Good luck to the LW and her family.

Someone who came out of the closet at 27 getting married at 28 is definitely a bad idea.

Truvada has its own set of gnarly side-effects. Rich Jizzywack's first hand account published on Gawker awhile back was very informative. Unfortunately, condoms are still the best way to go.

@ 2, it's fine. Adulthood doesn't begin until 40 now.

If she wants to be a loving and supportive mother for her newly out son, she shouldn't coddle any/all bone-head choices he makes just because they are gay choices.

>>When people come out—whatever age they happen to come out at—they turn into 15 year olds. >>

Does that relate to when they admit it to themselves, or when they come out to their family, or their work colleagues, or do they regress to adolescence again every time they come out to a new set of people?

What Ophian said. LW's problem with the lying, scum-sucking ho-bag son-in-law isn't that he's gay; it's that he's a lying, scum-sucking ho-bag who is manipulating and endangering her son.

Unless they are gay ex-Mormons, in which case their mental age reverts to about 10.

Not just great advice, a phenomenal display of empathy.

MNH, one little addition I would make to Dan's advice is to make sure your son knows that Prodigal Son rules apply - that there is essentially NOTHING he could do that would make you turn him away when he comes to you for help. It doesn't matter what stupid things your son's husband does before your son dumps him, you love your son, and that love is unconditional.

@7, it's like a second adolescence. I came out in my mid-20s. I'd never dated before. I was a virgin. I had rarely met an out gay man. So although I was a physically mature adult, I had all the dating and socializing skill of a 13 year old. My first sexual experiences were completely inept, and I came in seconds. I would have dated anyone who smiled at me nicely. If marriage had become suddenly legal at that point, I can totally see myself marrying anyone who was nice to me for a few months.

In hindsight, this all seems completely silly, but at the time I had no idea what I was doing.

Agreed 100% with the 15-year old comment. I came out when I was 16 and it wasn't a huge deal. But I had a friend who came out when he was in his 40s and it was bizarre to see what he went through when it came to dating, etc. he eventually caught up with his real age and all is well.

@4 in a follow up piece, Rick said that what he thought were Truvada side effects were actually from rickettsia, a primarily tick-borne bacterial infection. He is back on Truvada with no side effects. http://gawker.com/truvada-its-time-to-ta…

The best way to go is Truvada and condoms together. If one fails the other has your back.

Seems many supportive parents are so terrified of seeming homophobic that they don't challenge idiot behavior by their gay kids.

@ 13, That's excellent news; thanks for the link.

@11, thanks, that helps. I was thinking of people who are transgender, who often come out first to their longterm partner (so they can crossdress at home), and then to a group of likeminded friends, and then to their children/parents, and then later still to their work colleagues (if it gets to that point). The TG community talks about the "pink fog" phenomenon, when people do act almost like adolescents exploring for the first time.

But the "pink fog" can roll in and out and then back in again, as TG individuals experience different levels of freedom to be themselves: dressing at home vs going out occasionally in public vs dressing everywhere, even at work.

If only they could just invent a damn condom that feels as freakin' fantastic as barebacking. I'd also like a unicorn from the miracle vending machine, pleez.

No one knows the long term effects of Truvada. The long term effects of higher dose meds in the same class can be very serious and definitely take years off your life, as in decades. Truvada is a good choice for some people but not everyone, as Dan's lovecast guest Dr. Chu said recently. Condoms used wisely with a positive partner (or randoms, or untrustworthy possibly negative partner) are still the best thing out there.

Apologies in advance to Mr O; this seems much crabbier than I feel.

It seemed easy enough to advise LW to treat this in the way a good mother would treat the same situation with a nightmare of an opposite-sex spouse without using aggressive language about coddling or challenging. I agree with the substance of the posts, but the tone was along the line of saying Kate Bush forbid that a same-sexer ever get any sort of break an opposite-sexer doesn't.

How I wish this letter had run a week earlier, as then I could have had a great time going on about how the instinct to be a *little* more kind or gentle with the alien (and to be clear, I am not saying "coddle!" or to let this go "unchallenged" - how exactly does "challenging" an adult child's life call work, anyway? Is there a Chase Review and, if the ball landed on the line, the point gets replayed?) is a sound one because the vast majority of straight parents making a sincere effort to be scrupulously fair between an opposite-sexer child and a same-sexer child won't. (To be scrupulous, I'm highly dubious of the viability of parental fairness anyway, but it does seem more sound to acknowledge internal bias than to fear or deny it and think that not seeing the bias makes one fair.)

@21, If you have a chance, would you mind translating that into English? It really makes no sense at all.

@6, @8 and @11: What hit me was,

"Within three months they were married"

and I expected Dan to repeat his "Treat your gay son no differently (or maybe more conservatively because men are assholes) than you would your daughter." Maybe Dan didn't want to rub salt in the wound, but for the sake of other parents of late-coming-out-children:

If your straight son or straight daughter "within three months . . . married" you would challenge them on the stupidity of that. Doesn't your gay child deserve at least as much guidance? Especially your long-closeted, gay child who's only came out a year ago? You, LW, presumably "came out" as straight (knew you were straight, acted straight, dated other straights) by 15. Were you ready to choose a life partner by 16? How could you believe that a kid so messed up as to come out that late would somehow spike the landing on the first or second try and figure out everything there is to know about long-term relationships in a year?

Looking ahead: It took less than a year for the newly-out son to find a guy to marry. It's just fine if he takes a few years to find a different, less pathological guy to be his second husband.

P.S. there should be a number of boyfriends between husband#1 and husband#2.

P.P.S. Bluntly, your son has problems. I don't know what exactly those problems are, but coming out at 27 in 2013 is screwed up. Marrying the first guy he could, within 3 months, after being out less than a year, is fucked up. When 28-year-old children like 16-year-olds, parents need to act like parents of 16-year-olds.

I second @22.

vennominom- Your circumlocution, while pretty, generally obsures your point so thoroughly that now I tend to skip your posts. Consider something like this: plainlanguage.nih.gov

LW; as a mother of adult sons in their late and middle 20s, I can empathize with your concern. My sons let me know, very clearly, to stay the hell out of their lives. Which, to be honest, I'm more than glad to do.
However, if one of them seemed to be in a situation that concerned and distressed me, I would clearly( and probably often) state my concerns.
But really, each of us , as adults, have to run our own stories in life.
The crying and worrying really helps no one.

I thought @21 was clear. I admit I am sometimes mystified by the contents of vennominom's posts, but this one seemed straight-forward to me. Maybe I am missing something, but I thought the basic idea was that attempting to treat a gay son (or daughter) exactly the same as a straight son (or daughter) may be problematic, since treating any two people exactly the same is tricky to begin with, and parents are likely to feel differently about the two situations (even if they don't want to; even if the "different" isn't "worse"). Acknowledging that, and going just a bit more slowly or kindly to be careful (without repressing all urge to comment) seems fair.

The LW's son is 28. You can't treat an adult like a teenager even when he is acting like one. Dan's advice is just right. I imagine it would be very different if we were discussing an actual 15-year-old.

What a nice exchange, despite the painful trip mom is on.

@23 - great, right up until PPS...that wasn't quite necessary.

I don't know what the mother could have done differently. Do most 28-year-olds ask their parents for advice on how to conduct their love lives? Do most take advice that's offered unsolicited? Unless the son asked his mom's permission to marry, there's not much you can do when your 28-year-old adult child tells you he's in love or he's planning to marry someone he's just met (and the first person he's presumably dated) or he's gone ahead and actually married.

All you can do is to still love him and try to find a way to deal with the reality. You put the best face on it you can and try to hope for the best outcome. You accept your kid's choice of partner and try to find the good in him. You adopt an "innocent until proven guilty" attitude.

And when it's over, and the guy's proved himself to be toxic to your child, and after you've dried some tears, talk about how to do things differently and better next time.

This applies to sons and daughters, gay and straight, recently out or out for 10 years. Good luck telling a 28-year-old how to live his life.

The most worrying thing is that the son is still with his messed-up husband. Perhaps now would be the time for some sort of intervention.

nocutename @30,

Model better boundaries maybe? The mother’s boundaries seem terrible and it sounds like her son is also unable to set limits on what he will put up with.

Alison: I don't see any terrible boundary problems, other than the son's being unable to kick the loser should-be-ex-husband the curb.

The mom loves her son and tried to love her son-in-law. My parents love me and tried (and I think, succeeded) to love my ex-husband. I love my kids and will try to love anyone they marry.

She helped them when they were short on money--something my parents have done for me and which I would do for my children, though I'd like them to be able to be self-sufficient. There is a difference between giving help when needed and infantilizing and keeping someone dependent and enabling them, and from this letter, we can't say that the mom's actions represent the latter.

She is crying about who her son is with and what is happening to him. Well, I'd cry, too, if my child fell in love with a person who cheats, gives my kid an sti, forges checks, and generally acts like a bull in the china shop that is my child's emotional well-being. Perhaps she's overreacting, but it's hard to watch your child go through so much pain, and then to watch him go back for more when he seemed to be safely out . . . I'd be upset, too.

Then again, maybe you'd say that I have terrible boundaries.

Plus, how at this point in life, is mom supposed to model better boundaries for her son? Should she stop caring?

Yeah, HIV is no big deal. It just amplifies other health risks (you're at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, hepatitis C, kidney disease, certain cancers, etc); you'll have to take drugs your whole life, some with serious side effects (and deal with interactions with non-HIV drugs); and you'll be at much higher risk for opportunistic infections (everything from pneumonia to tuberculosis to toxoplasmosis).

So hey, no worries!

M? Clods - Well re-stated. I agree with the expressed position that rubber-stamping is not constructive, but find that posts advising against the rubber-stamp attitude often get too harsh in tone.

*****

I think Mr Kenai is a little before his time in expecting LG attitudes about marrying to fall neatly into line with S attitudes (I don't know where to stick the Bs - Mr Alan? Mr O?). I suspect that Mr Kenai is more or less on the right track for the long picture - given the different logistics, my guess is that, when the dust settles, successful SS marriage will likely occur later in the relationship than successful OS marriage.

But why should the who, where, when, how and why of LG marriages be exactly the same as that of S marriages right now? (One doesn't even need differing orientations for an example. Think of how Arthur and Henry [VIII] Tudor were raised to regard matrimony. Until Arthur died, Henry wasn't going to marry at all.) The youngest LG people of marriageable age in the US have barely had the possibility available for half their lives, and only to the tiniest extent for half of that period. Some of us married in haste because the window of opportunity might not have remained open all that long. Others have had their lives and attitudes influenced by being politicized, debated and voted upon, in a way their straight siblings did not. LW's daughters, if they are straight, have been able to approach their sexuality without any of the upheaval of the last few years/decades, and having known from birth that marriage was For Them.

Granted, this doesn't do much to solve the problem of what allies or family members should do in such a case. I'd just advise any straight parent/friend/ally in a similar situation before the fact to be prepared to encounter and acknowledge the presence of some reasons and rationale for marrying that they won't instinctively get, and to be able to try to centre any such in the discussion.

WRONG! henry was going to marry, whether or not he wanted to. that was the state of royal affairs in the late 15th, early 16th century. if you were a member of the english royal family, you married the person your parents/regents chose for you, regardless of whether you loved them or not. henry wanted to marry arthur's widow katherine, but could not until he was king in his own right. it might have been better for all if he hadn't, because we all know what happened then.

spam on aisle 36!

Son does sound incredibly immature... I'd never heard that you kind of lose your mind when you first come out, regardless of age. He'll never know what it's like to feel loved if he doesn't dump this manipulative sociopath. Poor schmuck.

WHO did not recommend that ALL sexually active gay men go on Truvada. They recommended that all sexually active gay men who are at risk for HIV go on it.

@2: "Marrying at 28 is a bad idea? That's almost 30!--after the average age of first marriage in the U.S. Come on, Dan, remember some of us are straight women concerned about fertility."

Which is not a huge concern at 30?

@41 If I understand correctly, most women's fertility starts declining in their mid-30's. Also, a lot of couples don't want to start popping out kids as soon as they get married, for a variety of reasons.

Personally, I think any age is too young to get married or have children (but a lot of folks do it anyway).

Fertility starts to decline much earlier than the mid-30s. In the mid-30s it takes a woman on average 18 months to get pregnant.

I wonder LW, if you should have a talk to both of them together ?
Just lay it all out- your worries about the whole situation, how you are crying and worrying ..this could be a pretty radical move;
Own your feelings about the situation. Mention that you are contemplating seeing a therapist about it, as you do want your life and don't want to be worrying.. Like I said, radical move.
It would be a move I'd think of making, if I was feeling the level of concern and anguish that you sound like you're feeling.

I don't think that's correct, 43. The majority of mid-to-late 30's women still conceive within a year, though the percentage of women who don't rises.

I also don't see the big deal about it taking 18 months as opposed to 12 months to get pregnant, even when that is the case. Unless you want a massive family, I guess. So you have to wait six months longer to get a baby, you'll have the baby for a lot longer than that. It's not getting pregnant *at all*, *ever*, that worries most women.

@43/45, if women learn to chart their fertility (checking cervical fluid & basal temperatures for a few months) and have a man willing and able to participate on the right days, it shouldn't take nearly that long to get pregnant. The problem is that many women just stop using birth control and think that's enough to get pregnant quickly.

I wanted to second what @33 said about: HIV infection is no longer a death sentence

It may no longer be a death sentence in and of itself, but living longer with HIV+ also means those longer years are plagued with a host of other, secondary issues & illnesses that can make that life an agonizing decline. Aphasia and the related brain damage (to name just one possible horror) can make mere speaking and conversation heart-rendingly tragic.

Unless it's 100% that you're not getting back together, DO NOT tell your family that your spouse has been wicked because you might forgive your spouse but they never will.

While I would say that most twenty-eight-year-olds are old enough to get married, this guy should have waited longer after coming out.