Oh wow. Last night was ... hard.

I had a frank talk with my 13-y-o son, during which he told me he was 'bi'. I'd like to think I handled it pretty well. I was open about how I felt, (the good and the bad) and I made sure he knew that no matter what, he and his sisters are the most important things in my life.

He told me that he'd felt this way "off and on", and mentioned that he had not felt it all summer, but that it cropped up again when school started back. My son is a bit of a nonconformist and has a habit of befriending the outcast (lots of those in middle school) so naturally, some of his friends are 'bi-curious' or more. I love that he's very accepting but selfishly I can't help but feel like our encouragement of this trait is sending an approval message that might be contributing to his confusion.

Among the things that we discussed, I told him my personal opinion that our society's relative permissiveness (compared to a generation or two back) tends to encourage gender confusion. I think that homosexual feelings are relatively more common than most of us would admit. Fifty years ago, you would bury your head and those feelings. Now, everyone wants to tell you that it's OK, and I do think that it makes it easy to tell yourself "Gee, if I feel this way, I must *be* this way." Sometimes an urge is just that, and nothing more, like the crazy urge to jump off a tall height. I admitted to him that I've occasionally had those feelings and urges, too, and that as far as I know it is normal. At least, I'm quite sure I'm not gay, despite those occasional thoughts.

Anyway, after that heart-wrenching experience, I decided that I'd best get some support myself, even if just to have others to bounce ideas off of, that sort of thing, help make sure I'm doing the best I can. So I found this site. Read quite a few posts that made me feel better about where both my son and I are right now.

Unfortunately, at some point I think I'll have to discuss this with my wife (for the record, his mom, we've been married 21 years) sometime soon, but I'm dreading it. She is very much a heart-on-the-sleeve person with a bad temper. She's quite tolerant of other people''s lifestyles, but I'm not at all confident that she'll handle this well, at least not right away.

OK, I've said enough for now, I think.