Anon… I’m so sorry. That’s no way to live. And that’s not how they’d want you to live either.
Maybe it’s not my place to say it and if you want me to shut up and just commiserate, I’ll do that, but I’d say to get out of it because you’re always going to be unhappy and worse, you’re going to know how unhappy you are. That’s going to keep eating at you until, what, when? There’s no time limit on how much you’re going to have to endure to make them happy, and the longer you wait, there might end up kids being involved, and your lives interlocking more inextricably. Even if you are brave and strong and lucky enough to keep on putting up with it, forever, why should you have to?
I know how it works, the guilt and constant “we’re worried about you alone”, “oh, your father’s okay *sigh* except for how worried he is about you”, “it’ll give us peace of mind, who’ll be there for you after we go”, but the root of that is genuine worry and love for you, right? Their minds may not have progressed enough to accept you being gay but their hearts don’t want you to be unhappy.
There’s a world of difference between disappointing them by not marrying (or by divorcing) and the reaction from coming out. I personally won’t come out and that may sound hypocritical of me, why am I putting their needs before mine here when I’m telling you to put yours above your family’s, but I’m not, I want them to stay in my life and I want to keep in touch with my family. Those are my needs. But if they wanted me to marry so badly that they’d rather have me unhappy and married over happy and single? Or, you know, closeted and mildly depressed and single? I wouldn’t trust them to have love for me as their priority and I don’t know if I’d particularly care to have those people in my life.
There are sacrifices no matter what you choose. But do the bare minimum with respect to this, anon, I swear, there’s no guilt when they’re the ones in the wrong. I’ll listen to my mom about a million things, but this? Never.
