My friend and my sexuality..

Question:

So My best friend has been my best friend for a very long time. And I absolutely love her to death. And I am Bisexual. I know I am. And she is straight which is totally fine, because I don’t have a crush on her or anything. But she doesn’t like other women who like women, because she thinks they will like her, and that creeps her out. But you know, I want to be myself around her. And myself is bisexual, and I just don’t know how to tell her. I love her to death. But I think she should know, and I just don’t know how to tell her.. Or should I even tell her at all?

Letter submitted by:

Answer:

Trevor Staff

Thanks for asking about such important issues in your letter. What to say, to whom, and when are the issues that face LGBTQ people all the time. Even after years of being “out” about who we really are inside, we come in contact with new people, make new friends, and have many people pass through our lives.
The fortunate part is that a wide variety of people often teach us the best lessons about ourselves. Almost no one has learned something about themselves from a rock! So this business of negotiating our relationships with other people is an important facet of life.
No two people are alike, and no situation is exactly the same. The only “constant” in the equation is YOU. That is fortunate too because it’s relatively easy to give yourself an honest answer about what you like and don’t like, and what you need and don’t need.
In the situation with your bff, although you don’t say so directly, you are worried that she will reject you if you are fully honest with her about who you are based on some previous comments she made. And that fear is not unjustified. It’s the reason that The Trevor Project was started. LGBTQ people are sometimes rejected by the people we love the most, and that isn’t fun or nice at all. So the first thing that many people must decide about “coming out” to someone is “If this person rejects me and I lose them, how will it affect me?” For some folks, staying in the closet with some people is better than to risk losing them entirely. And that is a perfectly acceptable solution.
However for many of us it is painful to keep parts of ourselves hidden, it feel inauthentic, and on the verge of dishonest, so risking losing a friend can be worth it if we gain self assurance and another potential ally in the process.
For some people, the best timing is when it becomes necessary. As a bisexual, perhaps one day you will choose to date someone who is your same gender. In that case it might become a necessity to “come out” to those closest to you. Or perhaps you want the freedom to appreciate the virtues of both genders while in the company of your friend, and that might be a necessity for you.
Whatever the case, you get to decide what is a necessity for you to be happy. Ask yourself what is acceptable for you, and proceed from there. As luck would have it, there are not right or wrong answers. What you want for yourself in this subject is perfectly acceptable.
Sometimes the friends we have already are our allies, and we just need to “come out” in order to find that out. And sometimes our friends might respond unfavorably at first, but because they value us may come around eventually. And certainly some friends may never respond well. The declarations we make will always polarize the people around, some will move toward us, and some will move away from us. Whatever THEY decide, if we know what we want for OURSELVES, we will likely be happier and stronger people.

SE