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After my dad died, we found the love letters

jenn.site

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Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#131

Post by ycombinete »

lvl155 wrote: post #89
throwaway142351 wrote: post #59

I'm a dad too, and I'm in a somewhat similar situation. My son is under five, and it feels like I'm still at the very beginning of his story. I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path. It felt easier to stay closeted. Easier to date a woman. Easier to move in together, propose, get married, and even have a child than to face my truth. I lo…

Do what’s best for your son. There’s nothing that will overcome that guilt. Not saying what’s best for your son is for you to reveal the truth now or later. That’s entirely situational and only you know.

I completely agree. Life as a parent is only about oneself insofar as looking after yourself is good for your family.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#132

Post by anal_reactor »

pavlov wrote: post #75

Ouch. This hits incredibly hard. I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself. Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like…

My father had an affair, with a woman. It came to light but remained contained within the family. My parents are still married. The whole situation taught me that life is complicated and sometimes situations that seem morally obvious on the surface can actually be very difficult and have lots of nuance.

When I was a teenager I dated a married man. On paper it's easier to explain "gay dude in a homophobic society" but in reality, he was an asshole and a coward. No empathy for him.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#133

Post by geoffmanning »

l2silver wrote: post #121
geoffmanning wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, he is a bad person! Ffs That is quite the judgement of a person you've never known, based solely on the view of one person's brief writing processing a deeply emotional experience. Your judgement reflects poorly on you.

There's too much apologizing for people's horrible actions these days. Nearly everyone is a sympathetic character when you get to know them, but that doesn't excuse them. There were other people, in his situation, who took different approaches that didn't result in locking a woman away in a loveless marriage for her entire life. I'm sure a lot of us come from easier situations, but the people who come from hard situa…

I'm not apologizing for anyone's actions. This is not to say he is a good person. It is to say that there isn't enough evidence to judge one as a bad person.

A lot of good people have made bad choices, and these writings reflect a mere sliver of a man's life choices from the very thin perspective of one person's grief laid bare.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#135

Post by Dumblydorr »

Alt-F4 wrote: post #129
quitit wrote: post #38

From reading both posts, there's a few things that come to my mind: - It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post. - I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a vio…

[flagged]

Why link closeted gay men with Incels? There was no shade of “deserve” or “victim” in the parent comment. Fact is gay men historically have had a very bad time finding love, Incels is a weird subgroup of hateful men with negative viewpoints, unless I’m out of touch with their zeitgeist.

I just think the comparison comes off as unkind to gay men.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#136

Post by woodpanel »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #87
pavlov wrote: post #75

Ouch. This hits incredibly hard. I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself. Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like…

I have heard this play out too many times. Most recently here, a college junior's wife revealed four months after marriage that she is actually a lesbian (she didn't share it – he caught her in their bedroom with a colleague of hers when he returned home early from the office), and he would be free to do what he wants; she should be too. Hit him hard, but he said they should go for an annulment— out of question; a di…

[flagged]

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#138

Post by dbancajas »

tossandthrow wrote: post #56
ninalanyon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The waste is that he, and I too, could have lived a happier life had we had the courage and opportunity to come out earlier.

The thing is, that This is speculation (with all respect). I, on the other hand, do not lack courage to do hard things. But I have learned that it is a strawman - it does not make you happier to quite you job, leave your spouse, go for your passion in a startup, etc. Luckily I fucked up everything in that fever dream early enough that it did not have substantiel impact on my life.

tell us your story

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#139

Post by lordnacho »

nkrisc wrote: post #102
lordnacho wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered what the point of capital letters even is? It doesn't seem to add anything worthwhile to the language. You need to learn 26 extra shapes, and then some arbitrary rules for when to use the majuscule. But if you never heard of capital letters, nobody will be confused by what you wrote.

They make scanning and reading text easier since they make jumping to the end/start of sentences easier. When you read your eyes are constantly jumping ahead and even backwards. The capital letters help you land quickly back at significant positions in the text since they are associated with boundaries in logical clauses.

If that were the point, why does English capitalize proper nouns? That would seem to complicate finding the start of a sentence. Besides, you have periods, exclamation points, and question marks at the ends of sentences anyway.

In German even ordinary nouns are capitalized, making it even less easy to find the capital at the start of a sentence.

Re: After my dad died, we found the love letters

#140

Post by Dumblydorr »

cinntaile wrote: post #39
omg2864 wrote: post #17

I barely comment but this is time it is worthwhile - please read the article first, it is worth it and the comments might spoil it.

Read the follow-up too, there are some unexpected twists. https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/

Wow, driven to a lifetime of harmful decisions by an extremely regressive society. Would he have settled down and been faithful if he could have started off right in his teens, open and truthful and honest? Lies become a habit and I’ve known others who couldn’t break themselves of the cheating/lying habit and lost whole friend groups for it.
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