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'Coming Out' to A Friend?


DragonSoulWithin

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DragonSoulWithin

I got a lot of great advice on this site, thanks for being so supportive, everyone! When I asked about asexual 'coming out' a lot of people told me that they only told a few best friends so they could be themselves more around those people. Others said they started with a best friend for practice in case they ever wanted to tell anyone else. I think that I would like to tell my best friend, who has come out to me as pansexual. The problem is, I am practically mute even around people I know. I tend to stick to things I'm comfortable talking about and even then I'm horribly awkward. Does anyone have any advice on 'coming out' to their friends? What did you do?

Thanks!

-Dakotah

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Does your friend ever seem to wonder about your sexuality?

My friends always wondered why I never had crushes. One even jokingly asked if I was a lesbian. So if I came out to my friends I would probably start based off that. "You know how I never really got crushes? I think I know why now..." or something to that effect.

If your friend hasn't noticed, maybe you could say that you've felt different for a long time, and now you know why. I can understand how difficult it is to bring it up though. I wish you luck!

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DragonSoulWithin

Does your friend ever seem to wonder about your sexuality?

My friends always wondered why I never had crushes. One even jokingly asked if I was a lesbian. So if I came out to my friends I would probably start based off that. "You know how I never really got crushes? I think I know why now..." or something to that effect.

If your friend hasn't noticed, maybe you could say that you've felt different for a long time, and now you know why. I can understand how difficult it is to bring it up though. I wish you luck!

Thanks very much! Yes, she has definitely wondered and joked about it with me. She's asked more than once about crushes and such and always wondered why I didn't understand. Once she even decided to see if she could determine who I would find attractive and started asking questions like "what hair color do you like?" And such. She thought she was getting somewhere until she figured out I was describing my favorite book character xD thanks again for the ideas!
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FireBendingAce

Does your friend ever seem to wonder about your sexuality?

My friends always wondered why I never had crushes. One even jokingly asked if I was a lesbian. So if I came out to my friends I would probably start based off that. "You know how I never really got crushes? I think I know why now..." or something to that effect.

If your friend hasn't noticed, maybe you could say that you've felt different for a long time, and now you know why. I can understand how difficult it is to bring it up though. I wish you luck!

Yeah, that's exactly how I come out to most of my friends too, and it usually works pretty well! I think sometimes it's easier for people to know what a concept looks like in practice first (aka, they've observed how I feel/act about sex and attraction, and have wondered why), and then to put a word to it. That way there's no "but wait, how can that exist?" Shock factor because obviously.. I'm standing right here.. You see how I am.. I clearly exist, and there's a term for it.

Good luck with coming out! I hope all goes well :)

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ChainSmokingBob

I've just started coming out myself and the first I person I talked to I did by discussing asexuality hypothetically with Aven open in front of us. I knew he'd respond to the debate as we've long enjoyed debating over things such as his religion. After we got a little way in and had properly established an understanding of what asexuality is, I simply chucked in 'Because that's what I am' and after acknowledging that, we continued our debate. He did bring up that I couldn't be asexual given my attraction to women, but he did retract that after we clarified emotional, romantic and sexual attractions.

Coming out to my sister was hard to start since I had to pair it with "Would you mind if I asked your friend out?" and she was heading overseas the next day, but I just brought it up in the bathroom. We're close and I know we can just talk about this kind of stuff, so I figured somewhere she wouldn't be with anyone else would be all I needed. She mentioned she thought she might have been too, and told me it was actually her search that had caused me to find the idea of asexuality, though I didn't know at the time.

The most recent friend I've told I lured into it. He asked me how I was, so I said I was good, but it had been a shaky week. He told me to go on, I said it was a bit of a story. He said 'Do tell' so I laid down the whole week: how I'd met my sister's friend and become attracted to her, asking her out and being rejected and how that made me feel, applying for a new job, researching more about sexism and feminism and deciding I'm asexual.

He said he had no idea what to say and that it had come so far out of the left field he didn't know how to respond, and that I'd "Reduced him to a blithering idiot". However, he was fully accepting and said "Asexuality really confuses me, because there is no way for me to understand not being sexually attracted to someone, and I also don't even know if that's all Asexuality is so correct me if I'm wrong about it" and "And now I can kinda understand you a bit better and it actually makes a whole lot of sense. But bleh. You're still gonna be good 'ol Bobinator... I'm actually happy for you if you can be happy".

Now, I've got a virtual sex addict I will come out to at some point and haven't quite figured out how to do that yet. I'm not expecting any kind of understanding from her, trust me. Acceptance hopefully, actual understanding? No.

I hope those examples are useful and at the end of the day the point I'm trying to make is that you should tailor it to the individual :) I imagine you can bring it up fairly comfortable with someone who has already confided in you something similar, but i understand the nervousness. Good luck! You've definitely chosen a good first person.

"Hey, do you remember when you first told me you were pansexual?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Ah, well, I just thought I'd let you know..."

Best of luck once again :)

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The Once-ler

The first friend I came out to I did so over text. Not because I didn't think I could face her, but because I'd just discovered I was asexual and wanted to tell her right away. I don't think it surprised her at all, and I ended up finding out she was on the spectrum as well.

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