On their journey to self-acceptance and self-love, people will encounter bumps along the way. This is especially true for people raised in an environment where they are not accepted and embraced for who they are but instead taught there is something wrong with them.
One TikTok user is sharing his story in the hopes that he might help others in similar situations not make the same mistakes he did. Abe Hutcheon is now an openly gay man, but there was a time he tried to hide his true identity to fit into his Evangelical Christian world. He told the story about how his wife found he was having a same-sex affair, and fellow TikTokers shared their opinions.
Abe is not proud of his affair and still has regrets. He starts out his story saying, "When you get married to a woman even though you know you're gay, you're destined to do some pretty stupid and harmful things to not only her, but to you and all the people involved, too."
Abe’s affair started out innocently enough. They met on the online chat site Chatroulette and started talking six months before his marriage. Abe was in his last semester of college.
"I didn't think it'd amount to anything. I was raised [in a] super conservative [religion], so I'd never allow myself to date a man. I figured, 'What could go wrong,'" Abe remembers.
Things quickly changed for Abe. "I accidentally fell in love with him, because I'd never dated a man before,” Abe says. He continued the affair even after he got married.
Just three weeks into his marriage, his wife found out. "I was in my biochemistry course when I got 11 missed phone calls from my wife," he recalls. "She didn't leave any voicemails or send any texts. I immediately knew what was wrong."
"She saw my open computer where I was Skyping with this guy, who I was still talking with. She saw our chat history and everything, three weeks into our marriage. That's how she found out I was gay," Abe says.
Abe does not want other people to make the same mistakes. He owns that he hurt people along the way: "I don't think what I did was right. I don't think it was good. And that's why I'm talking about this. I'm trying to help people who think they might be able to do the same thing realize that they can't."
People did not hesitate to share their opinions in the comment section. One commenter wrote, "Why would you waste a woman's time if you know that [you're] into guys…imagine the pain she's in."
Another agreed: "Oh grow up, another woe as me I'm the victim. The damage you did to that poor girl is irreversible and I do hope that everyday it makes you suffer."
Some comments were more compassionate. One commenter wrote, "If y’all see the hashtag, 'ex evangelical' you will see but may not understand the brainwash and the fear this man lived through. Kindness is key."
Another identified with the story and shared, "It’s ok to forgive yourself…it took me a while to get there but I did the best I could at the time. And I’m different now. Change happens…we get better."
Abe has since moved away from his hometown and Christian beliefs. He hopes sharing his story will help others find their way to their truth without the pain he caused and experienced.
"In my upbringing, you were not actually gay — you were just sinning. You hear that from your parents, pastors, friends, and your friends' parents — there's no safe space to be gay. This fundamental thing about my identity and my existence was erased," he told BuzzFeed.
Therapy has helped him work through all of this. "Therapy, in many ways, brought me out of a place of not even being able to set out on a path of how to identify myself," Abe explained. "All I knew was how to be what other people needed. I was raised from birth until my early 20s in church. Looking back, I spent a lot of those years in survival mode. I learned these very traumatic ways to have no agency or voice, for the approval of my parents, teachers, coaches, and pastors — people who were my safeguards. Now therapy is teaching me how to have a voice again.”
