Coming out at 45: Five Things We Learnt

Sam describes her upbringing as “very loving but conventional”. Nothing in her childhood signposted to her that she might be gay. “I had thoughts of this sporadically throughout my life. But the possibility of me being strong enough or ready or willing to lose everything? I wasn't at that point.”

However, at 45, Sam felt the gamble of losing everything was worth taking. “I'd rather be here now than look back in another 20 years when I'm 65 and say to myself ‘you know what, you should have just jumped then.’

When Sam came out in 2019, she describes it as “the most revelation I've ever had in my entire life. It was like a massive light going on” but, at the same time, admits. “I was absolutely s***-scared cause I didn't know what I was walking into, whether my family would follow, whether my friends would follow. I didn't know, but I also didn't care.”

Sam feels like she’s one of the lucky ones because she found the right person in Tracy. Her happiness was readily shared by her friends, and they were very pleased and supportive when Sam told them she was gay and that she had a partner.

Family, as is often the case, was a little trickier. Here again, however, Sam’s happiness has won out.

“I haven't got a family that's necessarily had any kind of particularly liberal situations like this to deal with. And that's fair enough. Some took little longer than others, but you have to let people just stand back and take their time and then realise I am still the same me but just really happy."

Tracy came out thirty years ago, aged 21, when, as she puts it, “there was no such thing as a rainbow flag.”

“It was nerve-wracking. I was totally on my own,” Tracy says. “I was terrified to lose people. They would say, ‘why haven’t you got a boyfriend?’ I used to lie and say and say I was too busy.”

Tracy’s anxieties were realised when she came out told her mother. “She just said ‘you disgust me, get out’. We didn't speak for a couple of years. That was the thing I feared. It was a horrible thing. Even close friends were like ‘that’s not right’.”

Tracy left home and moved to the city and socialised with gay people for the first time. However, her identity still wasn’t clear to her.

“I used to think ‘why am I looking at that girl thinking she's attractive?’” but her new friends were ahead of her and asked her how long she had been gay. “I told them ‘I'm not gay!’ and start squaring up to people and saying, ‘don’t you accuse me of that, I’m not one of them lot!’”

When she did confide in a female friend that she was gay, Tracy made her promise not tell anyone else and asked her if she they could still be friends. “That’s how bad it was,” says Tracy.

Before realising her sexuality and marrying Tracy, Sam was married twice before – to men. Intimacy was difficult to achieve.

“That's always made things very, very difficult within a relationship and therefore probably was a reason why a lot of them ended because I couldn't physically and mentally take myself to that place. I used to cut myself off and I just could not, you know, do that.”

Being with Tracy has liberated Sam. “I'm so grateful that I'm able to open up to that side of me now, to feel that fulfilled, to feel vulnerable in front of somebody. But the only reason why I can do that is because I'm with a woman I trust.”

Stacey loved meeting Sam and Tracy (the night before their wedding, no less!) and was so delighted to tell their story. And what's more - it was an incredible privilege for the Fresh Starts team to see the couple share their vows the next day!

Find out how their big day went by listening here!