October 18, 2010
TELLING THE CHILDREN
Every few years, I have an epiphany. You know what I mean—that “Aha” moment when things you were gray about become black and white. In the past six months, this has happened to me in terms of the always present issue of WHAT TO TELL THE CHILDREN.
Okay, I admit I was on the fence for the past 25 years. And believe me when I tell you I struggled with this throughout the time of my own children growing up, as well as your children growing up. I really vacillated because I felt that every situation was so different. It depended on:
1. The age of the children
2. The location of where the family lives
3. The willingness of the father to reveal the information
4. The acceptance of the mother of her husband’s homosexuality
I used to think that if a child was younger or older, the news would be better accepted. I really did “fear” telling children in their adolescent years for fear of them questioning their own sexuality which might further complicate their teenage years.
So now, after listening to so many stories from adult survivor children of straight/gay marriages, I realize that I was wrong—the children need to know as soon as possible. So let’s discuss the two issues here: (1) why do they need to know and (2) how to tell them.
Let’s start with the question “why do they need to know?”
First, the truth may hurt some of you reading this, but it’s better to face the reality than live in the fantasy. Although our husbands may be award-winning actors as they portray their parts as “straight husbands” during your marriage, you, the straight wives, have not developed that same talent of “acting” like you are happy when you know that there is something missing and wrong in your marriage. Most of you are spending hours every week wondering what the problem is and how you can fix it, and when you find nothing is changing no matter how monumental your efforts are, you become depressed. There’s no shame in this, trust me. I was there. It’s really hard to keep laughing while your sense of self and sexual esteem is plummeting downwards daily. When the extent of your intimacy with your husband resorts to being a quick peck on the cheek, it’s hard not to feel that sense of rejection.
It doesn’t take long before you move from a state of “living” into a state of “existing.” Yes, you wake up, do your chores, go to your job, get through the days, take care of the kids and husband, but you’re on auto pilot. In most cases you have no idea what is going wrong in your marriage, but you do know it’s not what marriage was supposed to be like. And even when you suspect the worst—namely the truth—you’re doing your best to believe the lies your husbands are constantly telling you hoping beyond hope that lies will miraculously turn into truths--but they never do.
Stop deluding yourselves by thinking your children don’t know something is wrong. They do. Every child of a straight/gay marriage has written to me telling me that he or she knew something wasn’t right in the home. There was a lack of affection, caring, compassion, and loving. It didn’t mean the dad wasn’t a good dad—it just means that the marriage wasn’t a good marriage. Children know it. They can sense it. And guess what? They sense your unhappiness. They hear your crying. They see you taking “medication” in the form of antidepressants. They sense your struggle, even if they don’t know what the struggle is about.
When you do find out the truth, if you don’t leave the marriage, you are covering up the truth. Like I said, YOU are covering up the truth. By the time you find out, your husband has now let down his defenses and started to get careless. Almost all of these children found evidence of their father’s homosexuality before you did via the Internet, cell phones, or pornographic material in the home. But now you feel backed against the corner to keep HIS secret. Let me tell you as a fact—this kind of secret destroys families.
I can understand the fear that gay men have of their families finding out. I work with many gay men who are going through this process and I do hurt for them. I really do. But I also tell them they need to do the right thing and TELL THE TRUTH. Now I’m telling both our women and gay men you need to tell the truth to your children.
First of all, why are we keeping this a secret? A secret implies something bad. Are we giving the message that homosexuality is bad? By keeping this a secret, we are. Homosexuality is different—it’s not bad. We have to move away from the “secret” mentality because it only perpetuates the situation and makes it worse. Remember—children are made up of two parents, not one. If a child feels that there is something wrong with the father without knowing what the truth is, any kind of horror can be imagined far worse than the truth. This affects the self-worth of the child because half of him or her came from the father.
Next is the issue of the children knowing and feeling they now have to keep this news a “secret.” This puts them in a very dark space that they don’t want to be in. They feel they are caught in a web of deceit affecting both of their parents. They don’t want to be the cause of the breakup of a marriage. They know their fathers are cheating but they are afraid of hurting their mothers. They don’t want their fathers to be mad at them, so they keep silent seeing their mothers hurting and feeling helpless to do anything to help their mothers.
Yikes!!! What are we doing to these precious children? We are giving them all the wrong messages about love, marriage, and trust. How the heck are they supposed to find positive relationships in their future when they look at their “teachers”—namely their parents—and feel such a sense of confusion?
Yep, this secret should not be a secret—it should be discussed as soon as the wife has time to process it. And it should be told to the children by BOTH parents. However, some of the fathers refuse to do this, still thinking about protecting themselves before protecting the mental health of their children. In that case, you will have to become the teller of the news on your own. Give your husband a chance to tell it with you, but if he refuses, be firm and tell him that you will do it yourself.
I know some of you are shuddering by now. As loving, kind, compassionate women, you are often the “keeper of the secret” for your gay husbands. You continue to protect them long after they are living their gay lives because they ask you to because THEY don’t want people to know. Let’s be honest—why are you protecting them? Why aren’t you protecting your children? Why should your children live in the mystery of why a marriage ended, and in some cases, blame YOU for the end of their family life? This makes no sense.
I look at this like a domino effect. Your husband has no choice in his homosexuality. He married you with the hopes and dreams of being a good “straight” husband, but it’s not happening over time. So he’s falling and knocks you down. Now the pressure of both of you falling is knocking down the children. Who are the real victims here?
Mis-marriages (or mistakes in a marriage as I call them) happen. The issue of fault is not the issue when it comes to the children. Gay men make the mistake and most often unintentionally—but they can fix it. They don’t have to linger in your life forever making you feel more trapped than they feel being where they don’t belong. As adults, you have the power to rebuild your lives again even though many of you feel very powerless. With help, counseling, and support—it does happen all the time. But who is there to rebuild your children? Why wouldn’t you think that your marriage wouldn’t affect them? Trust me when I tell you that it does. The emotional damage that it can cause them will fill their lifetimes. That’s why you owe it to them to do the right thing and tell them the truth before they find it out some other way or from someone else. Your children won’t thank you for “protecting” them as some as you think—they’ll wonder why you couldn’t be honest with them and then wonder what else wasn’t true in their lives that you “protected” them from.
As far as how to tell them, well, that’s another story. It can’t be told with anger in your voice and venom in your heart no matter how you are feeling at the moment. Remember—this is NOT about you—it’s about YOUR CHILDREN. When you talk about their father in a derogatory way, don’t think they won’t be internalizing it because they will. Your children don’t have to be your allies—you have friends and families for that. The children need to feel a sense of security and love from both parents, even when one of them may be acting like a total jerk. And to my gay men reading this, trust me—it’s not the “gay” that makes these men jerks—it’s the lack of responsibility financially and emotionally to the families after they leave. And while I’m on that subject, I don’t really care about how gay husbands now have the chance to “find themselves” after being tormented in a mis-marriage for years. The family STILL has to come first. That’s the correct, responsible thing to do. I make NO excuses for irresponsible gay husbands who are too busy having fun in their new found freedom to remember their grieving families. NONE.
So that’s where the problem comes in. It’s not really WHEN you tell the children, but HOW you tell them that is the issue. Homosexuality CANNOT be used as the weapon in the truth. Using derogatory words about gay is NOT going to help. That’s why wives have to be able to separate their personal own antagonisms based on their hurt from this discussion. Telling your children that their daddy is a “faggot” who likes to “screw men” is totally inappropriate. This is NOT going to make your children feel better about the situation. You can’t use gay as the target of your anger when telling the children the news. This is where loving them and putting their needs for emotional stability before your need for revenge comes into play.
Children don’t have to “visualize” their father’s sex habits in order to know about homosexuality. It’s bad enough that you are smacked in the face with it—but you’re an adult. It’s hard enough for you to figure out—don’t expect them to be able to deal with those thoughts. They shouldn’t have to. They do need to know this:
1. People are born differently. Some are tall; some are short. Some are white; some are black; some have blue eyes; some have brown eyes; some are straight; some are gay.
2. People don’t “choose” to be gay. They are born that way. They don’t always know it because there’s no big “G” sign on their bodies when they are born. The homosexuality develops at different times of each person’s life. Some people know it early; some know it later. There’s no set time which is the problem. For those that develop this later, they don’t understand or know it at the time they are getting married. The marriage was brought together by love, and the children were born out of this love.
3. When a man realizes he is gay, he needs to love his wife and children enough to be honest with them because he doesn’t want his family to suffer anymore. As a gay man, he can’t be the kind of husband the wife needs, but he can still be an important part of the family.
4. A gay man can still be a wonderful father. His love for his children hasn’t changed even if the marriage does change.
Do I have all of the answers? No, not yet. But I think this is a good start. It’s an objective start. Look, when my kids were growing up and my ex-husband was acting like a jerk, I had to bite my tongue A LOT so I wouldn’t say derogatory things about him that would affect them. Sometimes, I bit it so hard that it was swelling out of my mouth. There were plenty of times I wanted to call him every horrible name in the book—but I didn’t—not to them. I saved it for my friends and family. To my children, I turned my ex into a prince. I didn’t do it for him—I did it for them. I wanted them to feel secure that their parents loved them regardless of the fact that we couldn’t live with each other. I also knew that children are created from two parents. If they believe that one of them is “defective,” they internalize that something within them is wrong. It deteriorates their own sense of self-esteem which affects their future as far as positive relationships. I see it all of the time as our children find themselves in destructive relationships as they grow older because they don’t feel worthy of anything better.
And guess what? I told my children when I felt I had no choice. My ex refused to tell them even though I repeatedly asked him to. They would be in his home and find things as children do—magazines, videos, and other things. They would see him in bed sleeping with other men. By the time they were in their early teens, I felt I had no choice. They were confused, and I felt that as they grew into their teenage years, they needed to understand what was going on. And so, with great sensitivity, I told them because their father couldn’t—or shall I say wouldn’t. My ex was leading an actively gay life, and my children were around it whenever they visited him. He thought he was “hiding” it because he wasn’t holding hands or showing public display of affection, but children are far more perceptive than that. I felt the words had to be spoken because they were asking me questions that needed to be addressed.
Once my ex knew I told them was he mad? Infuriated is putting it mildly. He told me that I had no business to tell his business. But I told him he had no right living a life that the children were seeing and pretending like it wasn’t happening. How confused were they supposed to be growing up?
We didn’t speak for nearly a year after I dropped the news, but I had no regrets. In fact, in later years when my daughter came to terms with her homosexuality, at least she understood that she didn’t have to live her life in a closet pretending to be who she wasn’t because she didn’t have to feel the shame her father felt throughout his life.
My daughter was far more accepting of her father’s homosexuality than he was of hers--ironically. My son, on the other hand, felt it was his secret to keep from his friends. And that was his choice. He loved his father dearly, but he didn’t want people to know he had a gay father. I respected that decision. My son was certainly pro-gay, but he didn’t want people to know his father was gay. You see, if your children choose to keep the secret from their friends, that’s fine. But at least give them the knowledge to make that choice.
So, yes, there are no easy answers in this most complex situation. But as I tell the men who come to me, the truth will set you free. I am now telling you that it will also set your children free. Please think about this and feel free to get back to me with your thoughts and stories. We owe this to our children.
And speaking of children, we will be launching our adult children support group in November. If you haven’t told your children about this yet—please do. They need the support as much as we do. Have them write to me at Bonkaye@aol.com.
Showing posts with label Gay Fathers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gay Fathers. Show all posts
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Gay Fathers Speak Out
Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Talk Newsletter
June 2009 Volume 8, Issue 96
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Dear Readers,
First, let me thank you for the overwhelming number of letters from the May newsletter. The response was overwhelming with kind words from around the world. I’m glad I was able to connect with so many of you to bring a sense of reality into your situations.
This month I have dedicated this newsletter to gay husbands/ex-husbands who support our efforts and through this newsletter. This is the first time I am doing this, and I would like to explain why.
I think it’s important for women who have married gay men to understand where these men are coming from. So many of you question what was real in your marriage; others wonder if your marriage was all a lie. Some women are still blaming themselves for their husbands’ homosexuality thinking that in some small or big way, they had some influence in this situation. Some of you have horrible ex-husbands who keep telling you that this is your fault, manipulating those emotional buttons to the limit.
When we are in the midst of living through the nightmare, it is easy to lose perspective and only see things from one point of view—namely ours. And quite honestly, I do feel that our side is usually the right side for us—the women. However, I stick by my words that in almost all cases, these men loved us, hoped to be good husbands to us, and believed they could live happily ever “straight.” For many of us, the beginning of the marriage was real. It’s the years ahead that became like Alice in Wonderland—topsy turvey through a distorted mirror. It’s hard for us to understand how men who proclaimed to love us were willing to “throw it away” for sex with a man.
As much as I say that homosexuality is not just about sex, it’s hard for women in pain to accept this. For that reason, I have asked some of the men who support us, this newsletter, my writing, and your pain to write something that will hopefully explain things that will help you understand things better.
Dear Bonnie and Readers:
In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, WA invented Father’s Day to honor her father, William Smart. William, a Civil War Veteran, raised Sonora and her 5 siblings after their mother died in childbirth with the couple’s 6th child. Sonora wanted him to know how grateful she was for the sacrifices he made. Since her Dad was born in June, she chose to hold the first Father’s Day celebration on June 19th, 1910. It took several years before Father’s Day gained wide support but finally, in 1956, a joint resolution of Congress made Father’s Day official in the United States. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father's Day and in 1972 President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a National Holiday.
But just what is a father today? The role of father in American culture has greatly evolved since Sonora honored her father. In 1910 the role of the father was to be the family CEO – the ultimate family authority, disciplinarian, and comptroller. He played an important role in teaching masculine skills to his sons and provided protection and guidance to his daughters. However, our culture evolved and so did the role of father. Men went off to war leaving their wives to raise the children and run the household even as they staffed the assembly lines in the factories. Through WWI, WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam men were drafted and families learned to function without Dad. Then came the pop psychology culture of the 1970’s. Zen, EST, encounter groups, and an explosion of do-it-yourself pop psychology self-help books ushered in a seismic shift in our culture. Fathers became less central to the family. Instead we learned to nurture ourselves.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West wrote The War Against Parents and expressed their belief that pop psychology has been detrimental to the parental-child relationships. They wrote "..in its more watered-down, popularized forms, psychology can be extremely damaging, particularly to the parental role and function. At the heart of the matter is the fact that in our increasingly therapeutic culture, external obligations, whether to parents, children, or community, are minimized, because they interfere with a person's capacity for self-love and self-realization." The result, according to these authors, is that pop psychology encouraged an individual ethic that placed self-fulfillment above others such as public service, family or other important causes.
Pop psychology oversimplifies the message. Helen Reddy’s song “I Am Woman” convinced us all that women are super human. “I am invincible,” she sang. Husbands and fathers became the spare parent – no longer essential to the family. But as a result, young men looked to street gangs to provide male role models and development of their nurturing and parenting ‘skills’. We have also seen a tremendous increase in teen pregnancy and single Moms as an increasing number of daughters grew up in fatherless households. But in general, fathers did not have the same legal rights or equal access to their children. Until very recently co-custody was uncommon and the courts simply did not enforce visitation for the father. Fortunately that is beginning to change.
But the loss of contact with my own children did not occur simply because the courts refused to enforce visitation, nor did they fall victim to pop psychology. It would be easy to blame it all on the court, but the fact is that the court simply distilled and codified all the homophobic guilt and shame I felt about myself, and the betrayal, rage and resentment my wife felt when I admitted I was gay and could never change. Before we separated, I doted on my kids. My son was my shadow. I could not keep him out of my tools so we invested in a tool set just for him. We built projects together or sometimes we put model planes and ships together. We explored hardware departments and Do-it-yourself manuals and blueprints. My daughter was my Princess. Perhaps it was my gay brain that enabled me to style and curl her blond locks before school, or pick out her stylish clothes. Whatever it was, it had photographers and model agencies actively encouraging her to do modeling. But all that ended when my wife and I separated.
In a war of angry words, my wife made it clear that our son needed “a real man” for a role model, so she enlisted the aid of Big Brother to provide the masculine leadership that I could not possibly provide him since I was gay – and lousy at sports. And in my own internalized homophobia and self shame, I walked away from that fight. I gave up and made myself the disposable parent. How could I compete with a ‘real’ man?
But is that really what makes a Dad? Is there some kind of certification program that one passes which tests men on things like team sports knowledge before certifying them as a ‘real’ man and effective role model? Is being heterosexual a prerequisite for that course or certification program? Our culture assures us that Mothers are essential for healthy childhood development, but why do we need Fathers and what skills and experience are required for this position?
Social scientists tell us that children are strongly influenced by observing their parents working together to solve problems and provide support for their children. Rigid roles such as who cooks, who cleans, or who mows the lawn or plays handball are unimportant. What is important is that their kids learn from the way in which matters are discussed and decisions are made. Children who have two active parents see an adult world and the interaction between parents. It teaches them how to have a relationship. It teaches them how to one day be a parent to their own children.
The traditional role fathers play in their children’s life is that of breadwinner and provider of the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing. But fathers (even gay ones) are also seen as providing protection for their daughters and a role model for their sons. However, it is the role the father plays as one half of the parental partnership that is undoubtedly the most important. Even when a marriage dissolves, it is imperative that Dads stay active and involved with their sons and daughters. So I salute the Dads who find creative ways to stay involved with their children and who refuse to walk away.
Doug
Dear Bonnie:
To say the least May’s newsletter was a very interesting one and Bonnie you made your point quite clear.
As a gay man, married and with a child I can relate to the pain and mental suffering that each and every one of you has gone through and continue to go through, all the questions that roll through each and every one of your minds, everyday, “why did this happen”, “how did this happen”, and most importantly, “why to me”?
I believe that my wife asks herself those questions every minute of the day and even with help from professionals is still in denial of the whole situation. In one of my previous responses I mentioned that when two people get married they marry for Love, with the hopes of having a family, for a life time commitment.
When I finally realized myself who I was it was too late to go back in time and undo what had happened. Realistically I do not think that any gay man who marries is out to harm or hurt his wife in any way. From my own experience I did marry for Love, but at that time I was in denial of who and what I was and took many years to finally realize the truth about myself. The woman I married is a wonderful and loving person who till this day even after what has happened still professes her love for me, has forgiven me but does not change my make up or needs. Many people still ask me if I still Love her, honestly yes I do, she is the woman I fell in Love with and married, she is my best friend in life, but can I offer her that type of Love that marriage is supposed to, no I can’t. This has been the case for many years now and it is the stereotypical story about a gay man marrying.
I have been psychoanalyzed and the result has been the same of what I believed within myself for many years now. Truthfully, it’s me that was in denial of my own being right from the start. I really do not think that any women who is married or been married to a gay man realized just how much anguish and mental suffering each man goes through and how much courage and strength it does take to finally tell their partner the truth.
When my wife found out about me and I had to tell her about me, my heart was broken into a million pieces and truthfully I was scared. I was not scared about me, but scared about what I had done to her and what it would do to her for life. I was afraid of what this would mean for our child, his well being and life long ramifications. For many months now I have been beating my head against the wall thinking of what it is that I accomplished from getting married and living the lie for so many years? Some questions I can answer some I still cannot. Like many other men out there in this situation we have gained the utmost love from a wonderful woman, the respect and trust from her family, we have become fathers and the though of loosing all this is so very frightening.
Most of you must be thinking what a selfish attitude, but with all that is written on the subject, there is very little on the subject of the other side’s feelings. Believe me when I say that my suffering during all this has me just as in much pain as you many women out there. I know that what I and many other men out there did is not fair, nor justifiable to you women.
When Bonnie says that it’s not your fault believe her when she says that. You had no way of knowing what was to happen in the future. From the man’s side of things neither did I. Many of us men who married with hopes of having a normal life, we could not predict the outcome either.
As a father and husband I will not abandon my family, they will always have my support and love, this is the commitment I made to them as a father and husband. Should my wife choose not then so be it. Selfish no, realistic yes. Many of you ladies have become dependent on your husband and probably the most difficult thing that you must come to grips with is the independency factor. Your self esteem has been destroyed and it’s up to you to build that up again.
With Fathers day coming up, it will be hard for all of us, just like any other family holiday.
All the best to each and every one of you, and to you Bonnie, God bless you in all the help and good words you offer so many women out there to find themselves again. To all us men out there who really hurt from our situations, be strong not only for yourself but for your families.
Joe
Dear Bonnie:
“Honey I’m Gay” a phrase that is very difficult to listen to and accept and just as hard to say. When I had to say them to the only woman I ever loved in a romantic way they just about killed me. I had been married for 16 years 14 of, which were wonderful. We were married a total of 18 years and though I didn’t realize it at the time she was my sole mate. We shared the same dreams, hopes and expectations. Except for one. I kept that nightmare to myself.
As opposed to other men in my position I never strayed. Not because I wasn’t tempted or I didn’t have the opportunity but because I was so afraid of what it would cost me. I loved my wife and my sons they were the center of my life. I told myself that my “deviant” sexual desires were not to be allowed.
After 14 years of marriage life through us a curve, my wife’s father was diagnosed with a fatal heart disease and we were told he had little more than six months to live. My wife who was an only child felt it was best to move back home away from all our friends and closer to her family. She wanted to support her mom when the time came. I was not as willing but thought it was something I had to do for her. That move brought on a series of events that turned all of our lives upside down. My wife dedicated herself to her parents and parenting our children and I looked on as my place in the picture was taken on by her immediate and extended family. In fact I felt like I was just another face in the crowd. I never told her how I felt, instead I tried to adjust and found some refuge in a challenging job and my sons.
The feelings of alienation had been growing for about six months then when I was at my weakest moment as I drove my sons to school I saw a pair of beautiful eyes that were in the face of a beautiful young man. I had never seen him before on the road and thought it was a fluke something that would never happen again. Well I was wrong it happened for 14 days in a row. Finally one day as I was driving to work, from the school I saw the young man and he winked at me! To make a long story short I fell for the young man hook line and sinker.
The next 18 months of my life were a mixture of guilt, anger, pain and lies. My wife finally confronted me and I asked for a separation because I truly did not know what was going on inside me. Don’t misunderstand--when I was in college I had plenty of sex with men of all ages sizes and types; however, when I got married I put that all behind me and kept myself for my wife. Our sex life was not good by any stretch of the imagination but we were content, busy, and I above all was in denial. Now all of the feelings I had repressed for so long came out and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
My wife and I had high profile jobs and we were well known. I had to do something and what I did was move back to the city we had lived in before we moved back home alone. There I was safe if nothing else due to the sheer number of people. The young man called me almost every day telling me how much he missed me and how much he wanted me. My wife in her pain let me be. It was very painful to call and have to say hi and ask to speak to the boys. It was even more awkward when I went back to visit them. Being a gracious lady and a wonderful person she allowed me to stay at her house. I’m sure she would have preferred to see me on the streets or dead but for the sake of the children she put up with me. She never made me feel unwanted or unwelcome--I did that all by myself. It was a painful time for use both.
Unfortunately because of the pain and confusion I was going through, I didn’t recognize how much she hurt. That is not an excuse--only a statement of fact. My ex-wife passed away due to metastatic breast cancer about 2 years after our divorce was final. I was with her as much as work and my obligations allowed me to be, and I took charge of making all of the arrangements. My sons came to live with me and we tried to put together our broken family as well as we could. I explained to them why there mother and I divorced and my lifestyle, and to my delighted surprise and their mother’s credit, they didn’t even bat an eyelash.
My oldest is on his own now and my youngest still lives with me. We have never been as close as we were when I was married and they were young children. However, they know how much I love them and that I will do anything in my power to help them and keep them safe. As for their mom she is always in my prayers and in my heart she truly was a wonderful woman.
To all the men reading this I ask you if you have taken into account the pain you are causing your wife by lying to her and denying her the opportunity to be truly happy someday? To the women reading this I put the following questions. Have you ever done something that you are deeply ashamed of something you can’t even truly justify to yourself? A thing that you were told all your life was bad? Have you ever had to fight back the feeling of intense panic the grips your heart when you realize that you are doing something that will ruin your life? Yet you risk it all because you truly have no choice? That is what most gay married men go through every day. Once he realizes that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to keep those desires under control and it only gets worse with age.
M.A.
Dear Bonnie,
Three years ago in June, I made a radical change in my life. I came out to my wife and ultimately about all of my closest friends, family members and co-workers. My truth was life altering for myself, my young children, my wife and my extended family. I thought having to suffer through the death of my Father was incredibly difficult. I soon realized that death could not compete with what my family and I were to endure through the process of me acknowledging that I am gay … and destructive nature of divorce.
My story is so similar, to so many you and I have heard about, read about or lived … that it barely needs more than a few sentences here. I knew since about the time that I was in my early teens that something was “different” about me, compared to my male friends. However, I had convinced myself that different was fine and that I def. wanted to and could, live the life that my very conservative old New England family instilled in me. By the time I was 30 I had everything I thought I had ever wanted; a beautiful and smart wife, a great job and fine country home. I even had a golden retriever.
By the time I was 38 I had all of that and two beautiful children, too. And can you believe it … I was not happy? I thought I was going out of my mind. How could I have everything and still not be happy. The deeper I looked at myself, the clearer my answer became. Those nagging thoughts about what made me think I was different became more evident. Could it be that my preoccupation with how men looked was more than just me comparing myself with them? Could it be more like me longing to be with a man on an intimate level? It was more and more evident, that stereo types about gay men applied to me. And it was becoming increasingly more difficult to always watch how I expressed myself, how little I cared about football, baseball, basketball, etc. And biggest of all … how difficult it had become to keep my eyes focused away from the hot guy that see in the grocery store or walking down the street … fearful that my wife or someone else would notice.
For years my mother and sister and others would say … you don’t seem very happy. What’s wrong? My pat answer would always be … I’m tired. Well … I was tried because I had for years and years and years been trying in vain to suppress who I was … in order to become who I wasn’t … so to fulfill ideas established by my family and society. I wanted so desperately to fit in … to be accepted and loved. Denial is an incredibly strong resource. Denial can be a good thing … in small doses. I my case … denial was slowly killing me.
Coming out to my wife was of course the hardest thing I had to do in the process. My wife was in complete shock. Shock turned to sadness and then anger. Three years later … I still some anger and sadness but thankfully I’m now seeing more and more acceptance. Two days after I came out to my wife, I had to explain to my children that the love I had for their mother had changed and was not strong enough for us to stay together. My oldest child curled up in my lap and sobbed and I quite simply wanted to die!
Six months prior to coming out to my wife I had finally accepted that I am in fact, gay. Once I accepted that fact I found a therapist and started working with him on what I should do with my new identity. Should I continue to deny myself and live my current life until my children went off to college? Or should I lead a double life behind my wives back? Or should I finally be true to myself and those around me? I obviously chose the latter … given the facts, I believed my wife deserved to be with a person who could love her and be with her the way she deserved a spouse should be. The fact that she deserved to be happy and to know that the end of our marriage had nothing to do with her! And given the fact that how could I try to teach my children to lead an authentic life if I myself could not lead one. And given the fact that I was simply so tired of suppressing “myself” from the world that I felt I might truly make myself ill due to my lying about who I truly am.
Three years ago … just before I came out … I was scared to death of what chances were to lie ahead. But one morning I literally woke up and it occurred to me that the life I was living had been much less of a life than what I thought anyone should accept. And if when I came out, that the only things I had left where my truth and my daughters, I could begin to lead a much happier life.
To my great surprise and relief, I receive a huge amount of love and support from every last friend; co-worker and family member (save two and course my wife). Within two weeks, I had come out to nearly 30 people and almost the exact words came from each one; you are a great person … compassionate, loving and kind. If you believe you are doing the right thing for you and your family … we support you.
On the contrary, my wife was very angry and talked to me very little. Within 10 days, she called me to tell me she was serving me with divorce papers. She had asked me to move out of our house almost immediately. Prior to this time, I had always played a major role in the caring and giving to our two children. Suddenly, my wife wanted to control my time and access to our daughters. I was going along with her wishes, hoping that if I gave her some control on that end, she would feel better. That plan did not work in my favor. The more control I gave up the more she grabbed for. I understood her reactions to a degree but it was very painful to live through. But I knew what she was having to endure was just as painful. It took the two of us and our two attorneys and a two hour meeting to get to me more access. I took to sending cards to my children everyday … since some days when I called home, my wife would not answer the phone.
When my wife and I first separated, I told her I would continue taking care of all the finical responsibilities … just as I had been doing (since my wife had not worked since the birth of our second child, three years prior). And even though I was not living at our house any more, I told my wife I would continue to mow the lawn each week and clean the pool. Each week I did what I said. Each week I would leave flowers from the garden in the girls’ rooms … a little reminder that I had been there and was thinking about them. I read the books about having as good of a divorce as possible. I continued to see a therapist. I was always at the house to pick up our daughters when I said I was going to be … never late for pick up or drop off. I was determined to show my wife, that even though I could no longer be her husband in “normal” terms … I would never, not be there for her and never stop taking care of my responsibilities to her or our children.
The first year of separation was the worst. I felt like I could not be the Dad I wanted to be. I felt like a stranger at my own house. I could not understand why my wife and I could not communicate better. I felt scared, not knowing what the final outcome of the divorce would be; where would we live, how would we figure out a co-parenting schedule, how could I help my daughters understand how and why this happened … and on and on and on.
My daughters are my world. Nothing is more important to me. I have done my very best to show them consistent love and support. My parenting schedule with them is nearly 50%. I’m hoping someday soon it will be completely 50/50. Knowing it’s in the best interest of our children to have equal access to both parents. I know the girls friends. I know their teachers. I go into their classrooms to help out. The girls know my friends. I managed to keep the house that they have lived in since they were born. My daughters have been slowly (over a two year period) introduced to the man of my life … whom I’m marrying this summer. We are all very much becoming a family and it’s great. I hope that some day, my ex-wife understands that one of the reasons I chose the man I did, to spend the rest of my life with … was because he loves our daughters so very much. And they are loving him right back.
In the last two weeks there has been another dramatic shift. My ex-wife and I have gotten together for two intense and emotional conversations. We have both been able to hear thing; feelings, concerns, thoughts … about each other which I guess we are now finally ready to hear. We are both ready for closure. We are both ready to work on becoming friends again. We are both ready to work on co-parenting our children the way they need us too. I have never been happier in my life! It’s taken three years to get to this point … but I finally believe we are on our way.
D.
I want to thank our men for sharing their feelings with us. It proves that these are very complicated situations with no easy, and in many cases, happy solutions. We all go through life trying to make sense out of something that is so hard to understand. Hopefully the words of our men will help you understand a little more clearly.
If you have comments or questions, please feel free to send them to me.
With love and hope, Bonnie Kaye
June 2009 Volume 8, Issue 96
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Dear Readers,
First, let me thank you for the overwhelming number of letters from the May newsletter. The response was overwhelming with kind words from around the world. I’m glad I was able to connect with so many of you to bring a sense of reality into your situations.
This month I have dedicated this newsletter to gay husbands/ex-husbands who support our efforts and through this newsletter. This is the first time I am doing this, and I would like to explain why.
I think it’s important for women who have married gay men to understand where these men are coming from. So many of you question what was real in your marriage; others wonder if your marriage was all a lie. Some women are still blaming themselves for their husbands’ homosexuality thinking that in some small or big way, they had some influence in this situation. Some of you have horrible ex-husbands who keep telling you that this is your fault, manipulating those emotional buttons to the limit.
When we are in the midst of living through the nightmare, it is easy to lose perspective and only see things from one point of view—namely ours. And quite honestly, I do feel that our side is usually the right side for us—the women. However, I stick by my words that in almost all cases, these men loved us, hoped to be good husbands to us, and believed they could live happily ever “straight.” For many of us, the beginning of the marriage was real. It’s the years ahead that became like Alice in Wonderland—topsy turvey through a distorted mirror. It’s hard for us to understand how men who proclaimed to love us were willing to “throw it away” for sex with a man.
As much as I say that homosexuality is not just about sex, it’s hard for women in pain to accept this. For that reason, I have asked some of the men who support us, this newsletter, my writing, and your pain to write something that will hopefully explain things that will help you understand things better.
Dear Bonnie and Readers:
In 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, WA invented Father’s Day to honor her father, William Smart. William, a Civil War Veteran, raised Sonora and her 5 siblings after their mother died in childbirth with the couple’s 6th child. Sonora wanted him to know how grateful she was for the sacrifices he made. Since her Dad was born in June, she chose to hold the first Father’s Day celebration on June 19th, 1910. It took several years before Father’s Day gained wide support but finally, in 1956, a joint resolution of Congress made Father’s Day official in the United States. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father's Day and in 1972 President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a National Holiday.
But just what is a father today? The role of father in American culture has greatly evolved since Sonora honored her father. In 1910 the role of the father was to be the family CEO – the ultimate family authority, disciplinarian, and comptroller. He played an important role in teaching masculine skills to his sons and provided protection and guidance to his daughters. However, our culture evolved and so did the role of father. Men went off to war leaving their wives to raise the children and run the household even as they staffed the assembly lines in the factories. Through WWI, WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam men were drafted and families learned to function without Dad. Then came the pop psychology culture of the 1970’s. Zen, EST, encounter groups, and an explosion of do-it-yourself pop psychology self-help books ushered in a seismic shift in our culture. Fathers became less central to the family. Instead we learned to nurture ourselves.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West wrote The War Against Parents and expressed their belief that pop psychology has been detrimental to the parental-child relationships. They wrote "..in its more watered-down, popularized forms, psychology can be extremely damaging, particularly to the parental role and function. At the heart of the matter is the fact that in our increasingly therapeutic culture, external obligations, whether to parents, children, or community, are minimized, because they interfere with a person's capacity for self-love and self-realization." The result, according to these authors, is that pop psychology encouraged an individual ethic that placed self-fulfillment above others such as public service, family or other important causes.
Pop psychology oversimplifies the message. Helen Reddy’s song “I Am Woman” convinced us all that women are super human. “I am invincible,” she sang. Husbands and fathers became the spare parent – no longer essential to the family. But as a result, young men looked to street gangs to provide male role models and development of their nurturing and parenting ‘skills’. We have also seen a tremendous increase in teen pregnancy and single Moms as an increasing number of daughters grew up in fatherless households. But in general, fathers did not have the same legal rights or equal access to their children. Until very recently co-custody was uncommon and the courts simply did not enforce visitation for the father. Fortunately that is beginning to change.
But the loss of contact with my own children did not occur simply because the courts refused to enforce visitation, nor did they fall victim to pop psychology. It would be easy to blame it all on the court, but the fact is that the court simply distilled and codified all the homophobic guilt and shame I felt about myself, and the betrayal, rage and resentment my wife felt when I admitted I was gay and could never change. Before we separated, I doted on my kids. My son was my shadow. I could not keep him out of my tools so we invested in a tool set just for him. We built projects together or sometimes we put model planes and ships together. We explored hardware departments and Do-it-yourself manuals and blueprints. My daughter was my Princess. Perhaps it was my gay brain that enabled me to style and curl her blond locks before school, or pick out her stylish clothes. Whatever it was, it had photographers and model agencies actively encouraging her to do modeling. But all that ended when my wife and I separated.
In a war of angry words, my wife made it clear that our son needed “a real man” for a role model, so she enlisted the aid of Big Brother to provide the masculine leadership that I could not possibly provide him since I was gay – and lousy at sports. And in my own internalized homophobia and self shame, I walked away from that fight. I gave up and made myself the disposable parent. How could I compete with a ‘real’ man?
But is that really what makes a Dad? Is there some kind of certification program that one passes which tests men on things like team sports knowledge before certifying them as a ‘real’ man and effective role model? Is being heterosexual a prerequisite for that course or certification program? Our culture assures us that Mothers are essential for healthy childhood development, but why do we need Fathers and what skills and experience are required for this position?
Social scientists tell us that children are strongly influenced by observing their parents working together to solve problems and provide support for their children. Rigid roles such as who cooks, who cleans, or who mows the lawn or plays handball are unimportant. What is important is that their kids learn from the way in which matters are discussed and decisions are made. Children who have two active parents see an adult world and the interaction between parents. It teaches them how to have a relationship. It teaches them how to one day be a parent to their own children.
The traditional role fathers play in their children’s life is that of breadwinner and provider of the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing. But fathers (even gay ones) are also seen as providing protection for their daughters and a role model for their sons. However, it is the role the father plays as one half of the parental partnership that is undoubtedly the most important. Even when a marriage dissolves, it is imperative that Dads stay active and involved with their sons and daughters. So I salute the Dads who find creative ways to stay involved with their children and who refuse to walk away.
Doug
Dear Bonnie:
To say the least May’s newsletter was a very interesting one and Bonnie you made your point quite clear.
As a gay man, married and with a child I can relate to the pain and mental suffering that each and every one of you has gone through and continue to go through, all the questions that roll through each and every one of your minds, everyday, “why did this happen”, “how did this happen”, and most importantly, “why to me”?
I believe that my wife asks herself those questions every minute of the day and even with help from professionals is still in denial of the whole situation. In one of my previous responses I mentioned that when two people get married they marry for Love, with the hopes of having a family, for a life time commitment.
When I finally realized myself who I was it was too late to go back in time and undo what had happened. Realistically I do not think that any gay man who marries is out to harm or hurt his wife in any way. From my own experience I did marry for Love, but at that time I was in denial of who and what I was and took many years to finally realize the truth about myself. The woman I married is a wonderful and loving person who till this day even after what has happened still professes her love for me, has forgiven me but does not change my make up or needs. Many people still ask me if I still Love her, honestly yes I do, she is the woman I fell in Love with and married, she is my best friend in life, but can I offer her that type of Love that marriage is supposed to, no I can’t. This has been the case for many years now and it is the stereotypical story about a gay man marrying.
I have been psychoanalyzed and the result has been the same of what I believed within myself for many years now. Truthfully, it’s me that was in denial of my own being right from the start. I really do not think that any women who is married or been married to a gay man realized just how much anguish and mental suffering each man goes through and how much courage and strength it does take to finally tell their partner the truth.
When my wife found out about me and I had to tell her about me, my heart was broken into a million pieces and truthfully I was scared. I was not scared about me, but scared about what I had done to her and what it would do to her for life. I was afraid of what this would mean for our child, his well being and life long ramifications. For many months now I have been beating my head against the wall thinking of what it is that I accomplished from getting married and living the lie for so many years? Some questions I can answer some I still cannot. Like many other men out there in this situation we have gained the utmost love from a wonderful woman, the respect and trust from her family, we have become fathers and the though of loosing all this is so very frightening.
Most of you must be thinking what a selfish attitude, but with all that is written on the subject, there is very little on the subject of the other side’s feelings. Believe me when I say that my suffering during all this has me just as in much pain as you many women out there. I know that what I and many other men out there did is not fair, nor justifiable to you women.
When Bonnie says that it’s not your fault believe her when she says that. You had no way of knowing what was to happen in the future. From the man’s side of things neither did I. Many of us men who married with hopes of having a normal life, we could not predict the outcome either.
As a father and husband I will not abandon my family, they will always have my support and love, this is the commitment I made to them as a father and husband. Should my wife choose not then so be it. Selfish no, realistic yes. Many of you ladies have become dependent on your husband and probably the most difficult thing that you must come to grips with is the independency factor. Your self esteem has been destroyed and it’s up to you to build that up again.
With Fathers day coming up, it will be hard for all of us, just like any other family holiday.
All the best to each and every one of you, and to you Bonnie, God bless you in all the help and good words you offer so many women out there to find themselves again. To all us men out there who really hurt from our situations, be strong not only for yourself but for your families.
Joe
Dear Bonnie:
“Honey I’m Gay” a phrase that is very difficult to listen to and accept and just as hard to say. When I had to say them to the only woman I ever loved in a romantic way they just about killed me. I had been married for 16 years 14 of, which were wonderful. We were married a total of 18 years and though I didn’t realize it at the time she was my sole mate. We shared the same dreams, hopes and expectations. Except for one. I kept that nightmare to myself.
As opposed to other men in my position I never strayed. Not because I wasn’t tempted or I didn’t have the opportunity but because I was so afraid of what it would cost me. I loved my wife and my sons they were the center of my life. I told myself that my “deviant” sexual desires were not to be allowed.
After 14 years of marriage life through us a curve, my wife’s father was diagnosed with a fatal heart disease and we were told he had little more than six months to live. My wife who was an only child felt it was best to move back home away from all our friends and closer to her family. She wanted to support her mom when the time came. I was not as willing but thought it was something I had to do for her. That move brought on a series of events that turned all of our lives upside down. My wife dedicated herself to her parents and parenting our children and I looked on as my place in the picture was taken on by her immediate and extended family. In fact I felt like I was just another face in the crowd. I never told her how I felt, instead I tried to adjust and found some refuge in a challenging job and my sons.
The feelings of alienation had been growing for about six months then when I was at my weakest moment as I drove my sons to school I saw a pair of beautiful eyes that were in the face of a beautiful young man. I had never seen him before on the road and thought it was a fluke something that would never happen again. Well I was wrong it happened for 14 days in a row. Finally one day as I was driving to work, from the school I saw the young man and he winked at me! To make a long story short I fell for the young man hook line and sinker.
The next 18 months of my life were a mixture of guilt, anger, pain and lies. My wife finally confronted me and I asked for a separation because I truly did not know what was going on inside me. Don’t misunderstand--when I was in college I had plenty of sex with men of all ages sizes and types; however, when I got married I put that all behind me and kept myself for my wife. Our sex life was not good by any stretch of the imagination but we were content, busy, and I above all was in denial. Now all of the feelings I had repressed for so long came out and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
My wife and I had high profile jobs and we were well known. I had to do something and what I did was move back to the city we had lived in before we moved back home alone. There I was safe if nothing else due to the sheer number of people. The young man called me almost every day telling me how much he missed me and how much he wanted me. My wife in her pain let me be. It was very painful to call and have to say hi and ask to speak to the boys. It was even more awkward when I went back to visit them. Being a gracious lady and a wonderful person she allowed me to stay at her house. I’m sure she would have preferred to see me on the streets or dead but for the sake of the children she put up with me. She never made me feel unwanted or unwelcome--I did that all by myself. It was a painful time for use both.
Unfortunately because of the pain and confusion I was going through, I didn’t recognize how much she hurt. That is not an excuse--only a statement of fact. My ex-wife passed away due to metastatic breast cancer about 2 years after our divorce was final. I was with her as much as work and my obligations allowed me to be, and I took charge of making all of the arrangements. My sons came to live with me and we tried to put together our broken family as well as we could. I explained to them why there mother and I divorced and my lifestyle, and to my delighted surprise and their mother’s credit, they didn’t even bat an eyelash.
My oldest is on his own now and my youngest still lives with me. We have never been as close as we were when I was married and they were young children. However, they know how much I love them and that I will do anything in my power to help them and keep them safe. As for their mom she is always in my prayers and in my heart she truly was a wonderful woman.
To all the men reading this I ask you if you have taken into account the pain you are causing your wife by lying to her and denying her the opportunity to be truly happy someday? To the women reading this I put the following questions. Have you ever done something that you are deeply ashamed of something you can’t even truly justify to yourself? A thing that you were told all your life was bad? Have you ever had to fight back the feeling of intense panic the grips your heart when you realize that you are doing something that will ruin your life? Yet you risk it all because you truly have no choice? That is what most gay married men go through every day. Once he realizes that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to keep those desires under control and it only gets worse with age.
M.A.
Dear Bonnie,
Three years ago in June, I made a radical change in my life. I came out to my wife and ultimately about all of my closest friends, family members and co-workers. My truth was life altering for myself, my young children, my wife and my extended family. I thought having to suffer through the death of my Father was incredibly difficult. I soon realized that death could not compete with what my family and I were to endure through the process of me acknowledging that I am gay … and destructive nature of divorce.
My story is so similar, to so many you and I have heard about, read about or lived … that it barely needs more than a few sentences here. I knew since about the time that I was in my early teens that something was “different” about me, compared to my male friends. However, I had convinced myself that different was fine and that I def. wanted to and could, live the life that my very conservative old New England family instilled in me. By the time I was 30 I had everything I thought I had ever wanted; a beautiful and smart wife, a great job and fine country home. I even had a golden retriever.
By the time I was 38 I had all of that and two beautiful children, too. And can you believe it … I was not happy? I thought I was going out of my mind. How could I have everything and still not be happy. The deeper I looked at myself, the clearer my answer became. Those nagging thoughts about what made me think I was different became more evident. Could it be that my preoccupation with how men looked was more than just me comparing myself with them? Could it be more like me longing to be with a man on an intimate level? It was more and more evident, that stereo types about gay men applied to me. And it was becoming increasingly more difficult to always watch how I expressed myself, how little I cared about football, baseball, basketball, etc. And biggest of all … how difficult it had become to keep my eyes focused away from the hot guy that see in the grocery store or walking down the street … fearful that my wife or someone else would notice.
For years my mother and sister and others would say … you don’t seem very happy. What’s wrong? My pat answer would always be … I’m tired. Well … I was tried because I had for years and years and years been trying in vain to suppress who I was … in order to become who I wasn’t … so to fulfill ideas established by my family and society. I wanted so desperately to fit in … to be accepted and loved. Denial is an incredibly strong resource. Denial can be a good thing … in small doses. I my case … denial was slowly killing me.
Coming out to my wife was of course the hardest thing I had to do in the process. My wife was in complete shock. Shock turned to sadness and then anger. Three years later … I still some anger and sadness but thankfully I’m now seeing more and more acceptance. Two days after I came out to my wife, I had to explain to my children that the love I had for their mother had changed and was not strong enough for us to stay together. My oldest child curled up in my lap and sobbed and I quite simply wanted to die!
Six months prior to coming out to my wife I had finally accepted that I am in fact, gay. Once I accepted that fact I found a therapist and started working with him on what I should do with my new identity. Should I continue to deny myself and live my current life until my children went off to college? Or should I lead a double life behind my wives back? Or should I finally be true to myself and those around me? I obviously chose the latter … given the facts, I believed my wife deserved to be with a person who could love her and be with her the way she deserved a spouse should be. The fact that she deserved to be happy and to know that the end of our marriage had nothing to do with her! And given the fact that how could I try to teach my children to lead an authentic life if I myself could not lead one. And given the fact that I was simply so tired of suppressing “myself” from the world that I felt I might truly make myself ill due to my lying about who I truly am.
Three years ago … just before I came out … I was scared to death of what chances were to lie ahead. But one morning I literally woke up and it occurred to me that the life I was living had been much less of a life than what I thought anyone should accept. And if when I came out, that the only things I had left where my truth and my daughters, I could begin to lead a much happier life.
To my great surprise and relief, I receive a huge amount of love and support from every last friend; co-worker and family member (save two and course my wife). Within two weeks, I had come out to nearly 30 people and almost the exact words came from each one; you are a great person … compassionate, loving and kind. If you believe you are doing the right thing for you and your family … we support you.
On the contrary, my wife was very angry and talked to me very little. Within 10 days, she called me to tell me she was serving me with divorce papers. She had asked me to move out of our house almost immediately. Prior to this time, I had always played a major role in the caring and giving to our two children. Suddenly, my wife wanted to control my time and access to our daughters. I was going along with her wishes, hoping that if I gave her some control on that end, she would feel better. That plan did not work in my favor. The more control I gave up the more she grabbed for. I understood her reactions to a degree but it was very painful to live through. But I knew what she was having to endure was just as painful. It took the two of us and our two attorneys and a two hour meeting to get to me more access. I took to sending cards to my children everyday … since some days when I called home, my wife would not answer the phone.
When my wife and I first separated, I told her I would continue taking care of all the finical responsibilities … just as I had been doing (since my wife had not worked since the birth of our second child, three years prior). And even though I was not living at our house any more, I told my wife I would continue to mow the lawn each week and clean the pool. Each week I did what I said. Each week I would leave flowers from the garden in the girls’ rooms … a little reminder that I had been there and was thinking about them. I read the books about having as good of a divorce as possible. I continued to see a therapist. I was always at the house to pick up our daughters when I said I was going to be … never late for pick up or drop off. I was determined to show my wife, that even though I could no longer be her husband in “normal” terms … I would never, not be there for her and never stop taking care of my responsibilities to her or our children.
The first year of separation was the worst. I felt like I could not be the Dad I wanted to be. I felt like a stranger at my own house. I could not understand why my wife and I could not communicate better. I felt scared, not knowing what the final outcome of the divorce would be; where would we live, how would we figure out a co-parenting schedule, how could I help my daughters understand how and why this happened … and on and on and on.
My daughters are my world. Nothing is more important to me. I have done my very best to show them consistent love and support. My parenting schedule with them is nearly 50%. I’m hoping someday soon it will be completely 50/50. Knowing it’s in the best interest of our children to have equal access to both parents. I know the girls friends. I know their teachers. I go into their classrooms to help out. The girls know my friends. I managed to keep the house that they have lived in since they were born. My daughters have been slowly (over a two year period) introduced to the man of my life … whom I’m marrying this summer. We are all very much becoming a family and it’s great. I hope that some day, my ex-wife understands that one of the reasons I chose the man I did, to spend the rest of my life with … was because he loves our daughters so very much. And they are loving him right back.
In the last two weeks there has been another dramatic shift. My ex-wife and I have gotten together for two intense and emotional conversations. We have both been able to hear thing; feelings, concerns, thoughts … about each other which I guess we are now finally ready to hear. We are both ready for closure. We are both ready to work on becoming friends again. We are both ready to work on co-parenting our children the way they need us too. I have never been happier in my life! It’s taken three years to get to this point … but I finally believe we are on our way.
D.
I want to thank our men for sharing their feelings with us. It proves that these are very complicated situations with no easy, and in many cases, happy solutions. We all go through life trying to make sense out of something that is so hard to understand. Hopefully the words of our men will help you understand a little more clearly.
If you have comments or questions, please feel free to send them to me.
With love and hope, Bonnie Kaye
Friday, May 15, 2009
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
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
Thursday, January 2, 2003
DISTINGUISHING THE TRUTH, Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Talk Newsletter. Jan 2003
DISTINGUISHING THE TRUTH
The word “truth” is always controversial to me. You can have two people watching the same exact event, and yet, when they report it, you receive two very different versions of the actual event. Is one being honest while the other is being dishonest? No, not at all. It’s all a matter of perception, or how people filter the information in their own minds.
Keeping that in mind, I question a gay married man’s perception when it comes to a particular issue. It is not uncommon to hear gay men say that after they leave their marriages, the relationship with their children is estranged because the ex-wife is alienating them by bad mouthing, discouraging, and turning the kids against them.
Although I know that women are angry about losing their marriages to homosexuality, I have rarely met a woman who isn’t more than willing to have her ex-husband be part of the family life. Out of thousands of women I hear from yearly, I have maybe heard one or two women who have stated they don’t want their children around the father because he is gay. They may not be happy about the gay thing, but they would never let that stand in the way of a father-child relationship.
Personally, I think a lot of gay men use this as an excuse for being irresponsible to their families. It’s much easier to blame the wife and children than to accept responsibility for their own actions. And do I think they are making up this story because they are looking to feel better about themselves? Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some men, I give the benefit of the doubt because of what I feel is their distorted perception of the “truth.”
We all have truths, but all truths aren’t the same. I hear many gay husbands say that they had no idea that they were gay when they got married, and I definitely believe that is the case for the majority of gay married men. But then somewhere in the marriage, there were episodes of infidelity while they went out and had gay sex. And yet, they still claim this isn’t “gay” or “cheating.” In their minds, they believe this to be the “truth.”
Some gay men will tell you that their wives were argumentative and difficult to please. But they are telling you this from the point of view of a gay man. When a woman feels that she is unfulfilled and missing out on life, why should she act happy? But how often do these men say, “I can certainly understand why she was unhappy. I didn’t know how to make her happy”? I only occasionally hear that from ex-husbands. It’s more often a list of complaints of where their wives fell short.
These marriages are what I call, “A Mutation of Life.” All perceptions of what is real versus untrue is a mutation. We are always reacting to our husbands based on what they “think they should do as a straight man.” They do their best to play the part, like an actor in a television series. In this case, it’s more like a long running soap opera.
It reminds me of the movie, “Imitation of Life,” which was made in the 1930’s and remade in the early 1960’s. It is one of my all time favorite movies. In this story, two very poor women, one white and one black, both single parents of young girls, meet and become instant friends. The black woman is seeking shelter for her and her daughter. Both women are almost penniless, so the white woman agrees to have her move in as her housekeeper. The white woman becomes a famous actress. The black woman runs her home and helps raise her daughter. As the girls grow into their teenage years, their friendship takes a different direction due to the racial differences. The black woman’s daughter is very light and tries to pass in the white world as a white woman. She leaves home and starts her life as a white woman. Her mother keeps finding her because she loves her so much, even though the daughter begs her to stay away lest her secret be exposed.
The ending of the story always makes me sob no matter how many times I see the movie. The mother dies and the daughter gets there too late. She is crying for her mother, but she didn’t have time to say goodbye and I love you. It’s a great movie classic. Anyway, the young woman who “passes” as white lives in constant fear of being discovered, much like our gay husbands. She can act the part of a white woman, and even believe hard enough that she is a white woman, but her background will always come back to haunt her.
I can’t imagine having to play a role as someone who I’m not for more than a day. I can’t even conceive of living a lie day in and day out for years. But gay husbands do it all the time. And guess what? Since they are living a lie, we are living their lie with them, even though we may have no idea while it is happening.
Does this mean that our marriages are lies? Well, in a big way, I think so. We are reacting in our own lives to the actions of our husbands. They are acting in their own lives based on what their perceptions of being a “straight” husband should be. So when they get annoyed or irritated, we start looking to please by changing who we are and what we want to accommodate their happiness.
This translates into us doing things that we wouldn’t normally do or ways we wouldn’t necessarily want to be if we had a husband who loved us just for who we are instead of resenting who we aren’t. That’s why so many of us feel so betrayed when we learn our husbands are gay. The feeling that hurts so much is that we remolded ourselves to be “better wives” in the hopes that our husbands would love us more. Some of us “tiptoed” through life trying not to step down too hard fearing ridicule and criticism. Some of us gave up our own hopes and wants because we were too busy working at getting our husbands to love us better.
Since our husbands’ perceptions of us will never be true ones, their perception of how we are alienating our children from them is also not usually a real one but rather a distortion or justification in their own minds. I have heard from thousands of women who wish their husbands would take a more active part in the co-parenting of the children after the marriage is over. They long for some free time to breathe and wish their husbands would take the children for a while. They feel overwhelmed by their new responsibilities and lack of time to think. And in so many cases, the financial responsibilities that now are thrown our way choke us. Gay never seems to be the issue—responsibility is.
Too often, I have women write to me that their husbands claim there are “turning the kids against them,” when in fact, they themselves are turning the children against them. Children need to feel that they are just as important to their fathers after they leave as they were before. And when they start getting ignored because their fathers are into some other world that they have no idea about, the resentment starts taking place. The children do not need to hear a discouraging word from their mothers—they are watching the actions of their fathers and reacting all on their own.
When these fathers decide to find the time to be with their children, they expect the children will be happy just to see them. If they haven’t been around or active in the children’s lives, the children can become resentful or alienated without any help from their mothers. Children have their own feelings and perceptions that no one has to influence. I have rarely seen a wonderful father who is active in his children’s lives banned or alienated because he is gay.
Instead of these men having pity parties bemoaning their “angry, bitter wives” who are brainwashing their children, let them spend the time constructively figuring out what they can do to improve their children’s lives and repair the relationship. Being a good father shouldn’t have to be a sexuality issue. It’s a parenting issue. My children would have never resented their father’s sexuality because it was different; what they did resent was being made to feel that they weren’t as important as a hot date when their father broke his promises and commitments. These are the realities that we live, not the distortions.
So, the next time you read about a gay father’s rejection by his children due to his wife, think twice. Chances are his wife was very similar to us in nature. Chances are she wanted her husband to be more involved with the children than less involved. And chances are he screwed up big enough to make it easier to blame his wife rather than take the responsibility.
The word “truth” is always controversial to me. You can have two people watching the same exact event, and yet, when they report it, you receive two very different versions of the actual event. Is one being honest while the other is being dishonest? No, not at all. It’s all a matter of perception, or how people filter the information in their own minds.
Keeping that in mind, I question a gay married man’s perception when it comes to a particular issue. It is not uncommon to hear gay men say that after they leave their marriages, the relationship with their children is estranged because the ex-wife is alienating them by bad mouthing, discouraging, and turning the kids against them.
Although I know that women are angry about losing their marriages to homosexuality, I have rarely met a woman who isn’t more than willing to have her ex-husband be part of the family life. Out of thousands of women I hear from yearly, I have maybe heard one or two women who have stated they don’t want their children around the father because he is gay. They may not be happy about the gay thing, but they would never let that stand in the way of a father-child relationship.
Personally, I think a lot of gay men use this as an excuse for being irresponsible to their families. It’s much easier to blame the wife and children than to accept responsibility for their own actions. And do I think they are making up this story because they are looking to feel better about themselves? Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some men, I give the benefit of the doubt because of what I feel is their distorted perception of the “truth.”
We all have truths, but all truths aren’t the same. I hear many gay husbands say that they had no idea that they were gay when they got married, and I definitely believe that is the case for the majority of gay married men. But then somewhere in the marriage, there were episodes of infidelity while they went out and had gay sex. And yet, they still claim this isn’t “gay” or “cheating.” In their minds, they believe this to be the “truth.”
Some gay men will tell you that their wives were argumentative and difficult to please. But they are telling you this from the point of view of a gay man. When a woman feels that she is unfulfilled and missing out on life, why should she act happy? But how often do these men say, “I can certainly understand why she was unhappy. I didn’t know how to make her happy”? I only occasionally hear that from ex-husbands. It’s more often a list of complaints of where their wives fell short.
These marriages are what I call, “A Mutation of Life.” All perceptions of what is real versus untrue is a mutation. We are always reacting to our husbands based on what they “think they should do as a straight man.” They do their best to play the part, like an actor in a television series. In this case, it’s more like a long running soap opera.
It reminds me of the movie, “Imitation of Life,” which was made in the 1930’s and remade in the early 1960’s. It is one of my all time favorite movies. In this story, two very poor women, one white and one black, both single parents of young girls, meet and become instant friends. The black woman is seeking shelter for her and her daughter. Both women are almost penniless, so the white woman agrees to have her move in as her housekeeper. The white woman becomes a famous actress. The black woman runs her home and helps raise her daughter. As the girls grow into their teenage years, their friendship takes a different direction due to the racial differences. The black woman’s daughter is very light and tries to pass in the white world as a white woman. She leaves home and starts her life as a white woman. Her mother keeps finding her because she loves her so much, even though the daughter begs her to stay away lest her secret be exposed.
The ending of the story always makes me sob no matter how many times I see the movie. The mother dies and the daughter gets there too late. She is crying for her mother, but she didn’t have time to say goodbye and I love you. It’s a great movie classic. Anyway, the young woman who “passes” as white lives in constant fear of being discovered, much like our gay husbands. She can act the part of a white woman, and even believe hard enough that she is a white woman, but her background will always come back to haunt her.
I can’t imagine having to play a role as someone who I’m not for more than a day. I can’t even conceive of living a lie day in and day out for years. But gay husbands do it all the time. And guess what? Since they are living a lie, we are living their lie with them, even though we may have no idea while it is happening.
Does this mean that our marriages are lies? Well, in a big way, I think so. We are reacting in our own lives to the actions of our husbands. They are acting in their own lives based on what their perceptions of being a “straight” husband should be. So when they get annoyed or irritated, we start looking to please by changing who we are and what we want to accommodate their happiness.
This translates into us doing things that we wouldn’t normally do or ways we wouldn’t necessarily want to be if we had a husband who loved us just for who we are instead of resenting who we aren’t. That’s why so many of us feel so betrayed when we learn our husbands are gay. The feeling that hurts so much is that we remolded ourselves to be “better wives” in the hopes that our husbands would love us more. Some of us “tiptoed” through life trying not to step down too hard fearing ridicule and criticism. Some of us gave up our own hopes and wants because we were too busy working at getting our husbands to love us better.
Since our husbands’ perceptions of us will never be true ones, their perception of how we are alienating our children from them is also not usually a real one but rather a distortion or justification in their own minds. I have heard from thousands of women who wish their husbands would take a more active part in the co-parenting of the children after the marriage is over. They long for some free time to breathe and wish their husbands would take the children for a while. They feel overwhelmed by their new responsibilities and lack of time to think. And in so many cases, the financial responsibilities that now are thrown our way choke us. Gay never seems to be the issue—responsibility is.
Too often, I have women write to me that their husbands claim there are “turning the kids against them,” when in fact, they themselves are turning the children against them. Children need to feel that they are just as important to their fathers after they leave as they were before. And when they start getting ignored because their fathers are into some other world that they have no idea about, the resentment starts taking place. The children do not need to hear a discouraging word from their mothers—they are watching the actions of their fathers and reacting all on their own.
When these fathers decide to find the time to be with their children, they expect the children will be happy just to see them. If they haven’t been around or active in the children’s lives, the children can become resentful or alienated without any help from their mothers. Children have their own feelings and perceptions that no one has to influence. I have rarely seen a wonderful father who is active in his children’s lives banned or alienated because he is gay.
Instead of these men having pity parties bemoaning their “angry, bitter wives” who are brainwashing their children, let them spend the time constructively figuring out what they can do to improve their children’s lives and repair the relationship. Being a good father shouldn’t have to be a sexuality issue. It’s a parenting issue. My children would have never resented their father’s sexuality because it was different; what they did resent was being made to feel that they weren’t as important as a hot date when their father broke his promises and commitments. These are the realities that we live, not the distortions.
So, the next time you read about a gay father’s rejection by his children due to his wife, think twice. Chances are his wife was very similar to us in nature. Chances are she wanted her husband to be more involved with the children than less involved. And chances are he screwed up big enough to make it easier to blame his wife rather than take the responsibility.
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