"LOW SELF-ESTEEM ISSUE." MARCH, 2002 Volume 2, Issue 13

LOW SELF-ESTEEM ISSUE

I can never talk enough about the issue of self-esteem. When I reflect back now, at the age of 50, I can honestly say that I have spent a lifetime building up my own self-esteem. I can trace this back to my early childhood days when I was always the “chubby” girl. Eventually I transitioned from being a chunky teenager to being an obese adult. I have spent my adult years being fat. There have only been short periods of perhaps several years from time to time when I was heavy instead of obese.

When I met my gay husband, I was physically at the best point of my adult life. I had lost over 100 pounds and I was feeling and looking good. My self-esteem and confidence was at a new height. I was NOT desperate when I met him, so I can’t use that as an excuse of why I married a gay man. Like almost all of us, I honestly did not know that he was gay. It’s that simple. He made sure to let me know that he wasn’t by yelling up a storm when I mentioned a friend of mine suspected that he may be “bisexual.” I remember that feeling of total relief when he stood up in the middle of the restaurant and nearly turned the table over in sheer anger. Ah, the man was protesting—and it couldn’t be nearly enough--forget too much.

Why would I even think he was gay? He was tall, athletic, very handsome and extremely charming. We had sex in those early days. It wasn’t the best sex, but it wasn’t that bad either. I had worse in the previous years, and I believe that all of them weren’t gay.

My ex-husband married me because he loved me and wanted to have all of the things that straight men had. And in his mind, at that time, he was NOT gay. Yes, he had gay sex. Yes, he had a string of sexual encounters with men before we married. But in his mind, he believed that he was straight because there was no emotional commitment to these men. He enjoyed women and dated his fair share of them. And he believed that sexually he could pull it off as long as he loved someone enough. Through the years, I have come to terms with the fact that most of these gay men really don’t believe in their hearts that they are gay when they marry us. They can have gay sex galore, but they are not gay in their minds. They don’t even view themselves as Bisexual, just straight men dabbling with same sex encounters. Go figure.

Getting back on track here, I married a man who was mentally abusive to me. Not all gay husbands take this route, but many of them do. They are frustrated with life because they are living a lie, and the one they lash out at is the one responsible for living this lie in their minds—namely, us. Yes, I know it makes no sense at all, but that’s just the way it is. Even though my self-esteem was quite high when I got married, it didn’t take long for it to get battered back into oblivion within a relatively short amount of time. I was on a temporary high when I met my husband. I was feeling good about myself for the first time in my 28 years of life. I had not even had two solid years of good feelings about myself before this marriage. That means that I had numerous years of personal insecurity, loneliness, poor self-image, and peer-inflicted pain scars from adolescence that carried over into adulthood.

I was the girl who was picked last to be on whatever sports team that gym class played on any given day. I lacked the motor coordination to be an effective sportswoman, and my excess weight slowed down my athletic abilities. It was pretty heartbreaking and humiliating knowing that you would always be the last or almost last person picked. I was the girl who never got asked to dances or proms. I was the girl who didn’t have dates on the weekend because the guys I wanted didn’t want me. They wanted the pretty cheerleaders or the girls who radiated confidence. I was the girl who fell in love so often but always had her heart broken time after time when some girl who was prettier, thinner, or more graceful crossed my path. Ultimately, I was the girl who got left out. There were so many of us when I was growing up, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I wanted so badly to be someone worth loving, but that didn’t seem within my reach.

For that reason, I made poor choices in relationships from early in the game. I just wanted to be wanted to badly, that I was willing to “settle” for guys, later men, who were not worthy of having a relationship with anyone. They were men who had value systems that were different than mine, but yet, my desperation kept me moving in their direction because they seemed more obtainable.

In my mid-twenties, I was nearly 270 pounds and at five feet tall, I wasn’t long for the world. I began to care about living after having extensive chest pains, and started to lose weight. First I lost it in a healthy manner; then I developed an eating disorder when the healthy way just stopped working very well. Within 18 months, I lost approximately 130 pounds so I was feeling quite good about myself. I was never thin, but I was looking good, feeling good, and doing quite well in life. I was very vain at that point, and that was fine too. It was time for me to finally feel good about myself. Professionally, I was where I wanted to be, and personally, I was testing out the waters and looking for the right somebody to love.

Maybe if I had married a wonderful supportive man, my self-esteem building process would have continued on an upward trend. But instead, I found a man who was down right cruel who used to find great pleasure in knocking me down whenever I dared to stand up to question any of his unusual behaviors. This was his way of fighting back. My ex wasn’t really a bad man, he was just a sad man. He was sad because his life was falling apart being married to me. He was lying all over the place to cover his tracks, and every time I would uncover just one little crack, he became so angry. He was trying to tie that web of lies together but I seemed to be untangling them faster than he could tie them.

Rather than accept responsibility for his misactions, my ex would yell and scream about my inadequacies. He would magnify every molehill into a mountain when it came to my imperfections, making me believe that I was the awkward, gawky, overweight teenager all over again. I didn’t have enough “ self-confidence” time accumulated to make me believe differently. After a while, I bought into all of the lies that my husband kept telling me about me as he shredded away the few good years of feeling good and reverted me back to my original form of feeling inadequate.

And so once again, I found my comfort in food and started putting back my weight, one pound at a time. When I became pregnant, I looked at it as a license to eat all I wanted because the weight would come off after the baby was born. That’s what people kept telling me. I did gain 70 pounds during those months feasting on Baskin Robbins ice cream daily by the gallon. When my premature daughter was born and weighed less than five pounds, that’s what came off my body. And although in time I was able to take off half that amount gained, I regained it when I was pregnant with my son. I was once again a fat woman.

When my husband told me that he couldn’t make love to me because I was too fat, well, that seemed reasonable to me. At that point, I didn’t think much of myself so why would I expect a man to think much of me? It sounded so logical and made so much sense.

I say this first of all because I receive letters from so many women who write to me and tell me that they are 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100 pounds overweight. They didn’t start out that way in their marriage for the most part, but ended up that way due to frustration. Some of them had childhoods like mine where weight was a factor, but many of them never had a weight problem until during the marriage. They usually throw into their letters that marriage caused them to overeat because there was nothing else giving them much satisfaction on the home front. And as they gained weight,

I am sure that their husbands secretly cheered on the weight gain because now they had a new reason to retreat in the bedroom—namely, fat. Now fat became the natural enemy and justification for lack of passion, as if there was ever much passion to start with. Like my husband told me shortly before we split up, “Who would ever want to sleep with someone who looked like you? Have you looked at yourself lately in a mirror? If I became gay, who could blame me?” OUCH, with all capital letters. There were lots of tears that flowed from my eyes after that conversation. My ex had a wonderful talent for destroying any residual good feelings I had left from days of old. There was nothing left by the time he was done with me except a sense of survival—to find a way to survive without him in my life.

When I first started my local support group, the first two women who joined were also fat. I will not cover up that word and make it into something that it’s not. I don’t use that word to be insulting, but rather to be honest. I don’t need a bunch of “feel good” words about what I am. I feel good about myself now even if I am fat. It’s amazing what a wonderful straight man can do for your sense of self-worth. My soulmate hasn’t noticed the weight gain I’ve made over the eight plus years we’ve been together. He still thinks I’m beautiful and makes me feel that way about myself.

But, getting back to the point, I thought at first it must be a thing that women of weight encounter because my first two group members were big women. But after that, I was shocked to find how many thin women who were beautiful, attractive, and graceful women by society’s standards were in the same situation. As many of you know from my book, I still have my theories on the prototype of woman that a gay man seeks out when he wants to get married. One of the prototypes is a woman with low self-esteem. There are so many of us and we are all such easy targets. However, what I learned is that self-esteem is often something that women have within themselves from what’s going on inside, not outside.

I recently corresponded with a lovely woman who read my book last year. She thanked me for giving her the key to the problem in her life. She is an airline stewardess who is viewed by men as beautiful. And yet, after nine years with her hands-off husband, she felt as deflated as the rest of us. She has now moved on in her life and feels wonderful about it. I hear from many women just like this-- women who have never had self-esteem issues over their looks. Over this year alone, I have worked with three models, two in New York and one in California who certainly didn’t have a problem with their physical appearance. And yet, all of their external physical beauty didn’t help them feel beautiful inside. Within this same time frame, I have helped women who were doctors, lawyers, nurses, stockbrokers, professors at universities, a CEO in a Fortune 500 company, and a Broadway actress. Certainly they had accomplished enough in their professional lives to be admired by the masses for their intelligence and status. And yet, they felt just as horrible about themselves as I used to feel about myself. It seems as if having a gay husband is the great equalizer among women of all sizes, shapes, colors, professions, economic situations and societal boundaries.

I guess what I’m getting to is simply this. If the beautiful women who had high self-esteem throughout their lives can fall into this dark and lonely hole, what chance do women like me--who by society’s standards have imperfections creating emotional baggage--have? If a woman who held her head high all of her life can have hers chopped off the block, why would I expect mine not to be in the same pile only squashed down a little more?

I talk about this because women write to me constantly looking for excuses of why their gay husbands may have been turned off to them. They write about their torment of how hard they tried to be better wives by dieting which sometimes led to eating disorders, having breast implants, liposuction, plastic surgery, changes in hair color, and so many other things to try to physically change their husbands’ desire for them. It’s almost as if they are still apologizing or looking for reasons why they were at fault. And their pain becomes my pain. I hurt for every woman who has to spend one extra minute not feeling good about herself because she has failed with her gay husband.

In my last newsletter, I wrote about the long awaited conversation that I had with my ex-husband that brought closure to our misunderstandings. I think that these are the feelings that our gay husbands and ex-husbands have to know and understand. It’s not just the superficial damage or the obvious problems that result from these mismarriages. It’s the internal damage and scaring that they just don’t have a clue about.

I can forgive any gay husband for being gay. That is not a conscientious decision, nor is marriage a calculated move of deceit to punish some loving woman. And I acknowledge how difficult it is for gay men to come to terms with their homosexuality during a marriage. However, what I can’t forgive is the cruelty that they display to their wives while going through their own hardships. And even when they are able to be honest and move on in their lives, they somehow lack the understanding of what we are left to deal with. They feel we should just be able to “get over it” as if we can walk away from the damaging years unscathed. Well, we can’t and we don’t. And perhaps when they can recognize this and try to undo some of the damage that they caused, a better understanding will come about between wives and gay husbands or ex-husbands. There is great comfort in knowing that your gay man understands that the hurt goes much deeper than just superficial cutting. And when he can comprehend that and tell you that he is sorry for the internal damage he has done to you, then you will finally be able to start to heal—and even start to forgive.


Share your thoughts by posting your comments ???

Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Talk Newsletter MARCH, 2002 Volume 2, Issue 13

ANOTHER EXPLANATION TO THE SEX THING

In the last issue, I spoke about the recent healing conversation that I had with my ex-husband. In that article, I asked my ex about our sex life when we first met and how he was able to “pull it off” in the beginning. He explained how in his 20’s, when we met and married, he could become sexually aroused because sex under any circumstances was something that could “feel good.” Add into it a mix of emotional attachment and determination to be straight, and all things were possible, at least for a short time.

My friend Dina, from the AOL Str8 Spouses of Gays and Lesbians organization, sent me a much better and detailed explanation that she had discovered a few years ago. I asked her for her permission to share it with you because I think it sheds the best insight that I have found to date:

In late adolescence, young adulthood up to about 30's, a guy is driven by raging hormones and need for release - basically he could "do it" with anything or anyone just to get off. As time goes on, and they are not as driven biologically, they have to supplement the drive with some fantasy thrown in - that's the time when the male fantasies become prevalent. In turn it becomes harder and harder to get turned on "normally" and eventually even the male fantasies are no longer able to make him perform.

That is usually the "crisis" that leads them to actively fool around and/or eventually come out and leave. I think this is a good point to make to those straights who rationalize that if husbands can perform or could at some time that is an indication that they were not "totally" gay blah, blah, blah. Bottom line folks is that they could perform at a point in time when they did no discrimination at all....we were just one step better than taking matters into one's own hands!

Thanks, Dina, for that insightful explanation. I think this clarifies the situation for so many women who can’t understand how their gay husbands are able to have sex with them in the beginning, but not sustain it throughout the marriage.

Some women wrote to me asking me to discuss the “Psychological Sexual Warfare Games” that their husbands play with them. That’s my coined terminology to these demoralizing situations. Some gay men keep the games going in order to divert the thoughts of confirmed suspicions. This happens usually once the wife accuses her husband of being gay, or when he knows that she is barking up the right tree, as the saying goes. By this time, the wife is usually totally turned off to the thought of having a sexual encounter with her husband. This is when he turns on the charm and amorous moves.

Now, the gay husband knows that his wife knows, at least on some level. He also knows that it has been a long road of unfulfilling sexual experiences over a number of years. And he also knows at this point that the last thing his wife wants is sex—at least with him. That’s when he starts to touch her knee, her shoulder, hold her close, make the overtures, and goes for the gold. He is now an Olympiad in wimps clothing. He knows that it is a safe bet that he is going to be running a solo act here, because there’s no way his wife is going to respond to his tainted touch.

The worst part is that now he claims the victor’s spoils. Now he starts throwing those accusations around like a Herculean master yelling, “Whenever I want to have sex you reject me,” or “Don’t ever say I didn’t try. It’s not my fault that we don’t have a sex life.” And that’s how he weaves the web of self-doubt again. Just when you are so sure that he is gay, well, maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s changing. Maybe it’s your fault. Maybe if you had been more receptive to him through the years. Maybe you were reading him wrong. Maybe all of that evidence that you compiled really did belong to someone else, right?

Wrong. It’s a game. It’s a game of desperation because you have gotten too close to the truth and he knows it. Some of these guys just love to catch you off-guard. It gives them great pleasure to keep you confused while they are trying to figure themselves out. Or, if they have figured themselves out, they want to make sure that you don’t because it leads to the potential disaster of hurting them. And that’s why they do it.

I always tell women that if your husband tries this, don’t get too spooked out. Expect it, but don’t sweat it. By the point in the marriage that this happens, it’s almost guaranteed that if you would turn around and say, “Let’s do it dear,” he would develop a sudden crippling backache or migraine headache. He is making a calculated guess that you will say no. By this time, you’ve already been stripped of your sexual esteem, and one calculated shot in the dark isn’t going to restore it. You know that, and so does he. That’s why he feels confident in “offering” you something that he thinks you want so badly emotionally but knows you will reject physically. .

And feel free to laugh when he throws up in your face, “I was always the one who wanted sex. You’re the one who is cold blooded.” Ha ha. You don’t have to laugh a big, boisterous howl, just a little ha-ha will get the point across. Then go back to doing something that would be far more interesting than having sex with your gay husband—like washing the dishes or ironing the clothes. At least you know when you do something like this, it will turn out right!