My adoptive son (10.5) just came out to me tonight as bisexual. His birth mother is still in his life, and he's really scared how poorly she's gonna react. I am too. Advice needed on how to handle her.

Wow, this got really long. Sorry for the length. Hopefully this fits here, and not in another subreddit better.I've become a fairly active member here, but this is my first post, so hopefully I don't disappoint. I changed some things around to keep this anonymous, though I don't think it matters. I'm the only redditor in the house.TL;DR My legally adoptive son came out to me earlier tonight as bisexual. I'm also gay, I live with my boyfriend, and my son's biological mother in one roof. It's a complicated, odd family, and a result of a horrific and long story, the abridged version of which is below, but it works. For now, at least. His mom isn't going to take it well, and I don't know what to do or how to handle things if it goes really sour.First some boilerplate background: I (M) and my boyfriend became surrogate dads to the son of my godmother when he was 5. Very long story short: he was severely physically and emotionally abused/neglected by his birth dad before hand, godmother was on drugs and hardly around thanks to resorting to prostitution to get more money for drugs...it was a mess.Godmother finds out via walking in on him being beaten. She runs, calls the police, he gets thrown in jail, but she has no job, she's strung out on heroin, has no real friends or family (my own parents have long stopped associating with her), she shows up at my place when I'm barely out of high school (we were very close when I was younger since my own bio-mom was also abusive), and now suddenly I'm taking care of this 5 year old boy who was horrifically traumatized since birth.His mother lost legal custody of him when it was revealed that she was severely addicted to drugs and in no place to take care of him, and when it came out how neglected he was by the two of them (he was malnourished when I took him in, abused, he was disturbingly underweight, wasn't even potty trained properly, and his living conditions were a joke). There was no next of kin (grandparents, aunts/uncles, etc) to take him in, so it was my boyfriend and I or the foster system.5 years of love, countless struggles, and therapy sessions on, and things are much better. I officially adopted him when he turned 7 (boyfriend can't officially jointly adopt until we marry). His mother still has no legal custodial rights nor legal right to visitation, but it's an open adoption and we've been very willing to let her be in his life.His mother is now clean and doing much better, and the four of us now live together. That said, I'm by far the one who spends the most time with him since I work from home. The other two are always gone, working multiple jobs or going to school. His mother in particular is gone for days at a time between jobs and partying (don't even get me started), and she's basically been a footnote in his life.My son and I have a relationship somewhere between father/son, older/younger brother, and best friends. He's long considered me and my boyfriend his dads, even though I'm so young. We're very close. He still struggles with his past occasionally, but compared to where he was when I first saw him, so afraid that he was barely able to look at me in the eye for fear I would hit him? It's night and day. He's happy, funny, kinda snarky, super affectionate even in public, has great friends, is getting good grades, and now is living a good healthy childhood.So that's the backstory. This is the story-story:Last night we had a serious but heartbreaking conversation.He told me two things. He was clearly very nervous and scarred and shaking as he tried telling me. I was really worried it was something really bad and had to reassure him I would always love him, no matter what, before he told me.He told me he was bisexual. And he told me he knew this because he had a "boyfriend."I was very shocked by that last part, because he had a "girlfriend", or so I thought. It was adorable, really, the two of them were best friends for years. Of course at their ages, "dating" is little more than spending a lot of time at each others' houses and kissing, but it was really cute. He told me he asked her to be his cover and she agreed, so that nobody would suspect who he truly "like-liked".Now, considering I'm gay, obviously I don't care who he likes, who he is or whether he likes boys, girls, both, intersex, people with two heads or one leg or whatever. I was very clear with him about this when he told me.What he said next broke my heart. He told me he knew that I would take it well, but he was still embarrassed by it. That in some of his more recent nightmares stemming from his past, he would be beaten for it. That he was worried how his mother would react, both to him and to me. That he was afraid of what people would say to him: that him being raised largely by two gay men turned him bisexual. That he would be a disappointment to everyone if he ended up with a guy when he was older.Then he told me how he shudders at how recently everything has gotten better for people like us. He said he looked it up on the internet and he found that only 10 years ago, I couldn't get married to my boyfriend in most states. My son told me that he just felt sick at how until very recently, he'd have to hide it and he started crying. For me. God, that just killed me.I told him he was very brave to even say it to himself, let alone someone else. That I would always love him and he could never disappoint me and that what would make me happier than ever is him being happy with someone, even if they were a guy.That if anybody put a hand on him for this or any other reason, well...I'm a very large man. Let's leave it at that. I reassured him that how he was raised had zero bearing on who he loves, that it's something inherent. I even made a joke: I was raised by the straightest parents in the world, and I and many others don't turn out straight. So why should the reverse be true?He broke out crying in relief and we just hugged for a good 10 minutes. Then of course came all of the questions: how long has he known, was he absolutely sure, who this other boy was, had he ever liked girls, etc. He told me he's liked both for as long as he could remember but was too afraid until recently. This boy he likes is one of his other best friends, and he's 11 and openly gay and his parents know. Again, it's super adorable, but I can't say I saw it coming.We talked for a good hour after dinner. I told him about my own experience with me coming out to myself when I was only a little older than him, and then to everyone else when I was 14, and how I understood how even when you have an accepting family it's still hard. How even though there's no better time to be gay, how I still felt ashamed for the longest time. We've bonded over so many things: simple things like interests and doing things together for fun. More serious things like the fact we were both abused as children - we both see the same therapist. And now this.I think I handled it well enough. We finished by talking about who else knew and who else he wanted to tell and when. Apparently, I'm the first to know besides this crush of his. His circle of 7 friends (plus himself) are very diverse in terms of interests and temperaments and backgrounds, and 3 are LGBT, so they obviously wouldn't mind, but he's still scared to tell them.None of that was an issue. The issue:He wants to tell my boyfriend, his "other dad" next...and then his mom...oh boy, his mom. He wants me to be there with him when he tells his mom.Honestly? His mom isn't going to take it well. I don't know why, but for some reason, she's always been kind of hysterical when it comes to things like this. You'd think she would be okay with LGBT people since you know, not to toot our horn, two of them kind of saved her son from being homeless and worse, not to mention herself, but she's always just been weirded out by it. We really were her last (I'd argue her only) resort when she came to us all those years ago, not her first.She'll say that she has no objections to people doing what makes them happy, but on a personal level she just finds it "weird" and she's openly told her son "I really hope you're straight."WTF?She still thinks it's a lifestyle choice despite my insistence that it's very much not. I made the point to her: why on earth would anybody choose to be anything but straight in a world filled with people like you? Her response? "I don't know, to spite society, I guess?" It's infuriating.She'll make passive remarks to her son when she's around about how it's important he finds a girl when he's older so he can pass the name on and all that crap and how she can't wait for him to be old enough to have grandkids and whatnot, and he's always kind of taken that awkwardly. Now I know why.Honestly, I kind of can't stand his mother. I personally never wanted her around, both because of this and because frankly, she's barely around in his life and was/is so detached as a mom that she let so much harm come to him.The only reason we let her stick around is because she's the boy's mother, and I want my son to have her in his life if possible. Though frankly, the boy has told me in secret he would rather live with me and my boyfriend than her if he had to choose, so I don't even know if that's a valid reason. But still, I don't want that kind of drama or for her to start a custody war.I guess my question is this: I've never had to deal with unaccepting parents. How do I help my son when he comes out to his mother, who I know isn't going to take it kindly and whom I don't have the best relationship with? Should I do something to prepare her for it ahead of time? How should I prepare? How should my son? via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2p6lzEr