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[quote=Anonymous]I'm going to cross-post this on a few forums because I'm looking for as many and varied opinions as possible.

I'm a twenty-three year old lesbian woman who is almost ready to start dating again after a two year hiatus and am starting to have a lot of overwhelming feelings about parts of my past that I either regret or that didn't go well. I knew I was a lesbian since I was a teenager and came out to my parents, only to have them try to abuse me into being straight. There were years of screaming, swearing, yelling, and threats, along with actual punishments that absolutely broke me at the time (e.g. social isolation and sleep deprivation). They also forced me to attend church incessantly to "fix" or shame me into being straight. I didn't back down and refused to pretend to be straight, in part because I was incredibly sure of myself and also because I thought if I pretended this would just all happen again at a later time. During this time, I also lost many of my friends from growing up either because they shunned me for being a lesbian, I was scared of them being unaccepting because they were either very religious or had homophobic beliefs, or because I hadn't been super close to certain people in the first place and was in no emotional state to solidify a friendship with them while all of this was happening. Ultimately, the experiences I had from coming out in this environment ruined my already admittedly less than perfect life instead of making things better and caused me significant psychological distress until I was no longer the same person by high school graduation.

Luckily I still performed well enough in school to end up at a college frequently discussed on this board and had a much better time socially (especially after I had a few months and some counseling to deal with everything) but still felt like I missed out. Thankfully all of my college friends are very accepting and I am still in frequent contact with many of them, but I felt bad because I mainly had male friends (I was also a STEM major) and it seemed like girls would either stereotype me as being more masculine than I really am or were possibly even scared of becoming close friends with me in some cases. This was very difficult for me because I had almost completely been friends with girls growing up and expected to have more of a "girl squad" in college but instead had a lot of individual friendships with guys. Maybe in the longer term this really won't matter but as someone who is lacking a social network from their life before college and didn't have as many female friendships as desired from college it can hurt, especially when looking at social media.

What I'm most afraid of when I start dating again is that at least in college, many of the other LGBT students I knew seemed to have more educated or well off parents than mine and seemed to think that coming out never goes poorly. I care A LOT less about whether someone has affluent or high powered parents (meaning I won't be jealous) but it seriously stings when there's no sense of understanding that some people can have tragic coming out experiences. I think I'm basically afraid of finding myself in more situations where people write me off for having an insane family even if they like me or acting like I'm pond scum or somehow deserved my fate as a minor because if I was truly worthy everyone would've given me a standing ovation for coming out as a lesbian instead of making my life hell. I realize this might be a cultural difference but as someone who is now a white collar professional, I'm admittedly interacting with more people who I assume fit this profile than ones who demand that I pray the gay away.

On another (tangential) note, sometimes I just regret coming out entirely because of how things have gone for me socially (I'd consider myself situationally out right now). I think my family sucks regardless because of the choices they made when I came out and am willing to largely divorce them from my life if they reacted horribly to me having a serious girlfriend or getting married (they deny any wrongdoing during my teenage years, are still prejudiced, and treat me being gay as don't ask don't tell). However, I feel like I could have been spared tremendous amounts of pain if I didn't think that coming out was going to go well for me in an environment where it absolutely didn't and had a ripple effect on my life up to this point. There have been times where I've considered dating men just because I wouldn't have to deal with all kinds of incorrect assumptions about me or because I'm scared of re-experiencing the social exclusion and torment that I faced in the past (I'm vaguely attracted but it's not "the same" as when I like a girl). As of right now, I've been out of college for two years, have good friends from college, and have made a number of new friends since graduating (about half of whom know I'm lesbian and have responded in ways I'm happy with) and moving to a new city. Even with that said, I still live with regret for how the past went even if I think that some of the people who hurt me the worst were irreparably bigoted and I don't want them back in my life, especially if they're never willing to apologize. Part of why I feel bad is because even though I like who I am and consider myself successful, I'm not at all who I socially aspired to be at this age. Had my life gone as anticipated, I expect that I would've been a bit more "well rounded," had more solid female friendships from my earlier years, and maybe been a bit more "glamorous" if that makes sense. Instead, I'm a bit more of an obsessive STEM type person because I often buried myself in schoolwork in college to compensate and come across as a bit quirky. In a similar vein, I don't necessarily fit in LGBT spaces better than primarily straight ones because I'm considered "too serious/professional" and am conventionally feminine and fairly mainstream. I don't at all want to quash my natural personality, which might be a bit more intense or introverted anyway, but I still feel like my life is suffering because I made the choice (mistake?) to come out nearly a decade ago to people I loved and trusted.

So my question is where do I go from here? What can I do to ensure dating goes well for me now that I've thought about my past in depth, made a lot of progress, but still feel pain over how certain parts of my life have gone? I'm not looking to unload all my baggage on a first date or anything but want to have the best experience possible given how everything has already gone. [/quote]

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