My Parents Don’t Approve Of My Sexuality, Will I Ever Find Love?

Here’s some advice for you if, for whatever reason, your parents don’t approve of your sexuality and you are worried you will never find love or relationships.

The problems with ‘having to choose’

The way that we are encouraged to think about this is: ‘I have to choose, my parents or my sexuality’. Actually this isn’t how it works for most people. There are a lot of risks this this approach. Sadly, some parents will abuse their kids. Or threaten or actually kick them out of their home if they ‘come out’ about their sexuality (or relationships). When we are telling people big news about us, timing and trust and safety are really important.

There are also risks on the other side though. The risk of abusive relationships, where the ‘love of your life’ says they can replace the love of your parents or family. This kind of one-sided relationship can easily become abusive, or unhappy.

In fairer, better worlds, we would have support systems in place for people in very difficult situations like yours. We would have less or no discrimination (which is the cause of a lot of mental health problems, as I say in this article about the world and stress). There would be lots of easy ways to make friends and to hang out, in person and online.

Whilst we all work on the rest of this (through solidarity) we also need people like me to give sensible advice to people like you in this situation. So I’ll try my very best to give you some great advice.

I think a useful way of thinking about this is to think about root systems and plants.

Root Systems

When you’re born you are born into a root system, like this.

So there’s a small plant (that’s you, how cute!), and a larger plant (parents and family). Look at the root system, see how entangled that is? In nature, these plants are called rhizomes. They are interconnected to other plants and each plant is reliant on each other to thrive (as well as the soil, nutrients, water, sun, etc). So you’re all entangled up.

As you get a bit bigger your roots grow a bit more but they stay entangled up with those people who bring you up.

Your root system starts to spread out as a result of being in relation to others, as you can see in this next pic.

As you can see your root system might start to become entangled with other people, as well as being entangled up with your original root system. I’m sure this makes sense so far. We feel can feel entangled up with other people. We grow a bit in their direction, and become our ‘selves’. And we also stay entangled with our original root systems.

You’re an Assemblage or Arrangement of ‘Things’

Seeing ourselves in this way is called an ‘assemblage’ or ‘arrangement’. We’re in relation to other people. They also bring with them their ideas, bodies, thoughts, desires, likes/dislikes, values, principles, catchphrases, memes, accents, music, favourite films, etc etc. So these other plants and root systems aren’t just people but lots of ‘things’ that we can be in relation to. We bring these things with us too. As we become ourselves we do so in relation to the actual people around us (who might feed us, teach us things, and tell us to do things).

Here’s another drawing from another advice article I did about how someone who is a lesbian but has feelings for their bestie.

The L is part of the label Lesbian. This is what it looks like when you zoom in with a microscope to see what might be happening in their root system. It’s an assemblage of someone who might be a lesbian.

If you’re confused at this point don’t worry. Try drawing this for yourself on a bit of paper. Draw an interconnected root system (a few wavy lines that overlap). Write in some of the things (ideas, people, bodies, relationships, desires) that are producing ‘you’ today. You might notice that you can’t disentangle your parents from the ‘you’, even though you might have a lot of other intense relationships or feelings for people in your life.

What You Can Do

Now, this might feel like you don’t have a lot of control over what’s going on, but it’s not true. Remember, it’s not a tug of war, where you are being pulled in one direction or another. You are emerging as a result of the relationships and the root system you are entangled in. It’s about how we make use of our root systems so that we can thrive as best as possible. Your job is to become you / your sexuality, in a way that is as safe and caring towards yourself as possible.

You need to create little zones of safety, or islands you can jump onto and sit for a bit until you are ready to move again. That means sometimes doing things like:

• Being really patient
• Having trusted safe outlets for your feelings, like knowing who to talk to about sex, for example. You could also try the forums at The Mix or Scarleteen.
• Contact support organisations like AKT, who support LGBTQ people with housing, or the Trevor Project in the USA
• Acts of self care
• Keeping your insides safe (and knowing that they aren’t your interior life isn’t necessarily ‘the thing’ about you, more about that here in my self esteem resource)
• Paying attention to the resources that you have (try my Feel A Bit Better resource)
• Appreciating even the smallest things that your parents might do for you (even if you don’t like them)*
• Not having to tell the truth to people if you can’t trust them
• Having an emergency back up plan if everything goes wrong suddenly

*Sadly sometimes parents might be harmful though, sometimes shelter and food also comes with other kinds of abusive behaviour which may be too harmful to be around.

Getting Entangled

Eventually what is going to happen, is that even though you can’t disentangle yourself from your parents, or who brought you up, you’ll be so entangled up in other root systems that it will feel easier. You might also be able to see some valuable parts of that bit of your root system, even as other parts go off in very different directions.

All of these interconnected root systems produce really resilient plants (grass and bushes grow like this, as well as some trees). So you’ll emerge in relation to all of them. You may also find that your relationship with your parents improves as a result. Of course, they are emerging and growing and changing in relation to you too.

The really good news about this is that all relationships emerge in this way. I’ve been writing a lot lately about how to get a girlfriend / boyfriend / themfriend, or even how to make friends. There’s lots of excellent, research driven, actionable advice on how to find people, find love, and become you. When it feels safe to do so, try them out.

Hope you find this helpful!

Justin

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© Justin Hancock, 2024 Find out more about me and BISH here.

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