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17th November 2014
04:25pm GMT
It seems the man took some of the warm-hearted advice on board, returning to Reddit a week later to share a happy update.
Firstly, I'd just like to thank all of you who commented and gave me advice on the previous post, and because the post got so much attention I thought it wouldn't be fair for me not to make an update.
As many comments suggested that I do, is to slightly hint toward the notion that I am perfectly happy with having a gay son, while letting him do the work in actually saying the words "I'm gay", and I thought that was a very good idea.
I started off with talking about general media with him, for instance I mentioned how awesome it was that Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) came out as being gay and I asked him what he thought about it and I was completely expecting him to give a typical teenager response like "yeah.. its good" or something like that but he actually gave me a detailed response which I absolutely loved because for the first time in a good while I've actually held a conversation with my son that felt really... rewarding.
I also wanted to talk to him about how I've noticed that he's not been acting as cheerful as he usually has and I sort of gave the cliche spiel of "I love you no matter what and I just want to see you be happy" but I didn't get much of a response that time apart from "yeah I know.."
The next day as I picked him up from school I thought I'd ask him about any crushes he has, and I wanted to make sure I didn't say a gender when I asked him, so instead of 'he' or 'she' I used 'they' etc.. Here is that conversation as I remember it...
Me: So, do you have a crush on anyone?
Son: Uhm... no..m..maybe..
Me: Ohhh so who is the lucky person?
At this point he sort of looked at me slightly confused, I'm not 100% sure why, but I'm assuming it is because I said "lucky person" rather than "lucky girl".
Son: Just someone from my french class...
Me: Oh yeah... so what do you like about them?
Son: Just.. stuff..
Me: Okay.. but.. like what?
Son: I donno they're just kinda funny I guess...
At this point I dropped the conversation but just before I did I told him "Well, whoever it is, they should be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend.." and while I didn't see it, I certainly felt as though he was rolling his eyes at my cheesy comments.
At the dinner table the same day, while we were eating we had a couple minutes of silence, not much was heard apart from the cutlery and my son finally said "I actually wanted to tell you something in the car, but I was afraid you'd get in an accident.." I looked up from my plate and looked at him straight in the eyes... I could see he was thinking about something and all I could think of was "OMG this is it..." he said "Dad.." with a couple seconds of silence "..I'm gay". I looked at him and couldn't help myself from smiling, and I told him "____, you know I love you so much... right?" and I got up and gave him a huge hug. He even started to cry on my shoulder and because of that I couldn't help myself but shed a couple tears. We talked for a bit while finishing our dinner about how I can't emphasize enough that I love him regardless of which gender he loves etc...
After dinner and after he finished his homework we both lay in our pajamas on the sofa, while I was watching the Cooking Channel and he was playing on his iPad. I had my arm around him and he was leaning his head on my chest, and all I could think of was that I'm the happiest father on earth right now.
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