<

I’m in my late 60’s and my son is in his late 40’s, for relevant context. His mother and I divorced when he was young and for all intents and purposes, I essentially raised him as a single father from a certain point onward. I did my best to raise him well and to ensure he had everything he needed, but I worked a lot of hours and was very career focused. I realize now I was somewhat absent. I’m also fairly emotionally reserved in general, at least when it comes to physically speaking; I’m better at writing.

When he was in high school and in college he had several girlfriends, and one girl I thought he was very serious about for the majority of his time during his undergraduate education. They broke up. After that, he never brought home any more girls or talked about any, and he moved away to attend medical school and we stopped talking as much as we had previously. I remember very distinctly one time while he was visiting on a break from school I was worried about him and I had asked if he was on drugs. He just looked physically ill and in a poor state. He assured me it was stress from school and he would be fine. But I remember this clearly because this visit home was when I first started to think he could be gay.

Now the thing is, my son has never told me that he is gay even to this day, but it has become an unspoken acknowledgment between us. He has a roommate, that’s how we mutually refer to him, and he’s had the same friend for a long time. Sometimes I will ask about him but the answers are always short, basically that he’s doing well. I think I know maybe five things about his friend after some almost twenty years, maybe longer. We speak on the phone occasionally as we live far away and this is something we never discuss much if at all.

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I think I’m a poor father. Somewhere down the line I taught my son that we can’t speak about who he is. I’ll admit I’m not the most verse in this kind of lifestyle thing, but I don’t want to be shut out from his life. I want to tell him that whatever this is he’s perfectly fine in my book and I love him. I want to know him and his friend, but I don’t know how to tell him or what to say. I’m not sure if I should say boyfriend as again, he’s never said anything to me about being gay, I’ve just pieced it together over time, so I’m not sure if that’s what I should say.

Should I just spontaneously bring this up with him? There never seems to be a good time to say what I'm thinking, and the topic seems too serious to send an email or a very long text message. I'm not sure if a written mode of communication would be too informal or make it seem that I don't care. At that, I'm not sure where we should go from there.

Update:
In summary, I wrote about many things and the letter ended up being much longer than anticipated. I began by discussing some of my experiences with my father growing up and ways I realized I had treated my son similarly. I had wanted to do better than my father, who had moments where he could be cruel, but I failed to realize that being too reserved was also a problem and I leaned too far in that direction. After his mother left I was depressed and I didn’t deal with that as well as I should have. I apologized for being absent at work and for being emotionally unavailable at times when he would have needed me the most. I mentioned I’d like to change that in the future, but it’s still something that’s hard for me to do and I understand he may need his own space. Then I wrote about how even though I probably don’t show it well I do love him with my entire being, there’s nothing he could do or be that can change that, and I’m proud of him for many things. I wrote that by extension I love whoever he loves, and his chosen family is family to me as well. All said and done the letter was several pages long.

Then I mailed it, and it was incredibly hard to wait. I decided to text him to let him know I had sent him a letter as we don’t typically write, and it seemed like something that warranted some warning in advance of its arrival so he wouldn’t be entirely caught off guard by it.

Eventually, he sent me a text that he would like to call me at the end of the day. We spoke about everything in the letter. I learned that he had believed I viewed him as a burden, which was disheartening to me as I had always wanted to be a father since I was young, and I never saw him as being a burden, which I told him. We discussed his mother and the plethora of feeling surrounding her. This was a hard topic for me as I still have many unresolved feelings here, but I realized because of this I never explained to him everything that happened. I also learned that he was afraid to disappoint me, and that he had put a lot of effort into his career to make me proud of him as he felt this was the way to impress me and that it would “make up for his defects.” I brought up that focusing on work over family and interpersonal relationships was one of my bigger regrets, and he admitted that being so career-driven was straining his personal life. With everything going on at the moment he also expressed that the medical profession was weighing on him but he hadn’t wanted to disappoint me by not being “as emotionally strong” as he thought I am.

By this point in the conversation, we had both said a lot of very emotional things. He brought up that he felt it was hard to talk to me because I don’t make it clear what I’m thinking and so he felt it was always easier to only discuss work or accomplishments with me and nothing personal. He felt it was easier to let his relationship be an unspoken understanding between us as he felt I would be uncomfortable to know anything more. At this point, I confirmed that his friend is in fact his partner. He said he felt a lot of shame about it. I told him I regretted not reaching out to him sooner, that I’m sorry that my lack of availability had created this distance between us, and that I am always proud of him and not just for his career.

We ended the conversation by discussing seeing each other in person, as it has been almost ten years since we’ve actually seen each other. I expressed that I would like to fly out to visit him and his partner if he would feel comfortable (we are all fully COVID vaccinated). I now have a plane ticket for early next month, a date which is quickly approaching.