STRAIGHT TALK MAY 2009 NEWSLETTER

Dear Readers,
This month, I am sending you a personal newsletter written exclusively by me in honor of women and Mother’s Day. Any mailbag correspondence for this month will be included next month.

Also, in June, I am inviting my gay husbands/ex-husbands who are part of our support network to write for the June newsletter to tie in with Father’s Day. I know it will be a powerful issue, so please watch for it.

MAY IS FOR WOMEN!!
May is definitely the month that celebrates mothers, wives, and women in general. I would like to spend this month with you talking about the wonderful women who write to me daily in their worst moments of stress and distress trying to make sense of what has happened in their lives. Many of these women are now facing single motherhood, something that would have been unthinkable when they were taking those “I do” vows of love eternal. Every woman thinks at some point in the marriage when learning the truth, “Who would have ever thought…..”
Let me look back over the past 25 years since I started working with over 40,000 women married to gay men to give you some insight of what has changed. Okay, that took about five seconds. The answer is NOTHING HAS CHANGED. The same feelings of disbelief, shame, and fear are still the prevalent emotions that all women write to me about. I still receive on an average 30 – 40 letters a week for help and support every week. Women are still asking me to give them the answers that they are desperately seeking to these questions:
1. Will my husband change?
2. Can my husband change?
3. What can I do to make my husband change?
4. What can you do to make my husband change?
5. Why can’t my husband change?
Then after a couple of go rounds, the responses go in one of two directions:
1. Why didn’t I find you years ago? or
2. Why are you so negative?

Some women who write to me accuse me of being negative when I tell them the answers to these questions. They think that through developing a combative dialogue with me that they can make me change the answers I am giving them. They try to wear me out or down. They ask me why am I so black and white? Where are my shades of gray? Aren’t there any exceptions to the rule? I sometimes get worn down enough to tell them that yes, there are exceptions to every rule. I know there are at dozen or two women out of millions of us who embrace their husbands’ homosexuality and think that it’s just fine. I don’t have their names, but I advise them to check out those online groups that encourage women to sit and linger in a destructive marriage to a man who can never be a real husband to them.

I prefer to think of myself as the voice of sanity and reason rather than delusion. How many of you would be reading this newsletter if year in and year out I told you that it’s no big deal to have a gay husband and you can learn to live with it? I bet those dozen or two women would find their way to this newsletter list while the rest of you would turn away in disappointment. You see, even though most of you may not like what I have to say in the beginning, you know what I am right in what I am saying by the end. Once you are willing to close that closet door stuffed with denial—namely your closet stuffed with your denial—you have to deal with the truth at some point.

I have no happy campers writing to me. Every woman who writes to me feels her soul has been ripped out of her. It doesn’t matter what religion, nationality, culture, country, political belief, education level, or profession she has—she is part of the same group as all of the rest of us. And although we are all so different, in many ways we are all so much the same. I truly believe that we have so many commonalities that gay men sense when they meet us. We are trusting, loving, accepting, understanding, compassionate, giving, and in most cases, forgiving. This is not a coincidence—not with so many numbers of us. When a gay man is seeking a wife, he is seeking a woman—either consciously or unconsciously--who fits that profile “just in case.” And I say “just in case” because these guys are really hoping against hope that marrying us will change them. But it doesn’t. It can’t. They are gay. We are women.

Some women have what they thought were the best of marriages. Others had the worst. In the end, it’s all the same. But in between the beginning and the end, it’s definitely different. Women who had marriages with turmoil feel a sense of relief that the marriage is over and now understand the reasons why they could never make their husbands happy no matter how hard they tried. They have an easier time accepting that homosexuality was the cause of their unhappiness because now they know that it wasn’t because they weren’t “thin enough,” “attractive enough,” “smart enough,” “supportive enough,” or too “sexually demanding.” Women who had happy marriages have a much harder time dealing with this news. They lived a happy life and believed that their marriages would be forever. They may not have had the best sex lives, but everything else seemed great. They were married to their “best friend.” They can’t understand how sex with a man could be more important to their husbands than the love for their family. They don’t understand how men are willing to sacrifice the beautiful life they have for a sexual act. They want this “nightmare” to go away because they want their husbands “back.” They come to me wanting that magic wand that will “whisk the gay away.” I never was able to find out where they sell those wands. I am still working on finding the wand that “makes your husband gay” as so many ignorant people still believe we have the capability to do!
Two of the most heard questions are (1) Why did this happen to me? and (2) How did this happen to me? I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I’m pretty clear on why it happened. Almost all of you were “gay bait” whether you want to admit it or not. Please let me explain before you get upset—and that goes double for my gay husbands reading this. In all of my endless research over the last 26 years, I have put together a profile of the woman that a gay man seeks out for a wife. I have a whole chapter about this in my book “The Gay Husband Checklist.” Once again, let me doubly emphasize that I believe in my heart that almost every gay man who marries loves his wife when he marries her—I’d say at least 95%. Let’s be honest—would most of us have married a man who we didn’t think loved us? I don’t believe for one moment that straight wives are desperate women trying to hook any man who will marry them. On the contrary. Most of us dated our gay husbands for a while or knew them for a while and the love was there. These men loved us with their hearts to the best of their ability. There was no trickery here—gay husbands didn’t marry you because they hate women. They married you because they loved you and hoped they weren’t gay men. Most of them knew that they had twinges, attractions, or even urges to be with a man, but they could not equate that with being gay. And for those who did know at the time of the marriage that they enjoyed a few fleeing sexual encounters with men, they felt for the most part it was just an encounter and that didn’t make them gay. How could they be gay and love a woman?

They were just as confused then as we became later. They were just as influenced by the gay stereotypes in movies as we were. They couldn’t relate to the swishy, flashy, effeminate acting men that Hollywood portrayed as gay. That wasn’t them. Gay men grew up with the same misconceptions that straight women grew up with. Gay people only wanted gay people. The fact that these husbands had these feelings was a fluke—a fluke that would disappear after they married you. Loving you and building a family would take their minds off those terrible thoughts FOREVER.
And for a while, it did. Starting that new life with a new wife and taking those vows kept them busy for a while. Most of us were married in our 20’s when any sex can feel good to a man—even sex with a woman. Most of them tried to be loving husbands. But in time, “loving” became “dutiful,” and from “dutiful” became “resentful.” A gay man for the most part can only keep up the pretense for so long. As they physically mature, so does their sexuality. Unfortunately, with all of the research, slides and scales that have been invented to explain this, no one has come up with a realistic determination of when the “gay day” will strike. That’s because no two people are exactly alike. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there could be a method that by your 21st birthday when the clock struck midnight, a man’s sexuality would suddenly become clear? Maybe someday science will learn how to control that “gay clock,” but I don’t know of anyone working on it yet.

The fact is that a man’s sexuality will develop at any time throughout the marriage. I believe there are a few men who honestly didn’t even have a hint when they married—not even a twinge. They are able to successfully enjoy their marriages for a number of years. Then all of a sudden—BAM!!! Gay creeps up on them out of nowhere. But most gay husbands had some kind of feelings before they took those vows to you but either thought they would disappear or could be controlled. Look, people give up smoking and carbohydrates; why not desires for a penis?

For those men whose sexuality jumped ahead of them, the unhappiness set in. And guess who was responsible for that? YOU. You were the cause of their frustration. You made them feel “trapped.” You made them feel inadequate because you were expecting them to do things they didn’t want to do—namely make love to you. And so you became sexually “demanding” just because you expected them to act like a straight man should act. And to justify their unhappiness, they started holding you accountable for everything that was wrong in the marriage. In their own minds, if they could make YOU the fault, they wouldn’t have to accept the real culprit—THEIR HOMOSEXUALITY. It was easier for them to knock you down than to be honest with themselves. You were standing in their way of frustration, so you were easy to knock down—over and over again. The knocking wasn’t usually physical, but in almost all cases it was emotionally and mentally abusive.

No one who is straight understands better than I do about the pain that so many gay men go through during their struggle to come to terms with themselves. I have worked with hundreds of wonderful men—some of whom contribute regularly to our newsletter—who share their heartaches with me during their quest for understanding themselves and “chasing the gay that won’t go away.” You always hear me repeat over and over that these men have NO choice in their homosexuality—but they DO have a choice in being honest about it. The sooner the better is what I say. Every day that you live a lie, is a day gone that cannot be taken back. The days turn into weeks, the weeks months, the months years, and before you know it, 10, 20, and 30 years have passed. For many people, it is a lifetime. And what do you have to show for it?

Some gay husbands believe they are doing the “right thing” by staying in a marriage that is a lie. They justify it by saying it would hurt their wives too much if they left. I think the woman should make that decision after she knows the truth. To me, that is the coward’s way out. In most cases, men are afraid of what they have to lose, and in many cases, there’s a lot at stake. Most likely your wife won’t be happy when she hears the news, and how she reacts causes fear to paralyze many of these men long after their honesty due date.

Many of your gay husbands continue to live in denial and never will tell you the truth. I tell women who have husbands that finally admit to being gay or even “bisexual” which is gay to be thankful that they have a confession. So many of our women feel they can’t have closure because they don’t have a confession. What is that about anyway? You supposedly “love” a woman but you don’t “love her enough” to tell her the truth for fear of how it will affect you? Is that love or is that selfishness? Ummmm...it is selfishness.

You see, as I told you earlier, almost all straight wives of gay men are not typical wives. There is a certain prototype that gay men look for in a wife when there may be problems down the road. That’s why you rarely see a straight wife seeking total revenge on her gay husband. In some cases, it does happen, but for the most part, we are women who love too much, too hard, feel too bad about our husbands’ pain, feel guilty even when our head tells us it has nothing to do with us, and continue to want to protect our husbands even when they are out there and not protecting us. They aren’t thinking of us when they have unprotected sex and bring home sexually transmitted diseases, are they?

Hundreds of women are receiving this newsletter who have HIV/AIDS, herpes, syphilis, and pre-cancerous conditions attributed to STD’s brought home by their unprotected husbands. To me, this is unforgiveable. Even then, some gay husbands can’t be honest. They turn the tables accusing their wives of infidelity. Or they come up with the old “toilet bowl crawling with vermin” theory. They are “clueless” how their wives became infected. Okay. How do you even respond to that?

I never said there were any easy solutions to this multi-complex problem. Some gay husbands do the right thing—and some, sooner than later. Even the later ones I can deal with. But the ones that never do the right thing, well those are the ones I hold great contempt for. They refuse to discuss anything with their wives. They emotionally retreat into a shell and don’t come out. They live in a constant state of denial, making their wives second guess themselves over and over and over. This second guessing is emotionally exhausting for any woman who has to keep questioning herself daily. I remember those feelings of self-doubt and how they crept into every decision I had to make. After a while, I couldn’t do anything without questioning my ability as to whether or not I was making the right decision. After all, if I was “imagining” my husband was gay, what else was I “imagining”?

One of the biggest problems that both gay husbands and straight wives have understanding is that gay is not a “lifestyle.” One of the prime reasons why gay husbands are so convinced they are not gay is because they don’t feel comfortable living in the stereotypical gay world. They believe if they are repulsed by gay bars, gay parades, and gay activities, then they aren’t gay. They are straight men who have a sexual need. They don’t equate that sexual need to gay. They really believe they are straight. A gay encounter now and then to relieve the need doesn’t make them gay. As one woman in my support group recently said, “My husband said he just ‘dabbled’ a few times. Dabbling? Yikes! What is that? Plenty of men claim they aren’t gay because they only allow men to perform oral sex on them. Oh yes—they make sure to add that it’s because their wives don’t want to do it, and having a man do it makes it “Not Cheating.” So I suppose if a woman has a straight man perform oral sex because her husband refuses to do it, then it’s not cheating, right? Where’s the sense of reality here?

Why do women have such a hard time accepting the truth even if they don’t find hard-core proof of their husbands’ homosexuality? What is proof? For some women, it would mean walking in and finding him actually having sex with a man. They keep asking me, “Does it mean he’s gay because he’s looking at gay porno? He swears it’s only pictures and he’s not acting on it?” Gay. It’s gay. Straight men DON’T look at gay porno. Others ask me, “Is it gay when he masturbates? He’s not having sex with anyone else.” In other words, he’s not having sex with you, but he’s masturbating and having sex with himself—usually after looking at the gay porno. Gay. It’s gay. You catch him in gay chatrooms posting profiles of himself. He claims he’s just having fun because he’s bored. Gay. It’s gay. Straight men don’t have fun that way. You find his cell phone bills and there are calls to gay dating services or sex lines. He says it’s just a joke. Gay. It’s gay. Spending money on gay hotlines is not something a straight man would do. What is wrong with our women? When I tell these stories to my own ex-husband, he laughs. He can’t believe that women are this naïve. We are so desperate to hang on to the cries of denial that we believe anything these men these men tell us. I say “we” because I was once walking in your shoes a long time ago. I wanted to believe that the worst of all possibilities was impossible.

By hanging on to this hope, I lost who “I” was in the marriage and became someone that I no longer recognized. I remember making all kinds of personal compromises in my head every day. Even though the words were never spoken, all the clues and hints were there. The confrontations always ended the same way: “You’re imagining things.” I knew in time that I wasn’t. In the beginning I was able to believe those denials, and in fact, felt relieved when they kept coming. But in time, I had to think with my head instead of with my heart.

What was I able to live with? What was I able to accept? How much could I live with in order to keep my family intact? If my husband disappeared for a few hours every six months and did something I never had to find out about with a consenting adult, I could live with that. I thought I could live with that. I was willing to live with that. I packaged it in my own mind and felt a sigh of relief. I was so ridiculous, wasn’t I? Many of our women try this approach at first because of the fear of losing what they have. I tried to make it feel better by using the word “bisexual.” That was certainly one step up in comfort from “gay.” Bisexual gives women the illusion of hope. Your husband can be happy with a woman or a man; therefore, he can pick you—IF YOU TRY HARD ENOUGH. I tried and tried and tried. Nothing I tried worked in the end because we have NO CONTROL over our husbands’ homosexuality. They have no control over it—so how can we have any control?

Many of our women write and tell me that they live with gay husbands who are controlling. They don’t necessarily start out controlling, but as they grapple with their homosexuality, these men become controlling because they have no control over their sexuality. Some of them are in such fear of the truth coming out that they will isolate you in all kinds of ways. Some will whisk you off to a new home hundreds or thousands of miles away from everything secure and familiar to you. Others will start making demands on your time so that you don’t spend time with friends and family. And still others will make it so uncomfortable for company to come that people will want to stay away. They hope that by isolating you, you will not tell their “secret” based on your knowledge or suspicions. By isolating “you,” you become more dependent on “him.” This is how he keeps you in his darkened closet.

The sad thing is that even when some of these men finally do come out, we are still stuck in that closet. They’ve jolted—we’re stuck. We all go through the same set of emotions ranging from “how could I have been this stupid” to “I can’t tell anyone about this.” Of course it doesn’t help when your husbands warn you “you better not tell anyone about this—especially my family.” That’s when you are now stuck in the situation of continuing to live his lie for him while he is living his gay life and telling the people who know and love you that the marriage didn’t work out for “mutual reasons.” Or some guys go to the next level and come right out and say the marriage didn’t work because of YOU. And you are still “protecting” his secret while he’s defaming you. What’s with that?

I know that change is difficult, but living in a marriage that’s a lie is more difficult. Some of our women lose view of that because they feel paralyzed into inaction. They’ll sooner pop mind altering anti-depressants than take a chance at making a change for the better. How good is a marriage if you have to be medicated to stay in it? Doesn’t this show you that there is a problem?

For the women who are afraid to break up their families because of the children, I say take a chance. Children know when a marriage isn’t happy. They know when you aren’t happy. They are too young to understand why you aren’t happy, especially when they are living in the lie with you. So instead, they start doubting themselves and wondering what they are doing wrong to cause you unhappiness. They blame themselves, no matter how many times you tell them it’s not their fault. They don’t believe you any more than you believe your husbands’ denials. And what about the role model you are setting forth for them? Is this what you want for them in their futures? Do you want them to stay in a marriage that lacks emotional connection and sexual connection? If they see that is acceptable in your marriage, they will think this is what marriage is and repeat it in their own marriages. I also ask my women this question: Do you have a daughter or a sister? If not, a best friend? When they say yes, I ask them if they would want them to be in this kind of a marriage. No one has said yes. So why would any woman want less for herself than for her child, sister, or friend? What sense does this make?

I never compare two people. I left my marriage with two little babies after four years of being beaten down. I only had a GED which I obtained at 26. I went on welfare for 3 years while I snuck to college and raised the children struggling financially every single day. But I had peace of mind that I didn’t have to struggle living in a failing marriage that had no place to go but further down. I put myself in a place where I wouldn’t have to worry about supporting my children any more. I became self-sufficient and independent. There were days when I was falling over with exhaustion. I had a 3 month old with a rare undiagnosed disease at the time. I had a two year old who gave new meaning to the “terrible twos.” And yet, as horrible as it was, it was still better than wondering every time my husband went out the door who he was going to meet and have sex with. It was better than listening to all of the reasons why he didn’t want to have sex with me. And it was better than being in a controlling situation where I had NO control. Yes, it was difficult, but it was BETTER.

Change is a fact of life. People have overcome greater struggles than this. No one says it will be easy—because it’s not. But staying where you are and being paralyzed is not easy either. I know change can take time—but you have to WANT to make a change. And if you are reading this newsletter, there is something within you that is looking to do this. I don’t give you a timeline, but rather a mind-set. You can never by physically free if you’re not emotionally free. You have to have a clear mind to make an escape plan. And some of our women can never escape. They are disabled and dependent for health reasons—but guess what? They are emotionally free which is half the battle—the most important half of it.

Don’t apologize for loving your husband after he turns your life upside down. You can still love a man who has done this to you because there is part of you who understands this is not a real choice. You may hate the way he does it or how he treats you, but that doesn’t mean you can turn off the love button like a faucet. Some women will love their ex-husbands forever. Look, I love mine. Not as a husband, but as a family member. It took years to get to this point, but children often bond people together. Our losing both of our children in 2002 and 2005 bonded us more closely together than before because no one can understand our loss better than each other.

And if you don’t love your gay husband anymore, that’s fine too. Plenty of people break up who are straight couples and life goes on. In fact, 50% of the marriages in the country break up. Guess why? Because they were mistakes or became mistakes. Human nature is never a perfect science or math. People change, they grow, and they grow apart. Life was meant to live, not to accept as a death sentence. When people feel they are dying in a marriage, they end it and move on. Why do we, as wives of gay men, feel the need to hang and cling onto something that wasn’t meant to be in the first place? Why do we have to have proof before we can justify leaving? Why can’t the proof be that you’re just not happy and getting what you deserve out of a marriage?

That brings me back to my first point. We are different. We are loving, caring, hurting women who will try to the end to make something that is broken work. We will linger and wilt in a ridiculous marriage rather than stand up and say, “I don’t want this anymore for myself because I deserve better.” That’s because so many of us feel for so long that we don’t deserve better.
A few closing thoughts:

Allow yourself to have a pity party when you need one. Life dealt you a hand that you never expected or wanted. You don’t have to be brave—give yourself permission to break down once in a while and cry. But then pick yourself up and keep moving ahead.
Most importantly, there is no timeline of gay husband recovery. This situation is not like any other situation where people get divorced. We are dealing with a myriad of issues that straight couples don’t deal with. You have the children and they are going to deal or accept it, the family, the friends, your co-workers, now having to support a family, financial woes, self-esteem issues, sexual esteem issues, trust issues—including trusting yourself—to deal with. You have to watch with your eyes or at least in your head about your husband loving a man—something that was unthinkable to you when it came to your husband—instead of you. In the beginning, you believe that every man you meet is a gay man. Every man is a suspect. After all, you couldn’t tell with your husband, how can you tell with someone else?

You may believe that you will never trust another man again, but we all think that in our early phases of recovery. Recovery takes time, and women who don’t allow themselves that time are doomed to make a mistake again. It doesn’t mean you’ll find another gay man, but you will find plenty of straight predators out there that are looking for vulnerable women like you after this happens. In our need to feel the love that’s been missing for so long, we often jump before we are ready. We compromise again. That’s why it’s not unusual to find women married for a second time in a marriage with a gay man after a marriage with an abusive man. Abuse could include drinking, drugging, sexual addiction, or gambling. When you’re at a low point, this is when you jump into something just to prove to yourself that you are worthy.

You have to get to know who you are again. You have to become strong so you don’t keep making the same mistake in a different form over and over. Learn to love yourself first. You can never truly love a man in the right way if you don’t learn to love yourself. You have to learn that your needs are just as important in a relationship as your man’s needs. Learn to speak up and assert yourself; if not, you’re doomed to find another wrong relationship. Realize you can be COMPLETE without a man. You shouldn’t need a man to make your life—you should want a man to complement your life.

Please be aware that we have read so many “happily after ever again” stories here from straight wives who found their real soulmates after thinking love was a part of their past that would never happen again. I’m one of many success stories, and I keep bragging about it. It’s been 15 years, 4 months and two weeks. We celebrate every month because to me, finding your soulmate is a celebration! After all this time, the passion and love are even stronger than ever! Go figure!

I will end this newsletter with the most profound statement that my dear friend, Viv from Ohio, stated in a recent chat session. These words were so moving that I wish I would have thought of them myself, but I didn’t. But guess what? I haven’t stopped thinking about them and using them since I heard them.

Viv, who was stuck in a very abusive marriage for 25 years but found her freedom couple of years ago, said she figured out:

“When you are living in a situation that you don’t understand and being mistreated, you are a victim. But once you know the truth and you continue to stay in it, you become a volunteer.”

Think about it!

With love to you all, Bonnie Kaye