Dear Fathers, Your Gay Sons Are Hurting
If you’re a father to a gay son, there’s something I want to tell you. My intention is not to make you feel guilty, but rather, to help you understand your son better. He may have tried to tell you this before in his own way, but being vulnerable isn’t easy, especially with you.

Your gay son is hurting.

He hurts because there’s something that’s missing in his life that no one else can give him other than you. He tries to get it from his job, accomplishments, men, money, style, and countless other ways. Wanting it for so long and living without it has led him to do things that weren’t always good for him. What he gets in return never quite measures up to what he wants — your love and approval.

Your gay son was your child before anyone knew he was gay. As an infant and throughout his childhood, his admiration and adoration toward you created a bond much like the one you developed toward your father. No matter what type of person you were or if you were even present in his life, he thought the world of you. He was your number one fan, even when others spoke unkindly or truthfully about you.

When a child loves his father, his father’s love becomes the most cherished and sought after thing in the world. Your son tried his best to make you proud. He played the sports you wanted him to play, prayed like you wanted him to, and convinced himself to date girls, or tried to, at least.

When your love was denied to him for being gay, he developed a belief that he was unworthy of love. To believe that you’re unworthy of love can be one of the most damaging things to the human spirit.

Again, I’m not here to shame you. The reality is that society doesn’t prepare men to be fathers to gay sons. It’s hard to be good at something you were never taught to do. Men are raised to be tough, strong, and pursue women, aggressively at times. This then becomes the way in which men raise their sons, and so on. An idea of “the perfect son” begins to form in the minds of men before they even have a child.

A gay son spoils the idea of “the perfect son” for many fathers. It’s tough to realize your son will not live up to the expectations you were taught to have for him. You experienced the loss of a dream and you weren’t equipped to process that loss in a healthy way. For that, you have my empathy.
['Armando Sánchez']
['Family', 'Love', 'Fatherhood', 'Healing', 'LGBTQ']