My First Boyfriend Was a Total Heterophobe

I had the awkward pleasure of coming out of the closet as a gay man when I was 20 years old. Coming out was a terrifying experience for me, but I was two years into my undergraduate studies in music, and it didn't really surprise anyone that I was a man-on-man kinda bro. Plus, considering that most of the people I ran with were young arts majors, I didn't really deal with that much discrimination, so the process went fairly well.

As I'm sure anyone could easily guess, being my natural fabulous self while studying music and rubbing shoulders in the trenches of academia with a bunch of other young 20-somethings was a tremendously good time. Everything was seemingly perfect. I was happy with myself and learning to embrace who really was for the first time, and everybody around me celebrated that.

Naturally, my first boyfriend came not long after I was out and proud to the public. He was without a doubt a great guy; he had the singing voice of an angel, a flare for the theatrical, and he had a stunningly beautiful face (not that the latter is a qualifying factor for me to enjoy dating somebody, but it certainly doesn't hurt).

He was also very involved with the LGBTQ community, which was quite foreign territory for me at the time. He was in several leadership positions in our college town's LGBTQ programs, and did a lot of really great local work for the gay rights cause. I know, more wonderful qualities, right? I seemed to have myself quite a catch. It was also very good for me to spend time with all of his friends, most of which were very active members of the LGBTQ community as well.

Being that I was a fresh-out-of-the-closet 20-year-old college student, I had a very substantial social life. Now, I definitely had some gay friends, but a vast majority of the people I spent my time with happened to be straight (which isn't really that surprising, when you look at the general gay-to-straight ratio in America's population). It never bothered me to be the only fabulous dude in a social environment. I've always figured that it's pretty dull to spend time with a group of people who are too much alike, so I've always appreciated the differences between me and my friends.

When the boyfriend and I started to get serious, I couldn't help but notice how much he seemed to dislike being around my friends. He was always reluctant to agree to spending time with them, and on the occasions when he did come along, he was very reserved and would oftentimes leave early, which wasn't typically like him. I wasn't very slighted by this— there have been social groups that just didn't click for me in the past, and I understood what he was likely feeling. However, I was curious as to why he seemed so uncomfortable around my friends. When I asked him about it, this was his response:

"Oh, they're a great group. There's nothing wrong with them. I just... don't like straight people very much."

...Come again?

When he saw my confusion, he elaborated: "There's nothing wrong with someone being straight, but I'm personally uncomfortable if I'm in an environment that's dominated by a straight-minded mentality."

This made no sense to me. How could such a strong advocate for LGBTQ equal rights justify disliking a group of people based solely on their sexuality? If there's nothing wrong with being gay, then adversely, there shouldn't be anything wrong with being straight. I told him this. That spurned a fight that eventually led to the slew of events responsible for our eventual breakup. It was a rough time, but my gay little heart went on.

One of the best parts of my human experience has been celebrating the differences in the people around me. It's incredibly important to be skeptical of any distaste we may hold for certain people, and to make sure that distaste isn't coming from an ignorant or illogical place. Whether it's homophobia, or surprisingly enough, heterophobia, make sure you're thinking clearly and that you foster an environment around yourself that accepts everybody for who they are.