Is it OK to come out in your 30s? Dakota Johnson's new movie shows 'there is no timeline'

Lauren Pomerantz had a secret.

Roughly 12 years ago, the TV writer was struggling with how to tell her closest friends that she’s gay. She was frequently anxious and irritated, and "we were getting into fights,” recalls Pomerantz, now 44. “I remember I kept saying, ‘I just feel so weird!’ And they were like, ‘What does that even mean?’ I didn’t want to lose those friendships, but I just didn’t know what to do.”

Finally, after a long, teary car ride spent listening to Coldplay, she broke the news when they met up in Palm Springs, California. “They still make fun of me because I was just sobbing, like, ‘I think I might like girls!’ ” she says with a laugh. "They were like, ‘Oh, thank God, finally.’ It was a relief for all of us.”

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The experience went on to inspire her first film, “Am I OK?” (streaming now on Max), which is co-directed by comedian Tig Notaro and her wife, Stephanie Allynne. The dramatic comedy stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a 32-year-old woman in Los Angeles who reveals to her best friend (Sonoya Mizuno) that she’s a lesbian, and awkwardly wades into the dating pool as a newly out woman.

Pomerantz envisioned the project as a “friendship movie,” capturing how you can be so close to someone and talk about everything, yet still have one secret that eats you up inside. “You feel shame or fear over sharing," she says. "That just creates more problems in the friendship."

'Am I OK?' is a movie about coming out in your 30s

Coming out "later in life" ‒ or in this case, after 30 ‒ is not often portrayed in Hollywood. Popular Netflix shows "Heartstopper" and "Sex Education" depict queer teenagers, who in reality, are coming out at younger ages than before.

According to a 2022 study by The Trevor Project, 35% of LGBTQ youth between the ages of 13 and 17 said they came out before their 13th birthday. (In comparison, research by the University of California, Los Angeles shows that previous LGBTQ generations came out on average between ages 22 and 26.) And earlier this year, a Gallup survey found that 22.3% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ – more than double that of millennials (9.8%) and Gen X (4.5%).

"Coming out as an initial experience is something that's been trending for younger and younger people," says Benjamin Goldman, a licensed mental health counselor. "As a result, a lot of activism and education and resources and support have been much more oriented to younger people."

There are many other reasons why people may hesitate to come out as gay when they’re older. Some may fear the potential consequences of upending their lives, particularly if friends and family are not accepting of them. Others may simply be afraid that they’ve somehow missed the window − that they’ve spent so many years outside the queer community, they won’t have the same connections or cultural touchpoints to be welcomed in.

"There's this idea that you won't be able to penetrate the social and relational barriers that exist when you come out later," Goldman says. And for some queer people who have been out a long time, they may hesitate about “getting into relationships with people who are newly out. There is a queer maturation process that has to occur,” as one adjusts to new norms around dating and sex.

There is no such thing as coming out 'late'

Pomerantz, a former writer on “Saturday Night Live” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” says that most people were very happy for her when she came out. “But I had a couple people say, ‘You’re not really gay,’ ” she recalls. “That bothered me so much, because I was so scared to say it, and I was like, ‘Wait, now you don’t believe me?’ ”

She "tiptoed" into the lesbian dating scene: accompanying friends to ladies' nights at LA gay bars, and eventually changing her preferences from "men and women" to solely "women" on Tinder. It's where she met her future wife, Elizabeth Higgins Clark, whom she married in 2018. On one of their first dates, Pomerantz told her about the idea for "Am I OK?" and she finished a first draft four months later.

The couple, who now have two young children, had some differences to sort out in the early days of their relationship. “She realized on our third date that my parents didn’t know (I was gay) and she was like, ‘This is not going to work. This is going to be a long road and you’ve got a lot to do here,’ ” Pomerantz says. “But quickly thereafter, I told my parents because I was like, ‘This is a good thing and I don’t want to mess it up.’ ”

She hopes that audiences walk away with the message that in terms of coming out, "there is no timeline and there should be no timeline,” Pomerantz says. “Even when you’re questioning it and you’re scared, I do believe you will get there eventually. You don’t need to put pressure on yourself to do it by a certain time just because other people are.”

And when viewers are ready to come out, she hopes it’ll be in a way that “makes them feel safest and most comfortable,” Pomerantz says. “I had gay friends, I worked at ‘Ellen,’ I thought my family would be (accepting), and I just still couldn’t do it. No matter what anyone said, I wasn’t going to do it until I was ready. That’s what I hope people realize: When you’re ready, that's your time.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Am I OK?': The true story behind Dakota Johnson's coming-out movie