Your paragraph about the toxicity of being in the closet and thinking/knowing that if you came out to your family then you might not really have them as a family anymore really hits home for me. It's the reason I haven't come out yet to them, even though my friends know.
I think it's okay to not be out to ALL THE PEOPLE, just beware that it has its dangers, and that toxicity is one of them. If I'd known about it I probably could have mitigated it but I didn't even know.
I can relate to all that. I let my family figure it out which worked well for me. Except my mother had to protect my father from the news--when he learned I was with a woman, he was hurt that it had been a secret and truly did not give a fuck about any stigma.
It is a great relief to just be open and immediate. It felt like I took off a time delay filter I had in my brain and no longer had to worry about passing as "normal" all the time. And, yeah, when you're that careful, the emotionally cautious, it's a lot harder to get close to anyone. IME :)
Definitely a lot harder to get close to anyone. For years I didn't socialize with co-workers because when you do that they want to talk about personal stuff and I didn't want to be in the position of having to lie about everything. For me it's been very freeing to be able to talk about my husband in every day conversation with my co-wokers. It's especially a relief because if there's an emergency and I need to go do something with my partner I can go to my manager and just tell the truth.
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It is a great relief to just be open and immediate. It felt like I took off a time delay filter I had in my brain and no longer had to worry about passing as "normal" all the time. And, yeah, when you're that careful, the emotionally cautious, it's a lot harder to get close to anyone. IME :)
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