I was part of a support group for a while after I came out to my wife. We had been talking about coming out and how people would blame us for deceiving them their entire lives and this was what one of the respondents said:
"When anyone says anything about deceit, tell them YOU are the one who was deceived. You were deceived by your family and friends and community and church and society and culture into rejecting who you really are. You were deceived into believing that if you are yourself you are somehow invalid. This deception was at a time in your development when you were very vulnerable and needy, when you were an adolescent. You needed to believe you could be what they told you were the terms for being acceptable to them, because in that liminal stage of not still being a boy and not yet a man, you felt they were right and that YOUR feelings were not right. You were deceived into trying to be something you were not, and in their deception of you, they deceived also your wife and your children and themselves."
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