Auntie SparkNotes: I’m a Lesbian, but My Grandma Thinks I’m in Love With an Older Man

Dear Auntie,

Here’s where it gets stereotypical: I’m a high school girl with a problem that starts “there’s this guy.” However, fear not! The plot thickens in that there is this guy, but there’s also this girl, and my mom, and her friends, and my grandma. To clarify: I’m dating this amazing girl, but I’m only out to my mom (and a few of our friends, and the aforementioned guy). The guy is my old teacher from middle school (currently in his thirties), someone who volunteers for my mom’s business and is one of our closest family friends. He’s been to our house for the holidays, was the first person I came out to, is generally an awesome person, etc. Because we hang out with him so much, my grandma thinks I have a crush on him, or vice versa, or some other untoward thing, and a couple of my mom’s more conservative friends think the same way. Here’s why I would care.

The guy: Someone I trust. A very good friend (nothing more, mutual ew). Doesn’t know about this weird penchant of my grandma’s and would be pretty offended (rightly) if he found out.

The girl: Amazing. Understanding. Age-appropriate. Gorgeous (what can I say). Smart, independent, artistic, tougher than her troubles. Knows all about dealing with homophobic family members, but after almost six months understandably kind of sick of sneaking around and dodging conversations whenever my family is around.

My mom: My rock. Divorced from my dad and lives with me (that’s why he’s not my top worry). Runs said business. Super intellectual and driven, and has the friends to match (usually). New to the whole I-have-a-gay-daughter thing (I’m relatively new to it myself), so not really sure how to handle the family.

My grandma: From the 1950s and staying there, which means “gays are aberrations and men and women can’t be just friends.” Always turns off the TV when Neil Patrick Harris is on, is violently offended by the notion that my uncle might be gay, calls gay weddings “their own ceremonies or whatever”. My mom’s mom. Basically raised me from ages 3-15, when my mom was doing a lot more world traveling (so, someone I love more than most). Has lived through her share of abuse from older men/men in general, so has a history of trying to protect me from them (she also pulled the implicit-accusations-of-pedophilia thing on my mom’s ex, who totally wasn’t a pedophile but did end up being kind of a trash bucket anyway).

My mom’s conservative friends: Pretty much the same story as my grandma, but starting younger. A background annoyance, but still not fair to my ex-teacher.

So basically, that’s the sitch (sorry it’s biblically long!). It’s totally unfair that my teacher and my mom have to deal with this, but I don’t think I can come out to my grandma and still maintain a relationship with her. All I know is that my current plan of wait-it-out-until-she-dies isn’t fair to my teacher friend or my girl, and there’s probably a better solution somewhere. Much obliged if you could help sort through this muddle.

Let me just start by asking the obvious, possibly very stupid question: Is the option of coming out to your grandmother actually, definitely impossible?

Because if that were an option, it would certainly be your best and simplest one. And every time I look at your letter, sweet pea, this is what I keep coming back to: Your grandmother knows you, loves you, raised you. She’s been there for you, caring for you, for your entire freakin’ life. Even her totally misguided, awful rumor-mongering about your family friend stems from a very real and genuine desire to protect you from harm.

Do you really, truly, honestly believe that she’d terminate your relationship just because you like girls?

And look: If your answer to that question is a no-doubts resounding yes, then okay. (I mean, it’s a damn shame, but you know your grandma better than I do.) But at the same time, it’s worth noting that people who claim to believe that homosexuality is weird and uncouth and aberrant have an overwhelming tendency to stop believing that the moment that someone they love turns out to be gay. Having a child (or grandchild) come out is the thing that changes so many people’s minds about this subject, as they discover that hey, actually, they still love their kid even though the kid loves people of the same sex.

So, before you write Granny off as a hopeless, hateful bigot who would literally die before she accepted you for the person you are, please just ask yourself whether you’re really sure about that — or better yet, try asking her. Every time she sniffs at marriage equality or gets the vapors over a sighting of Neil Patrick Harris, that’s an opportunity for you to ask your own obvious question — like, “So, if someone close to you turned out to be gay, would you stop speaking to them?”

Even if her answer doesn’t surprise you (and it might!), it should at least give you a sense of what your best course of action is when it comes to coming out… or not.

And here’s the thing about that: a person who you have to hide the truth from, who can’t be trusted to love and support you for the person you are, is a person whose opinion of your relationships is not important and not useful to you. And that’s true of any person who projects their own weird hangups—about male-female friendships, about same-sex romance, about the trustworthiness of men in general—all over relationships that have nothing to do with them. You say that your family friend would be offended if he knew about your grandmother’s suspicions, and that may be true, but he would also probably deal with it the way grownups generally deal with unfounded, uninformed assumptions about their lives: By correcting them if confronted, but by otherwise not giving a damn.

Which is the one thing I can tell you for sure that you must, must learn how to do. Homophobic grannies aside, the biggest unifying issue in your letter is that you care much too much about what other people think—particularly people like your mom’s friends, whose opinions couldn’t be more unimportant and irrelevant to your life. What these people think is utterly misguided and ridiculous, but it’s also not your problem.

And once you’ve embraced how much of this whole scenario qualifies as Not Your Problem, you’ll be free to focus on the stuff that actually matters—which basically boils down to figuring out what you think, and what you want, and then making the necessary adjustments to get it. Maybe that means coming out to grandma now, because it’ll make your life easier and you’ve realized she can probably handle it. Maybe it means keeping your orientation under wraps, but also telling grandma politely (or asking your mom to tell her) that she’s got the wrong idea about your family friend and needs to cram it. Maybe it just means dialing back the amount of time you and your girlfriend spend with your less open-minded family members, until you find a balance that works better for both of you. Maybe it means that you and your girl need to have some real talk about your respective expectations for the relationship, and whether you guys can make things work under the circumstances.

I can’t tell you what will end up working best for you, darling. But if you stop wasting your energy worrying about things you can’t control, and start focusing on your own happiness, you’ll figure it out quickly enough. And with so many supportive, trustworthy people in your inner circle—the chirping of various busybodies-once-removed be damned—the one thing I’m absolutely sure of is that you’re going to be fine.

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