People react to dad 'faking' homophobia to disown troubled son; 'it felt freeing.'

'I disowned my son for 'being gay' and it was the best decision of my life.'

This has a lot of backstory to it so I'll try to summarize and make it as brief as possible.

My ex-wife and I had our son right out of high-school. We were both 19 at the time and decided to keep it and a year after his birth we got married. I won't get too much into the details but his mother and I had a rough marriage and by 24 we were both divorced and moved on with our lives.

I have had primary care of our son throughout his life while she has had a lot of visitation/ had him stay with her at various lengths. All throughout his life my son has had a rebellious streak. From trouble at school, lying to teachers, stealing, bullying, missing classes, you name it he's done it at some point.

We tried therapy sessions but they never came to anything and he wouldn't show up for them. We've been in and out of court for stupid petty theft and other idiotic things he's done.

This streak also continued at home (though at his mother's he always manipulated her and presented himself as a victim, so her and I would butt heads from time to time as he often blamed me).

I tried to do things with him all his life, put him into extracurriculars, spend time with him, be interested in his hobbies but no matter what I've tried he's always lashed out and pushed back on me. I've gone to therapy myself and nothing worked.

He was always ungrateful to anything I did. He wanted to join dance class? I got him enrolled in a class I could afford on my salary. He would then tell me I'm abusive because I wouldn't put him in the more expensive ones. He wanted to drive?

I bought him a car and taught him. But his car was 'shi*ty' and 'embarrassing'. The clothes I bought? Same thing. No matter how hard I've ever tried nothing has been good enough for him.

On top of that he's stolen from me, lied to me on numerous occasions, spread lies and rumors to his mom, teachers and friends about my supposed horrible treatment of him. He's 19 years old and blames me for every little thing that ever goes wrong in his life and his mother always echoes it.

Well 6 months ago it reached a boiling point. He asked me if he could borrow my car to go do something. I told him no because I had to go to the office late to get things ready for the morning. While I was in the shower he stole the keys to my car.

He refused to answer my calls all night. In the morning a random vehicle dropped him off and I asked where my car was. He told me to f**k off, he had obviously been drinking, and went to sleep.

When he woke up I found out that he had gotten into a wreck with it (hitting a parked vehicle) and wrote off my car and the other one. On top of the insurance cost, raise in insurance after the collision, I also had to pay a towing fee for my now destroyed car.

We got into a huge argument where he let me know everything he thought about me and what a horrible piece of sh*t dad I am. It ended with me kicking him out and him going to stay with his mother.

After 2 days of radio silence I get a nasty text from his mom. Apparently what he told her what happened is that he came out to me and that I blew up and kicked him out for being gay. I was pissed. Not because he was gay, that much had been obvious since he hit puberty if not even earlier even though he never brought it up to me. Just the sheer victim lying bullsh*t he had done his entire life hit me.

I didn't reply for a day after a steady stream of more abusive messages and his mom calling me a monster/piece of sh*t/abusive a**hole etc and informed me that she called my work and let them know what a homophobe I am. Something in me in that last one just made my last bit of empathy snap.

For the record, I am not homophobic, having even had a gay experience myself in high school, but something in me just snapped. I wrote back confirming what he said to her as true and how I couldn't morally accept him back into my house and that I was essentially disowning him, how him being gay just wasn't something I could overcome.

I was just sick of defending myself from his relentless bullsh*t and it felt freeing. My texts got put online by both him and my ex wife and spread like wildfire on my social media and I've lost some friends and family (while gaining others secret support). It was rough for a bit but even with that public crucifixion I feel happy, like I can breath again.

He sent me messages and tried calling me but I just reiterated what I said to his mother that I didn't agree with his new lifestyle and I figured it could be another thing he could be a victim about, and he could stay angry at me and just stay out of my life for good. After a while he just stopped trying.

My boss pulled me aside to talk to me and he congratulated on taking a stand against degeneracy and that my job wasn't at jeopardy. I was also forced to sit through some Bible thumping conservative rant about the state of the world but he couldn't say anything about ot because of snowflakes or some sh*t.

After that he's been really nice to me; even giving me a better position in the company with a pay raise. I plan to use my new position to negotiate a good salary at a new company (I'm not going to stay working for someone with these sh*tty values/opinions, plus he won't stop inviting me to stupid events.)

All and all things couldn't have worked out better for me. I will remain a closeted lgbtq+ supporter and my son can stay the hell away from me and spread his narrative of how I kicked him out for being gay. Sorry for the long post, I had a lot more I could have added but it was already a lot. How do you summarize a child's entire life?

Here's what people had to say:

kageofsteel writes:

Well I guess now you know who your homophobe friends are.

ThrowawayRant333 OP responded:

Yup. Some of them were pretty shocking. One is a professor at a college nearby. It's pretty sad how many ignorant people come out of the woodwork when they think you support their oppressive mindset.

The3rdLapPodcast writes:

Bro is done, and he burned it all to the ground 🤷🏾‍♂️. Personally I wouldn't have done it this way but what's done is done. Also he knows who he shouldn't be around any longer after folks congratulated him for being a sh*tty person.

tehgimpage writes:

crazy i wonder where your son gets the manipulation from. like, ya i bet your position sucks, but throwing an entire community under the bus like that and then pretending you're still a 'closeted ally'? yuck.

but hey, at least you got more money from a bigot, and don't have to support a child you created anymore, win win!

Heisenberg0606 writes:

What your kid did and has done to you sounds absolutely horrible and I’m glad you are finally getting some, what sounds like, much needed relief and peace. However as a gay man who is now almost 30 I can tell you that he has probably been going through a whole lot of mental sh*t all these years.

He may not realize the full extent/consequences of his actions right now. But as an adult you do. I would at the very least try and have a one on one heart felt conversation with him. He is your son after all.

Trust me I completely understand that sometimes people (even family) need to be cut out of your life for your own well being. But writing off your own son at only 19 seems to me like a mistake you’ll likely regret as time goes on.

Queen-Elyse writes:

I really don’t understand your perspective on this one. Why didn’t you just said that he drunk wrecked your car and he isn’t welcome anymore, and that he being gay is not the problem but his behaviour is? And be done after that?

ThrowawayRant333 OP responded:

Because he already spread this false narrative. He knows the truth, his mother wouldn't believe me even if I tried. I've dealt with things like this for years. I'm tired of fighting.

UrsaEnvy writes:

I read through the whole message. I get ur point, I understand your emotions around it. I wish this hadn't been your title. People can call me sensitive, or down vote me. But for any queer folks on this app/site this title could be really triggering for queer people who've been disowned by their family.

Its only after reading through that I understood, I almost passed it by because I was afraid of what would be in the post. Not trying to critique with bad intentions. Just sharing my thoughts as they came up.

ThrowawayRant333 OP responded:

I never seen it from that point of view and I apologize for the bad title. It was meant to be sarcastic thus the quotation marks but in hindsight I guess that only applies once you've understood the context behind that.

AidanBubbles writes:

You’re free. For your well-being it sounds like that’s what you need. But you’re proudly waiving a homophobic flag. You listened to your boss’s homophobic rant and behaved in support of it.

There was a far better, and honestly, less cowardly way to do it. Opt out of your sons life. You’re allowed to do that. It’s not fair to blame hating lgbtq people as your reason for it. Summarizing: you did the right thing when it comes to your relationship with your son, it’s just how you went about it that’s really sh*tty.

RandoRvWchampion writes:

Wow. This is a lot to process. As a person with a queer kid I honestly don’t know how I feel about this. I completely totally and 100% am on your side for kicking him out, he sounds like a monster right now. But scapegoating the queer community, especially in light of a lot of recent events makes me uneasy.

I know you are in a world of pain right now (and I’m so sorry) so you are probably in a highly reactive mode, but…. I dunno. This has a high potential of backfiring on you. I hope everyone here gets the help and peace they desperately need. Good luck OP