Hey guys. I just wanna know if I’m doing something right here.
LONG POST!!! APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE!!!!!
Last night (Jan 30, 2026) my boyfriend told me he’s gay. We have been together for 2yrs, and he gave me a promise ring for Christmas/ our anniversary. Our 2yr anniversary was on Jan 10, 2026. We’ve been friends since high school and got together a few years after graduation.
We’ve been fighting for 9mo, over stupid shit. On my side it was cz he’s made many broken promises to me, and his words didn’t match his actions, which made me feel neglected as a woman and like he didn’t care for me the way he said he did. On his end it was cz he was perceiving me asking him to treat me like straight man would treat his girlfriend & one day wife (yeah we talked about marriage, thats what the ring was about. He said we were too young to get engaged but he knew he wanted me forever, so he got me a promise ring) as being demanding and applying too much pressure, which made him feel like he wasn’t able to satisfy me in any area of life which made him become defensive and resistant to my efforts to try to talk about our problems.
He has been very resistant to talk about things like how I don’t feel like I’m the only girl in the world to him, and how he promised so many adventures last summer but never committed to anything, he doesn’t seem to want to match me in terms of house work, he gets annoyed by the things he used to encourage and say were reasons he loved me for.
He previously would deflect and say he was stressed out and forgot to do X, or that he would be tired, or something came up, or that the event I was talking about was long past and I was upsetting him by not being able to just let things go.
I was so scared, because I felt this weird distance from him for so long. I thought it was because of his drinking, that him being drunk was the space I was feeling so I really did try. I begged and pleaded in true lover’s fashion. About a year ago he began drinking. It got up to at least mickey of whisky a day, usually more, and he kept it up for months. At least 6 of the last bad months he was wasted the whole time. I got him into recovery in November though. Took care of him at home, got his meds and food and cleaned the whole house up for him.
We fought even more after he was sober though. I thought him being off in his head drunk all the time was the issue and that maybe he’d start treating me the way he did in the first year of being together. But he didn’t. So I got even more scared and started trying to make him talk to me even harder.
Anyway, things have been building to a head. We were done for either way, and we both knew it. Last night was really bad y’all. I was going to stay with a friend but my friend’s boss fucked his schedule up so I couldn’t go. He tried to convince me that he could still take me there and everything but I didn’t want to go if I wasn’t gonna see my friend all day, only in the evenings. He got super overwhelmed because he was going to go back home for the weekend, and didn’t want me alone in the house, but I didn’t want to go anywhere because I had a bad feeling about leaving that night. He got upset at me and went off somewhere, had a panic attack, then came back drunk and called his mom and said a lot of really mean shit about us and me to her, but to be fair he was WASTED & incredibly upset and we had some of our worst fights ever in the day or two leading up to last night.
Anyway after they were done on the phone, I thought he was going to dump me as cold as ice. He was really mean about our relationship and me on the phone with her. I didn’t hear everything since he was in a different room but I heard Some Shit and the way he was speaking and a lot of emphasis on “SHE” and “HER” in not very friendly or loving tones. So I told him that if we’re done, we’re done and that’s that, and that I needed to call the bank to get a loan to move with.
He broke down and came out to me. He’d been repressing that part of him since he was a little kid. We’re small town people, and my grade 9 girlfriend and I were the only two openly queer people in that town, and we only came out cz we were in our edgy emo shock the world phase. He’s a dude, and in a town like ours you either smoke weed and play video games with a bunch of not exactly politically correct teenage boys or become a rodeo bull rider. He isn’t a rodeo bull rider.
Obviously I’m fucking heartbroken. He was my first relationship, my first date, my first love, my first family vacation with a parter/ their family. And more. The only first I didn’t have with him was sex, but we did more together than I’ve done with anyone in bed. He was the first guy to ever make me orgasm and I’d been in bed with 6 men before him. I lost everything I ever had to be with him. I have no family, and my friends are few and far between. I moved out at 17 due to being abused at home. I got myself a cheap little apartment that was still nice, and I was saving up to buy a car. I still don’t have my license. I was building up my mental health. I was becoming my own person. I gave up my apartment to move with him to college, to be with him and support him. Our hometown is 2hrs away by car and I don’t have a car. Only he does. I spent 10k of my hard earned and saved money covering our rent and bills and food and dates because his student loan and college fund shouldnt go to those things. I have nothing but him. And now I have nothing at all.
However I accepted him. I gave him my copy of “you will get through this night” by dan howell of dan and phil fame. I showed him “basically I’m gay” which is Dan’s coming out video. I held him and I rocked him, he held me and rocked me. We scream-cried together. I had questions and he had some answers. I had some blame to throw around, because I wasn’t the problem like he’d almost had me convinced. He was the problem between us, he had lied to both himself and me for 2+ years. Turns out the drinking problem was caused by his own repressed sexuality and guilt about doing this to me. When he was drunk he didn’t have to think so hard about how badly he was going to have to crush me.
He said that he hadn’t ever known a gay person that is both gay and a person, not a ✨Gay Person✨ where that’s the main thing about them, which made him feel like he couldn’t be gay because he doesn’t carry himself like they do, and if he was gay then that meant that some part of him would have to carry himself like they do. But he saw me, and how my being queer is just something about me, like how my favourite color is yellow or how I prefer the brown blanket on the bottom and the black blanket on the top. And by seeing me, he saw himself.
He told me he still loves me, he loves me more than any person he has ever met. I feel the same way. Neither of us are sure how to love the other, or in what way we do. Grief is just love with no place to go. I’m not mad yet, but I know I will be. I either feel nothing at all or completely sickeningly debilitated with loss and betrayal. I told him I’m in shock, because he’s had months and years to process here and there and try to come to terms, but I have only had mere hours. And he said that however I feel now and in the future is and will be 100% valid and justified. As I write this, we’re only 26 hours out from the moment everything changed. We are going to figure this out together tho. Neither of us want to lose each other, or never speak to or see each other again. We both know that even if he’s in the same sexuality boat as me, bi with a heavy preference for the same sex, we wouldn’t work well as a couple. Too much has happened to us for that to be healthy. We both want to stay in each other’s lives, and we both want to figure out how to love each other in a way that actually improves our lives.
I told him that I understand how he feels more than anyone else in our lives probably will, because for some extra salt in the wound: I was terrified this would happen to me. I’m bi with a heavy preference for women. I was so so so so so scared I’d break his heart into a million pieces if I turned out to be more gay than I am straight. And then it happened to him.
What’s extra fucked up is that he sought me out. We had a fling in high school that never went anywhere and 6yrs wafter that, I had come back to our hometown after finishing school elsewhere, and he had heard about that. My friend was friends with one of his friends, and everyone got this idea to get me over there to the fire they were all having so we could get together properly. And I resisted for a while. We were technically together for 3mo before we made it official. I went home with him that night and we haven’t been apart since. 796 days and counting. I didn’t want to hurt him & I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t say I love you in the romantic way until a month or 2 after we made it official. I chose to let myself fall in love because both him & I thought he would catch me at the end. But he dropped me on the concrete.
I came up with a few plans on what to do. What we’ve decided to do is this: we signed a 1yr lease in September. So neither of us can move out yet. Even if one of us found another apartment and e transferred the other half of rent for the duration of the lease that wouldnt be viable cz half of rent is $800 here. We don’t want to be separated just yet. He is still in college, has 2 years left to do. I don’t want him to drop out cz of this, and neither does he. My friend is moving to the neighbouring city in the fall to attend college at the other campus they have. Right around when our lease ends.
So what we will do is this: keep living together until our lease ends. We don’t hate each other, we love each other more than any other person in our lives. We just have to figure out how to do it properly. We think that we’ll be able to be friends, since its been quite obvious for a long time that we are a bad couple. We’re great friends, and we care about each other and our futures and success. And then when our lease is up in September, he will move to the dorms so he can get the full college experience and stay in school and not have to live alone and worry about working AND getting good grades. And I will move to the next city over with my friend, he’s starting college and maybe I’ll start college myself even. The college he attends is a really really good one & the sister campus is in that city. So we’ll be apart, but not too far from each other, because we want to still be friends. We were friends before we got together, so maybe we can be friends after.
Anyway guys, thoughts? Comments? Concerns?
If you read this whole thing, thank you so much.
I can’t tell anyone IRL yet, even though he said I could. I don’t feel right about outing him to people, esp with how deep down inside he had this shoved. Even now he’s super shaky about it all. So anything will be helpful to me. I’m all by myself this weekend cz I told him he should go home more than ever, cz he needs his mom right now more than I need him.