Linda C J TurnerTrauma Therapist | Neuroscience & Emotional Intelligence Practitioner | Advocate for Women’s Empowerment
There comes a point where hiding your truth becomes more damaging than living it.
Not just to you — but to the people who love you.
To the partners you lie to.
To the ones you cheat on.
To the ones you manipulate, gaslight, and punish — because you don’t yet have the courage to say out loud what your body and heart have been whispering for years.
It’s time to stop.
If you’re struggling with your sexuality and still living in the closet — whether you’re married, in a long-term relationship, or hiding behind social respectability — this message is for you:
Stop blaming others for the pain you’re unwilling to face within yourself.
We can have compassion for your journey — coming to terms with your identity in a world that often shames you is no small task.
But that compassion ends the moment you weaponize your shame against someone else.
The Cruelty of Living a Lie — and Making Someone Else Pay for It
Too many people are left emotionally shattered by partners who:
- Deny their truth while accusing you of being too much or too little.
- Cheat behind your back, then gaslight you when your intuition senses the truth.
- Emotionally abandon the relationship while clinging to the appearance of one.
- Project their self-loathing onto you, because they can’t bear to look in the mirror.
This is not just emotional unavailability.
It’s emotional abuse dressed up as confusion.
It’s cowardice wrapped in charm.
And it’s profoundly cruel.
From a Neuroscience Perspective: Why the Closet Becomes a War Zone
When someone is hiding a core part of who they are, their brain is in a chronic state of internal conflict. The limbic system — the brain’s emotional centre — is constantly activated. Fight, flight, freeze… and yes, fawn and facade. They live in fear of exposure, rejection, abandonment.
But instead of processing that fear with maturity and honesty, some turn it outward — using defensiveness, aggression, and deceit as a shield.
The longer someone lives out of alignment, the more likely their nervous system is to collapse into dysregulation — and it’s their closest loved ones who often pay the price.
It becomes easier to lie than to admit.
Easier to shame than to explain.
Easier to destroy a partner’s reality than to say the words that feel unspeakable:
“I’m not being honest. I’m not being myself. I’m not straight.”
But guess what? Not speaking your truth doesn’t erase it. It just causes collateral damage — and often to the one person who loved you without judgment.
It Takes Real Courage to Be Authentic
Coming out is hard.
Owning your identity is vulnerable.
You may lose people. You may face judgment. You may be terrified.
But that fear does not give you permission to mistreat those who have stood beside you in love, intimacy, and trust.
Your pain does not excuse your cruelty.
Your shame does not justify your cheating.
And your silence does not entitle you to destroy someone else’s mental health just because you won’t confront your own.
Be braver. Be better. Be honest.
If You’re on the Other Side of This…
If you’re the partner who has been lied to, gaslit, cheated on, or blamed by someone hiding their sexuality — please let me say this clearly:
- It was not your fault.
- You didn’t “turn them gay.”
- You weren’t lacking anything.
- You weren’t imagining things.
- And you are allowed to be angry, hurt, confused, and heartbroken.
You were pulled into a storm that wasn’t yours. You tried to love someone who wasn’t loving themselves — and that’s not a reflection of your worth. It’s a reflection of their unresolved war within.
And now, it’s time to come home to you.
To the person still hiding: Your healing begins the moment you stop blaming and start owning.
To those left behind in the wreckage: Your healing begins the moment you stop internalizing someone else’s denial.
Truth is painful, yes — but so is pretending.
And in the end, only one of those paths leads to peace.
With clarity and compassion,
Linda C J Turner
🧠🖤🌈
