Mackenzie's Coming Out Story

Mackenzie Kolb came out to her brother and her mother on the same day, a few hours apart, and used a completely different approach on each of them.

"I came out as bisexual to my mom and brother on the same day at different times. I told my brother first, as he's one of the most accepting people I know."

Start with the easiest person in the house

Notice the order, because it is a strategy and a good one.

She did not start with the parent. She started with the person she already had evidence about, and by the time the harder conversation came that evening she had done it once and it had gone fine. Nobody tells you that coming out gets mechanically easier with repetition, but it does, and the first one sets the tone for every one after it.

"First I told him a little known fact that Freddie Mercury is bi, then I was like 'So... I'm bi too.' He said 'Wow that's awesome' and he didn't make a super big deal."

Which is a genuinely great piece of construction. She led with a fact about somebody else, let the subject be in the room before she was in it, and then said three words. Her brother's reply is the other half of why it worked: "he didn't make a super big deal." He matched her register instead of turning it into an event.

"How did I know?"

Her mother's conversation went differently.

"Fast forward to later that night and I told my mom as we were walking our dogs. She asked me how I knew, because I hadn't had sex with a man yet."

So the first response was a request for proof. Not a rejection, and worth separating from one, but a request for proof all the same: her mother's next question was how Mackenzie could be sure of who she was attracted to without having slept with anybody to confirm it.

Almost everybody who comes out as bisexual gets some version of this, and it is worth having the answer ready, because the answer is short. You did not need to sleep with anyone to know you were attracted to them. Nobody asks a straight teenager to produce evidence. Attraction is the thing you notice first and act on later, if at all, and a person who has never dated anybody at all still knows perfectly well who they keep looking at.

Also worth saying plainly: bisexual people are bisexual whether or not they have ever dated anyone, whoever they happen to be dating at the time, and for the rest of their lives regardless of who they eventually settle down with.

The boyfriend, and the father she has not told

"At the time I also had a boyfriend, and I broke up with him shortly after coming out because it seemed like he didn't accept me."

One sentence, and a decision most people take much longer to reach. She was already in the relationship, she came out inside it, the reaction told her something, and she acted on the information rather than waiting to be talked out of it.

"I haven't told my dad yet (they're divorced) and I'm scared to, because his wife is very conservative and homophobic, and I know he's not I'm just scared what will happen if I do come out to him."

Read that one closely, because the obstacle is not her father. Her own assessment is that he is fine. What she is weighing is a household, and a person in it with influence over how he would be able to react.

That situation has no clean solution and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is also extremely common: the risk sits with somebody adjacent to the person you actually want to tell. "I'm not in a rush" is a legitimate answer to it, and so is telling him somewhere that is not their house.

Where it landed

"Overall, my mom started talking to me about girls and asking which ones I find attractive, which is funny. It's nice to know I'm accepted in my family, and I wish everyone else was as well. Good luck to everyone planning on coming out!"

The same mother who opened with a demand for proof is, by the end, asking her daughter which girls she thinks are cute.

That gap is the most useful thing in this story. A first reaction is a first reaction. It is not a verdict, it is often just somebody being surprised out loud, and a parent who says the wrong thing on a dog walk can be the parent who gets it a few weeks later. If you are on the receiving end of a clumsy first response right now, it is worth knowing how often that is where it starts rather than where it ends.

If you are somewhere in the middle of this

Our coming out stories page is filling up with accounts like Mackenzie's from across the community, and it exists because reading someone else's version is the thing that makes your own feel survivable.

And if you have a story of your own, we would like to read it. There is a form at the bottom of the stories page. You choose whether your name appears on it.

If a flag is not safe where you are, a pin or a ring carries the same thing more quietly, and you can read what each of the flag designs actually means on our flag meanings page. All sales benefit LGBTQ+ charities.

Last updated: September 30, 2026