An Inadvertent Set-up

 While normally I would use this week to talk about all the things I'm grateful for over the course of the year, I had an entertaining conversation that made me realize something a couple of weeks back that fits here instead.

One of those things I should have realized was a sign towards my gender was that most of my friends were guys growing up.  Once I hit about nine years old, the balance slowly shifted from having an all female friend group, to only having one or two friends who were girls, and all the rest were boys.  Likewise, as I got older, and went and did more, I wound up forming friendships with guys who were older.

And yes, my parents went through the overly paranoid phase of thinking they would all take advantage of me, or use me for ulterior motives within a month or so of being friends.  That they were all going to hurt me, and were dangerous, and weren't actually friends.  But then they stuck around.  Not only that, but I took a role of being the guiding voice of all of them, so there was a visible respect for me amongst them.

To top it off, because I had not yet dealt with years of negative reinforcement for touching people, I would show affection to all of them.  We would be comfortable curling up together, holding hands, and hugging all the time, to the point where it became commonplace to see.  It created a source of support that covered many levels, and made us all more secure in the process (in some ways more than others).

My parents saw this, and learned that not only could I form actual friendships with guys who were at a different life stage than myself when I was younger, but that comfortable affection could be just that.  And over time, they learned that this was just the way I formed friendships.  That we would curl up on the couch, laugh, and be silly, but it was unrelated to sex, or forming a relationship like I would with a partner.

This becomes increasingly useful now, because they're also not the sort that I could ever come out to as polyamorous.  While I can't be making out with every boy I like (not that there are many) I wouldn't do that in front of family anyway.  However, being affectionate without labelling someone loudly as a partner is entirely normal to them, and is consistent with how I've always been even with partners I would be vocal about.

So while it made for some very difficult times when I was young, I'm grateful to now be able to avoid coming out to my parents, but not having to actually hide all behaviors with them.