So, I'm 40, I'm in a loving relationship with my second wife and I have children. My 17 year old son lives with me, my 16 year old daughter lives with her mother in another state. I come from a VERY conservative family, I'm pretty to the right on a lot of things myself as a general rule however... they are strange about LGBT. Race? Not a racist bone in the family, LGBT? Well that's where the hate seems to lie. To make matters worse, my wife works for my Aunt, who happens to be born again Christian and we fear she'd fire my wife if she "knew".
Yeah, that's the setting for my journey.
I started by of course telling my then girlfriend on our second date, I was still in the military (Navy) and not sure of anything. Fast forward 8 years, (got out of Navy at 29) and I found myself unable to deny the truth. So I got a good therapist, accepted who I was, started HRT. My hair is down to my mid back, I slowly have bleached it blonde and the usual changes one can expect from hormones have taken their course.
How's this relate to coming out? Well I'm getting there.
My son "didn't know" but he's captain oblivious, so I started online. I post on a political forum and a couple of people there knew via PM but that was it. I changed my name, came out and dealt with the support and haters on equal ground. I thought it was good training. I worked my way to VERY close friends, and have slowly rotated that outward. I have a fortunately excellent work at home job that allowed me to come out to my coworkers. Last week I finally came out to my sister and started dressing in front of my son. It's been a multi stage journey that the further I go down, the less problematic it is. My DAD? Yeah, he flew fighter for the Air Force back in the day, he's kinda gonna be a problem. I'll get there. I'm finding for me, the slow roll out is both advantageous and works for me.
I hope this helps.
