Sometimes it is difficult to do good things for yourself when you don't feel that you are deserving. If you are hiding who you are it is unlikely that you will be able to develop meaningful intimate relationships, since you will always wonder whether these relationships will continue once the truth is known about you.

When you don't openly discuss your sexual life-style with someone important in your life, you must constantly avoid discussing other things as well. You may change the name of the person you spent the weekend with, or not quite tell the truth about where you were on Saturday night, or even keep separate bedrooms in a long-term relationship in order to avoid a confrontation with others. If you are doing this you may say that it isn't important that they know, and besides nothing will change. If it truly wasn't important, you would not spend so much energy withholding the truth. If you really felt that nothing would change you would be comfortable being open and honest.

The rewards for being truthful are great and the self-respect and self-esteem that follows cannot be explained until you experience it for yourself. If you have already come out to a number of people, what effect has it had on you? Who do you want to spend the most time with, the people who know the truth or those that don't?

Coming out to those you care about allows you to do many things:

• You can share more of yourself and your life with others
• They have a greater opportunity to know you as you really are.
• You have more of an opportunity to validate your own life and your own life-style.
• You give the important people in your life a real opportunity to support you, and you become far more available to them, as well.
• Love flows more easily between you and others because some of the barriers you've constructed in your relationship are removed.

When you tell the truth, some of the consequences will be positive and some may be negative. Not everyone will like the truth. Trust yourself to effectively handle all consequences. This will involve taking some risks. Usually we play it safe, maintaining things as they are. But when things remain the same they often seem to get worse and worse. Taking risks is part of what makes life interesting and usually leads to personal growth.

Something to remember...

We live with hate, misunderstanding, fear, and prejudice because people don't know who we are, but we know. The truth is: we are everywhere. We are their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends and co-workers. We are soldiers, teachers, clergy, athletes, truck drivers, scientists, and, designers. We work in every profession, at every level. We touch the lives of millions of people who don't think they know anyone gay, lesbian or bisexual.