CHAPTER 10

WILL THEY STILL LOVE ME?

The breaking point came in early October 2012. And I knew I’d reached the breaking point because after a lifetime of keeping my sexual orientation secret I told a total stranger, a straight girl, that I was gay. My spontaneous coming out happened one evening at a bar in London’s Soho neighborhood. It was the kind of place where twenty- and thirty-something professionals go after work for a drink. I’d gone right from training to meet a couple of my buddies, who brought four of their other friends, including a couple of gay guys and a stylish East London girl I’ll call “Jessica.” It was a quiet weekday evening and there was a mixed straight and gay crowd of maybe thirty or forty people.

We all sat at a table together and chatted. I had a beer, and since it was a work night we didn’t stay long. Once we were all out on the sidewalk saying goodbye, Jessica’s friends went to a cash machine while she waited with me in front of the bar, and out of the blue she said, “One of my friends fancies you. Are you straight or gay?” Without really thinking about it I said, “I’m gay.” After all those years of hiding and pretending and lying I’d said, “I’m gay,” to someone I’d just met. And maybe that’s why I did it. Telling a complete stranger was a low-stakes dress rehearsal for what I knew was coming.

After spending so many years hiding and being afraid of what people would think if they knew I was gay, I was surprised by how easily I’d said: “I’m gay.” It felt good, but it also felt weird hearing myself say it, because I’d never said it out loud before. Then Jessica asked me if I noticed all the guys at the bar who were hitting on me and I answered honestly that I didn’t have a clue. To this day I never notice when someone is interested in me—a remnant, I think, from how well I’d trained myself never to be attracted to men in general. I just never allowed myself to go there.

It turned out that Jessica and I were going in the same direction and she asked if I wanted to grab a drink on the way home. If I’d been my sister Alicia I would have said, “No, thanks,” because I really didn’t want to go for a drink. Alicia’s great at saying exactly what she thinks and feels, and she wouldn’t waste energy or time with someone she doesn’t want to. But I’ve spent my life trying to be nice, and it was almost impossible for me to say no to anything. I’ve come to understand that trying to please people has been my way to compensate—overcompensate is more like it—for the fact that I’m gay, which I’d perceived as such a huge negative that it needed to be compensated for. So even though I really wanted to go home, I said yes, and Jessica and I caught a bus heading for the neighborhood in East London where she lived.

Just as we were getting off the bus, Jessica’s phone rang and after a brief back-and-forth she handed it to me and said, “Rob wants to talk to you.” Rob was one of her friends I’d met earlier that evening, who was gay, and he said, “I just wanted you to know that Jessica is trying to hook up with you.” I was stunned because I didn’t have a clue. Also, it was really weird that he called tell to me. And I was shocked that Jessica wanted to hook up with me, because she knew I was gay. I’ve learned since that girls who are attracted to me don’t seem to care whether I’m gay or not.

There was no way I was going to hook up with Jessica. Still, I didn’t know how to extract myself gracefully, so after I handed the phone back to her we went to a cute little bar to hang out. I didn’t tell Jessica what her friend had told me and she didn’t ask, which also surprised me. We had one drink and talked about East London real estate and Jessica’s work as an actress, and after about forty-five minutes it felt like enough time to say that I needed to call it a night. Once we got outside, Jessica asked me to walk her back to her place, which I knew I wasn’t going to do because I didn’t want to give her the impression that I was going to spend the night with her. So I walked her partway, spotted a cab, hailed it, gave Jessica a polite hug good night, and headed home.

One of the things I discovered over the course of the evening was that Jessica’s brother was a Leeds fan, so the next morning I sent her a text message saying that I liked to keep my life private and that I hoped she wouldn’t say anything to her brother. I was tired of hiding, but I didn’t want news of the fact that I was gay to spread from one Leeds fan to the next, and before you knew it the British tabloids would be calling my mother in California. Jessica texted me back, “Don’t worry, I understand.”

Despite how awkwardly the evening ended, the experience of coming out to Jessica gave me a taste of freedom and made me realize I wasn’t as terrified of people knowing I was gay as I’d thought I was—which isn’t to say I wasn’t still very, very afraid.

Up until this point I’d planned to wait until I went home in December or January to tell my family in person, but tasting freedom made me even more eager to get out from under my huge secret. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t already been obsessing about it for weeks and months. I’d think about it when I woke up in the morning, while I was in the shower, while I was shaving, while I was making my breakfast, while I was on the Tube—constantly. Am I really going to tell the truth? How am I going to do it? What will it mean for my life, for soccer? Where am I going to live? Who will I tell first? How will I tell them? What will they think? So many questions.

With all that stuff swimming around in my head I wound up feeling trapped in my body, like I was going to suffocate if I didn’t find a way out. I recognize now that a lot of my fears about coming out to my family were unfounded, especially with my siblings, but by the time I started making plans to tell my family the truth I was so stressed, anxious, and fearful that I wasn’t thinking rationally. I was simply terrified, because nothing in life scared me more than the possibility of my family distancing themselves from me if they ever knew the truth. That fear drove me to do everything I could to hide, but it was long past time to make my escape from the prison I’d built for myself. It wasn’t worth the price I had to pay just so I could keep playing soccer. I decided in the end that no matter how my family reacted, my life would have to be better on the other side.

There was one other thing that was pushing me to tell my family the truth. I needed to tell them I was gay before someone else did. I wanted to believe that Jessica would keep my secret, but I didn’t think it was paranoid to imagine the story of me being gay finding its way into the media. Given that my mother and father and brother and sisters were the most important people in the world to me, for them to find out through another source would have killed me and killed them, because they could have easily thought I didn’t care enough to tell them myself. Also, I wanted them to hear directly from me what an emotional thing this was for me and to tell them what I’d been through since I’d first gone into hiding. If I could explain it all to them, I knew—or at least I hoped—they’d understand.

While I was in London struggling in secret to figure out how I was going to tell my family I was gay, I was vaguely keeping tabs on the big marriage equality battle going on back at home. Just a few months before, President Obama had announced his support for same-sex marriage—something no sitting president had ever done before. Going into the election no one knew whether taking such a bold position on a hot-button social issue would help or hurt his chances of being reelected.

I read about all of this on Twitter, but it was more background noise than anything. I was so caught up in my own struggle over coming out that it didn’t feel like the marriage equality fight had a lot to do with me; the thought of getting married to a man never even crossed my mind. I hadn’t even been on a date with a guy! And just because the President of the United States supported marriage equality didn’t meant that I’d be accepted—let alone embraced—for being gay, especially by my family.

Before I reached out to Alicia—I’d decided to tell my sister first—I thought through all the possible scenarios and ramifications. (In truth I obsessed about it more than thought about it in an organized way.) Would they feel like they didn’t know me anymore? Would they wonder what this meant about my life? Would they hold it against me that I’d lied to them all this time, that I’d tried to deceive them into believing I was straight when I was really gay? Would they ever trust me again? Would they treat me differently? Would they understand? Would they reject me? Would they still love me?

Deep down I think I knew that my sisters and brother would be okay with it. They never gave me any reason to believe they wouldn’t accept me. I never heard them say anything hateful about gay people. But, then, I never heard them say anything positive on the subject, either, although I’m not sure that would have made much of a difference.

With my mom, I knew she would still love me. My mom lives for her kids. But I was worried that she might not understand and would reject me initially, that she wouldn’t be supportive, would distance herself and treat me differently. If she said, “I need to think about it,” I would have felt devastated, because expressing any doubt about her love for me would have made me think our relationship had changed forever.

I was worried by the stories I’d heard about others in similar circumstances, like Tyler Clementi, the college student who wound up killing himself in the fall of 2010 after coming out to his parents and being spied on by his roommate when he was kissing another guy. Tyler’s parents were religious and he’d told friends he felt like his mother rejected him. (It turns out that what his mom actually said was that she “needed time.”)

I also remember overhearing someone tell one of my friends about how difficult it was for his mother when he came out to her. And another time I was watching a show on MTV where a gay teen said, “My mom didn’t accept me at first, but then she got over it.” Some people might hear that story and feel hopeful, that a mother came to accept her gay child, but all I could focus on was the initial rejection.

One thing that didn’t occur to me was to do any research to see if I could get advice on how to come out to my family. I had so successfully isolated myself and screened out the gay world (except for the bad things I heard people say) that I had no idea there were gay organizations that provide all kinds of advice for people who want to come out to their parents. There’s even an organization for gay Catholics. I was totally clueless, but I didn’t let that stop me.

Looking back to that time, it’s hard for me to remember just how scared I was. But then I remind myself of how much I had to get beyond in order to take the next step and call my sister Alicia. It was an accumulation from my whole life of all the things I’d heard in the past that made me hate myself—that left me thinking I was a fundamentally flawed, bad person. If I felt that way about myself, why wouldn’t my family think the same things about me and reject me? So telling the truth meant pushing past all that fear, convincing myself that I was a good person, that God loved me as I was, and then finding the courage to at least take the first step and tell Alicia.

There was something else going through my head at that time. My decision to come out to my family was not about them. I wasn’t doing this for them; this whole thing was about me. It was about me coming to terms with myself. It was about me realizing that I wasn’t a bad person, that I was supposed to do good on this earth. So in the end it didn’t matter what anyone else said or thought. At least that’s what I told myself. Yes, I was afraid, but I needed to get this done and I needed to do it for myself.

There was never a question in my mind that Alicia would be first. She has a strong character and we love each other very much. She’s the kind of person I felt comfortable talking to about everything, except the fact that I was gay. She’s a very emotional person and she’s acutely aware of what other people are feeling, which I’m sure is something that serves her well in her work as a nurse.

Sometimes I think Alicia is psychic, because she can sense when things aren’t right. Or she’ll talk about being with a patient when he’s died and she can feel the energy leave the room. She’s also always been in tune with everything that’s going on in my life. But that didn’t mean I felt one hundred percent certain about how she’d respond when I told her. What Alicia had said to me the previous Christmas about not believing in gay marriage and how she didn’t know whether being gay was something you were born with or learned worried me and made me wonder. What if she told me that she still loved me but couldn’t accept that I was gay? I didn’t know if I could handle it if that was how she reacted.

In early November I emailed Alicia and wrote, “Hey, let’s make a date to go on Skype,” but I didn’t let on that there was anything big I wanted to tell her. A couple of days before the call I wrote a letter, which I planned to email to Alicia once we were on Skype so she could read it on her own and then we’d talk about it. I knew that I could never say all the things I wanted to say face-to-face, even via Skype. It was a lot easier for me to write down everything than to get intensely emotional on the call, so that’s how I came up with this two-step coming-out plan. In the letter I said that I’d known for a long time I was gay, that I’d been struggling, that I’d wanted to tell her earlier but I just couldn’t. And I said, “This isn’t something I chose, but it’s something that I am. It’s how I was created. It doesn’t change anything.” The tone of the note was almost apologetic because I felt so bad about not talking to Alicia sooner.

I was nervous writing the letter, but not nearly as nervous and scared and super-jittery as I was when I sat on my bed after practice and opened my computer to make the call. It was about three in the afternoon in London, so about seven a.m. in California where Alicia was. I’d been obsessing about the call the whole week and was lucky I didn’t get run over crossing the street on my way home because I was so on edge and distracted.

My hands were sweating as I brought Skype up on my laptop screen and clicked on Alicia’s number. I kept telling myself that my sister would still love me, but I worried that she’d be upset because I’d lied to her for so long. All that lying, and not just with Alicia, left me feeling totally ashamed.

Once Alicia and I were connected and said our hellos, I said, “I’m going to send you an email that you can’t show anyone, that’s really private. I want you to read it when we’re off Skype and then call me right back.” Alicia cautioned me about emailing to her AOL account. “I think Dad can look at my AOL account,” she said. I didn’t know how much of a risk that was, but I was so paranoid of anyone finding out without me telling them first that I told Alicia to create a Gmail account that no one else had access to, which she did, and then I sent the letter and we signed off.

As soon as I sent the email I remember thinking, Oh, shit! I knew deep down that Alicia would always love me, but as well as I knew her I couldn’t know what she was thinking and couldn’t know what she’d say. I hadn’t told anyone in my family. Gosh, I hadn’t told anyone in the world except for Jessica, who was basically a stranger, and I didn’t care what she thought. What Alicia thought meant everything to me—if she questioned our relationship or had anything negative to say, I didn’t think I could take it.

Maybe thirty seconds later Alicia called me back. I didn’t think she’d had enough time to read the whole email, but when she came back on Skype I could see she had tears in her eyes. Here’s what Alicia said she remembers feeling when she first read the email:

I had a sense of relief and shame. The relief was, finally, he said it. I thought, The truth will set you free. Thank goodness! I was thinking maybe Robbie had been sexually abused because of the way he was hiding things. So it was also a relief that he’s just gay! And I felt shame that he couldn’t confide in me when he was younger, and he had to go through all that pain alone and that I couldn’t protect him when my dad was yelling at him. I just wish I’d been able to hold his hand when he was little and somehow let him know he was good and it was okay. I also felt bad that in the past I’d said to Robbie that I didn’t believe in gay marriage and didn’t know if it was something you were born with or learned.

Knowing now how Alicia felt after reading my letter, I think she was being too hard on herself. She was a wonderful sister to me growing up and as far as marriage equality and how someone winds up gay, all of us in our family have come a long way in our thinking about all of this stuff, including me.

The first things Alicia said to me after reading the letter were, “I love you so much, Robbie. I don’t care that you’re gay. I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through all of this by yourself.” She said she was happy for me that I didn’t have to struggle with this alone anymore. Alicia also asked, “What do you need from me? What do you want to do?”

I told Alicia that I needed to tell Mom, and she offered to do it for me. For a moment I thought it would be easier that way, but I knew I needed to tell Mom myself. I said, “I was thinking I’d come home in January and talk to Mom in person.” Alicia was emphatic that I needed to tell her sooner, that Mom was worried about me. I told her that I’d have to think about it.

Not so surprisingly, I wasn’t the only one in my family keeping secrets. Alicia didn’t tell me that even before I told her I was gay, she and Mom had talked about it. She’d been having dreams about me and remembers feeling a sense of darkness around me, that something was troubling me. She told me later that in the dream I was climbing this mountain and I was wearing a big hat. We talked about what it meant, that maybe it was about me struggling, and that the big hat represented me being different.

So Alicia had mentioned to Mom that she was worried, and Mom agreed that there was “something holding Robbie back.” Alicia suggested that perhaps I was gay, and they wound up having a conversation in which they sorted through all the clues and all the things that did and didn’t add up, like the fact that I’d dated girls in the past. They also discussed how they should react if it turned out that what they suspected was true. That explains why Alicia wanted me to tell Mom right away, but I didn’t know they’d already been talking about it. I just knew that I needed some breathing room to overcome my fears for a second time so I could tell Mom. I’d need even more courage to tell Mom than I had with Alicia, because what my mom thought and felt about me mattered more than anyone’s opinion in the world. So Alicia got stuck having to fend off our mother’s questions in the weeks that followed, even though she’d already learned the truth. Alicia hates lying, so I know this was painful for her and I’m sorry for having put her through that.

Alicia and I talked for probably an hour and it took most of that hour for me to calm down. It felt like I’d just climbed off a roller coaster, the adrenaline still working its way through my system. Alicia asked lots of questions: How long did I know I was gay? Was I dating anyone? Had I had a relationship in the past? It was a really easy and free-flowing conversation, which is how it’s always been with her.

At the end of the call Alicia said, “Love you, Robber.” I told Alicia I loved her and signed off. That night she sent me a supportive text and then we Skyped every day for a week (and every other day in the weeks after) and talked about the things we always did, but we also speculated about how various family members would react. For the most part she thought everyone would be okay with the news that I was gay, but Alicia was concerned about our mom, our dad, and our grandparents. I was most worried about my mother. Catholicism plays such a big role in our mom’s life that Alicia said she just didn’t know how Mom would react. That was a big question mark for both of us.

It took me weeks to get up the courage to tell my mother, but I couldn’t wait forever because it wasn’t fair to Alicia. I knew when I first told Alicia that once I’d told one member of my family the truth, I’d be forced to tell everyone else in my family, too.

So I took a deep breath after getting off yet one more call in which Alicia begged me to tell our mother and emailed my mom to set up a Skype date. My plan was to do the same thing as I had with Alicia: write the letter, Skype, email the letter and have Mom read it, and then Skype again.

In the letter, which I wrote in my bedroom at home after training one afternoon, I said a lot of the same things to my mother that I had written in my letter to Alicia, so it should have been easier; but given that it was my mom, it was even more challenging and nerve-wracking the second time around. Here’s what I wrote:

Mom,

This is the hardest thing I have ever had to write or go through in my life.

Sometimes I think, Why would God put me through this?, but I have come to realize that He has a purpose for me. He has a plan for everyone obviously, and although my path will not be easy I choose to be honest.

As you might have suspected I am gay. The only reason I say you might have suspected is because you are my mom. I honestly believe moms can feel these kinds of things and we are very, very close.

I have been this way forever. I would not choose this life for myself or anyone close to me, but I have come to accept it and I am proud of the person I have become.

I have tried my whole life not to be gay, because of the way I was raised and because of my beliefs. Constantly struggling with myself has not been healthy and this has made me closed off emotionally to a lot of people.

I have dated girls, hooked up with girls, prayed, read books, all in the failing effort to try to change myself. I have come to the conclusion that this is not what He wants, nor is it what I want. After twenty-five years I have accepted myself and I have realized I was created this way for a reason.

As you know God created us all with our different talents and skills. He created us to be different, and because of this I can’t believe the life He chose for me is a life of sin.

I know I am a good person. I care for people, love my family and friends.

I am gay and I have to break barriers and be the same person that I have always been.

I am sorry I had to write this to you but it would be too hard for me to tell you in person mainly because I know that this is a disappointment for you.

I want you to know I will always be the same person. My beliefs have not changed. I still believe in the same life principles.

My whole life I have felt alone because of this and I believe I am ready to be open with people.

I want you to know you can tell as many people as you want and if you don’t want to tell anyone, as well, I 100% understand that.

I am sure Grandpa and Grammers won’t understand but in time I think people will realize I am still the same good person.

Again, I know this will be hard for you to come to terms with, but I will always love you no matter what.

Lets talk this over, but I had to put it into words first so you could understand how I am feeling.

Love your Son,
Robbie

I read that letter now and can feel how much I was still struggling to come to terms with who I was, and I can see how a lot of what I wrote in that letter was for me, not my mom. As much as I needed to tell my mother that I was a good person and that this was how God created me, I needed to tell myself, too. I can also see what a long way I’d come from the days when I prayed for God to make me straight.

When I emailed my mother to tell her I wanted to Skype, I wrote, “Hey mom, I need to talk to you about something.” I don’t know if she knew anything was up. In the past I would have said the same thing and the “something” could have been anything from soccer stuff to “I need help with my taxes.” I Skyped with my mom a lot, so maybe she could feel that this was different. I’ve always felt really connected to my mom and we’ve had what’s felt like a special relationship, but I also struggled in my relationship with her because I couldn’t share so much of what was going on inside me and was afraid she wouldn’t like this side of me because of her religious beliefs.

For my mom, church comes first. She goes to mass every single day. She speaks at mass. She reads the Bible. She says the rosary every night. I could only imagine it would be a challenge for her to have a son whose very identity was disapproved of by her Church. I know that’s not the case with everyone. There are a lot of Catholics who don’t agree with the Church about a lot of things, but my mom is very committed to the principles of the Catholic Church and I was afraid that because of her beliefs she would wonder whether I’d be going to hell because I was gay.

When I sat down to Skype with my mom I was even more anxious and scared than I had been with my sister. My heart was pounding hard in my chest like it was trying to escape. I could feel the sweat dripping off my scalp and down my back. But despite my state of mind I was determined to be strong during the call. What I wanted to project was This is who I am and this is how God made me, which is a belief that took me years to embrace. I didn’t want my mother to think this was something I’d just decided on a whim. And I didn’t want her to think I thought that being gay was a bad thing, or that I was upset about being gay, despite how much I’d struggled in the past.

I called my mom on Skype and as soon as she was on I said, “Mom, I need to talk to you about something.” Right away I could see a look of concern on her face. She didn’t look worried, just focused in the way that she always was when I asked her for help. I explained to her that I’d written a letter and was going to email it. I said, “Can you read it and call me right back?” She said okay and we signed off.

I talked to my mom later about what it was like for her reading my letter, and here’s what she remembers:

I didn’t read the letter once. I read it a couple of times. It contained such a potpourri of feelings, and experiencing those feelings felt almost like an avalanche. It was an answer. It was an explanation. It was a relief. Finally this is here. It was almost exciting because this was a new beginning. But I was also filled with anxiety and fear. What does this mean? Does this mean he’s not going to be a part of my life? Or does he mean that this is who I am and let’s go forward? And I was left wondering, How can I not have been there for him? How did I fail in letting Robbie know that I loved him no matter what?

While I sat waiting for my mom to call back, I was so anxious and scared that I just stared at the computer waiting for it to ring with my Mom’s call. After two minutes it rang. When Mom came up on my computer screen she looked so calm and peaceful that I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. She said, “Robbie, I love you so much. It doesn’t matter to me.” As soon as I heard those words I started crying—crying with relief from having told her, and crying with appreciation for her love and support. I said, “Mom, I didn’t expect to be so emotional.” I told her I wasn’t expecting such support from her right off the bat. And then Mom was crying, too. She said, “I hate that you had to struggle for so long about this on your own.”

My mother also told me something that she’d said many times in the past, that I was a gift from God and that God made me perfect. Whenever she’d said that before, I always wondered, What would she say if she knew how not perfect I was? But now she knew the whole truth about me and she was still saying it. Honestly, I was shocked and confused, because it was so not what I had expected to hear.

We must have Skyped for an hour after that. We talked about everything from who I wanted to tell to what I was going to do about soccer. I told Mom that at the end of the year I was going to walk away. I wasn’t going to tell anyone why I was retiring from soccer. I said, “I’m going to be Robbie Rogers who is no longer a soccer player and I’m going to apply to fashion design school.” I explained that I didn’t want to be the poster boy for gay athletes, that I just wanted to have my life for the first time in my life.

Mom also asked me if I wanted her to tell anyone. I told her that I was planning to tell my brother and other two sisters and she asked if it would be okay with me if she talked to my brother, Tim, before I did. My mother thought it would be easier for Tim if she told him in person than for me to tell him via Skype. Mom is very protective of us and our relationships with each other and I know she felt better doing it that way.

So that left my two other sisters, my father, and my grandparents. Mom asked me how I wanted to tell her parents, Grandpa and Grammers, and I said I wanted to tell them in person when I came home—I was extremely concerned about disappointing them, especially given that they’re very traditional and conservative midwestern Catholics. We agreed that I’d tell Dad later because I was afraid he might not keep my confidence while I figured out what to do about soccer. I also said that I’d let Dad tell his parents himself. I love my father’s parents, but they live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, so I only saw them about once a year when I was growing up. And for that reason I was more comfortable letting him talk to them, and I figured I’d follow up by writing to them after.

My mom had remarried, and I told her that it was up to her if she wanted to tell her husband, Jeff. I’d heard homophobic things from Jeff in the past, so I wasn’t eager to have that conversation. Two years prior I’d overheard a conversation in which Jeff and my mother were talking about two men getting married, and Jeff said, “If they want to get married I don’t want to go to a gay wedding.” But that was really nothing compared to the big blowup we’d had when I was fourteen or fifteen. Jeff asked me if I had a girlfriend and when I said that I didn’t he said, “What, are you gay?” I got really mad and defensive because by then I knew I was gay and was terrified that he’d blow my cover. I challenged him and said in a really angry voice, “Why would you ask me that? Why would you even bring it up?” In the end I wound up apologizing to him for losing my temper and he said it was “very manly” of me to apologize, and he apologized in turn. So I didn’t think he’d be surprised that I was gay, but I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with him.

My mother also asked if I’d had any relationships in the past (I hadn’t), and she asked how I felt about same-sex marriage and if I ever wanted to get married and have a kid. I said, “Mom, I have no idea. I’m just trying to figure out things one day at a time.” And it wasn’t like I could have gotten legally married in California at that time even if I’d had someone special in my life and wanted to. It would be another seven months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Prop 8 and cleared the way for same-sex marriages in my home state. (I couldn’t have gotten legally married to a man in the UK, either, in November 2012, but in July 2013 Britain legalized same-sex marriage.)

At the end of the hour I think we were both wrung out. Before we ended the call Mom said, “If you need to talk to me about anything, just give me a call. I love you and you need to know that I’m supporting you. I’m just happy that you felt you could tell us now.”

I said, “Thank you. I love you.”

It’s hard to describe the feeling I had when I got off the phone—a powerful mix of euphoria, relief, and exhaustion—but mostly I was thrilled. I remember thinking, Wow! I just did that! I was so happy to know that I was still my mom’s son and that being gay didn’t change our relationship at all. It felt like the best day of my life!

For the next few weeks Mom and I Skyped every day and she texted me all the time. In subsequent days we talked about the usual things, like my life in London, my friends, my sister’s pregnancy. Just normal chat, but even though most of the things we talked about were the things we had talked about before I came out, it was qualitatively different for me. I could be myself, relaxed and unguarded. I didn’t have to monitor everything I said to make sure I didn’t say anything that would give me away. I didn’t have to be on high alert that my mom would ask me something I couldn’t answer or would have to lie about. I could be honest. While I wouldn’t go out of my way to say that I’d gone out to a gay bar, one time when Mom asked me what I’d done the night before, I told her, “Yeah, I went out to this gay bar and met some people . . .” I described the people I had seen and how different gay people were from each other. I talked about how there’s this stereotyped view that all gay people are the same or similar, but just like at straight clubs, you see every type of person.

Through the whole conversation Mom was right there with me. She wasn’t judgmental and she’d be the first person to say that God created us all to be different. Sometimes Mom would laugh about the funny stories I told her about my experiences going out. Just as it was all new to me, it was all so new for her, too. It was great to be able to share these things with my mom as I explored them. For a change I didn’t feel so alone, and that felt really good.

The one time I went on high alert was when Mom told me she’d talked with her priest. I thought, Uh-oh, I wonder what he had to say. But then she told me what he said: “Theresa, this isn’t about you and your son and your relationship with God. This is about your son and his relationship with God. From what I know about your son, he’s a lovely boy who a lot of people enjoy being around. Stop worrying about him and just love him.” I agreed with the priest that my relationship with God was nobody’s business but my own. I could tell from the way my mother told me about her conversation with the priest that she was relieved, but I still think she worries about whether I’ll go to heaven.

Although I shared a lot with my mother in the weeks that followed, I didn’t share everything. Between the time I came out to my sister and when I talked to my mother, I’d met a man I liked. He’s a private person (although totally open about being gay), so I’ll call him “Scott.” I didn’t talk to my mom about meeting Scott or going on dates with him. I didn’t know how serious it was, so it didn’t seem appropriate or necessary to say anything. I’d remembered my brother and sisters bringing home people they weren’t serious about and thinking, Why bother? For me to bring someone home to meet my mom and my dad and my brother and sisters it would have to be a pretty serious relationship.

But really, I just wasn’t ready to deal with that amount of personal detail. It was one thing to say I was gay, but a whole other thing to talk about having a boyfriend. I was still so uncomfortable myself going on my first few dates with Scott, and I had no idea where the relationship was going. I couldn’t imagine having to talk about that on top of everything else I’d just talked about. I was already answering a lot of questions and this seemed like too much. If it got serious, then I’d have to say something. After finally coming out, I didn’t want to fall back into hiding the truth about my life, but I came to realize that coming out didn’t mean I forfeited a zone of privacy. It would take me a while to figure out how far out that zone extended, but at least for now I decided that I didn’t need to talk with my family about Scott.

One thing my mom wanted to talk about that I definitely did not want to talk about was anything to do with my sex life, and I don’t think that’s much different from any mother and son whether or not he’s gay. But just because it wasn’t something I didn’t want to talk about didn’t mean it was something my mother would just let go, not given her close-up experience helping friends and clients who had AIDS and the fact that she’s a nurse and a lawyer. Mom could tell I was uncomfortable with that conversation, so when it became clear I wasn’t going to engage her, she simply said, “I may not be the person that you talk to about this, but there is no option that you remain ignorant. So choose in any way that you want to become educated, but become educated.” I could hardly argue with my mother, because that’s the kind of advice I would give to any young person who is thinking about becoming sexually active.

I learned an important lesson from my experience of coming out to my mother. And it was something that I came to discover was also true about a lot of my fellow soccer players when I later went public about being gay. Even though my mom had said things in the past that led me to believe she was homophobic, deep down she really wasn’t someone who hated gay people. In fact, if I’d been paying more attention I would have realized that some of my mother’s friends and clients were gay (as I’m sure that some of my teammates had friends and family who were gay). But at the time I just couldn’t see it, because I’d made assumptions about my mother and her views because of my own stereotypes about people who are traditionally religious. I should have known better. Sorry, Mom.

A short time after I told my mother, I told my youngest sister, Katie, and I did it in the same way I told my mom and Alicia. You might think—and I might have thought—that after telling Alicia and Mom that I was gay and having it go so well, I wouldn’t be afraid anymore of telling anyone. I only wish that were true! I’ve discovered that this kind of fear does not go away overnight, especially when you’ve been scared for as long as I’d been scared. So I was still nervous telling Katie, although not as nervous as the first two times. Katie is brilliant. She’s this blond, beautiful girl and she writes the darkest stories. She’s really creative and thinks differently from a lot of people I know. I couldn’t imagine that she would have a problem with me being gay.

It turns out that Katie was at Starbucks when we Skyped, so it wasn’t ideal for a long conversation, especially since it wasn’t a good connection. Again I used the same routine but I wrote a much shorter note to Katie than I had to Alicia and Mom. In it I said, “Katie, I love you and I know you’re not going to care that I’m gay. You’re just such a lovely and amazing person and the only reason I didn’t tell you first was I knew you’d be okay with it.” Katie called me back on Skype and she was crying. She said, “I’m just so happy.” I asked her why and she said, “I’m so happy that you’re happy now, that you’ve come to this place in your life.” And after that we just talked about normal stuff, the routine fabric of our daily lives. That was the easiest.

Around the same time I told Katie, my mom told my brother and he sent me an email. In it he said, “Robbie, I just want you to know I love you and look up to you and this doesn’t change anything. I have so much respect for you as a person.” I wrote back and simply said, “Thank you so much for sending this to me.” It wasn’t a big deal for Tim, which itself was a really big deal to me. And it was just about the same with my sister Nicole. What I worried most about with Coco was that she’d feel bad that I told her last of my siblings, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was the only one of my siblings to tell me, after I told her, that she’d thought I might be gay because, as she said, “You’re a well-dressed, good-looking guy, and you never had a relationship.” As clueless as I still was about being gay, I knew enough to know that not all gay people dress well, and gay people come in all shapes and sizes and look no different from anyone else. In the moment I was tempted to correct my sister, but I decided to save that discussion for another time.

I waited two months from when I told my mother until I talked to my father. He was the last person of my immediate family I told, and he was unhappy about that. I knew he would be, which was why I was especially nervous telling him. But I didn’t think he’d have a problem with me being gay. Even though I’d heard some homophobic things from him in the past, he’d changed a lot since I was younger. If you asked him what his religious beliefs are now, he’d tell you that there are many pathways to heaven. When he was still with my mom he was devoutly Catholic.

I sent my dad an email and then I talked with him by phone. I didn’t give him a heads-up that I wanted to discuss something important. I just wrote an email and said that this was what I’d been struggling with and that one of the reasons it was hard for me to tell him was because it was man-to-man. I explained that most boys want to grow up to be like their dads. I wrote, “It was a little harder for me to say this to you, because in a fundamental way I’m not like you.”

In my email I also I apologized for telling my father last and I explained why. I said, “From my past experiences of sharing things with you that I had thought were in confidence but turned out not to be, I couldn’t trust that you could keep yourself from telling anyone.” I hadn’t yet decided how long I was going to wait before making a public statement—or whether I’d even make a public statement—but however long that was, I knew that once my father knew, it would be difficult for him to keep it to himself. I was pretty sure he’d tell his sister and his parents and they’d share it with others. That sort of thing had happened before when I told my father relatively inconsequential things about soccer and he shared them with his family before I was ready for them to know. Then I’d lose control of it and I’d hate that and wind up being really mad at him. Whether that was a realistic concern this time around or not, that’s what I was afraid of at the time, and I decided to be honest with my father about it even though I knew it would hurt his feelings.

Other than being upset with me for telling everyone before telling him, my dad was great. During our phone call he said, “I hate that you had to struggle for so long about this on your own” and that it pained him to know I’d been so alone. Since then we’ve been in regular communication, just as we were before I told him, so nothing’s really changed except that I was relieved I could be myself with him and talk about everything, just like I could be myself with my mother and brother and sisters.

In some ways it all felt too easy, but that’s not the kind of thing you can complain about. So I just thanked God for my family and felt like a very lucky man, especially knowing that not every gay person is accepted by his or her family in the way that I’ve been embraced by mine.

After I told Alicia I was gay I started telling my friends, too, from across the spectrum of my life. I’ve really been blessed because I’ve lived in a lot of places and along the way made some really good friends, mostly men and mostly straight. I was nervous with everyone. Even when things went well, which they did with every one of the twenty or so friends I told before the end of 2012, it made me nervous to have “the conversation,” and sometimes I’d make a date to meet up with a friend and then I’d wind up being too afraid and I’d have to try again the next time.

Two friends, Warren and Andy, stand out, mostly because I told them early on, so the experience was still new to me. I’d known Warren for two years, and Andy and I lived next door to each other when we played for the Columbus Crew. Andy and I met when I was nineteen and he was twenty-three, and we played soccer together for a few years. Andy is straight and Warren is gay. I know, how could I be nervous telling a gay friend I was gay? But I was. It wasn’t so much that I was afraid Warren would judge me because I was gay, but I was afraid he’d be upset with me for lying to him. And even if he was upset, I didn’t think he’d be that upset, but it was just so hard to get those words out of my mouth: I’m gay.

Andy was the first friend I told. I texted him and told him I was going to email him a letter and then we talked on Skype. In my letter I talked about my faith, my family, and about soccer, about struggling my whole life and accepting that this is who I am. When he called, he was incredibly supportive and said, “I’m so proud of you. When we first met, you were this successful and spoiled soccer player who always got what he wanted. And over time I’ve seen you struggle through your career with different challenges. I’m so happy that you’ve grown up enough and matured enough to recognize that this isn’t a big deal and now you’re ready to move on. And whatever it takes, you’re willing to be honest.”

Andy told me that he always thought I might be gay but it wasn’t something he was going to ask me. He said, “You could get whatever girl you wanted, but you weren’t interested in going out or doing any of that stuff, so it seemed pretty clear to me. Now you’re willing to break down barriers and be who you are. When people realize who you are and that you’re the same good person you’ve always been, a lot of kids are going to be able to connect with your experience.” I remember being in a panic when Andy said that, because I couldn’t yet wrap my mind around the idea of coming out publicly and absorbing the reactions of people who didn’t know me.

It was great being able to talk to Andy, because he was one of my best friends and he lived in London. Whenever we saw each other after that he always had questions for me: Are you dating anyone? Who have you told? Who are you going to tell? Are you going to release a statement? Do you think you’ll go back to soccer after you’ve come out? So he was someone I always felt comfortable talking to, and I was going to need his advice and support as I figured out what to do about my career in soccer.

I told Warren second. He lives in Los Angeles and he and his husband, James, are now among my closest friends. They have a place just down the street from me in West Hollywood. Back in November 2012, they were visiting their families in the UK (we had Thanksgiving together) and I couldn’t believe how nervous I was to begin the conversation. But I finally managed to do it while we were walking through London’s Hyde Park on a rare sunny day. I told Warren that I had something to tell him. Like Alicia, he’s a pretty tuned-in person, and he said later that as soon as I said I had something to tell him he knew what I was going to say.

I said, “Warren, we’ve been good friends and I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to say this because you’re gay, but I’m gay.” His reaction was totally understated. He gave me a hug and told me that he had the feeling I was, and that James thought I was, and then he basically said, “So, what’s next?” I told him I was probably going to step away from soccer, which he understood because he used to play and knows how homophobic soccer can be. And that was pretty much it. I have to admit that I was surprised by Warren’s reaction. I wasn’t expecting him to be dramatic, like, Are you okay? But I also didn’t expect him to be so low-key. In my head it was such a big thing, but he was so relaxed about it, which made me think that maybe one day I might come to think that it wasn’t such a big thing after all. (I’m not there yet.)

After I talked with my mother and sister, they both said I looked twenty pounds lighter. And I’m sure I looked even less burdened after my brother, two other sisters, father, and many of my friends knew, too. But as relieved as I was for all of them to now know the real Robbie Rogers—and I was massively relieved!—I knew it was only the beginning of a challenging journey. Still, the worst was behind me. As I came to learn, starting the “coming-out conversation” is the hardest part, and however fearful I’d been and still am about how people will feel about me once they knew the truth, nothing will ever be as difficult as telling the most important people in the world to me that I’m gay. I only wish I’d risked confiding in them sooner.