[Source: Yano]
Phil Reay-Smith talks to Trevor about coming out to his children
‘My overriding memory of leaving home is my son Sam running out into the street, screaming. It’s just the most awful thing ever.’
Gay men being parents is nothing new. It’s just the way they become parents that is changing.
My friend Trevor became a father to Rachel in 1987 and Sam in 1990. But he had first married a woman – despite knowing that he was attracted to men, and despite letting his bride-to-be know as much before she married him.
He’d come from a Jewish family and admits his religious upbringing meant he didn’t have much idea of how people outside his community lived. Though he liked men, he didn’t think he was gay, as being gay meant acting like John Inman in Are You Being Served?
But when his children were still young, aged five and three, Trevor realised that’s exactly what he was, thanks to a trip to New York and an introduction to the gay scene where he met men whom he finally felt he could identify with.
For a while he lived with his wife in an open relationship, but realised that if he were to have a fulfilled personal life he would have to move out.
‘I sat down with my daughter Rachel and said, “Daddy has to leave. I’m not leaving you, but it’s important that mummy has the opportunity to have a new man, and that I have the opportunity to have a man as well,”’ he says.
Read the full article here.
[Source: Yano]
No comments:
Post a Comment