Heritage & Awareness: Coming Out with Satoshi Suga ’26

I always imagined my coming-out story to be like one of those social media stories where their parents say something moving like, “You’re my son, and I’ll always love you,” or “I always knew, and nothing’s changed.” However, that isn’t my reality. I just turned 40, and not only have I not told my parents that I’m gay, but they also don’t know I was married to a man and just filed for divorce.

Since starting to understand my sexual identity, I felt the pressure to “come out” in a big, dramatic way because I thought social acceptance would help me to accept and like myself. But as an adult, I began to reinterpret the coming-out process as a way for me, as a gay man, to challenge our heteronormative society and live bold, unafraid, and become unequivocally myself. I realized that chasing money, success, and love could never make me truly happy—only I can make myself happy. This meant that I needed to do the work to become a version of myself that I liked and accepted because I would always feel the need to defend the way I live my life if I wasn’t comfortable with it myself.

I launched myself into a life rich with activity, from involvement in sports, academics, religion, travel, friendships, and relationships; I did all this to learn more about myself in pursuit of a life doing what matters to me, rather than trying to meet socially imposed expectations. Even when that meant changing careers twice or being the oldest MBA candidate in my class, I felt happier. I was proud of who I was becoming. I developed the confidence and capacity to care for others, which allowed me to seek understanding in the spaces I inhabited and led me to rewarding opportunities to build communities that fulfilled unmet needs.

Coming to SOM and joining the club Out of Office, devoted to providing a forum for the exploration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues within the community, has empowered me to further be my full self and remember how resilient and uniquely beautiful our queer community is. But daily engaging with other incredibly talented and amazing members of our SOM community also reminds me that other communities are just as beautiful and that we all have more things in common than not. We all sometimes get stuck, need help, and might never fully understand others’ experiences, but I truly believe that everyone is doing their best. That’s we have to first do the work to be happy ourselves—so that we have the capacity to help others do the same.

For anyone interested in coming out, please know it has to make sense for you, on your own timing. Your sexuality is not your whole identity. The best reason to share yourself with others is because it may allow you to be happy. To me, coming out always felt like a step that emphasizes our relationship with the world around us. In reality, it should be a step toward having a relationship with ourselves. That said, if I were to come out to my parents, it would go something like this:

Mom and Dad,

Please know that your son is very, very happy living an unforgettable life filled with incredible people, tremendous love, and genuine meaning and fulfillment. Oh, and by the way, I’m gay.

With love, 

Satoshi

About National Coming Out Day

Yale School of Management’s Office of Community Engagement and Dialogue honors National Coming Out Day annually on October 11. The holiday encourages members of the LGBTQ community to come out of the closet, which is the metaphor the community uses to mean recognizing, revealing, and honoring their authentic selves.