Maria Bello Comes Out, Reveals Relationship with Female Friend in New York Times Column

Maria Bello

Maria Bello came out in a New York Times editorial in which she revealed that she's been in a long-term relationship with a woman.

In "Coming out as a Modern Family," the 46-year-old Coyote Ugly and Prime Suspect actress opened up about telling her 12-year-old son from a previous relationship that she is in a relationship with her best friend Clare. "I was with someone romantically and I hadn't told him," she 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."

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Bello describes having met Clare two years prior in a bar, but it was only after reflecting on her past relationships that she considered making the friendship into something more. "We had an immediate connection but didn't think of it as romantic or sexual. 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.

"My feelings for Clare aren't the same as the butterflies-in-the-stomach, angst-ridden love I have felt before; they are much deeper than that," she continued.

Her son was ultimately very happy for her, as were her family members. "My father's response came between puffs of his cigar while we sat on the roof of a casino in Atlantic City. 'She's a good girl, good for you,' he said. My mother and family echoed his sentiments. Maybe they weren't so traditional after all."

Bello added that she still considers her ex-husband and the father of her son a partner and doesn't necessarily fit any labels. "I would like to consider myself a 'whatever,' as Jackson said," she continued. "Whomever I love, however I love them, whether they sleep in my bed or not, or whether I do homework with them or share a child with them, 'love is love.' And I love our modern family. Maybe, in the end, a modern family is just a more honest family," she concluded."