The Fallout

In the wake of our "breakup," which lacked any closure and went largely unacknowledged by Dana, I significantly extended myself to help her in her hard time. I vacated my apartment for two months so she wouldn't have to stay in [her boyfriend]'s. I supported her financially to the tune of several thousand dollars. Then Dana asked me if I loved her.

Her defense was that she asked all her guy friends, and it's fair for her to ask questions for clarity. But she broke the contract - the boundary of safety upon which our entire relationship rested. When she refused to acknowledge it or apologize for it, the relationship fractured irreparably. She became a fundamentally unsafe and untrustworthy person for me - the exact opposite of what she had been. It felt like a complete betrayal of the immense amount of trust I had placed in her. An abandonment of even chosen family.

Between losing her and you, I had lost my entire functioning support system. My process of confrontation with my family was already underway, exacerbated by my fallout with Dana, which highlighted my family's complete disconnect from my life and lack of actual care when I reached out for emotional support and was ignored and dismissed immediately, without so much as an interrogation into what might be wrong - because they had their own problems.

Essentially, the dominoes had already started falling, and each one made the next one worse... and the last domino standing was my family. As I said, I have a very finely tuned sense of what people are really thinking - no one more so than my mother. I knew she wouldn't accept me as I was. But I put more effort into addressing this with her in a healthy and charitable way for several weeks than I've ever put into any "conflict."

When I finally decided to "come out" again, it wasn't just about clarification or honesty. It was about finally addressing the deeply internalized shame I'd carried since coming out at 22 and experiencing nothing but avoidance, denial, and invalidation. The intense shame my aunt reinforced after I was victimized had only compounded this, turning my identity into something I felt inherently ashamed of or unsafe expressing fully - which manifested in my discomfort holding your hand in public.

So when I chose to openly reaffirm my identity and boundaries with my family, it was far more than an act of clarity. It was an act of emotional survival, a direct confrontation of decades of internalized shame.

My mother's immediate response - after crying, again, just like last time - was: "You know I can't support that lifestyle. But I still love you." Literally the exact same response I got 20 years ago. Not one thing had changed.

After multiple therapy sessions with my mom and her therapist (at my urging), I told my mom - after her having accused me of trying to manipulate her - that I'd meet her anytime with an affirming therapist. Then she asked me if I still accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. That's likely the last thing she'll ever say to me. It was clear: her care was conditional on my believing what she believes.

I was abandoned by my father when I was 11. I realized I never even had my mother in a healthy way when I was 41. John, she abandoned me. My own mother abandoned me - the lady who gave birth to me, and whose tit I sucked on. She was never really there in the first place.

The kind of retroactive schema-shattering process that occurred when I realized what an ass my father was happened all over again with my own mother. It shattered the remaining good ideals I still held about my family. It also revealed, clearly, the source of many of my lingering long-term relational and mental health issues.