Caleb Shomo opened up the moment he knew he was ready to come out to wife Fleur Shomo.
“I was in the shower trying to talk myself into saying something as I had been many times. And thankfully, I kind of smacked myself in the face. I was like, ‘It’s f***ing time,’” the Beartooth frontman, 33, said on the Wednesday, June 10, episode of Katie Maloney and Dayna Kathan’s “Disrespectfully” podcast. “And then I said something to my then-wife about how I feel about men and how I never really allowed myself to explore this. But I have to tell you, I can’t not. And it was just a road from there.”
Shomo decided to be candid about his sexuality with Fleur, 32, during a trip to Palm Springs after feeling “so safe” to share his true thoughts.
“I never allowed myself to go down any of those roads to the best of my f***ing ability in my nondreaming state of mind,” he recalled. “Doing every thing I can to just f***ing keep this at bay.”
Shomo also shared he felt “terrified” to acknowledge the feelings he had pushed down for so many years.
“I was just bawling my f***ing eyes out, trying so hard to verbalize and I really struggle to verbalize things,” he admitted. “And this is obviously such an intense thing, and I’m feeling so nervous and so scared in the situation that it was really, really difficult to verbalize, and I didn’t verbalize it very well. I tried my best. I’m trying to give myself grace and understand it’s a journey.”
Shomo was able to explain to Fleur that he had feelings for men and had been “running from” that idea “for a long f***ing time.”
“I don’t think I want to run anymore,” he recalled of their heart-to-heart conversation. “Then after that, the f***ing hinges got ripped out.”
After coming out, Shomo felt like everything started to “make sense” and some of the negative feelings he had about himself started to dissipate.
Last month, Shomo came out about his sexuality in a public statement.
“There has been a lot of speculation surrounding my personal life as of late and I feel compelled to set the record straight before it affects those I love any further. I am a proudly gay man,” the musician wrote via Instagram in May. “This is something I’ve been unpacking and reckoning with in my life for quite some time now. It’s been difficult to navigate the feelings surrounding the subject and figure out what to do with this fact.”
Shortly after Caleb’s post went viral, Fleur expressed her support for him.
“Our nearly 14yrs of marriage was wonderful and full of so much fun, adventure & love. Nobody will know anything about our marriage like we do. And no one can ever truly know what depths of love exist between two people unless they are those people,” she wrote, in part, via Instagram at the time. “I already miss it & my husband more than anything. Our story was a good one. And now it’s done.”
Looking back on it now, Caleb feels “good” about where he is now and is proud to be living his truth. However, he was surprised by some of the reactions he saw online.
“I’m very happy I did it and it feels like a weight lifted,” Caleb said on Wednesday. “But at the same time it was just so eye opening and kind of scary realizing how many people are so deeply, deeply opposed to this and opposed to being gay in general. Let alone me being the position that I am in and the music scene that I am in and frankly my life leading up until it.”
