‘I outed my tween in the most awful way and it’s killing me’

“I wish I could turn back to that moment where I screwed up and change it back,” the devastated mum reveals.

The mum was devastated that she'd forced her daughter out of the closet by accident. Photo: iStock

When Bryanna’s daughter started getting in trouble at school, the mum-of-two thought the only way she could find out what was really going on was to look through the 12-year-old’s phone.

She demanded the tween hand the device over, but what she found out made her regret not trusting the girl.

“I forced her to hand it over and I saw a conversation between her and one of her female friends,” Bryanna explained on Reddit.

“In that conversation her friend asked if she has feelings for her and my daughter responded yes.

“The conversation continued and the friend asked my daughter if she’d be her girlfriend and my daughter said yes.”

Bryanna looked at her daughter and blurted out a question: “Do you have feelings for her? Did you mean what you said?”

The mum wasn’t upset, but she realised her daughter had never revealed she was attracted to girls because she was worried what her mum would think.

“She started crying… I asked her why she was crying and so upset, and she told me, ‘I didn’t tell you because I am scared you would love me less or be mad at me’.”

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The mum was devastated that she'd forced her daughter out of the closet by accident. Photo: iStock

Mum accidentally forces daughter to come out

Bryanna felt terrible.

“I basically forced my daughter to come out and feel TERRIBLE that those were the circumstances that had her tell me.

“I wish I could turn back time to that moment and not ask.”

She tried to mend the situation and told her daughter she loved her and supported her.

“I told her she is still too young to be in relationships but that she shouldn’t be scared to be herself. She hugged me and went back to doing her homework.”

Bryanna added that although she’d suspected for a while that her daughter was interested in girls, “this was not the way I wanted her to tell me… I screwed up and it’s killing me”.

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Reddit weighs in on daughter coming back

The commenters were mostly in agreement: it wasn’t as bad as Bryanna thought.

“This is almost exactly what happened to me when I was young,” one woman said. “My mum went through my computer and found the lesbian evidence. For me it was a weight off my shoulders. Just be supportive and affirming, I promise the rest will follow.”

“You apologised, you talked to her, you are not a perfect parent, which is also known as a normal parent,” said another person. “We all do things we regret.”

But others said the situation was more nuanced.

“I think a lot of commenters are missing that it’s a big deal for LGBT+ people to come out,” one person said. “It’s an important thing individually and culturally. I think it’s really admirable that you realised this might be something your daughter would have liked to share in her own time.”

Originally published as ‘I outed my tween in the most awful way and it’s killing me’