Coming Out & Letting Go of What Others Think

There’s frequently discussion about living authentic lives after coming out, but I’ve seen less discussion about how severely some of us have learned to control what others think. If done long enough, it can become a huge habit to have a curated identity. What do I selectively reveal, and to whom? I’ve heard and read stories about men who led secret lives unknown to a spouse in a straight marriage and that seems to be the most common “Exhibit A” of the behavior I’m talking about. But I was never married and I still had my own issues with a persistent need to control what others think.

Managing Perceptions or What Will People Think?

What brought this particular subject to my mind was a discussion I recently had with a friend about how in the old days on Twitter (before I came out and before its downward spiral) I had three separate accounts. One was for my art business. A second one was my “personal” account but when I say personal, I mean a place where I talked about politics or what movie I just watched, etc. And then I had the account no one in my life knew about. It was where I followed spicy creators. Unlike the other two, no part of my real name was attached to it at all and I carefully did not follow any of the same accounts I followed elsewhere. It was the social media equivalent of a burner phone.

This habit illustrated how I compartmentalized my life overall. That burner account was part and parcel of a piece of my life that internally, never mind externally, remained a disconnected fragment of who I was. There were easily digestible aspects of my life That I owned to varying degrees but then there were parts I didn’t allow others close enough to even glimpse.

This fragmentation is a theme I’ve seen mentioned in multiple books I’ve read about a too common gay experience. The insidious thing is I really don’t have specific memories of events that convinced me there was a need to be secretive. I do have vague memories of my mother saying things like “what will others think” but I don’t remember the context at all. Maybe I’ve walled off some unpleasant memories or maybe I simply observed in the world at large how harshly anyone even a little different was treated.

I do remember when I told classmates circa 6th grade that I was agnostic I received much more interrogation and push-back than expected. Now I wonder how I opened up about that but was so hesitant to let the other shoe drop. Interestingly even then I was actually being selective about what I revealed. I always considered myself an atheist but thought agnostic was more palatable. However I got there, I formed an early habit of keeping my cards close to my chest. Worrying what others think seemed rooted in all aspects of my life.

Circles Of Trust

How comfortable did a given person make me feel? Did I feel comfortable sharing religious views with them? Was a person someone I didn’t mind knowing who I voted for? Would I tell them about my family? This attempt to manage what others thought was especially evident on Facebook where I didn’t have to ponder these questions each time I “spoke” – I had my Facebook connections pre-sorted into their own little silos via friend’s lists. I strategically used friend lists to maintain circles of trust that would control how others saw me. The nearer to the center the more one saw but there was always that core aspect of my identity that was off limits for all.

Coming Out & Letting Go of What Others Think

In 2022 when I moved from Twitter to Mastodon, I had yet to come out and I partly followed old patterns by having separate “personal” and business accounts. As time went on and I came out, I gradually unclenched. I started feeling a visceral reaction to having separate accounts, using my personal Mastodon account less and less as I no longer felt the old need to control what others think. And when I later opened accounts on Threads and Bluesky, it was just one each. I’m sure there are a lot of marketing people who would cry at the idea of sharing political views, music I like and my art business all from the same place.

However I had spent so much of my life with a tight grip on shaping what others think that I went 180 degrees in the other direction. And it was literally freeing not to pick and choose. Although I’m going to also admit it felt a little weird on Mastodon where there were people who followed my artist account who probably didn’t expect to see anything else. That’s probably a me thing though, an aspect of my people pleasing and a need to manage what people see that is still wound a bit tightly.

So I had entered a phase where one account to rule them all was my new mantra. And on Bluesky in particular that really meant them all. I shared my art, I chatted, and I followed the adult content creators all under one name-bearing account. And it was very liberating. No secrets. No 30 layers of circles. And on one level it felt wonderful, but on another it was jarring.

This time it wasn’t a matter of shame, it was a matter of distraction. I found that consistently having spicy content in the same feed as everyone else was a recipe for not really interacting with anything else. And I resisted the obvious solution for months. Bluesky has a lot of different custom feeds including one called “After Dark” that’s for just the NSFW content but I never found its opposite, a safe for work feed that was similar to the following feed but without NSFW content. Well I found a few but none seemed to actually work. And I kept ignoring the glaringly obvious choice.

Solutions & Compromise

I didn’t want to return to having separate accounts because to me the very act felt like an admission to some form of shame. After a couple of months of failing to find another solution, I finally found what worked for me was reinventing the wheel. So yes, now I do have a second Bluesky account. And my compromise was linking to my main profile from there. Not hiding any aspect of who I am but also accepting that my monkey brain does need some separation between some of the content I consume.

And after accepting the obvious solution to my problem was the best one, I have considered going farther. There are days that I feel like I’m getting consumed by politics and I’m tempted to open yet another account and blocking every political word under the sun and just following friends so I have somewhere more akin to an online Walden in the woods…

Maybe as social platforms mature and decentralize there will be better ways to curate our feeds. Because that’s really what I’m looking for now. Instead of a shame-based need to control what others think, I want to curate what I see based on the moment. In an old school analog way, I instead wish for a way to pick what “section” of the newspaper I want to read right now. It’s definitely a better “problem” to have than the old need to manage how others saw me.

Concluding Thoughts

By no means am I saying that in less than three years I’ve completely shed my worry about what others think about me. I won’t even guess to what degree that’s possible. It’s more a story of chipping away at old habits. It’s the act learning to actively recognize the behavior in myself. In a way it’s learning to harness the same energy that was previously self-censoring to instead recognize when I’m engaging in that behavior. Learned behavior can be unlearned.

By no means am I suggesting that in less than three years I’ve completely shed my worry about what others think about me. I can’t predict the extent to which that’s even possible. Instead, this is a story of gradual transformation. It’s a tale of chipping away at deeply ingrained habits, one day at a time. It’s about learning to take a breath and actively recognize when those old patterns of self-censorship surface. Slowly, I’m learning to redirect that same anxious energy from silencing myself to understanding myself. The beauty lies not in perfection, but in the patient work of unlearning. Learned behaviors aren’t dismantled overnight, but they can be transformed, softened, and ultimately reshaped with time.