Actress Maria Bello has come out as gay in a New York Times essay, in which she explains how she told her 12-year-old son that she is currently in a lesbian relationship.

In the essay, the Prisoners actress writes that she told her son Jackson that there were things she hadn’t told him. He pressed and asked if she was romantic with anyone.

“I took a deep breath, knowing that my answer, and his response, would have an impact on our lives for a very long time,” Bellow wrote. “He was right; I was with someone romantically and I hadn’t told him. 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 writes about how she had a hard time figuring out what the word “partner” really means. Can you have a partner in a platonic relationship? According to THR, she considered the late former studio chief John Calley a partner, even though they were only friends.

“For five years I considered my partner to be a friend then in his 70s, John Calley, with whom I talked daily," she noted. "He was the one who picked me up each time I had a breakdown about another failed romance. Because we were platonic, did that make him any less of a partner?"

In the end, Bello decided to tell her son that she is in a relationship with Clare Munn, a new media executive. She considers herself a part of a ‘modern family,’ with Munn, Jackson and Jackson’s father, producer Dan McDermott.

“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.’” Bello concluded. “And I love our modern family.”

Bello recently starred in Prisoners with Hugh Jackman and appeared in the TV shows Prime Suspect and Touch.

image: NBC