I have been pretending to date a female friend of mine for years to hide from my deeply homophobic family
the fact that I'm actually dating another man.
I can't believe you would go to all that trouble. Why don't you want to tell them?
They would never accept a gay person as a family member. So I will hide it.
It's horrible that you have to lie to your family about something like that! Are you really certain that they wouldn't accept you for who you are? A lot of people may just surprise you with how accepting they can be.
Why do you make it sound so easy?
No, it sounds like it is extremely difficult and I apologize for making it sound like it might be easy. There are a lot of people going through the same things that you are and they all struggle with it, but trying to involve your family into your real life would make things so much easier for you.