Every night before I fell asleep I would say to myself, “Tomorrow is the day” but I would not be able to work up the nerve to tell them.

After many weeks of delaying this conversation with my parents I was emotionally drained and at a breaking point. After walking around for hours in the rain I came home and my parents knew something was wrong.

After I worked up the nerve to utter the words “I am gay” my mother said something that I will never forget.

My Mom said “I love you more today than yesterday, because you are being true to yourself and the world.”

After hearing those words I felt a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Coming out gave me strength to face the world as an adult who was proud of who he was. It taught me to never be ashamed of who I am and to never forget that I hold the key to my own happiness.

Beyond the crib and potty training I embarked into the typical yet atypical life of a young boy. Riding bikes, playing Indians and Cowboys, watching Gilligan’s Island. On the other side of me I was fascinated with art, envisioned myself dancing on stage, and was a veritable fountain of emotions beyond what a “normal” young man should have.

In high school, the yearnings and stirrings led me to tip toe into relationships with girls, enjoying the kissing, heavy petting, and wonderment of what was happening between my legs, yet still not feeling like I was an active participant in the experience. Of course, like most gay men (if they would be honest), I had numerous unconscious crushes on my best friend, the gym teacher, and other guys that I found myself purposefully working my way into any activity that would just get me close to them. However, it was all very unconsciously conscious in retrospect.

In 1982 I was away at college and had 1) been sneaking off campus to take dance classes, 2) cruising around town, finding the few gay bars that existed, yet, never having the nerve to go in, 3) found myself being more and more bold with guys I perceived to be gay in my dorm…yet still not acting on my urges. All of this collided with a phone call home to Mom and Dad in which I announced “I’m Gay!” Not realizing how that conversation would change my life and save my life, I now see clearly that I may have been gay, but wasn’t truly ready to be gay. So back in the closet I went after some therapy and because, quite honestly, it wasn’t my time to be myself.

In 1986, after landing my first job out of college, I met a kindred spirit. This spirit just happened to be a woman. Joy of joys, I wasn’t gay after all. But who was I kidding. Yes we connected – intellectually, energetically, likes, dislikes, etc. I was able to be sexual with her without a lot of effort and before I knew it Mom and Dad were proudly standing for family wedding photos with their son who was no longer gay. Or so it seemed.

The years progressed and the epitome of married with kids prevailed. Nice home, world travel, successful careers, two beautiful daughters, good friends, ample money, yet below the layers of fat (close to 300 pounds on my 6’5” frame) I was miserable and life consisted of drinking, eating, keeping peace at home and sneaking around looking at gay porn and being a cheat. Yes, I admit I was a cheater. Not proud of it and making no excuses. Yet, I don’t believe that “once a cheater always a cheater.” Why? Because when you find yourself and you live your truth, “What is there to hide?” Nothing!

In 2002 on a trip to London, I found myself in the arms of a beautiful Brit, in his hotel room and for the first time I knew what being gay could truly be. We didn’t have sex, we had deep conversation and real intimacy…not sex. This really threw me for a loop! What was this I was feeling? How could this be happening? Who was I becoming? Two days later and a 12-hour flight back to the States I had answered all those questions and was ready to face my truth. A truth that there was no turning back from, or going back into the closet for, ever again.

I had seen what intimacy, passion, communication, and non-sexual life could be like with a man. Even weighing in at close to 300 pounds, this beautiful man had found me attractive, wanted me, and saw in me something that until that moment I hadn’t even seen in myself – a real man, a gay man, who needed to love himself and start living his truth. At that moment, the weight began to drop off of me, figuratively and literally.

Upon arrival at home, I summoned up every bit of courage I had and said, “Frankly my dear, I’m gay!” I’m not going to sugarcoat the rest of the story and say it was a fabulous celebration and we lived happily ever after. However, what I will share is, we (my ex-wife, my two beautiful daughters, my partner, and I) became the Modern Family before it was ever a hit TV sitcom. Did it happen overnight? Hell no. Was it easy? Hell no. Did it take work, compassion, give and take? Hell yes.

Is our story a fairy tale? To some it does seem that way. But in reality, when someone comes out of the closet, the first place to start with acceptance is within themselves. You’ve got to be 100% in you, your mind, your heart, and your body as an LGBT individual before you can expect anyone else to love you and accept you. Secondly, just because you’ve been preparing for this for 18, 25, 32, 38, 54 years – whatever your age when you come out – doesn’t mean all the rest of your peeps have had that same opportunity. It’s a bitch slap upside the head for most people when they hear the words, “I’m gay.” At that moment you have to realize you’ve just come out, but they may have just gone in the closet.

I have a theory, and maybe it’s because of the work I do as a coach working with all individuals through the “coming out journey,” that the more room we make for everyone to be in the journey in their way, the sooner we can all continue to live the journey of our lives exactly as we are intended.

Today, I am blessed. Blessed with a loving ex-wife; daughters who are very open-minded and non-judgmental towards others; a fantastic, patient, and sexy partner; parents who’ve taken their own journey and arrived at a space where mutual respect thrives; but most of all, I’m blessed to be doing work that means more to me than my jet-setting life ever did. I’m fortunate to wake up each and every day and work with people to help them cultivate their truth and embrace it.

My story contains pain, hurt, confusion, joy, fear, discouragement, happiness, and a different way of being in the world. In reality, it reflects life. The same life that anyone from any walk of life experiences. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to have this life, this experience, and to now help others grow into themselves with love, compassion, and respect.

And there are no words for that.

When I was approximately 14 years of age my mother and step-father took me to my favorite Mexican restaurant. I was in the middle of a bite of deliciousness when my Mom softly whispers, “We believe you are having homosexual tendencies.”

I spit out my food and stared at the two of them. She may as well have been on stage with a microphone and holding a huge spotlight on me. It felt like the entire restaurant came to a halt and all eyes were on me. In my mind you could have heard a pin drop in that establishment. “We know you have been kissing girls,” is what I heard, “and you are going to hell.”

“Umm…well…uh, I think you are wrong! NO” is what I believe I said while viciously shaking my head back and forth.

The 14 years of knowledge I had was far vaster than these two whose combined age was around 88. The reason they took me to the restaurant was because I would run like hell from anything uncomfortable. Literally, out the front door and down the street not to be seen for hours was my method of operating. I suppose this is still my modus operandi but at least I am aware of it now. Simply because he was a social worker and she worked with emotionally challenged individuals, what the hell did they know? Who cares if I had a girlfriend and the majority of my friends were all gay? These two were just plain stupid. I was not going to be one of those homosexual people made fun of. I was not going to be referred as a “dyke, lesbo, lezzy, queer, carpet muncher, fruitcake” and my favorite “crack snacker.” Of course I could pull a “Vagina Monologue” here and make a list for days but you get the idea. It’s not that I wasn’t gay; I just didn’t want to be.

I fought it, lied, made myself miserable and acted out in the face of all of the love and support most people long for from family and friends. Somehow, despite the understanding and acceptance I had, I was determined it was wrong. I was a latent homosexual I guess. I suppressed and repressed on a conscious level. At the age of 24 is when I finally accepted myself after numerous relationships.

I didn’t drape myself in a rainbow flag and run through the streets screaming, “I am here, I am queer and I am here to stay.” I simply stopped lying to others and more importantly, myself.

And now, 17 years later I am completely out and it is the best feeling. I can’t begin to tell you how fortunate I am to have the love, support and acceptance that I do have now. In closing I would like people to ponder something: What if a gay person did not have sex? Would they still be gay?

The answer is yes. I can assure you one thing: If I could get the same mushy, weak in the knees, passion throughout my soul with a man I would. It has never happened. It’s the same feeling anyone gets when love enters your being, mine just happens to be with the same sex. It is not a choice. I am not going to be someone else or not love simply because hate exists out there in this world.

[My father] was the founder, or one of the founders, of the school of psychiatry that believed homosexuality was a mental illness and that it could be cured through psychotherapy. … [H]is idea was they should be treated like any other neurotic. Couple of trips to a therapist and it should be just fine.

Dr. Charles Socarides didn’t just believe that homosexuality could be cured; he was one of the most sought-after therapists for people who wanted to become straight. And for Richard, that hit a little too close to home:

We lived on the Upper East Side on 78th Street in a townhouse and his office was downstairs. So on the top level there was this kid coming out, and on this bottom level there were these people going to be cured of their homosexuality.

In his twenties, at the insistence of his sister and his therapist, Richard decided it was time to tell the very man who is known for curing gay people that his own son is gay. Watch the video below to see how Richard’s coming out experience unfolded, or Continue Reading for the transcript.

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Richard Socarides and I’m from New York City, New York.

My father was, his name was Charles Socarides MD. He was the founder, or one of the founders, of the school of psychiatry that believed homosexuality was a mental illness and that it could be cured through psychotherapy. And he was a New York psychiatrist, quite well-known, had a thriving practice, wrote in 1967, maybe ‘68, one of the early psychoanalytic treatises of the issue of homosexuality, called “The Overt Homosexual,” which I do believe as I recall was dedicated to me and my sister.

So it was with this background that he became quite famous. CBS News did a very, now well-known, 60 Minutes-type special called “The Homosexual” in which they filmed him in his class that he taught at Albert Einstein Medical College on the treatment of homosexuality.

Charles Socarides: Homosexuality is in fact a mental illness which has reached epidemiological proportions.

I don’t look so much like the old him, but if you look at that film a little bit you can kind of see the family resemblance, it’s kind of a little scary. My parents were divorced when we were 6 though, when he moved out and I first lived with my mom and I missed him a great deal. So when I was about 13 I moved back in with my dad. And we lived on the Upper East Side on 78th Street in a Townhouse and his office was downstairs. So there was this, kind of on this one level is this kid coming out, on the top level there was this kid coming out, and on this bottom level there were these people going to be cured of their homosexuality. His idea was they should be treated like any other neurotic. Couple of trips to a therapist and it should be just fine.

He would occasionally ask me who I was dating and I would say, you know, try to avoid it. By the time I was in law school, all of my friends, most of my close friends knew. I was in therapy at the time and both my sister and my therapist said to me, they said, “Everybody who does this, you get to the other side and it’s great, right, everybody who does this, you come out to the parent, and even if the parent is a little weird at the beginning, they realize their relationship with their own flesh and blood, with their offspring is more important than this thing and they get over it.” And that I think is like a good rule for everybody. But I was suspicious, I said, “Hmm, I might be the exception to this rule.”

But finally one day I managed to come see him in the middle of the work day to see him at his office. I sat down and said, “Dad I think this is something we’ve known for some time together but I’m gay and we have to find a way to be more honest with each other about this.” And he had a tendency for the dramatic. He was angry, but he certainly wasn’t surprised and angry, and he was kind of a little surprised. So I kind of said, “I’m going to give you some time to think about it, to take this one in” and I left. It did not last a long time and it did not have a good ending, at that moment. And I just let it sit for a while.

A relatively short interval of a couple of months in which we didn’t speak to each other passed, and then he sent me a letter. He sent me a beautiful letter handwritten, 4 pages, in which he basically said, “I’m sorry I behaved so badly. I’m sorry I got angry. You’re the most important person to me in my life and I love you and the only thing that’s important to me is your happiness and if this is what makes you happy I want to support you and we’ll just figure out a way to manage it.”

Now, that was a great moment, the letter was a great moment, but it was not always that easy going forward because he did not change what he was saying publicly about the treatment and cure of homosexuality.

When people ask me about my dad is, right, what is the first thing they say, “Did he ever try to cure you?” And it’s an obvious question and the answer is no. It literally never came up. He never once said to me, “I have an idea, I have this theory, and we can get you some help for this!”

So it was quite sad because as a kid I had a relationship that was terrific. There was a lot of warmth and affection between the two of us and we were never really able to, well, we never came close to rebuilding that. But we had a relationship that was built on honesty, authenticity, integrity, at least coming from me. So it was much better.

You know, my story is no harder nor easier than anybody else’s. It’s just my story. It is a little stranger than most. And it’s kind of like a, wow, so you know it’s just part of who I am.

Preoccupied with my racing and anxious thoughts, before I knew it I had made my way through the security line and had already made my connecting flight, with only minutes to spare before I would land in New Mexico. I couldn’t help but think that there is no going back now. This is my chance to begin figuring out what being a young gay man is all about without any outside influences. I could only be so lucky to have a clean slate to work with. If worse comes to worse absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? The plane lands in New Mexico and I take another deep breath and make my way off the plane.

My lesbian love story started when I was in high school. I met a strange girl in 2010 and we became friends. She also supported me through a difficult period of my life. A year after, we understood that we were in love with each other so we started dating. After a year of a beautiful relationship, one of my girlfriend’s relatives found out about our “wrong” relationship, went to my house and told all the information he knew about us to my parents, plus he added a lot of lies about me, saying that I’m a whore, that I lured my girlfriend to lesbianism and more. My parents were so upset with me because I did not tell them absolutely anything and they supported my girlfriend’s family.

As a result, it was forbidden for us to meet, or have any contact ever again, or her relatives would harm my family. That was their last threat. My girlfriend’s mother changed her school, phone number and house, just because she wanted to keep her daughter away from me. My parents did not accept me the way I was, as I never came out to them, so I lost their trust too. I was so upset that I cried almost every moment of the day. All of my friends had abandoned me as they didn’t want to be involved with me and my problems. The only person who stayed with me was our common best friend who was supporting both of us and I’m still so thankful for her!

After all this hell that we’ve passed through, I decided to start my life again without her. I started having love partners just to forget her. That was the most stupid thing that I’ve done in my life, as I started drinking and I regret about it nowadays. I did not understand that I would never forget her. My feelings for her were growing every day more and more and I could not live a minute without thinking about her.

A few months after our breakup, I went to find her when I got the chance to do so. She was shocked when she saw me and asked me the reason of my coming, as I replied to her, “I just wanted to see that you’re alright.” Then her eyes were filled with tears, but our conversation continued to be cold and strict. From that day, we started secretly talking again and I was over the moon!

Two months later, we connected our lives again and from that day we started dating again. We promised to each other to be careful not to be discovered until we finish high school and from that day we never cared about what people said about us. My parents have accepted me for who I am and realised that I am happy with this person. As for her mother, I don’t think that she’ll ever accept our relationship, which breaks my girlfriend’s heart but we have chosen this difficult path by ourselves, so we have to face the difficulties of the society we are living in. Plans for the future and the wish to move to a European country is the only hope that we can have for a better life.

We were able to sustain each other because I really enjoy the radio show and he was supportive of me doing this work. So relationships have to have differences and similarities with the foundation of mutual support.

Continue Reading to watch the full story and to hear how they combined their passions to educate the community about HIV and AIDS.

I was on my way to work in the North Bronx, when I heard a teenager yelling this at me from across the street. He was with other teenagers, and they were laughing and egging him on. I was about 19 years old myself and in college. I was headed to my work-study position at a high school, where I counseled juniors, seniors, and their families on how to pay for college. These may have been some of the students I would do work with.

Growing up in the not quite working class neighborhood of Soundview in the Bronx, I learned to avoid most outright acts of homophobia. I instinctively knew what not to wear, what streets not to walk down, and what battles not to pick. I lived a mile from the subway, but I would walk that mile and take the 6 train to other places in New York like the East Village, Chelsea, SoHo, and Greenwich Village, where I could be as gay as I wanted to be, openly. Everybody in Soundview knew I was gay, but it was rarely a problem, as long as I “kept it to myself.” I was tired of keeping it to myself.

Instead of ignoring the taunting adolescents, I started walking straight at them. At this moment the universe randomly granted me a sang-froid and nerve I generally didn’t have when confronting homophobic slurs. Being called out your name, as we say in the Bronx, is essentially an invitation to fight. I would generally let these rare but upsetting confrontations slide. This time, wit and might were on my side, and I ignored better judgment. I wanted to say something. And I did.

I locked eyes with the mouthpiece of the group, who had taunted my jacket, my intensity silencing him. With a steady gaze, I smiled and said, “Are you stupid? This jacket is vinyl.”

They were dumbfounded for a moment, but then began to call me all manner of names, and threaten all manner of violence. Nonetheless, my sense of the situation was that they wouldn’t follow through on any threats, and I walked to work with a slow, deliberate swagger.

I live in a tiny village in Bristol, United Kingdom. We have seven shops and a high school, it’s the type of place where everyone knows everyone’s business and everyone has to air their opinion because there is nothing better to do. High school for me never felt like a school, it felt like a prison. I was held captive from 9 to 3:30 every day, all the time just counting down the seconds. I wasn’t openly gay but being somewhat effeminate I didn’t need to be, I didn’t get to come out of the closet, I was thrown out. There wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t knocked down or beaten or taunted, and in the end it became part of daily life.

By the time I was able to leave my high school the confident outgoing personality I once was had completely diminished. What remained was an empty, tired and unstable mess. I had numerous breakdowns including several years suffering from Anorexia Nervosa. Even as a young child I was teased and taunted and what childhood I did have was almost destroyed by the isolation I felt.

But turning 17 changed my life; I got accepted into a prestigious performing college which changed me forever. I met all manner of people, all races, all religions, and all sexualities and suddenly I didn’t feel so isolated. I started to develop a personality, I started to find my feet and become a person. When I turned 18 I hit the gay clubs in the city and met my boyfriend who I have been with for over a year and I started to recover as a person.

So last week it finally felt as if everything was beginning to fall into place, I felt as if my life was moving in the right direction and so was my country and I felt proud. I have never made any announcement of my sexuality to my family members other than my parents, partly due to the initial reaction my parents had as they banned me from telling anyone else. So on 5th February I updated my Facebook status (something I do rarely) to say:

“Today the gay marriage bill was accepted. I cannot help but think in a decade we’ll look back and think that this was a long time coming. Love is not gender, love is not something you control, love is love. Everyone is born to love who they love, we cannot change nor must we. Today something spectacular happened and love triumphed prejudice.”

The status was liked by over 60 people, and within those 60 people were family but more importantly several people that had previously bullied me during my time at high school, and I even received an apology via Facebook message from one individual. I felt as if I were in a daze, a moment of bliss, as my parents had accepted my boyfriend the world was accepting me.

But the very next night as I was stood at a bus stop, a man under the influence of drugs who identified that I was gay after attempting to start a conversation with me proceeded to attack me. Telling me that he ends his nights “slashing people’s throats” I feared for my life as he held me up against the screens of the bus shelter. He threw me into the road in front of oncoming track, and as I got back onto the pavement he once again grabbed hold of me and told me how easy it would be for him to kill me.

With dozens of people walking by I didn’t understand why not a single person intervened, he was just one man and I needed help. Then just as I had given up hope a gentleman appeared and took hold of my attacker to set me free, he urged me to walk away but just as I did my bus appeared and on it I went, the gentleman who had effectively saved me followed me on the bus to see how I was feeling, and he softly smiled at me and said nothing.

To many this event would replay in their minds as a negative, but to me I look back and think of it as a positive. It has restored my faith in humanity, although just one man stood forward, it was still one man, one man who saved another life. Those two days are amongst the most extraordinary of my short life, I don’t think I will ever forget what happened in those 48 hours, and I hope I won’t.

We ended up getting married because I had, with all my relationships with males in San Francisco, sort of fallen short. And what was confirmed in me, having had that relationship and bond with a woman, was not…I was in fact very much torn against myself with regard with what my true desires were, and that was to be ultimately with another male in a relationship, long-term.

Continue Reading to hear what his therapist said and what happened with their marriage.