How Do I Tell My Wife and Kids I’m Gay?
By: Jeremy Helligar
Tags: LGBTQ, The Golden Girls, Culture, Coming Out, Valentines Day

How Do I Tell My Wife and Kids I’m Gay?

Photo: Raphael Perez/flickr

October 11 is National Coming Out Day, and in observance of it, I’m thinking not about my own coming out — a gradual, two-year process that began when I was 22. Instead, I’m thinking about someone else’s.

Actually, it wasn’t exactly his coming out. This was more a conversation about coming out, and I don’t know if he ever actually pulled the trigger. It happened one night years ago, on Valentine’s Day, when I was living in Melbourne, Australia, the day after I broke up with the man to whom I’m now married.

But this isn’t about my husband. It’s about a very Blanche Devereaux moment that started while I was thinking about him. The Blanche connection was unexpected because of all The Golden Girls ladies, I’m a lot more Dorothy Zbornak and Sophia Petrillo.

Don’t worry. Our encounter didn’t involve peaches and cream or sex toys. Remember the Valentine’s Day episode when Blanche unknowingly counseled a gay man on how to propose to his boyfriend? Well, that night I had a similar experience, only sort of in reverse.

I was hanging out at Pinocchio, the Italian restaurant down the road from my apartment in South Yarra, to celebrate the end of Valentine’s Day with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and the man who loves me better than anyone else: me. Before long, a somewhat inebriated man who appeared to be well into his 60s, though he was claiming only 50, was sitting beside me, telling me his story.

He’d just arrived in town on business from Perth, where he’d been living for the previous 16 years. That was how long it had been since he was last in Melbourne. He marveled at how much everything had changed.

He wanted to know about the nightlife. Would he, as a 50-year-old guy, be too old to hang out at any of the bars or clubs in town? (He prefaced this particular question by saying, “I’m sure you, being such a young guy, wouldn’t have any reason to even think about this,” which immediately won me over to his side.) And where would he go anyway?

Not being much of an expert on Melbourne nightlife, I tried to assist him as best as I could. I told him I wasn’t that much younger than him (going along with the 50 ruse), and I’d never felt out of place anywhere in Melbourne, even in bars and clubs packed with early twentysomethings. I started tossing off the names of some of the hot spots I knew, throwing in a few gay bars for effect — and to test my gaydar. I was getting a vibe. He perked up at the mention of them. Apparently, he was talking to just the guy he was looking for on this lonely (for him) Valentine’s Day.

He went on to reveal (totally off the record) that he’d been married for 33 years to a wonderful woman, and they had four great kids, between the ages of 22 and 32. He loved his wife and his children, but there was one big problem: He was gay. He said he’d known for years. Although he’d never acted on his sexual impulses, he was ready to come out of the closet.

But how?

It all felt very Christopher Plummer in Beginners. I wasn’t sure how to answer him. Everyone has to come out in his or her own way, but when there’s a wife and kids involved, it complicates matters in a way with which I’d had no experience (and still don’t). From what I’d seen on the Fran Drescher sitcom Happily Divorced — not to mention the episode of The Golden Girls in which Blanche’s recently divorced brother Clayton came out of the closet —I suspected the best way to do it might be to just blurt it out.

He said he didn’t want to diminish his devotion or even his attraction to his wife, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to continue living his old life while ignoring his rising desire, the burning yearning to be with a man. After buying me another drink, he asked if I would be interested in dousing the flame.

I politely declined. Not long before, I’d made a vow to myself not to hook up with guys who were still in the closet. It wasn’t a judgment thing. I believe any LGBTQ person has the right to come out on their own schedule — if you’re single, or if your partner knows. But someone as closely affected by your sexual orientation as a spouse deserves to have all the pertinent facts so they can avoid ending up as collateral damage. Being blindsided is the worst.

Then, of course, there was the issue of his wedding ring. Like Blanche Devereaux (but alas, unlike Dorothy Zbornak), I’d never knowingly hook up with a married man. Rather than passing judgment, I told him he owed it to his wife to tell her the truth — and before he even considered finding someone to put that fire out. The life he’d save would be more than just his own.