Tell my abusers wife?

Q: when I was 10 and my cousin was 13 he molested me.  It only happened once and we didn't see them very often so I never said anything, but it definitely happened.  Recently I found out he is going to have a kid and I'm worried that if I don't say something he could do this to someone else, but if I do say something I could ruin his marriage.  Or my whole family could accuse me of lying and I could end up causing a lot of drama for no reason.

A:  continued silence is not an option.  This is not because you have to protect the world from your cousin, that is honestly beyond your control.  It is because you owe it to yourself to confront this issue and not be shamed and trapped by it when you did northing wrong.  

No matter what you do from this point it is likely to be painful for you and at least somewhat disappointing in the outcome so it is important that you have a therapist or close friend who knows everything supporting you through the process.

In a perfect world you contact him and say, "this happened and it caused me a lot of pain.  I need to know it is never going to happen to anyone else and that you are working through what ever caused you to do this in the first place (there is a significant chance that he too was abused at some point prior to molesting you).  

He would then acknowledge what he did, ask for forgiveness, get into counseling and tell his wife about his life experience.

That could happen, it is not as crazy impossible as it sounds because he may be carrying a lot of pain about this too.  BUT the more likely scenario is that he falls short of that ideal.  Most likely he will simply deny.  

You need to be prepared for that and ask yourself if you are willing to contact his wife if he won't.  I think there are significant cons to using the threat of telling his wife to force him into therapy.  You will never know if he is really attending or what is being shared there so if you have any doubt that he is facing his actions honestly letting his wife know what happened so she can make her own decisions is a path you will likely have to take.  

She is very likely to deny and be angry with you.  People tend to shoot the messenger.  This is a man that she loves and they are about to take on the biggest challenge of their lives together so do not expect her to thank you.   At the same time if you were in her position I think you would want to know.

Hopefully this was one confused act of an early adolescent.  There are probably hundreds of thousands of this kind of abuse perpetrated every year that are never reported so our statistics tend to suggest that perpetrators tend to be continual abusers buy my hunch is those are just the ones we catch.  Regardless, we can't take a chance and you do not need this on your mind anymore.  In order to be free of this you must confront and probably report on.  

When do I come out to my roommate?

Q:  I'm about to start my freshman year in college and I'm trying to decide if I want to tell my roommate I'm gay before I go.  I'm only recently out to a few people around home and that was weird and awkward.  Based on our texts he seems like a pretty chill person and I think he will be fine with it but I'm afraid that if I tell him this one aspect of my personality will end up defining how everyone thinks of me.  I will be his "gay roommate" instead of just his roommate who likes dubstep or who hates birds.  I'm still kind of figuring out who I am and I don't want to be pushed to just go be friends with the queer kids because I happen to be attracted to guys.  I have always, ironically, been kind of sketched out by the openly gay kids I have met and I just don't want him to think that is who I am before he can get to know me for me.  On the other hand if I don't tell him now, when...?  

A:  Do it now.  Coming out is an extremely daunting prospect at any time.  Leaving home for college and creating a new identity is, while in a very different way, also overwhelming.  I wish I could advise you to take your time and do things at your own pace.  In many ways who you are attracted to is no one's business but yours so why should getting a new roommate put a time table on disclosure?  Unfortunately our society is very hetero-sexist.  Even non-prejudiced people, including many queer people like yourself, approach the world as if everyone they meet is straight, that is just their default setting.

If you do not tell your roommate that you are not straight he is going to assume that you are.  Very quickly this is going to put you in a position where you have to come out,  lie to him, or be the most vague person he has ever encountered and he will either think you are hiding something (which you will be) or that you have been kicked in the head by a horse.

Since young men tend to bond over talking about girls and the sex acts they would like to engage in with them, and since terms of affection among men tend to be slurs for homosexuals I would wager a year's salary that you would not go 24 hours without having to react to one of these two situations.

So lets say you pretend to be straight, you have a great deal of experience with that.  People will get to know you as the dubstep loving, bird hating wonderful guy that you are.  But a huge part of you will remain hidden from view.  Even if by Halloween you are ready to come out and even if your roommate is the most understanding and logical guy in the world, he will still feel like you were lying to him.

We also have to recognize that he might not be the most understanding guy in the world.  Many young heterosexual men have a paranoia about gay men, that they are just waiting for them to unzip at a urinal before they can strike and sink their gay fangs into them or some other horrible thing that while they cannot quite visualize they sense it is terrifying.  Very often that fear can lead to violence.  Or even if it is just ostracizing or a change in the relationship from warm to cool, that can be an experience that is toxic to you every day.

I remember talking with a gay man who stayed in the closet all through college.  He talked about the anger of one of his friends when he finally came out.  His friend said that it felt like he had just taken a mask off and said he was an alien.  The two had often gone out to clubs chasing girls together and many of their shared experiences involved double dates.  The friend did not care that he was gay, he cared that he had been lied to for years and now he realized he really didn't know who one of his best friends was.  

By telling your roommate now if he really is uncomfortable with it he has time to find a new roommate.  If he is mildly uncomfortable with it at least he knows what he is getting in to and you will not have to hide who you are.  It is ok to tell him that you are figuring out who you are and you do not want it to be a big deal but you also don't want him to be shocked later.  You can use humor to defuse any potential tension and help him to realize that just like not every girl is his type there is a pretty good chance that even if he were gay (and lets not be so heterosexist to totally assume that he isn't) it doesn't mean you would be interested.

You are right, this is only one aspect of who you are, but your feelings about music, pizza, the state of the middle east, and the people you are attracted to are not things you should have to hide.  They are nothing to be ashamed of.  If you don't treat your sexual orientation that way then he probably won't either and the friends you make at school are going to get more time to know the real you.

Dad's depressed, how much do I visit?

Q:  I am supposed to spend a week at my Mom's and a week at my Dad's but in the summer things get fuzzy and I find it really hard to go over to my Dad's.  He has been out of work for about 9 months and he just sits around moping or complaining to me about my Mom or how I don't spend enough time with him.  I feel terrible for him but I'm only 16 and I'm not sure what I can really do for him.  Am I a terrible person for not spending more time with him and avoiding him?

A:  It is the job of the parent to care for the child, not the job of the child to care for the parent.  No matter how good a daughter or son you are at the end of your days God is not going to reward you with another chance to relive your childhood because you sacrificed it caring for him.  The debt that you owe is to your own future children, to survive high school and and to have as much healthy normal teen aged fun along the way so that you are not resentful when it it time for you to make them your first priority.

That is not to say that you should ignore your Father or the custody arrangement that your parents have set up.  Just remember that your father is dealing with a serious mental health issue and until he gets help for that no matter how much energy you steal from your own life and pour on his it is not going to be enough.

You could try writing him a letter and leaving it at his house laying out how you feel and your hope that he will seek help to improve his functioning and your relationship.  While a move like this is always scary as we fear the defensive reaction that is likely to result, how much worse could that be than the current state of things.

Other things to try are to try to catch him doing something good.  So often we can list all the negative things a person has done but we fail to catch them in their good moments and really reinforce those.  In the times when you do have a good interaction with your Dad be sure to mention what you liked about dinner or that trip for ice cream.

You absolutely have the right to call him out when he makes comments about your mother by simply saying, "Dad I want to have a good relationship with you but when you bring Mom up it makes it hard to be around you.  Let's talk about..."

If you have siblings and they are being similarly impacted sometimes writing a joint letter or even staging an intervention if he is not getting help for his depression can make a greater impact as you show a united front.

At the end of the day whether a parent has a mental health disorder, an addiction, or just an unfortunate personality you give to them what you hope your own child will give to you some day.  While your parents are major figures in your life there are other people (including yourself) who need your energy and you cannot give away all your reserves and still be healthy.

When dealing with people who are truly draining, (sometimes we refer to these people as toxic as just being exposed to them can make us unhealthy) for every hour you spend with them you need to spend 3 hours with people who fill you.  Do that and you will keep things in a healthy balance.