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[quote=Anonymous]I'm a twenty-five year old gay woman and sometimes (increasingly often) feel more and more regretful for ever having come out at all. Coming out as a teenager cost me my relationship with my parents, extended family, and many friends from growing up because of how prejudiced people were. I'm still in contact with some of these people (parents and a few old friends) but the relationships are fundamentally worse and weaker than they were pre-coming out, despite it being a decade later. I was treated like a pariah and essentially terrorized (through both social and religious means) in the hopes that it would turn me straight, but all it did was cause me a lot of pain and trauma. I've since attended and graduated from college and moved to a new city, but still feel like coming out hasn't exactly brought me anywhere near as much happiness as it has pain.

I have some accepting friends but still find coming out a burden because I feel like people are often subtly prejudiced and that I don't get treated equally after coming out, I become "a gay person" (e.g. I get stereotyped, straight girls no longer fully treat me as "one of the girls," girls are afraid of me checking them out). I find this particularly difficult as a reasonably feminine woman who was socialized as a girl and values female friendship and socialization. On top of this, I feel like my dating prospects are nowhere near as good in my current city as they would be if I was straight based on what my dating pool looks like vs. what it is for my friends. I find this all extremely difficult to deal with, especially in light of living in an era where people seem to think that coming out never goes badly, everyone is accepting, that if you're not openly gay in all situations while fitting a certain aesthetic you're not "your authentic self," and that "nobody cares anymore." I'm kind of at a loss for what to do. I feel like I haven't had any of the positive, heartwarming coming out experiences that so many people view as an expectation, it hasn't all magically worked out for me, I've never found that "everyone was right there with me all along" while I was afraid of nothing. Instead, I've experienced damage to both my life and psychological state. I wouldn't date a guy without at the minimum disclosing that I'm gay and probably can't give him everything he's looking for, but I'm starting to feel hopeless after years of less than fantastic experiences identifying as gay.[/quote]

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