Auntie SparkNotes: Duplicitious Dating

Dear Auntie,
I am sixteen years old, and ever since I was fifteen, I realized I was a lesbian. I met this incredible girl (let's call her Adriana), and so far, we've had this great relationship and we like each other a lot (kinda on the brink of "love"), and her parents know she's lesbian.

My mom, however, doesn't. My mother, as is the rest of my family, is extremely conservative and religious, and she believes that gay, transgender, etc. people are downright sinful and deserve no mercy. I'm afraid that if I come out of the closet now, my family would disown me when I turn eighteen. She even believes in those Michelle Bachmann clinics. Adriana completely understands my situation (but her parents are more liberal than mine, so her telling her parents and me telling my parents would be completely different stories).

So here's how it's been going: Adriana happens to have a brother (let's call him Chase) who one would consider very attractive. To be able to be with Adriana, it has been agreed between the three of us that Chase would pose as my "boyfriend" when Adriana and I go on a date. Chase drives to my house on his car with Adriana hiding in the back seat, Chase walks over to my door to pick me up, Chase would talk to my parents for a bit, I go with Chase into the car, we drive off, and when we were out of sight, Adriana would pop up from the seat. Chase would then drive us to [insert location of our date], drop us off, and he would go drive... wherever he wanted to, I guess. Then, when our date was over, he'd drive us back, Chase would walk me to my front door, and we'd kiss (Yes, that was agreed, too.). The end.

Sometimes I ask Adriana if she gets bothered by this whole "date ritual", but she says she has fun "playing Mission Impossible" as she calls it. It's not as easy at it sounds, though. When I get home, my mom asks me how it was, and I describe it the best I can. However, I'm running out of descriptions. Plus, one time, I came home and my dad saw Adriana. I just told him that Chase's sister wanted to be dropped off at her friend's house and had no other option but to come with us. Then my mother saw her, and I told her the same thing. I'm afraid the seeds of distrust have already been sown and sooner or later, someone will discover everything and my family will hate me. Can you help, Auntie?

Wow.
Wow.
WOW.

This is all kinds of crazy, Sparkler, and so I'm not even going to fault you for sneaking around—not just because this espionage-style dating setup is truly Hollywood-worthy in its elaborate awesomeness, but because yours is one of the rare set of circumstances under which it's basically okay to lie to your parents. Call it the best possible option when there are no good ones; you can't just put your emotional and sexual development on hold until you're conveniently out of the house, so if being openly gay would compromise your emotional health and safety, then staying closeted and sneaking around is just what you've gotta do.

That said, though, I've got some bad news: I think it's time for you and Chase to "break up." But it's not because your dating ruse is wrong, or even because it's getting complicated. It's because it's completely and totall unnecessary.

And instead of creating a fake boyfriend—and all the drama and pressure and active dishonesty that it entails—you can solve this problem through much simpler means. Namely: you tell your folks that you and Chase decided to call it quits. (Obviously, it'll be a mutual, no-hard-feelings split; say that you both agreed that the chemistry just wasn't there, or something like that.) And then, you tell them that despite the breakup, you and his sister have become close friends. And then, you proceed to hang out with her on the regular, just like you've been doing, just like a close friend would.

And, y'know, in the meantime, you just casually omit the fact that when you two hang out, you do it with your tongues in each other's mouths.

Because unless your parents are super-protective and uber-untrusting—and given that they're happily letting you out of the house on hetero dates, that hardly seems likely—then your pretend platonic friendship with Adriana should be pretty much above suspicion. Close friendships and constant contact between same-sex BFFs is hardly an anomaly... which, for the record, is why romance-under-the-guise-of-friendship is a classic move for closeted gay teenagers the world over.

Of course, this doesn't do anything about the potential fallout if your parents find out—which is a good reason to keep your web of deception as un-tangled as humanly possible, but an even better reason to realize that any fallout is not your fault. You can't control how other people react to your sexual orientation, anymore than you can control what that orientation is. And while it's true that there's a lot of mistrust in this situation, it didn't originate with you being untrustworthy; it began way before, when your parents made it clear that you couldn't trust them with the truth. Which, if they have any self-awareness at all, they'll be able to understand if and when you end up coming out.

How would you handle this dating duplicity? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.

Related post: The Art of Discreet Dating