DENIAL, March, 2003

DENIAL

I’d like to end this month’s newsletter with a few thoughts about the subject of “DENIAL.” I’ve been doing some rethinking about my use of this word. I realize that I’ve been making excuses for some of your gay husbands by suggesting that they are in “denial.” When husbands eventually admit to having gay sex but state they didn’t think this was “gay,” they often say it’s because they were in “denial.” In fact, I honestly believe that their gay peers also buy into this thinking. But now I think it only serves as another excuse for dishonesty. It kinda sounds good to the unsuspecting mind. “I’m sorry honey, I would have told you years ago, but I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I was in a state of DENIAL!!!” And when a gay husband uses this as his excuse, it actually makes a horrible situation seem just a little better. It takes some of the stabbing sting away from our psyche. It generates a sort of “win-win” situation all the way around.

How? Well, let’s face it. If your husband says that he was in “DENIAL,” that means he wasn’t consciously or purposely betraying you. In fact, he wasn’t technically cheating on you. He swears he never really enjoyed it. In some cases, he can barely even remember it. He had absolutely no emotional attachments to the stranger that he spent a few quick moments with. His “thinking head” was in such a different place than his “sexual head” that he never even realized that it happened during those weeks, months or in some cases, years. How can you possibly hold this against him? He was almost like, well, for lack of a better word, a VICTIM.

Whew! Don’t you feel better? I would. And, there are even some extra bonus points here. You have more peace of mind than before because your gay husband really loves you and those momentary encounters, which only were a few seconds in a vast sea of time were simply that—momentary “BLACK-OUTS” where your honey can’t remember what happened. He can’t even remember how it started or ended. It is just a blank spot in his subconscious or, hmmm, unconscious, so to speak. He has no recollection of the actual person whom it happened with, and don’t even think about a name. There was no name. The face is a blur for sure. And after it happened, it was tucked away, or shall I say thrown away from his mind, never to return.

When gay husbands refer to “DENIAL,” I realize it means that they were acting on their needs to sexually fulfill their homosexuality. “DENIAL” really means that they don’t dare tell you, their wives, lest you should understand what the real problem is in your marriage. The only one I think they are really in denial to is you. When you ask your husband what the real problem is in the marriage, he will DENY there is a “real” problem. When he stops making love to you and you ask him why, he’ll once again deny that there’s a problem. In fact, anything you ask him that even alludes to homosexuality—bam! There must be something wrong with you because your husband DENIES he has a problem.

It’s really difficult for me to “swallow” the line about DENIAL at this stage of time. I have done things that I’m not proud of in my life, but I never pretended to myself that I hadn’t done them. I try to live up to my responsibilities and don’t look to peddle them off elsewhere. As horrifying as acting on gay sexual urges may have seemed at any particular moment during a marriage, once the deed is done, it’s done. Using DENIAL as a tactic to keep running away from the truth seems pretty lame. I’m not saying you have to shout it from the rooftops, but I do think that you need to you need to tell the person whom you married and promised to be honest with for better or worse. Yes, this is worse, but let’s be fair here. Your wife hasn’t done anything wrong except try to love you. Why can you love her enough to be truthful? Because you are in denial? No, I don’t think so. Let’s call it what it is—namely CONSCIENCE FAILURE.

Hugs and Love, Bonnie Kaye