I’ve spent the last 12 years (all of my 30s) in a situationship with my best friend. For years, I struggled with self-talk around why he didn’t think I was good enough/why he couldn’t commit to me, while, and just not feel attractive enough, all while wondering if maybe he was gay and just hadn’t come to terms with it. All this time, everyone in our lives treated us like a couple because that’s how we presented, I made all my life decisions based around him, and I barely dated, forfeiting my child-bearing years because I compared everyone to him and held out hope that someday he’d be ready to say he loved me back and commit. Over the years, on multiple occasions, these feelings were clear. At one point, there was even another woman he used as an excuse.
Two weeks ago, on the eve of his 40th birthday, he finally came out to me and said he’d been in the closet and secretly hooking up with men for years, suffering from anxiety that anyone would find out, and he decided he couldn’t take it anymore and was too old. I’m still the only one who knows. At the time he told me, he sobbed, he said I’m the most important person in his life, he said he was sorry, he begged me not to hate him, and he told me I’m his safe space and favorite person. I told him I love him and support him.
But in the days following, while that is still true, I find myself feeling upset that he let me spend over a decade as his beard essentially and that he hasn’t really acknowledged that or specifically apologized for the way his being in the closet, despite me multiple times giving him opportunities to come out to me and suggesting I suspected it, he allowed me to keep my life paused for him and allowed me to still lean into the negative self-talk he knew was happening in me as a result because I had told him over the years. Now, I also feel terrible because I’m a proud ally and I know he could only come out when he truly felt ready and this was a huge deal for him to say to me and I don’t want to make it about me. I’m proud of him. But I’m also grieving a future is been holding onto because he was allowing me too. And because I’m the only one who knows, he’s wanting to spend a ton of time together since he’s so relieved he can be fully himself with me, but my heart is breaking on one hand and that’s not being acknowledged. I don’t want to tell him because I don’t want to discourage him from coming out to others. I just feel so many things all at once.