me she had read the article and understood what I was trying to say, it was neither the time or the place to start a discussion, and she did not seem to see there was anything to discuss.

The problem with my mom (and from a certain angle, it is probably a good thing about her) is that she is very tolerant, very open-minded (for most things, anyway) and expects the people involved to be the same. I do not mean that she believes everyone to be as tolerant and open-minded as she is – but she expects that it is just as easy for someone to accept their own orientation as it is for her to accept it when she hears about it. She cannot imagine how painful it was for me to realize I was not who I thought I was, that I was attracted to women in a way I had never understood before, and to re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about myself in order to make room for this new knowledge. When I talk about the terrible seven days between the night I realized I was attracted to a woman and the night I accepted my orientation as bi-asexual, I often use two metaphors. The first one is that I died that first night, that the shock of the discovery killed me, and that I came back to life – a new life, as a different person – once I had made sense of my thoughts and feelings again. The second one is that my life and my identity shattered into a million pieces that first night, when I realized that I was not who I thought I was – that I did not fit the mold I had been living in so far – and that I spent the week that followed trying to find what shape my life and my identify actually had and putting the pieces back together to fit that new shape. Maybe I am the only person for whom questioning her identity was so devastating (well, I know another person for whom it was very diffficult too – I was there when it happened), but I do not believe it is generally as easy as my mother thinks it is. She seems to think that it is like adding simply a new element to one’s life and perception of oneself, and going on with one’s life. It is not. At least, it was not for me.

I suppose that she did not understand how important it could be for me because she did not see it as a big deal at all. She may have even wondered why I wanted to tell her about it. And I got even more frustrated when I realized that she did not understand how much it meant to me. I grew desperate to make her understand that (she had not really rejected anything yet, merely seemed indifferent) and she misinterpreted that desperation as unhappiness – maybe as a cry for help, a request for confirmation that, no, asexuality did not exist, so I could not be asexual and I did not have to be unhappy about it.

I suppose she thought I was afraid to be frigid and was clinging to that belief as an orientation, although it made me unhappy, because I wanted to belong somewhere – because I had found a group of people who seemed to be like me and wanted to be part of their group. From her point of view, it meant that I was unhappy, but was convinced that there was no other explanation and that things could not change. That explains why she rejected so violently my explanations, why she told me that I was wrong, why she was so desperate to make me give up that idea – from her point of view, I was allowing myself to get trapped in an orientation that made me unhappy. What kind of loving and dedicated parent can accept to see her child persisting in a belief that causes her so much distress? What kind of mother can accept to see her daughter claim with something that looks like despair to be frigid, as if it is something definitive that cannot ever be changed, and refuse to hear otherwise?

How could my mother realize that if I was desperate, it was to make her understand how happy my orientation made me? I was so frustrated and unhappy because of her reaction – she only misunderstood the cause of these emotions and thought they were due to the orientation I was claiming, while they were actually due to her own words and behavior. The more desperate I grew, the more harmful my belief in asexuality seemed to her, and the more violently she opposed it, trying to save me from what she perceived as the cause of great distress – and the more frustrated and unhappy her efforts made me. Until I eventually was so hurt that I stopped trying and eventually started this blog instead.

How I finally got it right

When I formally (and calmly, matter-of-factly) came out to her last October, I began by asking for her full attention, explained that I wanted to tell her about something that was important to me and that I wanted her to know about, and I stated that I was bi-asexual, before quietly explaining what it meant. She listened attentively and had no reaction of rejection that time. How could she? Her daughter was telling her something important, and was doing so calmly, as an adult, without a single trace of distress. Something presented in such terms was something she could only accept – and, in fact, that she did not relate at all to the previous conversations we had had about asexuality.

She even made sure that I understood that she realized that sexual orientation could change and that if I ever felt I was no longer asexual, I could tell her – and that she would not say “I told you so” but accept my new orientation without questioning the validity of the previous one. It may seem to you that she was in fact making sure that I kept the door open to a future realization that I was not asexual at all (if, for instance, I met the “Right Person”…) but I do not think so. I believe she was making sure that I did not feel trapped in the orientation I had just disclosed to her – that I did not think her acceptance of a rather unusual orientation was conditioned to the fact that it was never questioned in the future. She was telling me that it was all right to be asexual, but that it was also all right not to be – that what mattered, the only thing that really mattered, was who I felt I was at a given moment, and that I should not be afraid to accept changes if they happened just because people might laugh and say “I told you so, asexuality doesn’t exist”. It may seem to you that she was only trying to indirectly bring me back to the norm, but I think she was telling me to be myself, and that is what I had needed to hear all along.

Why I usually want to come out

There are times when I think that there is really no reason to come out as asexual. It does not change much in my life, it just means that I do not want to have sex – but my sex life should be my business anyway, and others have no need to know whether I have sex or not. I mean, most people do not tell me about their sex lives, so why should I tell them that I do not have one and do not want to have one? The only people I should tell are potential romantic partners (so that they know what to expect) but I do not date so there is no-one to tell there.

For similar reasons, there are many people I have not told that I am not straight. Why should I tell them? Basically, I only tell the people I want to discuss my crushes with. Most of the time, I do not even actually say it – I just make comments that suggest that I am interested in women as well, and usually they understand pretty quickly. But I have not come out to my dad or my grandparents, for instance, because there is no point. I do not tell them about my crushes, so there is no need to tell them that I like girls. I would tell them if I were dating a girl and wanted to introduce her to them – but since I am not dating anyone, there is no need to upset my family with such revelations.

Sometimes, though, I am tempted to come out to more people – usually when they make assumptions about my orientation. I know it is normal for them to think I am straight, since I have never given them any reason to believe otherwise (well, I wish that people did not assume that heterosexuality is the “normal” or “default” orientation, but it is not something I can easily change, although coming out to them might teach them to stop assuming things), and it does not seem really useful to interrupt the conversation to correct them. But it feels strange to sit there and know that they have the wrong idea about me. Even if it does not really matter in the end.

When I do come out, usually, it is because I want the other person to understand the whole picture, because I care about the image they have of me and I want it to be accurate. It seems to me that my asexuality has some consequences on aspects of my life that I sometimes discuss with my friends, and in that case I think it is better to explain the whole situation. If, say, I was heartbroken because a guy I wanted to date had lost all interest in me after discovering I was asexual (something not quite exactly like this happened once, before I realized that I was probably too aromantic to date anyway), I would need whoever I chose to confide in to know I am asexual for him or her to understand the situation correctly.

What definitely does not work, and what may work

In the months that followed my discovery of my orientation, I sometimes came out as a way to prove that asexuality did exist. It was usually a total failure, as I explained in this entry. I do not think it is possible to introduce two “difficult” ideas at once – meaning that asexuality does exist and that one identifies as asexual. It is possible to tell someone that one is asexual when that person knows already a bit about asexuality – usually, it works. It is possible to describe one’s asexuality to someone in order to explain how one feels about sex and, say, dating or whatever. It works too. It is probably possible to introduce the idea of asexuality as a valid sexual orientation and convince the other person that it exists, if the other person is interested in such matters and willing to listen without jumping to conclusions – I have never tried to do that, but I think that it could work.

But doing two of these things at the same time does not work. You cannot justify something the other person does not believe to be true by using evidence the other person does not believe either. At best, the person simply rejects both ideas. At worst, they reject asexuality and whatever you tell them about your own orientation for, well, maybe not forever, but a very long time.

People who have recently become aware of their asexuality are usually more eager to come out – and, usually, their eagerness can turn out to be a problem, like it did for me. I remember how my orientation seemed important to me two and a half years ago, how I wanted to tell everyone, how I felt I must tell everyone. After a while, this eagerness faded away. I am not saying that my orientation does not matter to me anymore – of course it does, or else I would not be writing this and feeling bad about not updating more often. It had just moved to a different place on the list of things that define me, on the list of things that people should know about me. Maybe it is also because I am writing this blog and can express my asexuality that way, and therefore do not need to do it anymore in my daily life. I do not, for instance, discuss asexuality with my mom, although she has now accepted that I am asexual. I mention “the blog” sometimes, and she remembers which blog I mean and what it is about, but nothing more.

I know AVEN helped too, at the start – just knowing it existed and had many members who were all asexual like me, and also posting there a little (not for very long, because I am not comfortable on discussion boards, it is not the right medium of expression for me – I think blogging is). There are more asexual resources and communities online now than there were then, so maybe these can help dealing with the need to come out and talk about asexuality, at times.

I do understand how important it feels to come out to people we love and trust – like it was for me to come out to my mom. But, sometimes, it is simply too soon. If they do not understand, we cannot accept it and we grow too frustrated to be convincing – and the most important thing is not to tell people, but to make them understand. And the only way to do that is to be calm (agitation has never convinced anyone that what we are saying is true and important, it only makes everything confusing and the other person might think it means that we are still confused) and to state the facts. That means actually saying “this is something that means a lot to me”, “this is something I want you to know because I trust you and I want you to know me as I really am”, “this is something that makes me really happy and that I want to share with you”. That means explaining how it feels like to be asexual, rather than using the word – show, don’t tell, as I wrote before. Tell them what it feels like for you, how you realized you were asexual, and why it has nothing to do with the romance novels you read, the singers you admire, the posters on your wall, your bad experience with that guy last summer, the fact that you do not think you are pretty, the fact that you spend all your time on the computer, the fact that your favorite song is “Erotica” by Madonna, the huge crush you’ve had on Angelina Jolie for the past five years, the fact that your best friend just got engaged and everyone thought you were together or would eventually end up together. Tell them that not all non-asexual people like porn and not all asexuals are sex-repulsed. Tell them that you are sure that sex is great, but then again, so are lots of things, and that does not mean you have to try them all or want to do them all. Tell them that you do not believe that the right person exists, or that, yes, it is true that you have not met him or her, but anyway it would not change anything because he or she is certainly asexual. Tell them all that and more, but only if they ask, and always, always remain calm. Do not sound aggressive – aggressivity is the natural reaction of people who know they are wrong but do not want to admit it or to let the other person know.

Show them that you are a responsible person who has finally found out who he or she really is and what he or she really wants from life. Show them that you are finally finding out for yourself what you want your life to be like, instead of just taking things for granted. And show them how happy you are to be finally in control of your life.

I cannot promise that they will believe you, that they will understand, that they will accept it. But at least you will have told them the right way, and if they do not get it at least it will not be your fault.

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