AceShowbiz -

Maria Bello comes out of the closet as she wrote a personal passage on NY Times titled "Coming Out as a Modern Family". The actress, famous for her roles in "Coyote Ugly" and "Grown Ups", revealed that she has been in a long time relationship with her best friend Clare.

Bello began by recalling a conversation with her 12-year-old son Jackson whom she had from her relationship with TV executive Dan McDermott. Jackson wondered if there was something that she was not telling him. "This was the moment I had been anticipating and dreading for months," Bello 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."

She continued, "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." And when she finally confessed, Jackson's reaction was not what she had expected. "He looked at me for what seemed like an eternity and then broke into a huge, warm smile. 'Mom, love is love, whatever you are,' he said with wisdom beyond his years," Bellow recalled.

A year before the conversation, Bello went soul searching in her California garden while reading her journals. "I read about the handful of men and the one woman I had been in romantic relationships with, passages rife with pain and angst. It seemed when I was physically attracted to someone, I would put them in the box of being my 'soul mate' and then be crushed when things didn't turn out as I had hoped," she wrote.

"As I continued to look through photos, I came across a black-and-white one of my best friend and me taken on New Year's Eve. We looked so happy, I couldn't help but smile. ...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."

Bello also recounted the moment she told her "traditional" family in Philadelphia. She was also surprised by their reaction. "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'," she wrote. Her mom and family agreed.

Bello concluded, "So I would like to consider myself a 'whatever,' as Jackson said. 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."