My 16-year-old son has come out and I want to support him

[TheDeepBiscuit]

Hello All ,
Very new to this topic as my son 16 , spoke with me last night and has said he knows now he is gay.

This has been a big step forward since I left my abusive husband of 13 years (his step dad).
He always took the brunt of his nasty comments and has said that he felt he couldnt be honest because of his reaction.

Im So proud of him and seen him come out of his shell over the last few weeks.

It makes me so sad though because he told me whilst he was figuring stuff out, he googled and asked why he was cursed with feeling how he felt.
I have assured him this is not a curse and it is a blessing he can now be who he wants to be and he has such am exciting future ahead

you sound like a wonderful caring parent. Do you feel confident in being able to support him?

I really hope I have the confidence to guide him as best I can. No matter what I will try my hardest and I see this as a journey me and him can take together

im not gay, but att 16 I thought I was. I was terrified to tell my parents and I didn't. TBH my mum would have been awkward and my dad upset.

What I would have wanted was for it to be treated as normal, so if my sister could invite her BF on holiday I could invite my GF. I didn't want a fuss.

I am now with a man, turns out im Bi. But I also felt cursed.

Well done on leaving your partner i'm sure that was hard. Does your son have any role model gay relationships? Maybe you can watch a movie together about a gay couple (maybe not one where the central theme is coming out to homophobic parents) but rather a normal couple who happen to be gay

My DD came out at the same age (I had already considered this and it wasn’t such a surprise) I was grateful that she felt safe enough to have this conversation with me and trusted me not to be a jerk.
One of the biggest ways you can support your kid is to be led by them. She came out to me first, and was worried about how her dad would take it. I asked if she wanted to tell him herself when she was ready, if she wanted me to tell him or for us all to chat. I assured her that it wouldn’t be an issue for him either, but didn’t know that he’d given any thought to her sexuality as his priorities were the same as mine. He just wanted her to be happy, healthy and safe too. She went out for breakfast with him and told him and of course he was great. My DD has always been a private, self-contained person who knows her own mind. Nothing has changed there, now she’s a young adult. We told her that we would be led by her. If she wanted to talk about her sexuality she was safe to do so. She made it very clear that she didn’t want to have deep and meaningfuls about this because she didn’t want anything about our relationship to be different. The way she explained it was that all she wanted us to understand is that she might need support if she was ever discriminated against because of it, otherwise she didn’t want things to be any different. She needed us to be her safe place and she’s had that. She is a very well-adjusted and super intelligent young adult now.