Quite frequently, women write to me about their lack of viable skills when it comes to securing a job so they can gain financial independence. I always look for transferable skills that would be a good match such as caretaker, nurse, detective, etc. How did I miss the most obvious one, namely—ACTRESS?
Every holiday season, wives of gay men have to play their Oscar award-winning role of “Happy Wife” in front of crowds of hundreds. Of course, there is no golden statue at the end of the season like their movie counterparts, but no doubt, the performances are just as extraordinary. And the holiday season is not the yearly birthday, anniversary, or Easter. The HOLIDAY SEASON is a long stretch that starts at Thanksgiving and continues until Valentine’s Day. Between those two points, we begin the family and love ordeal. Thanksgiving is the beginning, followed by Christmas, New Year’s, and finally ending on Valentine’s Day in February. We are so relieved to have the President’s Birthday as a holiday in February because by then, all of our emotional horror of the holiday season is over. Imagine thinking that Washington and Lincoln can actually neutralize and balance out life because after three months of families celebrating family unity and love, we no longer have to cringe when we hear the word, “holiday.” The touchy-feely ones are over, and once again, we have not been touched or felt, and in fact, most of us have been living with a Novocain kind of numbness so that we can protect ourselves from crying at any given moment because we are HURTING.
The Holiday Season is such a difficult time for straight wives because it is an up front in your face reminder of what life was supposed to be like but never became. Or if it was, it’s over after years because homosexuality has joined into your previously happy union or what you were hoping would be your happy union. It’s almost like having Scrooge find his way into your husband’s body and head. When you want a display of affection and emotion, he’s saying, “Bah, Humbug.” To this I say, “Ho, ho, no, no more.”
You see, even though you may be feeling the pain of this holiday season, it could be your last year to suffer this way. Believe it or not, you can make it your New Year’s resolution to be FREE by next year. Free of the pressures and strain of living a lie. Free of the constant questioning of what can you do to make life better with a man who wants a man to make his life better. Free of the mental torture from the mind games your husband plays so well with you, trying to make you start believing that you are losing your mind and it’s just your imagination running away with you while he’s running around with men. Free of earning your professional detective license while snooping around in a relationship that is supposed to be based on honesty and truth. Free to go to bed at night and feel good about waking up in the morning. Why? Because waking up alone and having peace of mind is always better than waking up next to someone who really doesn’t want to be with you and is making you miserable because he feels that you are “trapping” him.
You see, way beyond this being a holiday season of family and love, it is a holiday season of hope. A time to make resolutions that will help you become healthy and happy. Now I know people hate clichés, but this one really catches the essence of the holiday—namely, “HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.” This little ditty kind of coincides with my own personal philosophy; namely, each new day offers the opportunity of waking up and changing your life. I believe it. I actually did it, and I never look back and regret it. My marriage was doomed. I could have spent 10, 15, or 25 more years of wasting my life with a man who could only make me miserable. But a little bird in my head that became a choir of canaries singing to me, “Don’t Do It.” Don’t give up one more year of precious time to a debilitating situation.”
Look, I know that there are women who are now free who are reading my newsletter. You write to me all the time. I’d appreciate it if you could write to share your new life with my other readers who are still trapped to give them hope. Hope for the New Year. Hope for a new life. Hope for happiness. Hope for sanity. I will publish some of your letters in my upcoming newsletters with your permission. Please write to me!
ON A HOPEFUL NOTE – HAPPY 10 YEARS TO ME!!!
If you’ve read my newsletters, you’ve read about my soulmate. We will celebrate 10 years together on January 5. Ten years—wow. Who could ever believe that I could find a man who would hold my attention for more than 10 minutes, and now it’s 10 years. A decade.
To me, this represents more than just a decade of togetherness. This has been an entire decade of learning how to communicate with someone who still excites me every time he touches me. This is a decade of a man who loves to touch me, even though I’ve entered into middle age with middle bulges throughout my body. And yet, he has never, ever, ever, made me feel that I was less than beautiful and desirable, even though I have gained more than an average of 5 pounds during each of these 10 years. He loves me. He makes me feel as if I were 100 pounds lighter than I am and worthy of being loved.
After 10 years, I am more in love with him now than ever. And yes, there is a difference between being in love and loving someone. I am both. I need to be in love in order to wake up feeling good every day. But loving him helps us make it through times that aren’t perfect or when there is strain due to external circumstances.
My soulmate often asks me why I love him so much. He can’t understand it. In the early part of our relationship he was even “embarrassed” when I kept telling him that I loved him. He’s more than 11 years older than me. He just couldn’t get it. And quite frankly, I wasn’t quite sure myself what compelled me to go after him with every ounce of energy I had, because he was not in a relationship mode or looking for one. In fact, it took me nearly 16 months of relentless pursuit to make him mine. And then, after trying every little trick in my book to get him hooked, he grabbed the line. There was no turning back.
Over the years, we have had some rough times. It took time for both of us to understand each other. He never had a relationship that required so much emotional work. I was coming into a relationship that would need a lot of nurturing to try to reverse my own sense of insecurity due to my past failures. I like to think of myself as low maintenance, just needing some quality time and a few loving words. It took a number of years before he could meet my needs, but I refused to quit. We worked our way through many obstacle courses that often seemed to be blocking our way It was similar to those old Johnny Mercer lyrics from the song, Something’s Gotta Give, that state:
When an irresistible force such as you
Meets and old immovable object like me
You can bet as sure as you live
Something's gotta give, something's gotta give,Something's gotta give.
I was the irresistible force, he was the immovable object. And yet, my heart told me that all the potential for my ultimate happiness was with this man. He was my soulmate who needed me as much as I needed him. And after lots of hard work on my part—the hardest part being not giving up knowing the potential was there—everything started moving in my direction. My continued show of unconditional love produced a reversal of heart and created unconditional love from the man I love. After a number of years, he learned how to meet my emotional needs in a meaningful way. He learned how to make me feel secure and loved. There is a deep sense of commitment there on his part, and he knows how to express it in a way that makes me know he loves me.
I guess this is the most important lesson that I want to share with you. There is a difference between putting time and effort into a relationship that can work versus one that won’t work. While I spent the last 10 years building a relationship of mutual love, passion, and intimacy with a man who could return it, many of you spent this past decade with your gay husbands only to find out that you are putting time into a losing cause. All of you have tried just as hard or harder than I to change the “immovable objects” you are married to, but all that happens is that they move further away from you physically, emotionally, sexually. When you are married to a gay man, there’s no way to move closer because he is always two feet in front of you and running faster. You can never catch up. Unfortunately, those of you who are married to Limbo Men or Straight/Gay Men never get enough physical space between you. They will never leave more than a two-foot space when they need to leave all together. They will stay and torture you for decades to come.
I don’t know why some women in general feel the need to “change” men who have no desire to be changed, whether they straight or gay. I know this may sound selfish, but I don’t like to stay a suffering servant for too long. I believe in the philosophy of “cut your losses,” and I have a good track record of doing that. I’m not waiting to die to get to heaven. I want a piece of it here. And I’ve been blessed to find it with the man who is my soulmate.
So, Happy Anniversary, my love. Thank you for making me believe in myself, believe in us, believe in love, and to not only dream the impossible dream, but to live it while loving it. Every one of you deserves to be this lucky and this happy. Don’t give up no matter how impossible you think it is. Good things do happen to good people—you just have to be the master of your own destiny.
