@Timmyd
Brother, I feel your struggle. Please forgive for copying a previous reply I made to another post, but I feel it is talking to your concerns.
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Reading the posts on this topic and wondering, does the level of embarrassment change with age or time?
For me I started to bedwet as a teen. I was totally humiliated by it to the point that I kept it from my parents. It only happened once every few months so easier to hide, but sooooooo humiliating when I'd wake wet. Once I moved out on my own my embarrassment level lessened since I didn't have to 'hide' it. But when I realized that I was getting serious with my now wife and thinking marriage, and she would find out sooner or later the embarrassment level went up again. As Catholics premarital sleeping arraignments were not an issue, but knowing that she was 'THE ONE' if she'd say yes I knew I had to tell her.
Now my mind is wrestling with do I tell her before I ask for her hand in marriage or after. I really struggled with this. If I ask before, and she says yes, then it is a true yes in full knowledge of me and all my issues. If I wait, for fear that she might say no and no need to 'expose' the secret, and she says yes I need to still tell her before or after the wedding???
I chose to tell her after I asked for her beautify hand to join me for life. Why?? Embarrassment... I was set to tell her before asking, but then got too embarrassed to tell her.... what if she says no?? Then she knows... who will she tell??? False reasons but my reasons at the time.
To speed up the story, I asked she said yes and then a new dilemma, tell her before or after the wedding? While in retrospect I think I made the wrong decision in not telling her before I asked her, here I know I made the right decision, I told her before the wedding.
I was soooooooooo scared, rehearsed what I would say, planned when and where I would tell her and then they day and time came. .....
I won't go into the details on how, where and all that when I told, but I will say she was sooooooooo cooooool about it. Apparently I had build up the seriousness of what I was about to tell her that she laughed at first. I was crushed until she said, "No, it's fine I am laughing cause it is such a minor thing. I had in my mind that you were going to tell me that you had cancer and was going to die in a year."
So I share this to say that embarrassment is part of it. Though we should not be, it is part of it. It is how we deal with it that makes it embarrassing.
Be strong, be empowered, be yourself.
JT
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Hope thus helps in some way.
JT
