#4A Security and Being Out: Family

Similar to work, consider why and to whom you need to be out. Dissimilar to work, family are people who should accept you and those you consider family. When it comes to security, some people have families that may disagree but would never do anything to harm each other, and others have families that are just plain abusive. These are the families you see throwing their LGBT kids out on the street. Almost every friend I’ve counseled through this sort of schism has indicated the same thing: A parent or important figure made the issue about them and played the victim. Their kid said, “I’m not normative,” and the parent replied, “You’re embarrassing me, wounding me, insulting me! Me, me me!” If your family member reacts this way, it’s not about you being non-normative: it’s about their own sense of control. Like with jealousy, the root is far deeper, but unlike jealousy it’s rare for someone with control issues to seek the root of their problem: after all, it’s not *their* problem, it’s someone else’s. The number one thing to do with abusers is go no-contact. If you can’t for any number of reasons, you can limit contact, limit their knowledge of your life, and therefore limit their control over you. Establishing boundaries with abusers is sort of like training a particularly persistent dog: exhausting, tedious, frustrating, and you know that you’ll never really convince your Great Dane that it’s not a lap dog, but you can at least get it not to try to cuddle when you have a plate of food or another person in your lap. These are the people you don’t tell *that* you’re dating, let alone doing it in a non-normative way. These are the people you don’t bring your significant other(s) around more than is absolutely necessary. Or, they’re the people that you get to use as catharsis for all the times you wished you could have yelled down a particularly inane assumption but the setting just wasn’t right. After all, they already think they’re the victim, whether or not you play into their fantastical world view. (What, you thought I was going to preach saintly non-conflict? I’m actually writing this with being human in mind.)