Maria Bello came out a in a New York Times piece titled "Coming Out as a Modern Family".
The 46-year-old actress revealed she's been in a long-term relationship with a female. Bello shared the first time she opened up about her love life to her 12-year-old son Jackson.
Bello said her son with producer Dan McDermott, was getting suspicious and wondered if she was keeping secrets from him. She said he wondered if she was romantically involved with anybody.
"He was right; I was with someone romantically and I hadn't told him," the actress wrote. "I had become involved with a woman who was my best friend, and, as it happens, a person who is like a godmother to my son."
Bello said her therapist advised her to wait until Jackson asked about her personal life.
"This was the moment I had been anticipating and dreading for months," the actress wrote. "I took a deep breath, knowing that my answer, and his response, would have an impact on our lives for a very long time."
Bello said she was surprised by her son's response.
"He looked at me for what seemed like an eternity and then broke into a huge, warm smile," she said. "'Mom, love is love, whatever you are,' he said with wisdom beyond his years," she said.
The talk with Jackson came one year after Bello began her romantic relationship with Clare Munn, a new media executive.
"We had an immediate connection but didn't think of it as romantic or sexual," the "Prisoners" star wrote. "She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn't occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically."
"Coyote Ugly" actress said she realized her feelings for Munn, while looking through photos and journals in the garden.
"I came across a black-and-white one of my best friend and me taken on New Year's Eve," wrote Bello, "We looked so happy, I couldn't help but smile. I remembered how we had met two years before; she was sitting in a bar wearing a fedora and speaking in her Zimbabwean accent."
Bello said shortly after the two tried to figure out how their relationship would work out. Their friendship eventually turned romantic.
After telling her son, Bello said she came out to her "large, Italian-Polish, 'traditional' Philadelphia family. Bello said her father's response "'She's a good girl, good for you.'"
"My mother and family echoed his sentiments. Maybe they weren't so traditional after all," Bello wrote. "Maybe, in the end; a modern family is just a more honest family."
