no, because you didn’t give any. You’re no the one having to deal with this, so it’s real easy for you to drop a snarky “So?” and act like that’s “advice.”
like I said, it’s real easy to tell people what to do when you’re not the one who has to do it.
I’d say the same thing to anyone asking me a similar story IRL. The intention is to get them to calm down and think about what their issue really means.
Yeah, so?
So? How’s that condescending “so?” work for you IRL? Your intentions be what they may be I have a hard time imagining any real person sharing something with you that they were concerned about wouldn’t just label you an asshole completely devoid of empathy.
There will be hard things in life but you can’t change the way your children think you should let them be what they want love who they want Then just move forward
It works out fine more often than not. I haven’t kept detailed records though, so no cite. And no, I don’t have much empathy for homophobia.
I had limited success in convincing my children to do things, much less convincing them not to do, feel or think a particular way. There are times to pull out the parenting big guns this is not one of them! You really cannot change someones sexual preference, it would akin to talking a non-athletic kid into becoming an athlete. Can’t be done, you will only succeed in alienating her, and maybe causing a host of other problems.
I have to repeat what some others have suggested: Contact PFAG. I wish the group had existed way back when I came out to my parents (1963). It would have helped them to understand me in ways I couldn’t at the time.
My 18 year old daughter is asexual. My son, I THINK he likes girls, but he can’t be bothered to date one - he’s 19 and I understand that its “too much work - girls want things.” (He had an eighth grade girlfriend who was very demanding in a middle school sort of way). Many of my daughter’s friends are gender fluid - she herself uses female pronouns but identifies as non-binary.
My kids are lovely people - and while my chances of getting grandchildren don’t look great - I’d rather not have any ever than have them now - or have them if my kids don’t want them. (And plenty of gay people get married and have kids - it just doesn’t look like either of mine will make that choice). Don’t worry about it. Maybe your daughter will be bisexual her whole life. Maybe she will, in ten years, settle down with a man in a traditional monogamous marriage and if she is bisexual, it won’t make a darn bit of difference in her external life. Maybe in ten years, you’ll be going to a wedding where your daughter marries the woman she loves. Maybe she will never marry and raise alpacas.
For this generation, there seems to be a huge shift in how they see both sexuality and gender - it isn’t an either or thing or a lot of them. Its an acknowledgment that they have parts of themselves that can’t be put into boxes.
And more and more of the country is becoming more and more comfortable with this. Fewer people are homophobic. More people are let and let live. When my kids were little, I hoped they wouldn’t be gay not because I’d love them less - but because even eighteen years ago it was just a much more difficult life - and you want your kids to be happy, and you know that is easier when they don’t face discrimination. Now…no big. I’m not worried about how society will treat them.
Colette8, welcome to the board and I haven’t read the other responses but I think I know the Dope well enough to be sure they all point in similar directions.
TLDR, you’ve got a teenager; keep the TUMS handy. Doing things that the parents find irritating, absurd, stupid or unbelievable is part of being a teenager. Hopefully both of you will survive this period in good health and your relationship will actually be stronger once it’s between two adults.
I was reading the beginning of your OP and thinking “…and they’re Catholic… aaaand they’re Catholic… aaaAAaaad there it finally is, they’re Catholic!” Your daughter having gone to private schools doesn’t really tell us anything, “private schools” comes in many different flavors. The hurting point is, “we’re Catholic and she’s rejecting the Church too”. FTR I’m Catholic too, but from Spain, where until very recently anybody was assumed to be Catholic. Now we come in all colors, we can’t make assumptions about anybody’s religion and when my SiL got a First Communion student whose parents are a lesbian couple and SiL tried to reject the student, the priest told her “we’ll be sorry to lose you then!” (she relented). That family is in church every Sunday, unlike so many others.
Until she joined that school, your daughter had never been conscious of any queers she could identify with. Homosexuals were Other. Lesbians were Other and practically invisible (have you noticed that any time people talk about homosexuality it’s always the gays/the guys? Well, unless they’re talking about porn). Bisexual, pansexual, what’s that? She now has peers who identify with those labels; I remember trying on the ‘lesbian’ label, mentally only, and deciding that no, it didn’t fit, I like guys. I was 12 and had just been informed that “you are… [distorted voice]weird[/dv]” because I’d declared I didn’t like the current official heatthrobs (one of whom doesn’t even get a headshot in IMDB, the guy who played TJ); I did like this guy 'cos I have bad taste. And I’m weird.
You guys live in a country whose general culture includes notions such as that it’s imposible to like someone without wanting to have sex with them, where colleagues asking a colleague to have lunch need to put up neon signs saying “I’m not hitting on you” (one of the guys who put up that sign when asking me for lunch was gayer than a Pride Parade, but he still felt the need to make it explicit that he wasn’t hitting on me; I know honey, I’ve got eyes). She’s at an age where pushing against boundaries is normal (expected in fact); she’s in a social context which is very different from her previous one. Having teenagers in the house is always a rollercoaster; I was such a goody two shoes it’s ridiculous and we still did have our Issues (Dad’s reaction to my suddenly-widened vocabulary comes to mind: “we sent you to the Jesuits to get educated, not to learn four letter words!”).
Do contact PFLAG, but do also talk with a priest that you don’t know to be homophobic (note that I don’t even say one that you know to be accepting, but you don’t want one who’s going to make you feel worse!). Don’t try Opus Dei, do try Jesuit or Franciscan.
Yes - DON’T PANIC.
Seriously. Some of the rebellion may be normal teen rebellion. However, since she has been, as you admit, living in a “bubble” up until this current school she might well have been have feelings towards girls she was not able to express, or thought she was the only one in the world having them. Exposure to people outside that bubble might well have enabled her to express things she couldn’t until now.
Don’t pull her out of that school. She’s doing amazing, right? So don’t disrupt that.
Then don’t pull her out of school.
So, if there are ZERO emotional issues, no depression, trauma, etc. then why are you contemplating changing anything?
Look, I get it - you tried to raise her in a shielded, protected environment. The problem is that eventually she was going to leave the bubble and meet the real world. She was, regardless, at some point going to meet people who are gay or bi, she was at some point going to be exposed to people who really, really hate Donald Trump. You couldn’t shield her forever.
She trusted you with something very personal. Don’t blow it. Remain calm. Don’t panic.
The question here is … do you love your daughter unconditionally? Or is that love bought only if you agrees with your political views, only loves those you approve of?
You say you’re Catholic - well, here’s some of what the current Pope has to say gay people. If the Pope says “who am I to judge?” perhaps you should take a deep breath and ask yourself how you are judging your daughter.
It sounds like you are raising an amazingly talented daughter. If she doesn’t turn out exactly like you expected that’s not a failure on your part - it’s because she’s her own, individual person.
Well, I kinda went through this a few years ago. I pre-empted the discussion by 6 months by telling my eldest daughter on the way to school one morning that
silence in the car
“awkward”
“How about them Seahawks?”
She came out as bi about 6 months later to her parents, and classmates. My wife had a very serious problem with it, and I really don’t know or understand why. China Wife has kinda sorta come to terms with it after 18 months, and has come at least detente if not peace with our daughter. It helps there is an informal “don’t ask, don’t tell” practice between the two. My wife’s mother may have irrevocably destroyed her relationship with both my eldest and middle daughter over this. While I’m still trying, it grieves me deeply to think our marriage is probably not going to survive because I had my daughter’s back 100% through this process, and that probably is an unforgiveable marriage sin in my wife’s eyes.
PFLAG is worth checking out. It wasn’t really for us. My wife tried it once, left after about 5 minutes sobbing uncontrollably. Some of the nice ladies there had similar experiences when their kids came out, but were not able to help. My wife is from China, and had no interest in going to Vancouver (3 hours drive) to check out a Chinese speaking PFLAG group there. I went a could of times, but it’s such a non-issue to me, I didn’t “need” peer support. I would recommend you try PFLAG as I guarantee there will be some experienced parents there that are Catholic, judgement free, and probably can provide some help and/or comfort to you as *you *struggle to come to terms with *your *issues. Remember, and apologies for being blunt, your daughter is figuring things out while you’re the one with personal issues.
Your daughter’s school probably has a GLBT club, and I expect she probably attends already. My daughter started the one at her school.
By the way, did I mention my daughter is artistic, gets good grades, nailed the SAT’s, and was accepted to the digital arts programs in the film schools at both Loyola Marymount and Chapman University? With substantial scholarships? I will also point out that how you act *now *could have a catastrophic impact on where your daughter goes to University and how she is successful in life. It’s one thing to grow up in a loving family with acceptance and anything is possible, it’s another to find out as one is on the cusp of responsible adulthood that you’re in a family of homophobic bigots. Think about that instead of yourself.
My Chinese “brother” that I have known since a homestay 30 years ago, grew up in a very conservative cough cough homophobic cough cough Chinese family in Taiwan. He figured out at 20, what was pretty obvious at least to me a few years before, that he was gay. We were chatting after I said my eldest came out as “bi”. He just laughed and said “when a teen boy comes out as “bi” 99% of the time it means he’s gay, and when a teen girl comes out as “bi”, 99% of the time it means she’s straight.” Just one gay guy’s opinion but it might be of some comfort to you. My niece, who had boyfriends in high school and college, took up roller derby and had a pretty long term serious relationship with another roller derby woman. Broke up. Niece went abroad to teach international school in Germany, about 9 months later had a serious English boyfriend, was pregnant, soon married, he got a green card and they are really enjoying their family life in the US. You don’t know how this will play out with your daughter, but you can love and support her unconditionally, and treat this about as seriously as a minor cold and avoid causing cancer.
Apologies if I’ve been a little harsh but your daughter needs you now, and you should step up to the plate. You can PM me if you’d like, and my daughter would probably be willing to do a peer call with your daughter but I need to ask. Best of luck
“I’m telling everyone!”
Apart from the counting issue, there are also those - particularly those in their teens - who genuinely either aren’t sure or are interpreting an “unsettled” state as bisexuality in order to put some kind of label on what they’re feeling. The remedy for that is time - better to wait and let them figure out what’s in their head. And wherever they land - bi, straight, gay, other - as long as they’re happy and no one is being harmed, the best one can do is be happy for them.
Man, there are a lot of dashes in that paragraph.
Heathen! Pepsi is an abomination before the Lord! And Crystal Pepsi a thousand times so!
archy
I think the OP should thank God they’re so lucky.
The fact that your daughter felt comfortable talking to you, and you immediately went seeking advice, rather than going whole hog with a negative knee-jerk reaction, tells me you’re all going to be just fine.
I was a teen in the late 1970s / early 1980s, and went to a Catholic, all-boys high school, in a small city. For all of those reasons, I really wasn’t exposed to anything other than heterosexuality being acceptable – gays were the subject of humor, derision, and stereotyping, and no one in my school would have ever willingly, openly admitted to being gay. And, the idea that sexuality was anything other than a binary setting (you either liked boys, or you liked girls) was even more foreign.
It took me until the past decade to really come to realize that I’m not purely heterosexual, and that, while I prefer women, I do have some bisexual leanings. I always did have some of those leanings (feeling a sense of attraction to certain males), but it was something that culture was telling me I really shouldn’t act on, or dwell on, and those feelings quickly got shoved deep down into the subconscious.
Looking back, if I were in high school today, I think it’s entirely possible that I would be self-identifying as bisexual.
I would suggest finding some guidelines that are based on ethics rather than specific gender identities or sexual preferences. In other words, be honest and kind no matter who you have a crush on, and respect your own body no matter who’s next to you.
Dossie Easton’s “The Ethical Slut” is one of the few books out there that really focuses on ethics in intimate relationships, rather than pushing a single sexual norm and pathologizing all the rest.
Spiritually, I had to go through an exercise of specifically reviewing Old Testament passages that I did not agree with and admitting to myself that I denied their validity, but that I still respected the underlying concepts.
I want to point out that there is simply no way that this is actually true. She grew up in US popular culture, presumably going to church, and going to a private school (religious?) that presumably didn’t successfully forbid talking about sex and dating at all. There is a TON of pressure to like the opposite sex in the media, from peers, from the school and church itself, and a variety of other sources. You probably filter most of it out, but the idea that you’re supposed to be interested in and later date MOTOS is all over the place in TV shows and books, and various relatives and authority figures. I mean, you’re a member of a Church that actively supports discrimination against gay people, considers same-sex attraction a disorder, and believes that people have a moral duty to procreate, did the Church really avoid mentioning any of that to her at any time?
Ouch.
I would add that you tell her that as her mother your acceptance of her does not automatically mean acceptance of any possible girlfriend and that they will be held to the same standards as any potential boyfriend would. If you’re truly supportive she shouldn’t be allowed to ignore any specific concerns of yours as homophobic.