Came out to my very religious Muslim father. It went surprisingly well!

I come from a very religious family. My parents moved here from the Middle East to give us kids a better life. I spent my whole life here. Growing up in that kind of household, though, when you know you're gay is tough. In our house, my father always disparaged gay people every chance he got.

I have always been kind of straight passing, so my father never suspected anything, until in high school, he found gay porn on my computer. He berated me until I told him I was just confused and not gay (because I was in high school and not financially stable to be disowned). He accepted that I wasn't gay and he convinced himself that I was straight.

That was almost a decade ago. Since then, I went off to college and grad school, didn't move back home, and now live alone and am in a happy, healthy relationship with my boyfriend of 3 years. I was tired of hiding my relationship and who I am, so with the help of my therapist, I planned to tell my parents I'm gay. Last night, I sent a text to my father to tell him. I did it over text because I wanted to protect myself and save myself the emotional trauma of having him scream at me or be aggressive. So my father sent me a barrage of texts about how shocked he was. His English still isn't so great, so he mostly just sent a lot of shocked face emojis with a few sad face emojis, along with some shocked phrases in broken English. From what I gathered from the texts, I figured he was upset and probably would say he wouldn't want to be in my life anymore. I didn't respond to his texts. I needed some distance.

But this morning, he texted me and said he wanted to talk. I decided to bite the bullet and talk to him and get closure on the topic. I braced myself for the expected verbal onslaught.

To my shock, my father called me, almost in tears, and told me that he loves me. He told me that is sorry if he's made me feel like I have to hide myself from him for all these years. He said that he thought about it, and the idea of losing his child would be too much to bare. And he begged me to please not cut him out of my life. He said he doesn't care if I'm in a relationship and get married to a man. All he wants is to have his only son be in his life.

I am in tears typing this. He said that tomorrow, I can call my mom and tell her too and that he will be there with her to support me. I spent my whole life worried about telling my parents, especially my father. And now, my father is telling me not only is he not going to cut me out of his life, but he fully accepts me and loves me.

Sorry for the long post. I know there's a lot of coming out stories on here. But I just wanted to share my story with anyone who wants to hear a success story!