Is it harder for teens or adults to come out?

Coming out to your loved ones is a hard thing to do for most gay, lesbian or bisexual people because you never know how they will react.

Every coming out is different. It can be easy and without any problems, but it can also be very painful. It might improve some of your relationships to others, but it might also be the reason for losing someone as a friend.

Either way, it usually doesn’t happen without a lot of thinking beforehand. But for whom is it harder to face the decision of coming out; teenagers or adults?

When I came out to my family, I was 16. Back then I already knew for two years that I was definitely a lesbian. Nevertheless, I was worried that I might not be taken seriously, especially since I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time. I think one of the biggest problems gay teenagers have today, is that they are not being taken seriously. Parents come up with the argument that it’s just a phase, that their kids have to experiment and that they will eventually become ‘normal’, meaning heterosexual, again. Many teenagers, gay or straight, have a hard time already with accepting themselves, discovering who they really are, confiding in their own wishes and choices. But it’s even harder when you finally find the strength and courage to come out and then find out you’re not being taken seriously. It undermines the knowledge of yourself.

Adults usually don’t have that problem. While getting older, most people learn more about themselves, become more confident and generally strengthen their self-awareness. When you already know how to be true to yourself, it’s also easier to be open about your sexuality to others. In my opinion that’s a big advantage adults have over teenagers.

But is it therefore easier for them to come out? I don’t really know. Older generations have problems of their own regarding this topic. Today, being gay, lesbian or bisexual is accepted a lot better than some decades ago. But while the older generations were growing up, homosexuality was still a taboo topic. Something that was seen as ‘abnormal’ and that you by no means wanted to be. So many gay, lesbian or bisexual people suppressed their true feelings and married a partner of the opposite sex, had children and adjusted themselves to society as well as possible, disregarding their own happiness. They lived their whole lives this way and only now discover that they could have it otherwise. But that would mean a big change. It would mean telling all of your friends and family that your whole former life was a delusion. For some it would mean telling your spouse and children that you married for different reasons than they believed all of the time. It is a big decision to make and definitely not an easy one.

Coming back to the problems a teen has, I’d say we can’t ignore the peer pressure many young people are subject to. In my experience, there are many teens who are only looking for someone to bully for whatever reasons. For many teenagers friends are more important than family and they would do anything just to keep their friendships alive. Losing your friends would mean being alone, having to face problems you can’t talk about to your parents or siblings on your own. That would reduce some teens to despair. I guess that’s the main reason many teenagers hide their real sexuality from their friends.

Adults, on the other hand, will probably already have seen that life goes on, even when you lose some friends, and that for every friend you lose there are others that will love you for who you are.
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What could also be a big concern for teenagers is that they are often quite dependent of their parents. There is always the possibility that your parents won’t know how to deal with your homosexuality and that they will throw you out. Even if it’s not that likely, I do understand that many could fear exactly that. But if you are an adult who already makes a living on his or her own, this is nothing you have to worry about.

Looking at all of these aspects, I can’t really decide for whom it is easier to come out. Most of the time it’s a hard but necessary step for everyone if you want to go on and live a happy life. I can only imagine that it might seem harder to a teen to come out because he or she mostly looks at what’s going to happen now and not in the long run, while adults might see it from a more reasoned point of view.

Of course it always depends on your surroundings and it is definitely easier to come out today than it was, let’s say, thirty to forty years ago. But what do you think, who has it easier? Younger or older generations? Leave your comments below. 

[© Kurt Löwenstein Educational Center International Team for the article image.]

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