Reply To: Being outed

[Domestic Abuse Helpline Team]

Hi Blah1,
Thank you for posting and sharing your situation. It sounds like what is happening is serious. It is not part of a healthy relationship to demand, threaten and attack your partner. You mentioned your partner is older than you and really we would expect him to be modelling what it is to be in a communicative, compromising and understanding relationship. We are really sorry this is your experience.

@Elfnotonashelf makes a good point about questioning is this a real threat or something he is saying to control you and that perhaps a conversation with your local police liaison officer could help you understand what laws there are to prevent someone doing this kind of thing. This is something Galop could look at helping you with, if it was something you wanted to explore. As it is only up to you to come out to your family or not to come out to them. This is a decision for you only to ever make, and you have the right to never come out to them if it doesn’t feel safe for you to do so. It is abusive and dangerous for your partner to threaten to do this and he says it with the intention of controlling you and causing you harm.

You talked about your worries about your dad and brothers reactions and some of the possible consequences of this. You are right to want to think through carefully what impact being outed would have on your life and because of this the helpline team would really encourage you to make contact with us by emailing help@galop.org.uk or calling in freephone on 0800 999 5824 as it might be useful for you to have some on going support.

The Helpline Team