Why do your straight friends treat you differently once you come out of the closet?

Men treat women differently than they treat other men, women treat other women differently than they treat men, and we all treat homosexuals differently than we treat straight people. It’s not so that our love for them diminishes, but the nature of the relationship drastically sifts once you find out that they are, in fact, gay or bi unlike previously thought.

When straight people interact with straight people, they assume that everyone wants to get into a relationship with opposite-gender people. The conversation, thus, flows freely because there are no sexual or romantic chances to be smashed. You can praise and hug people without thinking they’re going to take it as a come-on, you being straight and all. You can express “more feeling” than what you could with a member of the opposite gender or gay people, without it meaning romantic or sexual interest.

Sexual orientation changes a relationship dynamic dramatically.

Once they find out you’re interested in same-sex people, the whole context of your relationship changes. All of the sudden, your assumed mutual interest in men or women sifts, and you have less to talk about. Straight women are not particularly interested in lesbian romances. Straight men are not inherently interested in romances between men. They may be cool with it, and they may feel happy for you, but their interest will drastically drop. “Cool, but, did you hear Dave went out with an actual girl.”

Sexual attraction between platonic friends is always a deal breaker.

While straight people can be genuinely loving friends with gay people, what everyone has to know and be comfortable with is that there is NO sexual thing going on between you two. Like straight people don’t typically want to be friends with opposite-gendered people because there is such a danger of one-sided feelings developing. If they are friends, there’s a strict protocol in place to prevent any sexual signals from being accidentally sent.

That’s not all. Straight-gay friendships are weird:

I had a dear friend once, a gay man who I absolutely adored, and I still miss him. Still, the day he confessed he was jealous of my boyfriends because I had an gender advantage… Things got a little weird for me. I wasn’t even dating them in front of him, but he was still bothered by it, just knowing they were there. If he’d been a straight woman, I’d feel just as weird. It’s not like you want to stop being attractive to make your friend feel better – you’ll create distance so they don’t have to see it all the time.

We also assume you’d rather hang out with gay people, as it’s simply more interesting for you.

Straight people are also sex-obsessed, right? You may not realize this, but we are. 😀 Therefore, we assume you will prefer the company of people who are potential romantic and sexual partners to you anyway. So you coming out of the closet is effectively breaking up that friendship because they’ll assume you want to either hang out with other gay people, OR you expect your straight friend to also have sexual feelings toward you, which just gets real fucking weird for a straight person to live with.

When you come out of the closet, it just puts things into a more accurate perspective. Certain innocent things become loaded with potential sexual charge. And, other things just won’t go where you might wish they did, and the whole thing becomes as weird as male-female friendships are – but which we avoid as a matter of course. Those relationships typically don’t get very close, and you coming out of the closet makes things different and the sift is going to be sudden and often unexpected.

(You didn’t see? For the most part, we are NOT LOOKING for signs of homosexuality in people the same way as you are. 😉 First of all, we’re not interested in same-gendered people enough to want to know if they’re gay or straight. We’re not looking to see that… At least, not before we run into our first problems with these relationships and we learn to do that just to keep potential gay people from getting too close for everybody’s comfort.)

So, it’s not that we “hate gay people” not at all. It’s just that we hate awkward relationships and dodging unwanted advances as much as the next person.

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