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 straight wives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label straight wives. Show all posts
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
A GAY MAN'S ANSWERS TO STRAIGHT WIVES
Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Talk Newsletter
June 2010 Volume 9, Issue 108
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Please visit my website to view and purchases my books at www.BonnieKayeBooks.com. Your sales help support my website and free monthly newsletter.
FATHER’S DAY TRIBUTE
Once a year during the month of June, I like to dedicate this newsletter to the gay husbands/ex-husbands who are really doing their best to right the wrongs of their marriages. In this year’s June issue, I imposed on my male gay peer coach Doug to answer 12 of the questions that women ask me most often.
Before I give you Doug’s answers to these questions, I would like to remind our women that not all husbands/ex-husbands are irresponsible, cruel, or detached from their families. I know that many of you do have husbands who seem to have been transformed into strangers in your midst—but not all of them.
There are some wonderful gay men who found themselves caught up in their own confusion throughout their lives. When they have the courage to be honest and leave the marriage, they remain faithful to their families emotionally and financially. I have met some of these men, and you have read some of their letters throughout the years.
Doug is a hero to me. I have never met him, but I have seen the life-saving work he has done with the men I send him who want to do the right thing, as well as the women who I have sent to him to help them understand the dynamics of our situation from a gay man’s point of view. He has helped dozens and dozens of people in clarifying the reality of this situation so that they can move ahead in their lives. I am in awe of this man because he is so generous with his time and efforts to help people in our network.
Although we don’t always agree 100% of the time, we agree almost all of the time. And I guess in this situation where emotions and feelings run so high, that’s the most anyone can ask for. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Doug’s thoughts, I know you will find them honest, insightful, and heartfelt. Hopefully, you will learn some of the answers that you wonder about that have remained unanswered.
If you have questions or comments for Doug after reading this, please send them to me at Bonkaye@aol.com and I will forward them to him.
Here are Doug’s answers to the 12 most often asked questions that come my way from my straight wives.
1. Was my husband gay when he married me?
Science still has not determined why some people are gay but the research since the 1970’s has focused on genetic and/or biological factors. It appears that our sexuality is hard-wired in our brain before we are born. It occurs throughout the world in all cultures and it has been observed in over 100 species. Researchers have also identified structural differences in the brains of gay and straight men. In addition, all those old psychoanalytic theories about absentee or ineffective fathers and dominant mothers have since been disproved. Whether we are gay or straight, it appears that is determined sometime while we are developing as a fetus. Was I gay when I married my wife? Absolutely. I was gay the day I was born but no one in my family knew it or suspected it – including me.
2. Did my husband know he was gay when he married me?
The answer to that question depends on how one defines gay and straight. There is a difference between sexual orientation and sexual identity. Sexual orientation is based on our natural sexual attractions and responses toward the same or opposite gender and it does not change over time. There has never been any documented cases of anyone who changed his sexual orientation. Even the reparative ministry folks do not claim to be able to change someone’s natural attractions and desires. But sexual identity is based on how we perceive ourselves and that self-concept DOES change as we gain experience and become aware of our natural feelings and responses. For example, I knew I was attracted to other guys during my teen years and young adulthood. But the attraction was just physical. I had no interest in any kind of emotional relationship with another male. Therefore I did not define myself as being gay. My concept of the average gay man was shaped by a culture that failed to show me any positive gay relationships and treated them as perverts and felons. Remember, it was only a few years ago that the Supreme Court struck down felony offenses for consensual gay sex. And in most States in America, it still is legal to discriminate against gay people in employment and public accommodations. The only images I had of gay men were those who were gender non-conformists – males whose outward behaviors and interests were feminine and those who were shunned as outcasts in our society. That was not how I saw myself. I saw myself as an average guy who was in a heterosexual marriage. Even though I knew that I found some guys attractive and had natural sexual feelings for them, I did not view that as being homosexual. Like most husbands in these situations, I had limited sexual experience when I married and I married when I was young. I believed that those homosexual feelings and desires were probably present in most men, but the average guy was able to suppress those feelings and form a love bond with a woman, get married and have children.
Like most gay men who marry women, I didn’t define ‘gay’ in terms of sexual attractions. I defined ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ in terms of emotional attachments and/or outward masculine behavior. I couldn’t see myself ever loving another man and I wasn’t into cross dressing or other overt feminine behavior. I couldn’t even imagine it. I never met two guys who loved each other so I had no role models to compare with. The only way that I knew how to live was to love a woman and marry her and have kids. There were no other options in life.
3. Did my husband really love me when he married me or was he trying to escape who he was?
We have all read accounts about gay Hollywood stars who entered marriages of convenience. They didn’t really love their wife. It was an arrangement made by the studio execs or their managers to squash rumors of homosexuality. Being gay in Hollywood is still pretty much a career-capper. Ditto for politicians. Former Governor James McGreevey knew he was gay but got married because he needed a cover. In his book he admitted he knew he could not have a successful political career without a wife. So he married twice to protect his political career. But that’s not the case in most of the gay married guys I’ve met and coached. In fact, most of the husbands describe their marriage in terms of ‘soul mate’ and ‘best friend’. Part of the reason that these marriages are so very difficult and painful is because the relationship between the gay man and his wife is so very close. I’m not surprised. If the brain science is correct, our brain is most similar to those of straight women. We have skill sets most resembling those of women. We have the same high language skills and intuition and empathy. Why should it then be a surprise that we form very close relationships with women? In some ways, we are like the sister our wife always dreamed of having. It is much easier to end a marriage when two people have simply fallen out of love. It is far more difficult and painful to end that marriage when you still love each other but you know that it cannot work. You’re not just losing a spouse. You’re losing the best friend you ever had.
4. If my husband was gay, how was he able to have sex with me?
Men and women experience sexual desire very differently. Researchers had control groups watch porn movies. Using various instruments and brain imaging, they were able to measure sexual arousal. By tracking the retina, they were able to zero in on what the subject was watching or focusing on when they became aroused. It was determined that women tend to focus on the context of the scene – the situation and the romance and intimacy. However, gay men and straight men alike tend to focus on body parts. That probably also explains why women are twice as likely to have sex with men or women. The plumbing equipment and the visuals are not as important to them as the romance and emotional love bond. Men however, are highly visual and respond to visions of genital activity. In addition, a young man’s body is flooded with high levels of testosterone which amplifies emotions. One female researcher began taking testosterone injections equal to about 10% of what the average male her age would have in his system. She discontinued her experiment within just a few weeks. She reported that all of her emotions were heightened to the point where it was difficult to control them. That makes sense. All of our lives, boys have to deal with hyper-activity and out-of-control emotions. But it is that testosterone that pushes us to have sex. It’s the same stuff that makes us fall hopelessly in love – or lust. For most of us in our teens and early adulthood, ANY sex is good. There is no such thing as unfulfilled sex at that age. The very thought of having sex resulted in arousal.
5. Was my husband fantasizing about men when he had sex with me?
Some men do use homosexual fantasies to perform with their wife but that was not my experience nor does it seem to be the case in most that I’ve worked with. Fantasizing about a penis while you’re playing with a vagina just doesn’t work for most of us. If we start thinking about some guy we want to have sex with, and then see our wife making love to us, it usually results in a deflated penis. Most married guys separate our two realities. We live in a heterosexual world and heterosexual marriage and we try to play the role of a heterosexual husband and father. Our homosexual nature is assigned to an alter-ego and we keep that persona locked up in the closet until we can let him out in private – or with another guy. I was sexually active with my wife up until our separation. However for several years of our marriage she was aware that I was also having sex with men. When I had sex with her, I was doing it for her and trying my best to please her. I was able to bring her to orgasm and myself as well. But it felt academic. I was doing those things to please her. But when I was with a guy, whatever activity I was engaged in with them was shear lust and hunger. I wasn’t doing it to please him. I was doing it to please me because I desired it. I think that’s a significant difference that defines what sexual pleasure is. Are you doing it to please the other person, or are you doing it because it turns you on and you hunger for it? As gay married gay men grow older, the testosterone poisoning can no longer be relied upon. The levels begin to drop in the late 20s and 30s. Now he has to rely on desire to make it work.
6. Why couldn’t my husband be honest with me before he cheated with a man?
Most gay husbands married when they were young and had limited or no sexual experience with other men. We try to understand our attraction to other men but some things in life cannot be learned academically or through cognitive reasoning. Logic doesn’t teach us about our sexuality. These are complex physical and emotional responses that we have to experience. But we have no personal experience to draw from so the only way to discern whether this is just some crazy fantasy or something much deeper is through experiential learning. In that type of learning process, we experience something, then reflect on that experience, draw conclusions, and then adjust the experience and try it again. We keep repeating variations until we are able to learn from it and answer the questions about ourselves. Gay married guys are not willing to hurt their wife and family and risk destruction of the marriage over what may turn out to be some phase or ridiculous fantasy. We are not about to do that when it’s just possible that we could try it and come away with disgust and disillusionment. It’s one thing to put ourselves at risk of getting emotionally hurt but we are not willing to destroy our family without knowing the truth about ourselves. But the dilemma is that he cannot go have a full relationship with another man. He cannot experience that because he is married so he never truly gets the answers he needs. Very frequently, it sets him up in an approach-avoidance conflict where he reaches out for something but then pulls back because if he achieves what he desires it will hurt his wife and cause him more pain and guilt – which he tries to avoid. In my own life, I searched for those answers and tried to find fulfillment. But I couldn’t let myself fall in love with another guy and went to extremes to avoid it. That set up a sexual compulsion where I tried to use quantity as a substitute for what I really needed and desired. Until I understood that I was sabotaging myself in the hopes of avoiding painful situations for her, it was a constant compulsion that preoccupied me.
7. Why did he constantly blame me for his unhappiness in the marriage?
In my own marriage, I knew that we had once been sexually happy but didn’t understand why that was changing. Sex was becoming more like a duty or work for me. I saw my own struggle - working hard to try to keep romance and lust alive. However, I didn’t see her working at it at all. It felt like I was the only one working to keep the romance alive and she just took it for granted and didn’t see or appreciate what I was doing to keep it going. It was faulty reasoning. Of course she didn’t have to work at it. She loved me and I turned her on. She didn’t want anyone else. It wasn’t work, it was pleasure for her. But I was wrestling - trying to stay motivated. Yes, I loved her. But I didn’t desire her body. I desired and needed men, and I never had to work at that. It came automatically. And it wasn’t just about a penis vs. vagina. She could have sex reassignment surgery and get a penis – but she would still be a woman with a penis. I desired and needed a man. No matter what she did or how hard she tried to please me, she couldn’t be a man for me. But at the time it was happening, all I could see was that somehow I used to be motivated to have sex with her and now I was struggling and having to work at it. But I didn’t see her putting in the same amount of work/effort that I was. I remember thinking, if only she would be more aggressive in bed, or be more spontaneous and take the initiative. If only she would try to find ways to turn me on. The “if-only” kept coming up until I finally hit the truth. If only she was a man.
8. My husband said that I didn’t want to have sex enough so he turned to men. Is that true?
This is another “if-only” excuse. Quantity is sometimes used as a coping strategy to keep a guy’s mind off of sex. He figures if he keeps himself sexually satiated he won’t think about sex and won’t be driven to have sex with men. He figures it’s her job to keep his sexual energy drained and that way he won’t fantasize about guys or desire to have sex with them. But I learned that staying sexually drained might keep my mind off of sex temporarily, but it still wasn’t going to get me what I needed to be happy.
9. My husband says he is bisexual. Does that mean he can stay happy with me without having sex with a man?
For the most part, bisexuality among adult men tends to be a transitional state. When you look at the statistics by age group, those who identify themselves as being bisexual tend to be in late adolescent years or early 20’s. As we humans sexually experiment and learn about ourselves, we tend to change our ‘bisexual’ self-identity to that of heterosexual or homosexual. By the time we are in mid-life, the number of people identifying as bisexual drops dramatically. In my own case, I identified as being bisexual for several years because I loved my wife and was sexually active with her, but at the same time I was sexually attracted to men though I had no interest in a love relationship with a man. So I didn’t seem to fit in either the heterosexual column or the homosexual column. But as I learned more about me and experimented with men physically and emotionally, it became clear that I was predominately sexually and emotionally attracted to men. I had been subconsciously trying to avoid emotional bonds with men because I instinctively knew that it would be a life altering experience that would threaten my self-concept and my marriage. I could have sex with men but as long as I didn’t love them, I wasn’t gay. Inevitably however, I met a man who I fell deeply in love with. I had an emotional response that I had never known existed. Limerence, that feeling of deep love that has an obsessive-compulsive quality to it, is something I never knew existed. I had never experienced it in my life until he came along. The feelings were so deep and overwhelming that it instantly destroyed any self-concept of bisexuality. I wasn’t caught in the in-between world of loving a woman and yet being physically drawn to men. I was fully engulfed in physical and emotional desire for another man. I couldn’t possibly be any more gay – not by any stretch of the definition.
10. Now that my husband has found his new life, why does he treat me like an enemy?
As I pointed out earlier, these mixed-orientation marriages tend to be extremely close. It is easy to walk away from someone with whom we have fallen out of love. Leaving someone you love feels like pulling live flesh from your body. It’s very common for the husband and/or the wife to assign blame to each other and treat each other badly as a means of making it easier to let go. Also, he has been struggling with his sexuality for a long time. There has been an internal war going on and an identity crisis. Eventually he hates the situation he is in and it doesn’t seem that he will ever be able to be happy and fulfilled because for most of his life he stifled his own needs to maintain his dysfunctional marriage. But eventually the disdain he has for the marriage becomes personified and he begins to see his wife as a block in his path to self-actualization and happiness. Subconsciously he begins to feel as if his wife is the warden and he’s a prisoner. When it reaches that point, any attempt at showing him love is rebuffed. The experience has taught me that people can love us but if that love is not coming from someone we love, it doesn’t feel like love at all. It feels like we are being stalked.
But it need not go from a love relationship to a hate relationship. Many couples find ways to stay friends and co-parent their children. My advice is to not wait until you both become bitter and cynical. Have the courage and grace to admit that the marriage cannot work. Have the caring and love to let go and help each other find someone else who can give them the love you cannot give each other. Hold onto the good memories and hold onto the respect for each other. But let go of the impossible marriage. You are doing no favors to yourselves or to your spouse or children in clinging to a marriage that is dysfunctional and failing.
But know that this situation was not caused by the wife. It didn’t happen because you weren’t sexy enough or you weren’t aggressive enough. It happened because he is gay and despite all the years of war within himself, he cannot change it no matter how much he loves you or how much you love him.
11. My husband tells me that he is gay because he was sexually molested when he was younger. He claims this is a learned behavior that he can un-learn with therapy and support. Is this true?
This is the favorite fodder for anti-gay religious groups such as the Family Research Council or NARTH. These organizations tout statistical studies that report that gay men are more likely to have been molested by adult males as children, and therefore jump to the conclusion that childhood sexual experience with a male causes homosexuality. It begs the question: Is heterosexuality caused by sexual molestation by someone of the opposite sex??
But seriously, the statistics they cite are erroneous or taken out of context. It is true that gay men are more likely to report sexual experiences with adults when they were under the age of 16, but in the majority of those cases (one study reports it as 68%), they had already self-identified as being gay before the molestation had occurred. A closer look at those suspect statistics reveals definitions that become problematic. A boy of 15 who had a sexual experience with a boy of 18 would have fallen within the definitions of having been molested. But most of us would not view sex between a 15-year-old and 18-year-old as a predator molestation.
This is what the American Psychological Association has to say about it in May, 2000:
"No specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse.
Sexual abuse does not appear to be more prevalent in children who grow up to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, than in children who identify as heterosexual."
The national Organization on Male Sexual Victimization stated in 2004:
"While there are different theories about how sexual orientation develops, experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation.”
Sexual abuse can interfere with a person’s sexual enjoyment and may even contribute to a condition referred to as Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in which a person keeps checking to reassure himself that he’s not gay. But childhood sexual abuse does not create a person’s deepest passions, attractions and desires.
12. What do you suggest about telling the children?
I think the answer to that depends on the age of the children. Generally speaking, kids don’t want to hear about anything sexual associated with their parents. It conjures up images of what Mom or Dad does between the sheets. There’s a strong “yuck” factor to it. Husbands and wives divorce every day but they don’t usually share their bedroom disappointments with their children. That being said, if Dad has found a male partner, or if other situations arise that make it necessary to have that conversation with the kids, I believe it should be couched in terms of affection and love rather than complicated and ambiguous labels. Children understand love and affection. But terms such as ‘sexual orientation’ are generally beyond their level of comprehension. Unless they are in their late teens, anything about their parents that includes the word ‘sexual’ is toxic. Wherever possible, the child should be given support he/she is going to need to cope with the knowledge that they have a gay parent. If a child shares that information with friends, they can quickly become the target of mean-spirited taunts. I urge parents to work with a therapist or family counselors in discussing it with kids and I recommend they also have a conversation with the school counselor so the kids have someone supportive they can turn to at school.
Doug
Thank you, Doug, for sharing this information with us.
Mailbag
In keeping with my theme of men for the month, the letter below comes from a straight man, Jim. He would like to share his thoughts with you.
Bonnie,
I just read your May newsletter and I continue to be dismayed at the reaction of many of your readers to the discovery of a gay spouse. It seems to me that there is some “social dynamic” at work that makes women feel almost responsible for a husband’s gayness. It’s as if they feel that they have somehow “caused” it. Yet much of what I have read in your newsletters indicates that gayness was brought to the marriage, not that the marriage caused a spouse to “become gay”. The only “fault” is that the offended spouse was, for one reason or another, unable (or perhaps unwilling, but I am inclined to believe “unable”) to recognize the signs. George Bernard Shaw once observed that most men will choose a spouse in a light so dim that they would not consider buying a suit in it, much less choose a life partner. Perhaps the same is true of women! But allowing one’s self-esteem to be a function of the deceit practiced by another is a serious and dangerous mistake. The fact that society has made hiding gayness is, I’m sure, a factor in the deceit. But to take upon oneself the burden of a societal error is not a proper response.
It’s understandable that emotions run high when one is talking about what was presumed to be a lifetime commitment and children are involved. Even straight couples who divorce face trauma and feelings of guilt. I did when I first divorced. However, a marriage relationship is a two-way street. Each party brings “baggage” to the relationship and that baggage should be inspected before committing to sharing a life. Both parties have a responsibility to the relationship and if one is deceitful while the other is not, it seems to me that the burden of low self-esteem is really, or should be, with the deceiving party. We are deceived daily by news media, politicians, marketers, professional colleagues, etc.
Spousal deceit, while much more personal, is not objectively different. Any man who is attracted to pictures of other naked men has “baggage” that needs to examined. If I want to see a naked man, I can look in the mirror! If the desire of a man to see pictures of other naked men cannot be examined, and in most cases it cannot, we should not chalk up a discovery of that desire to our own failings and punish ourselves for not having seen signs that were hidden to begin with. Life is little more than a series of choices and not all of our choices result in positive outcomes.
If one of the parties to a relationship deliberately chooses to not reveal something important to the relationship, it is not reasonable for the other party to bear the burden of that choice. Simply stated, we can’t always be right! But we can always be FAIR to ourselves. We certainly should not have to bear the burdens of some other person’s choices. And we should not build our own lives around them. Forgiving oneself for a mistake is essential to moving on in life. And it is most unfair to expect our children to carry the burden of the choices of their adult parents. They have enough to worry about in their own lives!
Jim
JULY WORKSHOPS BY MY CO-THERAPIST MISTI LYNN HALL
July will be a very busy month. I will be offering a Saturday Seminar, a weekday Seminar and a Workshop! Please see the descriptions below.
Saturday Seminar: Spirituality and Healing
Being married to a gay man dissolved my Spirit and caused hurt and pain to the depths of my Soul. I was walking around in an empty shell. Hollow on the inside. My Spirit was depleted and my Soul was wounded. I had no motivation, no purpose or meaning in my life. I was barely existing. Then I discovered the importance of rebuilding myself Spiritually. Finding things that fed my SPIRIT healed me on a Soul level. On Saturday, July 10, I will share with you the things that fed my Spirit and motivated me to start the quest of living an extraordinary life. You can expect this seminar to be a mixture of lecture, guided activities, discussion (question and answer session) and a downloadable journal/workbook on Spirit Center Discovery. This topic of Spirituality has nothing to do with a specific religion. This type of Spirituality will focus on how to refill your SPIRIT and allow that zest for life to flow back to you. This life is precious. You deserve to live it fully and completely. Join in on this live Saturday Seminar Telecourse via your telephone from the comforts and privacy of your own home.
What: July Saturday Seminar Telecourse
When: July 10, 2010 at 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time Zone
Cost: $30.00
Note: You must have access to a phone to call into the Telecourse. You will also need access to a computer for email and be able to print the Spirit Centered Discovery journal/workbook. Arrangements can be made to mail the packet if you do not have a printer.
Self-Esteem Seminar
I recently facilitated a Saturday Seminar on Self-Esteem. It was tremendously successful. I have gotten so much positive feedback and so many requests from Straight Wives that I will be offering a repeat of this seminar on a weeknight.
Often times Straight Wives have little to no Self-Esteem. Knowing that your spouse is Gay can be very damaging to your Self-Esteem. There are many things that can lead to low self-esteem. For starters, our culture already promotes the essence of a woman to be unrealistic by expecting us to be Wonder Woman. On top of that, add a Gay spouse to the stress and it spells for disaster in the Self-Esteem department. The years of being in a Gay/Straight marriage can be devastating. Little chunks of Self-Esteem are removed bit by bit, piece by piece.
Improving Self-Esteem is crucial for Straight Wives to heal. It can be repaired. It takes work, knowledge, time and effort to repair broken Self-Esteem. Join in on this Seminar to learn how to start the repair process. You can expect this Seminar to be a mixture of lecture, discussion (question and answer session), activities to help rebuild your Self-Esteem and a downloadable Self-Esteem journal.
If your Self-Esteem has been damaged due to being in a Gay/Straight marriage, join us for the Seminar. Regardless of where you are in your journey, this Self-Esteem Seminar should be helpful for you.
What: Seminar/Telecourse
When: July 21, 2010 (Wednesday) at 8:30-10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
Cost: $30.00
Note: You must have access to a phone to call into the Seminar/Telecourse. You will also need access to a computer for email and be able to print the Self-Esteem journal. Arrangements can be made to mail the Self-Esteem journal if you do not have a printer.
Workshop: Rediscovering YOURSELF!
I am happy to announce that I have a brand new Workshop scheduled for July. This workshop is all about rediscovering yourself...redefining yourself...and becoming the new YOU. By participating in this workshop, you can expect to find where you are stuck in your grief process, identify your obstacles and learn how to remove those obstacles. The workshop will also be full of tips, guided activities, ideas and individualized suggestions on how to move forward.
If you are Straight Wife, you know how difficult it is to redefine yourself after a gay/straight marriage. Often times we wonder around feeling lost and stuck in our past. Our past has a tendency to haunt our present and future. Don't let your past define you. Realize that you deserve to have hopes and dreams. Join in on this 4 week workshop and allow this to be a time for new possibilities and new discoveries about yourself.
We will meet for 4 consecutive Mondays. The workshop will begin on July 25 and go through August 16, 2010. We will connect with each other via a conference line from 8:30-10:00PM on each Monday during the workshop.
What: 4 weeks of online/telephone workshop for Straight Spouses
Starts: July 26, 2010 @ 8:30-10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time Zone and it will meet 4 consecutive Mondays.
Cost: $150.00
Supplies Needed: Access to a telephone and to email.
Includes: Email support from the facilitator, Misti Hall, M.S.
For more information and/or to reserve your spot in any of the upcoming events contact MistiLynnHall@aol.com. The Seminars and Workshops are very easy and convenient to participate in from the privacy of your own home. The only essential equipment you need is a phone that will call a long distance number. Please note that your privacy is respected. You can register under an anonymous name.
To all of the wonderful men, gay and straight, who are part of this support network, Happy Father’s Day to you. To any women who have husbands who are struggling with the truth, hopefully you can share this newsletter with them in hopes that they will do the right thing someday soon.
With Love and Hope,
Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.
June 2010 Volume 9, Issue 108
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Please visit my website to view and purchases my books at www.BonnieKayeBooks.com. Your sales help support my website and free monthly newsletter.
FATHER’S DAY TRIBUTE
Once a year during the month of June, I like to dedicate this newsletter to the gay husbands/ex-husbands who are really doing their best to right the wrongs of their marriages. In this year’s June issue, I imposed on my male gay peer coach Doug to answer 12 of the questions that women ask me most often.
Before I give you Doug’s answers to these questions, I would like to remind our women that not all husbands/ex-husbands are irresponsible, cruel, or detached from their families. I know that many of you do have husbands who seem to have been transformed into strangers in your midst—but not all of them.
There are some wonderful gay men who found themselves caught up in their own confusion throughout their lives. When they have the courage to be honest and leave the marriage, they remain faithful to their families emotionally and financially. I have met some of these men, and you have read some of their letters throughout the years.
Doug is a hero to me. I have never met him, but I have seen the life-saving work he has done with the men I send him who want to do the right thing, as well as the women who I have sent to him to help them understand the dynamics of our situation from a gay man’s point of view. He has helped dozens and dozens of people in clarifying the reality of this situation so that they can move ahead in their lives. I am in awe of this man because he is so generous with his time and efforts to help people in our network.
Although we don’t always agree 100% of the time, we agree almost all of the time. And I guess in this situation where emotions and feelings run so high, that’s the most anyone can ask for. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Doug’s thoughts, I know you will find them honest, insightful, and heartfelt. Hopefully, you will learn some of the answers that you wonder about that have remained unanswered.
If you have questions or comments for Doug after reading this, please send them to me at Bonkaye@aol.com and I will forward them to him.
Here are Doug’s answers to the 12 most often asked questions that come my way from my straight wives.
1. Was my husband gay when he married me?
Science still has not determined why some people are gay but the research since the 1970’s has focused on genetic and/or biological factors. It appears that our sexuality is hard-wired in our brain before we are born. It occurs throughout the world in all cultures and it has been observed in over 100 species. Researchers have also identified structural differences in the brains of gay and straight men. In addition, all those old psychoanalytic theories about absentee or ineffective fathers and dominant mothers have since been disproved. Whether we are gay or straight, it appears that is determined sometime while we are developing as a fetus. Was I gay when I married my wife? Absolutely. I was gay the day I was born but no one in my family knew it or suspected it – including me.
2. Did my husband know he was gay when he married me?
The answer to that question depends on how one defines gay and straight. There is a difference between sexual orientation and sexual identity. Sexual orientation is based on our natural sexual attractions and responses toward the same or opposite gender and it does not change over time. There has never been any documented cases of anyone who changed his sexual orientation. Even the reparative ministry folks do not claim to be able to change someone’s natural attractions and desires. But sexual identity is based on how we perceive ourselves and that self-concept DOES change as we gain experience and become aware of our natural feelings and responses. For example, I knew I was attracted to other guys during my teen years and young adulthood. But the attraction was just physical. I had no interest in any kind of emotional relationship with another male. Therefore I did not define myself as being gay. My concept of the average gay man was shaped by a culture that failed to show me any positive gay relationships and treated them as perverts and felons. Remember, it was only a few years ago that the Supreme Court struck down felony offenses for consensual gay sex. And in most States in America, it still is legal to discriminate against gay people in employment and public accommodations. The only images I had of gay men were those who were gender non-conformists – males whose outward behaviors and interests were feminine and those who were shunned as outcasts in our society. That was not how I saw myself. I saw myself as an average guy who was in a heterosexual marriage. Even though I knew that I found some guys attractive and had natural sexual feelings for them, I did not view that as being homosexual. Like most husbands in these situations, I had limited sexual experience when I married and I married when I was young. I believed that those homosexual feelings and desires were probably present in most men, but the average guy was able to suppress those feelings and form a love bond with a woman, get married and have children.
Like most gay men who marry women, I didn’t define ‘gay’ in terms of sexual attractions. I defined ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ in terms of emotional attachments and/or outward masculine behavior. I couldn’t see myself ever loving another man and I wasn’t into cross dressing or other overt feminine behavior. I couldn’t even imagine it. I never met two guys who loved each other so I had no role models to compare with. The only way that I knew how to live was to love a woman and marry her and have kids. There were no other options in life.
3. Did my husband really love me when he married me or was he trying to escape who he was?
We have all read accounts about gay Hollywood stars who entered marriages of convenience. They didn’t really love their wife. It was an arrangement made by the studio execs or their managers to squash rumors of homosexuality. Being gay in Hollywood is still pretty much a career-capper. Ditto for politicians. Former Governor James McGreevey knew he was gay but got married because he needed a cover. In his book he admitted he knew he could not have a successful political career without a wife. So he married twice to protect his political career. But that’s not the case in most of the gay married guys I’ve met and coached. In fact, most of the husbands describe their marriage in terms of ‘soul mate’ and ‘best friend’. Part of the reason that these marriages are so very difficult and painful is because the relationship between the gay man and his wife is so very close. I’m not surprised. If the brain science is correct, our brain is most similar to those of straight women. We have skill sets most resembling those of women. We have the same high language skills and intuition and empathy. Why should it then be a surprise that we form very close relationships with women? In some ways, we are like the sister our wife always dreamed of having. It is much easier to end a marriage when two people have simply fallen out of love. It is far more difficult and painful to end that marriage when you still love each other but you know that it cannot work. You’re not just losing a spouse. You’re losing the best friend you ever had.
4. If my husband was gay, how was he able to have sex with me?
Men and women experience sexual desire very differently. Researchers had control groups watch porn movies. Using various instruments and brain imaging, they were able to measure sexual arousal. By tracking the retina, they were able to zero in on what the subject was watching or focusing on when they became aroused. It was determined that women tend to focus on the context of the scene – the situation and the romance and intimacy. However, gay men and straight men alike tend to focus on body parts. That probably also explains why women are twice as likely to have sex with men or women. The plumbing equipment and the visuals are not as important to them as the romance and emotional love bond. Men however, are highly visual and respond to visions of genital activity. In addition, a young man’s body is flooded with high levels of testosterone which amplifies emotions. One female researcher began taking testosterone injections equal to about 10% of what the average male her age would have in his system. She discontinued her experiment within just a few weeks. She reported that all of her emotions were heightened to the point where it was difficult to control them. That makes sense. All of our lives, boys have to deal with hyper-activity and out-of-control emotions. But it is that testosterone that pushes us to have sex. It’s the same stuff that makes us fall hopelessly in love – or lust. For most of us in our teens and early adulthood, ANY sex is good. There is no such thing as unfulfilled sex at that age. The very thought of having sex resulted in arousal.
5. Was my husband fantasizing about men when he had sex with me?
Some men do use homosexual fantasies to perform with their wife but that was not my experience nor does it seem to be the case in most that I’ve worked with. Fantasizing about a penis while you’re playing with a vagina just doesn’t work for most of us. If we start thinking about some guy we want to have sex with, and then see our wife making love to us, it usually results in a deflated penis. Most married guys separate our two realities. We live in a heterosexual world and heterosexual marriage and we try to play the role of a heterosexual husband and father. Our homosexual nature is assigned to an alter-ego and we keep that persona locked up in the closet until we can let him out in private – or with another guy. I was sexually active with my wife up until our separation. However for several years of our marriage she was aware that I was also having sex with men. When I had sex with her, I was doing it for her and trying my best to please her. I was able to bring her to orgasm and myself as well. But it felt academic. I was doing those things to please her. But when I was with a guy, whatever activity I was engaged in with them was shear lust and hunger. I wasn’t doing it to please him. I was doing it to please me because I desired it. I think that’s a significant difference that defines what sexual pleasure is. Are you doing it to please the other person, or are you doing it because it turns you on and you hunger for it? As gay married gay men grow older, the testosterone poisoning can no longer be relied upon. The levels begin to drop in the late 20s and 30s. Now he has to rely on desire to make it work.
6. Why couldn’t my husband be honest with me before he cheated with a man?
Most gay husbands married when they were young and had limited or no sexual experience with other men. We try to understand our attraction to other men but some things in life cannot be learned academically or through cognitive reasoning. Logic doesn’t teach us about our sexuality. These are complex physical and emotional responses that we have to experience. But we have no personal experience to draw from so the only way to discern whether this is just some crazy fantasy or something much deeper is through experiential learning. In that type of learning process, we experience something, then reflect on that experience, draw conclusions, and then adjust the experience and try it again. We keep repeating variations until we are able to learn from it and answer the questions about ourselves. Gay married guys are not willing to hurt their wife and family and risk destruction of the marriage over what may turn out to be some phase or ridiculous fantasy. We are not about to do that when it’s just possible that we could try it and come away with disgust and disillusionment. It’s one thing to put ourselves at risk of getting emotionally hurt but we are not willing to destroy our family without knowing the truth about ourselves. But the dilemma is that he cannot go have a full relationship with another man. He cannot experience that because he is married so he never truly gets the answers he needs. Very frequently, it sets him up in an approach-avoidance conflict where he reaches out for something but then pulls back because if he achieves what he desires it will hurt his wife and cause him more pain and guilt – which he tries to avoid. In my own life, I searched for those answers and tried to find fulfillment. But I couldn’t let myself fall in love with another guy and went to extremes to avoid it. That set up a sexual compulsion where I tried to use quantity as a substitute for what I really needed and desired. Until I understood that I was sabotaging myself in the hopes of avoiding painful situations for her, it was a constant compulsion that preoccupied me.
7. Why did he constantly blame me for his unhappiness in the marriage?
In my own marriage, I knew that we had once been sexually happy but didn’t understand why that was changing. Sex was becoming more like a duty or work for me. I saw my own struggle - working hard to try to keep romance and lust alive. However, I didn’t see her working at it at all. It felt like I was the only one working to keep the romance alive and she just took it for granted and didn’t see or appreciate what I was doing to keep it going. It was faulty reasoning. Of course she didn’t have to work at it. She loved me and I turned her on. She didn’t want anyone else. It wasn’t work, it was pleasure for her. But I was wrestling - trying to stay motivated. Yes, I loved her. But I didn’t desire her body. I desired and needed men, and I never had to work at that. It came automatically. And it wasn’t just about a penis vs. vagina. She could have sex reassignment surgery and get a penis – but she would still be a woman with a penis. I desired and needed a man. No matter what she did or how hard she tried to please me, she couldn’t be a man for me. But at the time it was happening, all I could see was that somehow I used to be motivated to have sex with her and now I was struggling and having to work at it. But I didn’t see her putting in the same amount of work/effort that I was. I remember thinking, if only she would be more aggressive in bed, or be more spontaneous and take the initiative. If only she would try to find ways to turn me on. The “if-only” kept coming up until I finally hit the truth. If only she was a man.
8. My husband said that I didn’t want to have sex enough so he turned to men. Is that true?
This is another “if-only” excuse. Quantity is sometimes used as a coping strategy to keep a guy’s mind off of sex. He figures if he keeps himself sexually satiated he won’t think about sex and won’t be driven to have sex with men. He figures it’s her job to keep his sexual energy drained and that way he won’t fantasize about guys or desire to have sex with them. But I learned that staying sexually drained might keep my mind off of sex temporarily, but it still wasn’t going to get me what I needed to be happy.
9. My husband says he is bisexual. Does that mean he can stay happy with me without having sex with a man?
For the most part, bisexuality among adult men tends to be a transitional state. When you look at the statistics by age group, those who identify themselves as being bisexual tend to be in late adolescent years or early 20’s. As we humans sexually experiment and learn about ourselves, we tend to change our ‘bisexual’ self-identity to that of heterosexual or homosexual. By the time we are in mid-life, the number of people identifying as bisexual drops dramatically. In my own case, I identified as being bisexual for several years because I loved my wife and was sexually active with her, but at the same time I was sexually attracted to men though I had no interest in a love relationship with a man. So I didn’t seem to fit in either the heterosexual column or the homosexual column. But as I learned more about me and experimented with men physically and emotionally, it became clear that I was predominately sexually and emotionally attracted to men. I had been subconsciously trying to avoid emotional bonds with men because I instinctively knew that it would be a life altering experience that would threaten my self-concept and my marriage. I could have sex with men but as long as I didn’t love them, I wasn’t gay. Inevitably however, I met a man who I fell deeply in love with. I had an emotional response that I had never known existed. Limerence, that feeling of deep love that has an obsessive-compulsive quality to it, is something I never knew existed. I had never experienced it in my life until he came along. The feelings were so deep and overwhelming that it instantly destroyed any self-concept of bisexuality. I wasn’t caught in the in-between world of loving a woman and yet being physically drawn to men. I was fully engulfed in physical and emotional desire for another man. I couldn’t possibly be any more gay – not by any stretch of the definition.
10. Now that my husband has found his new life, why does he treat me like an enemy?
As I pointed out earlier, these mixed-orientation marriages tend to be extremely close. It is easy to walk away from someone with whom we have fallen out of love. Leaving someone you love feels like pulling live flesh from your body. It’s very common for the husband and/or the wife to assign blame to each other and treat each other badly as a means of making it easier to let go. Also, he has been struggling with his sexuality for a long time. There has been an internal war going on and an identity crisis. Eventually he hates the situation he is in and it doesn’t seem that he will ever be able to be happy and fulfilled because for most of his life he stifled his own needs to maintain his dysfunctional marriage. But eventually the disdain he has for the marriage becomes personified and he begins to see his wife as a block in his path to self-actualization and happiness. Subconsciously he begins to feel as if his wife is the warden and he’s a prisoner. When it reaches that point, any attempt at showing him love is rebuffed. The experience has taught me that people can love us but if that love is not coming from someone we love, it doesn’t feel like love at all. It feels like we are being stalked.
But it need not go from a love relationship to a hate relationship. Many couples find ways to stay friends and co-parent their children. My advice is to not wait until you both become bitter and cynical. Have the courage and grace to admit that the marriage cannot work. Have the caring and love to let go and help each other find someone else who can give them the love you cannot give each other. Hold onto the good memories and hold onto the respect for each other. But let go of the impossible marriage. You are doing no favors to yourselves or to your spouse or children in clinging to a marriage that is dysfunctional and failing.
But know that this situation was not caused by the wife. It didn’t happen because you weren’t sexy enough or you weren’t aggressive enough. It happened because he is gay and despite all the years of war within himself, he cannot change it no matter how much he loves you or how much you love him.
11. My husband tells me that he is gay because he was sexually molested when he was younger. He claims this is a learned behavior that he can un-learn with therapy and support. Is this true?
This is the favorite fodder for anti-gay religious groups such as the Family Research Council or NARTH. These organizations tout statistical studies that report that gay men are more likely to have been molested by adult males as children, and therefore jump to the conclusion that childhood sexual experience with a male causes homosexuality. It begs the question: Is heterosexuality caused by sexual molestation by someone of the opposite sex??
But seriously, the statistics they cite are erroneous or taken out of context. It is true that gay men are more likely to report sexual experiences with adults when they were under the age of 16, but in the majority of those cases (one study reports it as 68%), they had already self-identified as being gay before the molestation had occurred. A closer look at those suspect statistics reveals definitions that become problematic. A boy of 15 who had a sexual experience with a boy of 18 would have fallen within the definitions of having been molested. But most of us would not view sex between a 15-year-old and 18-year-old as a predator molestation.
This is what the American Psychological Association has to say about it in May, 2000:
"No specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse.
Sexual abuse does not appear to be more prevalent in children who grow up to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, than in children who identify as heterosexual."
The national Organization on Male Sexual Victimization stated in 2004:
"While there are different theories about how sexual orientation develops, experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation.”
Sexual abuse can interfere with a person’s sexual enjoyment and may even contribute to a condition referred to as Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in which a person keeps checking to reassure himself that he’s not gay. But childhood sexual abuse does not create a person’s deepest passions, attractions and desires.
12. What do you suggest about telling the children?
I think the answer to that depends on the age of the children. Generally speaking, kids don’t want to hear about anything sexual associated with their parents. It conjures up images of what Mom or Dad does between the sheets. There’s a strong “yuck” factor to it. Husbands and wives divorce every day but they don’t usually share their bedroom disappointments with their children. That being said, if Dad has found a male partner, or if other situations arise that make it necessary to have that conversation with the kids, I believe it should be couched in terms of affection and love rather than complicated and ambiguous labels. Children understand love and affection. But terms such as ‘sexual orientation’ are generally beyond their level of comprehension. Unless they are in their late teens, anything about their parents that includes the word ‘sexual’ is toxic. Wherever possible, the child should be given support he/she is going to need to cope with the knowledge that they have a gay parent. If a child shares that information with friends, they can quickly become the target of mean-spirited taunts. I urge parents to work with a therapist or family counselors in discussing it with kids and I recommend they also have a conversation with the school counselor so the kids have someone supportive they can turn to at school.
Doug
Thank you, Doug, for sharing this information with us.
Mailbag
In keeping with my theme of men for the month, the letter below comes from a straight man, Jim. He would like to share his thoughts with you.
Bonnie,
I just read your May newsletter and I continue to be dismayed at the reaction of many of your readers to the discovery of a gay spouse. It seems to me that there is some “social dynamic” at work that makes women feel almost responsible for a husband’s gayness. It’s as if they feel that they have somehow “caused” it. Yet much of what I have read in your newsletters indicates that gayness was brought to the marriage, not that the marriage caused a spouse to “become gay”. The only “fault” is that the offended spouse was, for one reason or another, unable (or perhaps unwilling, but I am inclined to believe “unable”) to recognize the signs. George Bernard Shaw once observed that most men will choose a spouse in a light so dim that they would not consider buying a suit in it, much less choose a life partner. Perhaps the same is true of women! But allowing one’s self-esteem to be a function of the deceit practiced by another is a serious and dangerous mistake. The fact that society has made hiding gayness is, I’m sure, a factor in the deceit. But to take upon oneself the burden of a societal error is not a proper response.
It’s understandable that emotions run high when one is talking about what was presumed to be a lifetime commitment and children are involved. Even straight couples who divorce face trauma and feelings of guilt. I did when I first divorced. However, a marriage relationship is a two-way street. Each party brings “baggage” to the relationship and that baggage should be inspected before committing to sharing a life. Both parties have a responsibility to the relationship and if one is deceitful while the other is not, it seems to me that the burden of low self-esteem is really, or should be, with the deceiving party. We are deceived daily by news media, politicians, marketers, professional colleagues, etc.
Spousal deceit, while much more personal, is not objectively different. Any man who is attracted to pictures of other naked men has “baggage” that needs to examined. If I want to see a naked man, I can look in the mirror! If the desire of a man to see pictures of other naked men cannot be examined, and in most cases it cannot, we should not chalk up a discovery of that desire to our own failings and punish ourselves for not having seen signs that were hidden to begin with. Life is little more than a series of choices and not all of our choices result in positive outcomes.
If one of the parties to a relationship deliberately chooses to not reveal something important to the relationship, it is not reasonable for the other party to bear the burden of that choice. Simply stated, we can’t always be right! But we can always be FAIR to ourselves. We certainly should not have to bear the burdens of some other person’s choices. And we should not build our own lives around them. Forgiving oneself for a mistake is essential to moving on in life. And it is most unfair to expect our children to carry the burden of the choices of their adult parents. They have enough to worry about in their own lives!
Jim
JULY WORKSHOPS BY MY CO-THERAPIST MISTI LYNN HALL
July will be a very busy month. I will be offering a Saturday Seminar, a weekday Seminar and a Workshop! Please see the descriptions below.
Saturday Seminar: Spirituality and Healing
Being married to a gay man dissolved my Spirit and caused hurt and pain to the depths of my Soul. I was walking around in an empty shell. Hollow on the inside. My Spirit was depleted and my Soul was wounded. I had no motivation, no purpose or meaning in my life. I was barely existing. Then I discovered the importance of rebuilding myself Spiritually. Finding things that fed my SPIRIT healed me on a Soul level. On Saturday, July 10, I will share with you the things that fed my Spirit and motivated me to start the quest of living an extraordinary life. You can expect this seminar to be a mixture of lecture, guided activities, discussion (question and answer session) and a downloadable journal/workbook on Spirit Center Discovery. This topic of Spirituality has nothing to do with a specific religion. This type of Spirituality will focus on how to refill your SPIRIT and allow that zest for life to flow back to you. This life is precious. You deserve to live it fully and completely. Join in on this live Saturday Seminar Telecourse via your telephone from the comforts and privacy of your own home.
What: July Saturday Seminar Telecourse
When: July 10, 2010 at 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time Zone
Cost: $30.00
Note: You must have access to a phone to call into the Telecourse. You will also need access to a computer for email and be able to print the Spirit Centered Discovery journal/workbook. Arrangements can be made to mail the packet if you do not have a printer.
Self-Esteem Seminar
I recently facilitated a Saturday Seminar on Self-Esteem. It was tremendously successful. I have gotten so much positive feedback and so many requests from Straight Wives that I will be offering a repeat of this seminar on a weeknight.
Often times Straight Wives have little to no Self-Esteem. Knowing that your spouse is Gay can be very damaging to your Self-Esteem. There are many things that can lead to low self-esteem. For starters, our culture already promotes the essence of a woman to be unrealistic by expecting us to be Wonder Woman. On top of that, add a Gay spouse to the stress and it spells for disaster in the Self-Esteem department. The years of being in a Gay/Straight marriage can be devastating. Little chunks of Self-Esteem are removed bit by bit, piece by piece.
Improving Self-Esteem is crucial for Straight Wives to heal. It can be repaired. It takes work, knowledge, time and effort to repair broken Self-Esteem. Join in on this Seminar to learn how to start the repair process. You can expect this Seminar to be a mixture of lecture, discussion (question and answer session), activities to help rebuild your Self-Esteem and a downloadable Self-Esteem journal.
If your Self-Esteem has been damaged due to being in a Gay/Straight marriage, join us for the Seminar. Regardless of where you are in your journey, this Self-Esteem Seminar should be helpful for you.
What: Seminar/Telecourse
When: July 21, 2010 (Wednesday) at 8:30-10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
Cost: $30.00
Note: You must have access to a phone to call into the Seminar/Telecourse. You will also need access to a computer for email and be able to print the Self-Esteem journal. Arrangements can be made to mail the Self-Esteem journal if you do not have a printer.
Workshop: Rediscovering YOURSELF!
I am happy to announce that I have a brand new Workshop scheduled for July. This workshop is all about rediscovering yourself...redefining yourself...and becoming the new YOU. By participating in this workshop, you can expect to find where you are stuck in your grief process, identify your obstacles and learn how to remove those obstacles. The workshop will also be full of tips, guided activities, ideas and individualized suggestions on how to move forward.
If you are Straight Wife, you know how difficult it is to redefine yourself after a gay/straight marriage. Often times we wonder around feeling lost and stuck in our past. Our past has a tendency to haunt our present and future. Don't let your past define you. Realize that you deserve to have hopes and dreams. Join in on this 4 week workshop and allow this to be a time for new possibilities and new discoveries about yourself.
We will meet for 4 consecutive Mondays. The workshop will begin on July 25 and go through August 16, 2010. We will connect with each other via a conference line from 8:30-10:00PM on each Monday during the workshop.
What: 4 weeks of online/telephone workshop for Straight Spouses
Starts: July 26, 2010 @ 8:30-10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time Zone and it will meet 4 consecutive Mondays.
Cost: $150.00
Supplies Needed: Access to a telephone and to email.
Includes: Email support from the facilitator, Misti Hall, M.S.
For more information and/or to reserve your spot in any of the upcoming events contact MistiLynnHall@aol.com. The Seminars and Workshops are very easy and convenient to participate in from the privacy of your own home. The only essential equipment you need is a phone that will call a long distance number. Please note that your privacy is respected. You can register under an anonymous name.
To all of the wonderful men, gay and straight, who are part of this support network, Happy Father’s Day to you. To any women who have husbands who are struggling with the truth, hopefully you can share this newsletter with them in hopes that they will do the right thing someday soon.
With Love and Hope,
Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
STRAIGHT TALK SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER
Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Talk Newsletter
September 2009 Volume 8, Issue 99
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Please visit my website to view and purchases my books at www.BonnieKayeBooks.com. Your sales help support the website and monthly newsletter.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
Normally, I prefer not to focus on ME when I am talking to YOU. However, I would like to say a few words to my over 7,000 readers around the world who take the time to listen to what I share each month.
On September 26, I will turn 58. As I creep up through the age ladder aiming towards 60 in two years, I feel blessed that I had the strength to end the marriage to my gay husband many years ago so I could try to salvage the rest of my life and find peace of mind, happiness, and in my particular case, the love of a wonderful man who has become my lifeline. Because it is my birthday month, I would like to share some important thoughts with you.
Last week in our online support group, we were discussing the issue of “low self-esteem,” and how so many of us suffer from it. I explained to the group that I work every day to keep my self-esteem high because for so most of my life, it was so low. Self esteem is not an external issue—it’s an internal issue. For those of us who suffer from it—which are almost everyone reading this newsletter at some point or another, you know what a daily struggle it is to feel good about yourself. If you are living with a gay husband, it becomes that much more difficult because you feel the daily rejection and often ridicule in their effort to “control” the situation that is uncontrollable. Well, at least they try to control you since they can’t control themselves.
So, for all of you who are sitting there and shaking your heads in agreement, let me say these words to you. Self-esteem comes from conditioning. I know some of the most physically beautiful women who are brilliant, kind, and loving, but they have low self-esteem. They are doctors, nurses, politicians, actresses, company directors (and you know who you are when you read this) who feel just as inadequate as everyone else. You can look at them and say, “You’ve got to be kidding,” but I’m not. Their internal message system makes them feel the same as the rest of us who may not have been blessed with their physical or intellectual attributes. And yet I know women who will never be on a magazine cover and who may have jobs that are far from what most of us would consider high end, but yet they feel good about themselves because they have high self-esteem. Yep, I see this side of the equation as well. And I love seeing it too! It makes me realize that you can be Miss Average Jill and still feel like you are a true winner because you believe you are! That’s what high self-esteem does for women.
Because I have had a weight problem for 50 of my 58 years, I have suffered with self-esteem issues my whole life. From my teenage years when I “pudgy” to my adult years where I was just obese, I went through lots of horror stories in trying to feel “wanted” by a man who could love me for the way I was. When I married my gay husband 31 years ago, I was actually looking my best. I wasn’t overweight very much at that point—primarily because I had an eating disorder called bulimia. In my mid to late 20’s, that was my solution to my weight problem. I looked good and felt good about myself—better than I had in years—but that didn’t last long once those buttons of insecurity started being pushed in my marriage. My newly found self-esteem quickly went down the drain as my weight returned and the rejection set in.
So all these years later, I still struggle daily with my weight problem. I’ve accepted it is here with me to stay. I never stop working at it, but it’s just part of who I am. But guess what? If I’m concerned now it’s because of my health, not because of feeling bad about myself. Why? For the past 15 years and 8 months, I have been blessed to find a wonderful soulmate who hasn’t noticed that I put on that extra 60 pounds since we met. When I bemoan the fact of my weight, he just responds with things like, “More of you to love” or “You’re built for comfort!” This man makes me feel like I’m a movie star every time we are together. He makes me feel young and beautiful every time we are intimate, which is every week of the year. And we are no youngsters—trust me! But when we are together, we feel like we are in our 20’s. That is what I love so much about him. He makes me feel “internally” beautiful. He has built up my self-confidence instead of knocking it down. He inspires me and encourages me. No idea I have is ever too ridiculous or no requests are ever too “demanding” like it was when I had a gay husband. Because of his unconditional love for me, I have survived the worst tragedies in my life. It’s not all about HIM, it’s about me and him, and many times, he just focuses on me and what makes me happy. This is what a relationship is supposed to be.
What so many of you have is the “illusion” of a relationship because two people are living in the same place. But what you really find is two empty shells living there—both existing day to day. One is in a maze of confusion—the other is trapped in a lifetime of deception. Neither has the courage to say THIS IS NOT WORKING because fear and paralysis has set in. I always say every day you lose in these destructive marriages is a day you can never get back. Life is so precious and fragile. Ask me—I know. I lost both of my precious children in the past seven years. Life offers you no guarantees for sure.
This is why living with a man who is unable to love you for the woman you are is so destructive to YOU no matter what you look like or where you are in life. When I hear stories of women having to “beg” their husbands to have sex, it makes me ill. I remember those feelings of sexual rejection only too well. Nothing makes you feel less adequate than feeling like you are undesirable because a man won’t be honest with you about being gay. That is why I tell men I can always forgive them for being gay—that is not a choice. But it’s the deceit, the lies, and the manipulation to keep that secret going that makes me angry. No man has a right to rob his wife of what is hers—self-respect and self-worth. Men who continue to do this year in and year out are cowards of the worst type because they slowly peel away whatever self-esteem a woman has until she doubts her daily activities and sanity. I greatly appreciate our men who support us here who eventually do come to terms with themselves and do the right thing. I just wish all gay husbands could give their wives that gift.
So, I hope as my birthday gift some of you will do some heavy duty thinking about how wonderful your life could be if you allowed yourself to make that move and take your life back. If you need help or support, we have one great network here that will provide it for you. All you have to do is ask! You don’t have to do it alone.
MAILBAG:
Last month, we had two women who reached out to ask advice about dating and telling about the marriage to a gay husband and what to do with photographs with bad memories in the pictures. The responses were overwhelming, but all of them were important. Please feel free to always write and comment here.
Dear Bonnie,
I read your newsletter and am continually amazed at how we are a sisterhood with common stories. I filed for divorce August 3, 2007 and I got my final ruling August 6, 2009. I wanted to share my victory with all my sisters out there in the hopes that perhaps it will give some of them strength to keep going. It turned out there were 801 gay porn sites on the hard drive of the computer. He denied under oath knowing anything about how they got there. It was hard core evidence, with dates and times. He thought he had all this power because he had an attorney who promised him the world. He demanded half the house - even though my 85 year old mother, who lives with me, paid for 2/3 of the house when we combined households in 2000 because he was unemployed and my dad had Alzheimer’s. He demanded alimony for life because I earn more money as a teacher than he does as a Radio Shack employee and alimony pendente lite which is spousal support while going through the divorce. He demanded $55,000 rent for letting me remain in the house for the past two years. He was very concerned about getting the one item in the house that has some true value, an antique Persian carpet. He also demanded that I pay all his attorney fees. It should have been over in three months by Pennsylvania law and it should have been simple, if half the house was considered marital, it would have been equivalent to half his retirement account. His attorney had the power to drag it out for two years in order to accumulate enormous billable hours and he did that. He knew how to hurt me the deepest and so he did – by taking away the daughter I love with his lies, the grandson whom I have not seen since he was 8 months old and the fear of poverty. I was his victim for 29 years. But I hired a second attorney to intervene for my mother, doubled my attorney costs and fought back. I had no idea how the ruling was going to go but I refused to give him the power to break me. He thought he had the power because my daughter was his only witness. She is doing a residency as a doctor so having her come to court and testify that “my mother is crazy, my father is not gay” was supposed to make the judge give him everything he demanded. I watched him run up senseless legal fees that will completely empty his retirement account.
Our attorneys said very little in court. They didn’t have to. I married an engineer who earned a decent salary. I ended up with a pathetic creature with a 14 year addiction to gay pornography that took over his life, destroyed his career and his mind. The ruling went entirely in my favor. I get the house. He does not get alimony. He does not get alimony pendente lite. He does not get rent. He does not get anything in the house. He does not get his attorney fees paid for. He does have to pay me $4000 in cash for his share of the property taxes and his car insurance for the past two years. He also has to have an account set up in my name and transfer a hefty chunk of his retirement account into it. I don’t expect to get any money, he is a foreigner and he will probably leave the country to avoid having to pay me anything. But he ruined his life and he destroyed himself financially in his quest for revenge. He is 60 years old, earns $7.15 an hour and he blew all his retirement savings. He can contest it and he probably will but the end result will be the same. My advice to my sisters out there is to stand strong. I wanted my freedom to love again. Two days after the ruling I went on a cruise to Bermuda with my mother. It was rejuvenating and healing as well.
As for Julie’s question about what to do about photos, I packed all the photo albums in boxes and put them down in the basement after ripping up every single photo of him from 1990 on, the year when our marriage began to crumble because of his secret desires. Some day my kids might want to have them.
In response to Lil’s question about what to tell men in dating situations, I have approached dating as a research project. I talked to lots of recently married couples on the cruise ship and collected stories from them about how they met and I didn’t need to tell anyone that I had been married to a gay man. I wanted to learn more about remarriage in mid life. The basic consensus was that everyone has some kind of baggage. I think if a guy is turned off by it, then he is not the kind of man any of us need and that it is good to find that out sooner rather than later. We have a need for all the things we did not have in these doomed marriages…..respect, affection, emotional support, honesty, understanding, consideration, love and passion. We all deserve these things.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Take it one day at a time.
Dorothy
Dear Lil,
I read your letter with interest as I have been in a very similar position as you and can understand exactly what you are going through. My ex husband too was very nasty and unfair whilst going through the divorce. He had cheated on me with numerous men for years and I had found him out, yet he was the one being spiteful towards me. To this day I still do not understand what gave him the right to treat me that way. Like you at no point did I stop him seeing the kids even though I really wanted to sometimes. But believe it or not after seeing such a nasty side to him that I didn’t know existed everything has changed. He is now civil towards me and often quite chatty. A complete transformation! It is so much better for the kids sake, and mine too I might add!
Now to get back to your question about internet dating and telling the guys about your ex husband. This is what I have personally experienced. I have been internet dating on and off for over 2 years. Like you, at first I told the men before I met them about my ex. I think partly that was due to the fact that I had been cheated on and wanted to be sure I was honest and upfront from the start. This also allowed me to ask them why they had split from their ex wives. I wouldn’t be able to have a relationship with someone who had cheated on their spouse. Most didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Now though I don’t tell them until I meet them. But I do think it’s important from the outset to let them know as it has shaped my life as I was with my ex for 15 years. My past experiences with my husband also affect how I am today. I have met quite a few men from the internet and most I reject after one date. I went through a phase of looking for the perfect guy and felt I would know as soon as I first met him that he was the one! I have now come to the conclusion that I will never be sure straight away and trust and communication take time to develop.
Internet dating is very difficult please be careful. It is very flattering to have such a lot of attention from men once you join an internet site. Remember there are guys out there who just pray on vulnerable women. I have met my fair share! It takes time and experience on these sites to sift through the authentic single guys who are normal. But when you find the right guy I believe it’s important to be honest from the outset when you meet. If they do not wish to continue to see you then they are not worth your time anyway.
Best of luck
Joanne
P.S I have met someone recently. Although it’s still in the early stages I think he may be the one I have been looking for, only time will tell. Internet dating is definitely worth the effort. How else can busy mums meet single guys?
Hi Bonnie,
In response to your question posed in this newsletter, I'm a firm believer in laying it on the table from the get go. As I have small children, it's always a red flag that I'm divorced when I meet men and so I start with the truth. In my experience, I have found that the circumstances and the story matter less than how you have come through the story. Nobody wants to get involved with someone who is angry, bitter or victimized by their past circumstances, regardless of what they are. The feedback I have received as I've started dating is that the men have all been so impressed with how I have handled my situation and although the story is big and hurtful, I've emerged stronger, more compassionate and wiser as a result. My most profound wish is that every one of your readers can find their way there and no one feels like they have to keep their ex's secrets any longer.
Peace and love,
Carrie
Hi Bonnie,
I know that I have been out of touch for a while, sorry, but I have another new grandbaby and he is adorable. I have been healing and actually dating for a while now. I did not want to date after the divorce. It took me nearly 2 1/2 years to actually go out there. I even had crazy ideas that it was all a very bad dream and would someday be all right. Ha, Ha!!!, but it was not funny, as you all know. My situation may not be as some others, as I was one of those limbo wives. My husband, will never admit his lifestyle. He will go through life, as a sad, selfish, human being. Since I was not dating, it made sense to me to have "outings" with my ex. Not such a smart idea. It always left me feeling sad and depressed at what I had lost. The family unit, the family outings and get-togethers etc. I could not tell others about him, since he would call me a liar, and so I was the wrong person who gave up the marriage and ruined the family. I had a lot to get over. My son finally told me to get on with my life and realize that I had nothing to lose but being unhappy. Those were the words that set me off on a new direction.
So I tried on line dating. I met a great guy, on a free dating service, but he soon moved away and we have lost touch. I went out with him several times, but I would not have told him that my husband was gay. Later, several months later, I tried a dating service. I only signed up for three months. I met several men, but started communicating with one in particular. We have been dating several months now, and I DID NOT tell him about my husband being gay until we had been dating for several months. I do not feel that the men you date need to know everything right away. It makes you look like a whiner and a complainer. Being married to a gay man, as you know takes away a woman's self-esteem, and self-worth. We are belittled, ignored, taken for granted, a cover, a breeder, and sucked dry of any feelings that we are worth anything. We want to tell the world, what a derelict we were married to. Be the stronger one, be the woman that knows who she is and what she wants. When you start complaining about how you were married to this gay man etc., it scares them.
They are not strong enough to take it right away.
I can say that I am really happy now. My ex saw my new guy and myself in the mall in February. He finally said something to my daughter, who told me he was so mad, at me. Why? I don't know, he didn't want the package, but I don't want his either. I waited to tell until I felt that we had a strong enough relationship that he could handle the truth and I believe that it was a good decision. I also waited to date until I was sure of myself and who I was inside. I did have self worth, I did have a good feeling about my self esteem. Going out again is a scary thing. You have to open yourself up and that is hard since when you did open yourself before, you were burned really badly. All of us have gone through this horrific time. We need to stick together and realize that Bonnie has given us a great gift via which we can obtain the strength we need to get through the tough times in our life.
Thank you again Bonnie for your wisdom and assurances through everything. Feel free to send anyone who has questions and or comments my way. I don't have all the answers, but I have grown so much, thanks to you.
Jeanne
Dear Bonnie,
I can understand Lil wanting to "look" because it's natural: you want to know you've still "got it", that a really honest-to-God straight guy could find you attractive.
She's found that.
But I think her higher power is trying to tell her to take it a little bit slow right now ...
Now, in terms of being honest with a man, I've gotta say YES. YES YES YES. If he can't handle your reality, he isn't worth your time. You've spent X number of years taking care of someone who didn't take care of you ... now is the time to really listen to your gut.
I had a couple of misses before I met the man I'm currently with, probably the most thoughtful human being I've ever known. Yes, he's flawed (who isn't?!) but he wants honesty and isn't afraid of emotional intimacy. And, oh, by the way, he's straight straight straight. It's an amazing thing making love with a man who loves you and is attracted to you (and not a penis!)
That's my .02 Lil, take it slow and when you meet someone who you really click with, tell him when the time is right.
Linda
Hi Bonnie,
Lil wondered whether to tell her dates about her past. I did it both ways, however, the wonderful man I am now married to, I told on the first date. Because my ex husband was such a prominent community member and his "coming out" was done through an arrest, there was little keeping quiet about it. When I began online dating though, I just went by my first name and did so for the first couple of dates also. On my first date with my now wonderful husband, we were "clicking" right away. At a later point in the date, I said to him, "I need to tell you something that may change your mind about dating me", and I proceeded to tell him my last name upon he knew immediately who my ex was. I told him that due to this, I carried a lot of baggage. His immediate answer to me was, "you only carry the baggage that you choose to.......you did nothing, there is no baggage for you to carry." "You are a lovely lady that got a very raw deal." He then hugged me and told me in no way would that affect him wanting to get to know me. I knew then that he was the real deal and could deal with all I had to deal with. We married 16 months later and have now been married for 17 months and I have never been happier.
I truly feel that what we have been through will affect us for the rest of our lives. We can choose to let it consume us or to live through it and become stronger and happier but nevertheless it will affect us and sometimes it rears its ugly head at strange times. Having a spouse who loves us and understands all about us is a wonderful comfort.
I feel like someone who cannot love us for who we are in all of our totality only spells heartache ahead so I chose to be open and am blessed with a wonderful husband because of it. Hope this helps in some small way. Melody
Dear Julie,
The photos are something I, also, had a hard time dealing with. I put them away in boxes and never looked at them. We had no children together, so after he died, I finally just went ahead and pitched them. I knew I didn't want them anymore, and that I couldn't move on while I knew
I still had those damn pictures in those damn boxes in my house. I felt that he didn't deserve any more space in my head, my heart or my house. But, that's just me.
Since you have children, you could always ask them if they want the photos, or maybe if his parents (if they are still alive) or if his siblings want them. You could always have a shredding party or a small bonfire to wipe your hands of them. Or, you can just keep them in a box until you are ready. If it were me, I sure wouldn't bother to put them in albums.
One thing is certain, there are no rights or wrongs in this situation, whatever is best for YOU is right.
Hugs,
Joanie
Dear Julie,
Like you, I am an ardent fan of photography and have many photo albums from my 20 years of marriage to a secretly gay, cheating husband. He was also a sociopath an emotional abuser, and master manipulator. Like so many of us, I am still working on my recovery from this situation. I think I am just about there; it's been 14 years since he came out.
Photos can be so painful, since they freeze the moments in time, good or bad.
Every time I looked at any family photos, I would say to myself, "Oh he was cheating by then" or "Oh, that's when he gave me so-and-so gift to show me how much he loved me, and he was cheating". You can drive yourself crazy!
When I first had my ex move out, I readied him with 2 boxes of pages I took out of all the albums which contained him and his side of the family with our kids.
As for my wedding pictures, I could never stand to look at them. I wished I could jump back in time to warn that 23-year-old bride what she was in for. I finally gave the wedding album to my daughter. I don't even know if she kept it. I kept one picture of myself as a young bride.
I wished I could jump back in time and tell the proud mother of adorable toddler twins, what was about to start. I decided to put all the family pictures away until I could decide what to do with them. Maybe my daughter will want them. All the other photos are waiting for me to finish a really nice photo album of my kids, ages birth-age 21. After that, all the photos of my daughter's wedding and my granddaughter are with me and my family only.
Remember, you don't have to make the family picture decision right away. Put them away, and see how you feel later on. Give yourself time to heal from this horrible situation. It's all an ongoing process. Eventually, you will know what is the best for you.
Good Luck!
Lori in Texas
Hi Bonnie,
I wanted to respond to this.
"Once women are ready to start opening their hearts again and want to meet someone, an important question comes to light. Do I tell the new guy about my ex-husband? And if I do, when do I tell him? This is a question we often discuss in our support chats. Some women believe in honesty as the first policy; others believe that honesty comes after the relationship gets serious. Of course, there are pro’s and con’s for both arguments. Some women don’t want to invest emotional energy into a new relationship if the new man is going to walk away from this situation. Other women feel telling the new man will “turn him off” because he’ll be focusing on that issue instead of the relationship."
I don't ever tell a man anything about my past unless he specifically asks me. And even then I am very careful what I tell and how much. Generally those kinds of conversations are best done with girlfriends.
When I meet a man, I am generally interested in whether or not I like him and in finding out something about him.. I watch very carefully and I listen to the kinds of stories he tells me about himself. These tell me alot about him and how he deals with people and views life.
I generally assume that a man is most interested in whether or not a woman offers something that he might be interested in now, It's just my opinion that stories of past loves make a man feel crowded out and that its just more emotion than he is prepared to deal with early in a relationship. And its really none of his business unless you choose to make it his business. I find that now I really want to know a GREAT DEAL about a man before I am willing to consider giving my heart to him. And I expect the jury to be out at least a couple of years. In the first year, it seems to be a lot about fun and shared experiences. It's usually the second year before any trouble starts to surface or issues that were glided through asset themselves and demand to be resolved.
I never really enjoy hearing a man tell me how much he loved his first wife and how broken up he was over the divorce or her death. I like to think that I am the best thing that ever happened to him and I think most men feel that they want to be your hero and your lover and friend. I wouldn't tell him anything, but then if you do, if he runs, it might be that he can tell that you just aren't over it yet, or that you are looking for him to assure you that he will never ever cause you so much pain. And he can't promise you that if he has any integrity at all. Sometimes relationships end for any number of reasons. If I want another try at love, I feel that I have to be willing to take some chances and know that it takes a lot of time to trust and even then it might not last forever. I am more careful now.
I am one of the women that thought that my GAY husband was such a "good man" that I was willing to overlook the lack of chemistry, What a mistake!
I am so happy to say that now I have been dating a man for a few weeks that the sex is so hot with, you couldn't shake me loose with a big stick! I have to be peeled off the ceiling when he leaves for work.
I say have some fun and don't be so serious. If its right, he will be around in a year or two to have some of those long chats with and believe me when he wants to know, he will ask you. I intend to let a man be a man and if he wants me, he will have to hook me and reel me in. I think that when a man wants to make things happen with a woman, he does.
Anonymous
Dear Friends,
I have been reading Bonnie's newsletters since I learned of my ex- husband's on-line gay wrestling in the fall of 2005. Some of the comments and suggestions written over time, I have practiced. Others, I set aside because they didn't line up with my character, such as remaining angry and not forgiving my ex-husband's lies and for his going outside a committed, 23 year marriage. All of your comments are written by those who are in a process that isn't linear, meaning, it takes time, thought, prayer and the counsel and friendship of others to move past this horrible experience. It doesn't happen in a sequence and it takes the form you make of it.
In particular, I listen to those women who don't know what to make of a person who will not admit he is gay. (I am not sure bi-sexuality exists, although, I am open to this possibility.) My own husband is 'engaged' to another women with children. I begged him not to do what he did to another unsuspecting woman. He began to see her even before we were divorced. Of course, his position was: ' you didn't give me enough time to change, you are emotionally unstable, you sought out therapy, therefore there is something wrong with you, you are sexually assertive and that doesn't work for me, oral sex is dirty, or, I am too caught up in my work for sex......'
You see, often the same things many of you have been told and churn about in your letters to Bonnie. And so, what now? First, I have let go of having to hear the words: " I am gay" leave his mouth. I wanted and needed this from him--privately between us, as two married partners do. He won't and he can't. If he ever loved me, or trusted me, he would have told me he was gay. He can't. Period.
I have let go of him telling our two sons he is gay. Independent of me, they learned of this when they snooped his computer and found the truth for themselves. To this day, I have never said: "Your father
is gay." That is between their father and them. I told them, I didn't know what he was when they came to me with questions and confusion. I only said he partakes of these activities, and that he lied to me about who he is; and, that lack of trust doesn't make for a marriage. I have tried not to make him an evil person. He has a personality disorder, which leaves him without compassion and empathy. (NPD) He most closely aligns with a sociopath. It's a difficult disorder. We had been to 8 therapists over our 23 year marriage and
as long as I was the 'patient', he would remain in therapy. When he had to reveal himself, he would leave therapy.
My gay friends, who are both male and female, tell me that my ex isn't 'out' to himself, and that this will catch up to him if it hasn't already. Our tendencies to be who we really are grow with age. This is a natural process. We shed the “should’s,” the “must’s” and hopefully, live out who we really are with our inherent character, truth, integrity and light.
After nearly 4 years, I knew I wanted to rid myself of any residual resentment, anger, and damage the lies had left me with. This has nothing to do with my ex. This is something I wanted for myself.
Why? Because if you are angry, it shows up. If you are resentful it shows up.
Where does it show up? In your next significant relationship. In your relationship with your kids. In your relationship with your friends. It shows up and robs any current relationship of its goodness and health. You contaminate your good relationships with resentment and anger whether you realize it or not. You are either contributing to a relationship or polluting. I want to contribute.....
I am working the Al-Anon four step program. What is it? You name the person who has hurt and betrayed you. You write down, in no order, all, yes ALL the things that he or she did. Just a list. Mine is very long, by the way. It includes my ex telling me he never wanted our children after they were born. He went along to 'keep me'. Stuff like that. Big stuff and little stuff, like, ' Mary, you should not tell people how old you are in public. I want them to think I am younger than I am.' Yep. He said it many, many times.
The next bit of writing includes listing all of the ways this affected you, or what did it take from you. How did it affect you sexually, physically, spiritually, financially, morally, how did it affect your dreams. Again, I have a pretty long list....
Finally, you list any way you have contributed to this dynamic. What if anything, did you do, to perpetuate this relationship? How did you enable anything? It's scraping yourself clean. You need to do it. I have scrapped to the bone. It has been worth it.
I am going to take my work to my therapist who has been with me for nearly 5 years. She and I will review what is there and see what if anything more can be done, besides adding Time. There are also prayers that are used within the process of the Four Steps. Visit an Al-Anon group if you need to. It's for anyone who has been seriously harmed by a user, typically drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.
I made the choice not to be bitter, resentful, angry and abusive. I made the choice not to pollute my next relationship, nor the ones I have with my children, family and friends. Believe me, it will show up. You have to find a way to empty yourself of that stuff, so your Real Self comes back to you.
Thanks for listening.
My best for all of you in this little canoe trying to make your way.
Keep paddling, but use two oars.
Mary
Hi Bonnie
Short and sweet response to "Should we tell our new boyfriend the truth about having been married to a gay man"
Yes, tell your new boyfriend the truth, right from the get-go. If he can't take, it, then you're already a step ahead of the game, and know that he's not worth developing a further relationship with. If you can't talk openly about this topic with him, then I guarantee it's a predictor of a relationship that will not last. Don't continue to hide your gay ex-husband's secret. If your friend is afraid of talking about it, then find a new friend.
Regarding that wonderful piece that Julie Largent wrote. I LOVED reading about her dilemma. For it is also my dilemma. I have family photos in a couple of boxes that I have kept for years, intending to mount into photo albums, but since discovery, I neither want to look at them, or especially, handle them. I always wondered why my ex gay husband was never interested in family pictures. The only photos he took over the years were when his mom, sister, aunt or uncle came to visit, and he wanted me to take the pictures. I always had a feeling that he didn't want me in any of the pictures, which, at the time, was a subliminal feeling; however, after thinking about it, after reading Julie's article, I just now realized, that my feeling at the time, was true. He never suggested that my picture be taken - it was always his family doing the suggesting for me to be included in any photo, now that I think about it. Those pictures of him and his family were the simplest for me to dispose of - I just put all of "his" pictures in a box, which he took with him when he left our home, about 3 years ago. As for the others - the ones with him and me, or some variation of my son and daughter with him - I gave all of the pictures of him and our daughter, to our daughter. She's ok with him. She thinks I should forgive him. My son, on the other hand, has painstakingly cut his father out of pictures and saved the remaining part of the picture of himself and/or me, but I still don't know what to do with them - I can't mount them on a page for a photo album, that way. And then there's the wedding pictures. What do you do with them? I suppose these are the same questions that would arise given any divorce from a gay or straight man, but we have our own special pain, knowing that it was all pretend, is something that a divorced ex-wife of a straight man, wouldn't experience - at least they know that what they had was at least real, for a time. For us, it was all an illusion, as these pictures themselves, now seem to be.
Anonymous
That’s all for this month. Have a great one!
Love, Bonnie
September 2009 Volume 8, Issue 99
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Please visit my website to view and purchases my books at www.BonnieKayeBooks.com. Your sales help support the website and monthly newsletter.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
Normally, I prefer not to focus on ME when I am talking to YOU. However, I would like to say a few words to my over 7,000 readers around the world who take the time to listen to what I share each month.
On September 26, I will turn 58. As I creep up through the age ladder aiming towards 60 in two years, I feel blessed that I had the strength to end the marriage to my gay husband many years ago so I could try to salvage the rest of my life and find peace of mind, happiness, and in my particular case, the love of a wonderful man who has become my lifeline. Because it is my birthday month, I would like to share some important thoughts with you.
Last week in our online support group, we were discussing the issue of “low self-esteem,” and how so many of us suffer from it. I explained to the group that I work every day to keep my self-esteem high because for so most of my life, it was so low. Self esteem is not an external issue—it’s an internal issue. For those of us who suffer from it—which are almost everyone reading this newsletter at some point or another, you know what a daily struggle it is to feel good about yourself. If you are living with a gay husband, it becomes that much more difficult because you feel the daily rejection and often ridicule in their effort to “control” the situation that is uncontrollable. Well, at least they try to control you since they can’t control themselves.
So, for all of you who are sitting there and shaking your heads in agreement, let me say these words to you. Self-esteem comes from conditioning. I know some of the most physically beautiful women who are brilliant, kind, and loving, but they have low self-esteem. They are doctors, nurses, politicians, actresses, company directors (and you know who you are when you read this) who feel just as inadequate as everyone else. You can look at them and say, “You’ve got to be kidding,” but I’m not. Their internal message system makes them feel the same as the rest of us who may not have been blessed with their physical or intellectual attributes. And yet I know women who will never be on a magazine cover and who may have jobs that are far from what most of us would consider high end, but yet they feel good about themselves because they have high self-esteem. Yep, I see this side of the equation as well. And I love seeing it too! It makes me realize that you can be Miss Average Jill and still feel like you are a true winner because you believe you are! That’s what high self-esteem does for women.
Because I have had a weight problem for 50 of my 58 years, I have suffered with self-esteem issues my whole life. From my teenage years when I “pudgy” to my adult years where I was just obese, I went through lots of horror stories in trying to feel “wanted” by a man who could love me for the way I was. When I married my gay husband 31 years ago, I was actually looking my best. I wasn’t overweight very much at that point—primarily because I had an eating disorder called bulimia. In my mid to late 20’s, that was my solution to my weight problem. I looked good and felt good about myself—better than I had in years—but that didn’t last long once those buttons of insecurity started being pushed in my marriage. My newly found self-esteem quickly went down the drain as my weight returned and the rejection set in.
So all these years later, I still struggle daily with my weight problem. I’ve accepted it is here with me to stay. I never stop working at it, but it’s just part of who I am. But guess what? If I’m concerned now it’s because of my health, not because of feeling bad about myself. Why? For the past 15 years and 8 months, I have been blessed to find a wonderful soulmate who hasn’t noticed that I put on that extra 60 pounds since we met. When I bemoan the fact of my weight, he just responds with things like, “More of you to love” or “You’re built for comfort!” This man makes me feel like I’m a movie star every time we are together. He makes me feel young and beautiful every time we are intimate, which is every week of the year. And we are no youngsters—trust me! But when we are together, we feel like we are in our 20’s. That is what I love so much about him. He makes me feel “internally” beautiful. He has built up my self-confidence instead of knocking it down. He inspires me and encourages me. No idea I have is ever too ridiculous or no requests are ever too “demanding” like it was when I had a gay husband. Because of his unconditional love for me, I have survived the worst tragedies in my life. It’s not all about HIM, it’s about me and him, and many times, he just focuses on me and what makes me happy. This is what a relationship is supposed to be.
What so many of you have is the “illusion” of a relationship because two people are living in the same place. But what you really find is two empty shells living there—both existing day to day. One is in a maze of confusion—the other is trapped in a lifetime of deception. Neither has the courage to say THIS IS NOT WORKING because fear and paralysis has set in. I always say every day you lose in these destructive marriages is a day you can never get back. Life is so precious and fragile. Ask me—I know. I lost both of my precious children in the past seven years. Life offers you no guarantees for sure.
This is why living with a man who is unable to love you for the woman you are is so destructive to YOU no matter what you look like or where you are in life. When I hear stories of women having to “beg” their husbands to have sex, it makes me ill. I remember those feelings of sexual rejection only too well. Nothing makes you feel less adequate than feeling like you are undesirable because a man won’t be honest with you about being gay. That is why I tell men I can always forgive them for being gay—that is not a choice. But it’s the deceit, the lies, and the manipulation to keep that secret going that makes me angry. No man has a right to rob his wife of what is hers—self-respect and self-worth. Men who continue to do this year in and year out are cowards of the worst type because they slowly peel away whatever self-esteem a woman has until she doubts her daily activities and sanity. I greatly appreciate our men who support us here who eventually do come to terms with themselves and do the right thing. I just wish all gay husbands could give their wives that gift.
So, I hope as my birthday gift some of you will do some heavy duty thinking about how wonderful your life could be if you allowed yourself to make that move and take your life back. If you need help or support, we have one great network here that will provide it for you. All you have to do is ask! You don’t have to do it alone.
MAILBAG:
Last month, we had two women who reached out to ask advice about dating and telling about the marriage to a gay husband and what to do with photographs with bad memories in the pictures. The responses were overwhelming, but all of them were important. Please feel free to always write and comment here.
Dear Bonnie,
I read your newsletter and am continually amazed at how we are a sisterhood with common stories. I filed for divorce August 3, 2007 and I got my final ruling August 6, 2009. I wanted to share my victory with all my sisters out there in the hopes that perhaps it will give some of them strength to keep going. It turned out there were 801 gay porn sites on the hard drive of the computer. He denied under oath knowing anything about how they got there. It was hard core evidence, with dates and times. He thought he had all this power because he had an attorney who promised him the world. He demanded half the house - even though my 85 year old mother, who lives with me, paid for 2/3 of the house when we combined households in 2000 because he was unemployed and my dad had Alzheimer’s. He demanded alimony for life because I earn more money as a teacher than he does as a Radio Shack employee and alimony pendente lite which is spousal support while going through the divorce. He demanded $55,000 rent for letting me remain in the house for the past two years. He was very concerned about getting the one item in the house that has some true value, an antique Persian carpet. He also demanded that I pay all his attorney fees. It should have been over in three months by Pennsylvania law and it should have been simple, if half the house was considered marital, it would have been equivalent to half his retirement account. His attorney had the power to drag it out for two years in order to accumulate enormous billable hours and he did that. He knew how to hurt me the deepest and so he did – by taking away the daughter I love with his lies, the grandson whom I have not seen since he was 8 months old and the fear of poverty. I was his victim for 29 years. But I hired a second attorney to intervene for my mother, doubled my attorney costs and fought back. I had no idea how the ruling was going to go but I refused to give him the power to break me. He thought he had the power because my daughter was his only witness. She is doing a residency as a doctor so having her come to court and testify that “my mother is crazy, my father is not gay” was supposed to make the judge give him everything he demanded. I watched him run up senseless legal fees that will completely empty his retirement account.
Our attorneys said very little in court. They didn’t have to. I married an engineer who earned a decent salary. I ended up with a pathetic creature with a 14 year addiction to gay pornography that took over his life, destroyed his career and his mind. The ruling went entirely in my favor. I get the house. He does not get alimony. He does not get alimony pendente lite. He does not get rent. He does not get anything in the house. He does not get his attorney fees paid for. He does have to pay me $4000 in cash for his share of the property taxes and his car insurance for the past two years. He also has to have an account set up in my name and transfer a hefty chunk of his retirement account into it. I don’t expect to get any money, he is a foreigner and he will probably leave the country to avoid having to pay me anything. But he ruined his life and he destroyed himself financially in his quest for revenge. He is 60 years old, earns $7.15 an hour and he blew all his retirement savings. He can contest it and he probably will but the end result will be the same. My advice to my sisters out there is to stand strong. I wanted my freedom to love again. Two days after the ruling I went on a cruise to Bermuda with my mother. It was rejuvenating and healing as well.
As for Julie’s question about what to do about photos, I packed all the photo albums in boxes and put them down in the basement after ripping up every single photo of him from 1990 on, the year when our marriage began to crumble because of his secret desires. Some day my kids might want to have them.
In response to Lil’s question about what to tell men in dating situations, I have approached dating as a research project. I talked to lots of recently married couples on the cruise ship and collected stories from them about how they met and I didn’t need to tell anyone that I had been married to a gay man. I wanted to learn more about remarriage in mid life. The basic consensus was that everyone has some kind of baggage. I think if a guy is turned off by it, then he is not the kind of man any of us need and that it is good to find that out sooner rather than later. We have a need for all the things we did not have in these doomed marriages…..respect, affection, emotional support, honesty, understanding, consideration, love and passion. We all deserve these things.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Take it one day at a time.
Dorothy
Dear Lil,
I read your letter with interest as I have been in a very similar position as you and can understand exactly what you are going through. My ex husband too was very nasty and unfair whilst going through the divorce. He had cheated on me with numerous men for years and I had found him out, yet he was the one being spiteful towards me. To this day I still do not understand what gave him the right to treat me that way. Like you at no point did I stop him seeing the kids even though I really wanted to sometimes. But believe it or not after seeing such a nasty side to him that I didn’t know existed everything has changed. He is now civil towards me and often quite chatty. A complete transformation! It is so much better for the kids sake, and mine too I might add!
Now to get back to your question about internet dating and telling the guys about your ex husband. This is what I have personally experienced. I have been internet dating on and off for over 2 years. Like you, at first I told the men before I met them about my ex. I think partly that was due to the fact that I had been cheated on and wanted to be sure I was honest and upfront from the start. This also allowed me to ask them why they had split from their ex wives. I wouldn’t be able to have a relationship with someone who had cheated on their spouse. Most didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Now though I don’t tell them until I meet them. But I do think it’s important from the outset to let them know as it has shaped my life as I was with my ex for 15 years. My past experiences with my husband also affect how I am today. I have met quite a few men from the internet and most I reject after one date. I went through a phase of looking for the perfect guy and felt I would know as soon as I first met him that he was the one! I have now come to the conclusion that I will never be sure straight away and trust and communication take time to develop.
Internet dating is very difficult please be careful. It is very flattering to have such a lot of attention from men once you join an internet site. Remember there are guys out there who just pray on vulnerable women. I have met my fair share! It takes time and experience on these sites to sift through the authentic single guys who are normal. But when you find the right guy I believe it’s important to be honest from the outset when you meet. If they do not wish to continue to see you then they are not worth your time anyway.
Best of luck
Joanne
P.S I have met someone recently. Although it’s still in the early stages I think he may be the one I have been looking for, only time will tell. Internet dating is definitely worth the effort. How else can busy mums meet single guys?
Hi Bonnie,
In response to your question posed in this newsletter, I'm a firm believer in laying it on the table from the get go. As I have small children, it's always a red flag that I'm divorced when I meet men and so I start with the truth. In my experience, I have found that the circumstances and the story matter less than how you have come through the story. Nobody wants to get involved with someone who is angry, bitter or victimized by their past circumstances, regardless of what they are. The feedback I have received as I've started dating is that the men have all been so impressed with how I have handled my situation and although the story is big and hurtful, I've emerged stronger, more compassionate and wiser as a result. My most profound wish is that every one of your readers can find their way there and no one feels like they have to keep their ex's secrets any longer.
Peace and love,
Carrie
Hi Bonnie,
I know that I have been out of touch for a while, sorry, but I have another new grandbaby and he is adorable. I have been healing and actually dating for a while now. I did not want to date after the divorce. It took me nearly 2 1/2 years to actually go out there. I even had crazy ideas that it was all a very bad dream and would someday be all right. Ha, Ha!!!, but it was not funny, as you all know. My situation may not be as some others, as I was one of those limbo wives. My husband, will never admit his lifestyle. He will go through life, as a sad, selfish, human being. Since I was not dating, it made sense to me to have "outings" with my ex. Not such a smart idea. It always left me feeling sad and depressed at what I had lost. The family unit, the family outings and get-togethers etc. I could not tell others about him, since he would call me a liar, and so I was the wrong person who gave up the marriage and ruined the family. I had a lot to get over. My son finally told me to get on with my life and realize that I had nothing to lose but being unhappy. Those were the words that set me off on a new direction.
So I tried on line dating. I met a great guy, on a free dating service, but he soon moved away and we have lost touch. I went out with him several times, but I would not have told him that my husband was gay. Later, several months later, I tried a dating service. I only signed up for three months. I met several men, but started communicating with one in particular. We have been dating several months now, and I DID NOT tell him about my husband being gay until we had been dating for several months. I do not feel that the men you date need to know everything right away. It makes you look like a whiner and a complainer. Being married to a gay man, as you know takes away a woman's self-esteem, and self-worth. We are belittled, ignored, taken for granted, a cover, a breeder, and sucked dry of any feelings that we are worth anything. We want to tell the world, what a derelict we were married to. Be the stronger one, be the woman that knows who she is and what she wants. When you start complaining about how you were married to this gay man etc., it scares them.
They are not strong enough to take it right away.
I can say that I am really happy now. My ex saw my new guy and myself in the mall in February. He finally said something to my daughter, who told me he was so mad, at me. Why? I don't know, he didn't want the package, but I don't want his either. I waited to tell until I felt that we had a strong enough relationship that he could handle the truth and I believe that it was a good decision. I also waited to date until I was sure of myself and who I was inside. I did have self worth, I did have a good feeling about my self esteem. Going out again is a scary thing. You have to open yourself up and that is hard since when you did open yourself before, you were burned really badly. All of us have gone through this horrific time. We need to stick together and realize that Bonnie has given us a great gift via which we can obtain the strength we need to get through the tough times in our life.
Thank you again Bonnie for your wisdom and assurances through everything. Feel free to send anyone who has questions and or comments my way. I don't have all the answers, but I have grown so much, thanks to you.
Jeanne
Dear Bonnie,
I can understand Lil wanting to "look" because it's natural: you want to know you've still "got it", that a really honest-to-God straight guy could find you attractive.
She's found that.
But I think her higher power is trying to tell her to take it a little bit slow right now ...
Now, in terms of being honest with a man, I've gotta say YES. YES YES YES. If he can't handle your reality, he isn't worth your time. You've spent X number of years taking care of someone who didn't take care of you ... now is the time to really listen to your gut.
I had a couple of misses before I met the man I'm currently with, probably the most thoughtful human being I've ever known. Yes, he's flawed (who isn't?!) but he wants honesty and isn't afraid of emotional intimacy. And, oh, by the way, he's straight straight straight. It's an amazing thing making love with a man who loves you and is attracted to you (and not a penis!)
That's my .02 Lil, take it slow and when you meet someone who you really click with, tell him when the time is right.
Linda
Hi Bonnie,
Lil wondered whether to tell her dates about her past. I did it both ways, however, the wonderful man I am now married to, I told on the first date. Because my ex husband was such a prominent community member and his "coming out" was done through an arrest, there was little keeping quiet about it. When I began online dating though, I just went by my first name and did so for the first couple of dates also. On my first date with my now wonderful husband, we were "clicking" right away. At a later point in the date, I said to him, "I need to tell you something that may change your mind about dating me", and I proceeded to tell him my last name upon he knew immediately who my ex was. I told him that due to this, I carried a lot of baggage. His immediate answer to me was, "you only carry the baggage that you choose to.......you did nothing, there is no baggage for you to carry." "You are a lovely lady that got a very raw deal." He then hugged me and told me in no way would that affect him wanting to get to know me. I knew then that he was the real deal and could deal with all I had to deal with. We married 16 months later and have now been married for 17 months and I have never been happier.
I truly feel that what we have been through will affect us for the rest of our lives. We can choose to let it consume us or to live through it and become stronger and happier but nevertheless it will affect us and sometimes it rears its ugly head at strange times. Having a spouse who loves us and understands all about us is a wonderful comfort.
I feel like someone who cannot love us for who we are in all of our totality only spells heartache ahead so I chose to be open and am blessed with a wonderful husband because of it. Hope this helps in some small way. Melody
Dear Julie,
The photos are something I, also, had a hard time dealing with. I put them away in boxes and never looked at them. We had no children together, so after he died, I finally just went ahead and pitched them. I knew I didn't want them anymore, and that I couldn't move on while I knew
I still had those damn pictures in those damn boxes in my house. I felt that he didn't deserve any more space in my head, my heart or my house. But, that's just me.
Since you have children, you could always ask them if they want the photos, or maybe if his parents (if they are still alive) or if his siblings want them. You could always have a shredding party or a small bonfire to wipe your hands of them. Or, you can just keep them in a box until you are ready. If it were me, I sure wouldn't bother to put them in albums.
One thing is certain, there are no rights or wrongs in this situation, whatever is best for YOU is right.
Hugs,
Joanie
Dear Julie,
Like you, I am an ardent fan of photography and have many photo albums from my 20 years of marriage to a secretly gay, cheating husband. He was also a sociopath an emotional abuser, and master manipulator. Like so many of us, I am still working on my recovery from this situation. I think I am just about there; it's been 14 years since he came out.
Photos can be so painful, since they freeze the moments in time, good or bad.
Every time I looked at any family photos, I would say to myself, "Oh he was cheating by then" or "Oh, that's when he gave me so-and-so gift to show me how much he loved me, and he was cheating". You can drive yourself crazy!
When I first had my ex move out, I readied him with 2 boxes of pages I took out of all the albums which contained him and his side of the family with our kids.
As for my wedding pictures, I could never stand to look at them. I wished I could jump back in time to warn that 23-year-old bride what she was in for. I finally gave the wedding album to my daughter. I don't even know if she kept it. I kept one picture of myself as a young bride.
I wished I could jump back in time and tell the proud mother of adorable toddler twins, what was about to start. I decided to put all the family pictures away until I could decide what to do with them. Maybe my daughter will want them. All the other photos are waiting for me to finish a really nice photo album of my kids, ages birth-age 21. After that, all the photos of my daughter's wedding and my granddaughter are with me and my family only.
Remember, you don't have to make the family picture decision right away. Put them away, and see how you feel later on. Give yourself time to heal from this horrible situation. It's all an ongoing process. Eventually, you will know what is the best for you.
Good Luck!
Lori in Texas
Hi Bonnie,
I wanted to respond to this.
"Once women are ready to start opening their hearts again and want to meet someone, an important question comes to light. Do I tell the new guy about my ex-husband? And if I do, when do I tell him? This is a question we often discuss in our support chats. Some women believe in honesty as the first policy; others believe that honesty comes after the relationship gets serious. Of course, there are pro’s and con’s for both arguments. Some women don’t want to invest emotional energy into a new relationship if the new man is going to walk away from this situation. Other women feel telling the new man will “turn him off” because he’ll be focusing on that issue instead of the relationship."
I don't ever tell a man anything about my past unless he specifically asks me. And even then I am very careful what I tell and how much. Generally those kinds of conversations are best done with girlfriends.
When I meet a man, I am generally interested in whether or not I like him and in finding out something about him.. I watch very carefully and I listen to the kinds of stories he tells me about himself. These tell me alot about him and how he deals with people and views life.
I generally assume that a man is most interested in whether or not a woman offers something that he might be interested in now, It's just my opinion that stories of past loves make a man feel crowded out and that its just more emotion than he is prepared to deal with early in a relationship. And its really none of his business unless you choose to make it his business. I find that now I really want to know a GREAT DEAL about a man before I am willing to consider giving my heart to him. And I expect the jury to be out at least a couple of years. In the first year, it seems to be a lot about fun and shared experiences. It's usually the second year before any trouble starts to surface or issues that were glided through asset themselves and demand to be resolved.
I never really enjoy hearing a man tell me how much he loved his first wife and how broken up he was over the divorce or her death. I like to think that I am the best thing that ever happened to him and I think most men feel that they want to be your hero and your lover and friend. I wouldn't tell him anything, but then if you do, if he runs, it might be that he can tell that you just aren't over it yet, or that you are looking for him to assure you that he will never ever cause you so much pain. And he can't promise you that if he has any integrity at all. Sometimes relationships end for any number of reasons. If I want another try at love, I feel that I have to be willing to take some chances and know that it takes a lot of time to trust and even then it might not last forever. I am more careful now.
I am one of the women that thought that my GAY husband was such a "good man" that I was willing to overlook the lack of chemistry, What a mistake!
I am so happy to say that now I have been dating a man for a few weeks that the sex is so hot with, you couldn't shake me loose with a big stick! I have to be peeled off the ceiling when he leaves for work.
I say have some fun and don't be so serious. If its right, he will be around in a year or two to have some of those long chats with and believe me when he wants to know, he will ask you. I intend to let a man be a man and if he wants me, he will have to hook me and reel me in. I think that when a man wants to make things happen with a woman, he does.
Anonymous
Dear Friends,
I have been reading Bonnie's newsletters since I learned of my ex- husband's on-line gay wrestling in the fall of 2005. Some of the comments and suggestions written over time, I have practiced. Others, I set aside because they didn't line up with my character, such as remaining angry and not forgiving my ex-husband's lies and for his going outside a committed, 23 year marriage. All of your comments are written by those who are in a process that isn't linear, meaning, it takes time, thought, prayer and the counsel and friendship of others to move past this horrible experience. It doesn't happen in a sequence and it takes the form you make of it.
In particular, I listen to those women who don't know what to make of a person who will not admit he is gay. (I am not sure bi-sexuality exists, although, I am open to this possibility.) My own husband is 'engaged' to another women with children. I begged him not to do what he did to another unsuspecting woman. He began to see her even before we were divorced. Of course, his position was: ' you didn't give me enough time to change, you are emotionally unstable, you sought out therapy, therefore there is something wrong with you, you are sexually assertive and that doesn't work for me, oral sex is dirty, or, I am too caught up in my work for sex......'
You see, often the same things many of you have been told and churn about in your letters to Bonnie. And so, what now? First, I have let go of having to hear the words: " I am gay" leave his mouth. I wanted and needed this from him--privately between us, as two married partners do. He won't and he can't. If he ever loved me, or trusted me, he would have told me he was gay. He can't. Period.
I have let go of him telling our two sons he is gay. Independent of me, they learned of this when they snooped his computer and found the truth for themselves. To this day, I have never said: "Your father
is gay." That is between their father and them. I told them, I didn't know what he was when they came to me with questions and confusion. I only said he partakes of these activities, and that he lied to me about who he is; and, that lack of trust doesn't make for a marriage. I have tried not to make him an evil person. He has a personality disorder, which leaves him without compassion and empathy. (NPD) He most closely aligns with a sociopath. It's a difficult disorder. We had been to 8 therapists over our 23 year marriage and
as long as I was the 'patient', he would remain in therapy. When he had to reveal himself, he would leave therapy.
My gay friends, who are both male and female, tell me that my ex isn't 'out' to himself, and that this will catch up to him if it hasn't already. Our tendencies to be who we really are grow with age. This is a natural process. We shed the “should’s,” the “must’s” and hopefully, live out who we really are with our inherent character, truth, integrity and light.
After nearly 4 years, I knew I wanted to rid myself of any residual resentment, anger, and damage the lies had left me with. This has nothing to do with my ex. This is something I wanted for myself.
Why? Because if you are angry, it shows up. If you are resentful it shows up.
Where does it show up? In your next significant relationship. In your relationship with your kids. In your relationship with your friends. It shows up and robs any current relationship of its goodness and health. You contaminate your good relationships with resentment and anger whether you realize it or not. You are either contributing to a relationship or polluting. I want to contribute.....
I am working the Al-Anon four step program. What is it? You name the person who has hurt and betrayed you. You write down, in no order, all, yes ALL the things that he or she did. Just a list. Mine is very long, by the way. It includes my ex telling me he never wanted our children after they were born. He went along to 'keep me'. Stuff like that. Big stuff and little stuff, like, ' Mary, you should not tell people how old you are in public. I want them to think I am younger than I am.' Yep. He said it many, many times.
The next bit of writing includes listing all of the ways this affected you, or what did it take from you. How did it affect you sexually, physically, spiritually, financially, morally, how did it affect your dreams. Again, I have a pretty long list....
Finally, you list any way you have contributed to this dynamic. What if anything, did you do, to perpetuate this relationship? How did you enable anything? It's scraping yourself clean. You need to do it. I have scrapped to the bone. It has been worth it.
I am going to take my work to my therapist who has been with me for nearly 5 years. She and I will review what is there and see what if anything more can be done, besides adding Time. There are also prayers that are used within the process of the Four Steps. Visit an Al-Anon group if you need to. It's for anyone who has been seriously harmed by a user, typically drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.
I made the choice not to be bitter, resentful, angry and abusive. I made the choice not to pollute my next relationship, nor the ones I have with my children, family and friends. Believe me, it will show up. You have to find a way to empty yourself of that stuff, so your Real Self comes back to you.
Thanks for listening.
My best for all of you in this little canoe trying to make your way.
Keep paddling, but use two oars.
Mary
Hi Bonnie
Short and sweet response to "Should we tell our new boyfriend the truth about having been married to a gay man"
Yes, tell your new boyfriend the truth, right from the get-go. If he can't take, it, then you're already a step ahead of the game, and know that he's not worth developing a further relationship with. If you can't talk openly about this topic with him, then I guarantee it's a predictor of a relationship that will not last. Don't continue to hide your gay ex-husband's secret. If your friend is afraid of talking about it, then find a new friend.
Regarding that wonderful piece that Julie Largent wrote. I LOVED reading about her dilemma. For it is also my dilemma. I have family photos in a couple of boxes that I have kept for years, intending to mount into photo albums, but since discovery, I neither want to look at them, or especially, handle them. I always wondered why my ex gay husband was never interested in family pictures. The only photos he took over the years were when his mom, sister, aunt or uncle came to visit, and he wanted me to take the pictures. I always had a feeling that he didn't want me in any of the pictures, which, at the time, was a subliminal feeling; however, after thinking about it, after reading Julie's article, I just now realized, that my feeling at the time, was true. He never suggested that my picture be taken - it was always his family doing the suggesting for me to be included in any photo, now that I think about it. Those pictures of him and his family were the simplest for me to dispose of - I just put all of "his" pictures in a box, which he took with him when he left our home, about 3 years ago. As for the others - the ones with him and me, or some variation of my son and daughter with him - I gave all of the pictures of him and our daughter, to our daughter. She's ok with him. She thinks I should forgive him. My son, on the other hand, has painstakingly cut his father out of pictures and saved the remaining part of the picture of himself and/or me, but I still don't know what to do with them - I can't mount them on a page for a photo album, that way. And then there's the wedding pictures. What do you do with them? I suppose these are the same questions that would arise given any divorce from a gay or straight man, but we have our own special pain, knowing that it was all pretend, is something that a divorced ex-wife of a straight man, wouldn't experience - at least they know that what they had was at least real, for a time. For us, it was all an illusion, as these pictures themselves, now seem to be.
Anonymous
That’s all for this month. Have a great one!
Love, Bonnie
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
JULY NEWSLETTER 2009
Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Talk Newsletter
July 2009 Volume 8, Issue 97
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Please visit my website to view and purchases my books at www.BonnieKayeBooks.com. Your sales help support the website and monthly newsletter.
IN RESPONSE TO THE FATHER’S DAY JUNE ISSUE
Last month, I published my first newsletter featuring letters only from some of our gay men who support our efforts. I asked them to contribute insight that would help women understand the demons they faced that contributed to their living double lives until they came to terms with themselves.
I wanted to do this because when women experience this myriad of confusion, hearing how this happens can sometimes give us understanding that can lead to our healing. It wasn’t intended to make you feel better about your situation, but rather more aware of what some men go through in their own struggles.
I had a large response to this newsletter with various points of view, some of which with their permission I have reprinted to share with you. Some women really appreciated reading the words of these men because it gave them a better understanding of how their husbands were thinking. But others were angry because they felt the men were trying to “justify” their behavior. I viewed it not as a “justification,” but rather as an “explanation.” I am a very understanding woman whose heart hurts for men going through this nightmare. However, that being said, I will never justify the misbehavior of their cheating on their wives emotionally or sexually during the marriage.
I’ve said this numerous times before. Homosexuality is not about “infidelity”—it’s about “sexuality.” It’s about a man posing to be a straight man and living in a straight world while being a homosexual man and making his wife feel inadequate because she is a woman. Here are some points that I want to reiterate.
1. Nothing makes me feel angrier than when gay men tell their wives, “It takes two to make a marriage fail.” No, it takes one—one gay man living in a marriage to a straight woman where he doesn’t belong. That’s a fact—not an opinion. No matter how “nice” some of these guys can be, they aren’t into you because you are a woman. They may cuddle with you, hug you, even perform sex with you, and love you on some level, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want a man to have sex with over making love with you. No woman should have to feel that she has to compete with a man for a man’s love. First, she can’t compete; second, she can’t compete. I thought I would restate that for you in case you didn’t hear me loud enough the first time!
2. Most married gay men look for reasons to blame their wives for their unhappiness. Although the wife is the cause of the unhappiness, it’s not because she’s a wife—it’s because she’s a woman. They try criticizing, controlling, and micro-managing the marriage to make you think that what’s wrong is your fault, but that’s because they are miserable living within their own lies. Rather than accept responsibility, it’s so much easier to blame you for their unhappiness. How many of our women tell me the same thing my ex-husband used to tell me—he felt “trapped.” I used to feel like an ogre expecting my husband to do what a husband should do—want to spend time building a life with me and making love with me. Yep, that was trapping him, right? There is only so much belittling that women can take before they start to believe there is something wrong with them—and so they stop asking and stop expecting. This creates a loss of self-esteem and sexual esteem. No man should be allowed to do that to a woman on a continuous basis, year in and year out. Who is really “trapped” here? The man is leading his life “outside” the marriage while the woman is truly trapped by her own insecurities and feelings of failure.
3. There are no easy ways to end a marriage. If I hear one more man tell his wife to “get over it” because she’s had six weeks or six months to come to terms with it, I’ll get really angry. A man has his whole life to deal with who he is. He spends years in denial and living a double life because he can’t accept who he is. So now that he has come to terms with himself, we’re supposed to move at the speed of light to just accept that everything we thought we had in our marriage is now gone. Guys, give me a break. It took you years to accept you—don’t expect us to “get over it” in record time so you can enjoy your new life. It isn’t going to work that way. So many of our women still love their husbands when they lose them. They have spent years loving these men. Even when they know the marriage has to end, it doesn’t mean they can turn on and off the love.
4. What hurts so much is the betrayal. I think that if a husband was honest with his wife before he acted on his homosexuality, she could deal with the situation so much better. But in almost all cases, men (even the nicest ones) are out there playing while they are married. I have heard from hundreds of members of this support network who have STD’s brought home to them by their unfaithful husbands who had no consideration about infecting their wives. As I always say, no man has a choice in being gay—but he does have a choice in being honest. The honesty should come before the husband decides to go out there and do his thing. That would be the right thing to do.
So guys, if I hurt your feelings, I’m sorry. But you know me—I have to say it as I see it and have seen it for nearly 30 years. But I’m always happy to listen and share, so continue to send in your letters and I’ll continue to share them with our women in hopes of creating a better awareness and understanding.
Here are some letters from the last two months:
Dear Bonnie,
7 months ago, I sent you this:
"Dear Bonnie, my new good friend:
Please, please add me to your newsletter at this address, and let me know how I can get your book, "Straight Wives, Shatter Lives." This is so how I feel.
My 52nd birthday was October 29th. A few minutes past midnight on the 30th, my entire world was rocked by concrete proof of my husband's infidelity, and life "in the closet." He inadvertently left his email open, and I got the shock of my life. I printed out several of his emails (I had the presence of mind to realize I might need proof); I also figured out his password, since he uses the same one for everything. Funny enough, he has yelled at me because I vary passwords; he told me to keep the same one. Little did he know that that would provide me easy access; also ammunition, in case I have to take him to court. I don't like this hard side of me; it's almost as unknown as the man I found in those emails. He's been doing this for a year. How could I not have known?
I found emails setting up "dates" -- when he should have been looking for a second job. I work about 50 (sometimes, up to 80 hours) a week. He's been complaining about "doing everything", while playing with other men. I found pictures he's sent to other men "displaying his wares" -- I wouldn't brag if I were him. But, apparently, he's had takers.
I have been married for 24 years, with him for 31. I feel so betrayed and angry, frightened to death of the future, in mourning for my future life I envisioned -- I burst into tears without warning, am hanging on only with the support of my friends and my children, who, interestingly enough, have told me for years that "you know, Daddy's gay." Their friends (and some of mine) have said to me since this "you have such great 'gay-dar': how have you missed it?" I honestly had no idea. I feel like the biggest fool.
I look back over 31 years, and think that there were warning signs I missed -- I thought the worst thing to happen to me was incest as a child, then teenager. I was wrong. That was a walk on the beach compared to the misery that my marriage has become, more increasingly over the past 10+ years. I have wracked my brain and my soul over these years, trying to figure out why I am so miserable a failure as a wife, why I can't do anything right, walking on constant eggshells, afraid to "upset" him. This sets him off in a verbally denigrating, berating diatribe of my failures; he's blamed me for everything from the condition of the house to the "turning against him" of our children. Thankfully, our children are now 18 and 20, so custody issues are nonexistent.
He is extremely self-righteous about attending Mass -- interestingly enough, he apparently has hidden his sexual proclivities from everyone. I am harboring feelings of vengeance; I want to out him to the congregation: my Scorpio is hard to override in this.
I am in the process of obtaining a formal separation agreement from my lawyer (also one of my friends), and I want to be able to have all of the facts at my disposal before I sit him down. It won't be pretty. He will probably blame me, as always, and become vindictive. It is killing me to make him leave, but I see no way of salvaging this relationship. By entertaining men, he has also given me HSV 1 and 2, and that is unforgiveable. My children have told me "you deserve someone who will treat you right", so I know they are very supportive.
I do have outside interests -- my community theater involvement is my passion. He directly blames my involvement in this as a reason for our relationship to suffer "your theater has come between us". It is my relationship with my theater friends that is saving my life. I also have a good career as a nurse manager that has provided me a support network at work as well.
Thank you, thank you for being here. For the first time since I discovered the horror that my marriage and life has become, I am starting to feel hopeful about an "after life." I still feel that my chances for a romantic afterlife are just about nil.
I apologize for the length of this -- but I am so grateful that I am not alone. Bless you.
Sincerely, Theresa"
June 14, 2009
That was November 15, 2008. Hard to believe it's been 7 months since that letter -- so much in my life has changed. I'm writing back to you to let you know how GOOD life is now. If you want to share any of this in your newsletter, by all means, please do -- maybe it will help other wives of gay men.
As you know, I found out October 30th. All the details are above; I kept my secret through Thanksgiving (fortunately, it was a small dinner). I made it through Christmas (I had a hysterectomy on December 18th -- my children were with me, and my mother came to help out and stayed almost to the New Year. This helped, since they all knew the truth (how we all kept it a secret, I really don't know!) Christmas was awful as was New Year's Eve (I went out with friends, since he had to work -- a small blessing).
Every time I looked at him, all I could think of was, "You lying bastard. How can you go on like you're so innocent? Don't you feel any guilt? You son of a bitch!" It took all the strength I had not to tell him right out. I was working on my separation and property settlement agreement, and I wanted to have all of my pieces in place before I confronted him. For three months, I kept my silence. At times, I thought it would kill me. Every breath I took was painful – I had panic attacks at night, waking up gasping. He slept blissfully through it all. The first month I was devastated, the second angry and the third putting the final touches on my planning. I had to be so careful; losing his income had to be taken into account seriously; our daughter (age 18) was still living at home and in school. I had to consider more than myself; unlike my husband, who was willing to throw it all away.
Finally, finally, on February 1, 2009 at 2 pm, I walked in my front door and said "We need to talk". He snidely said "about what?" I told him to join me at the table by the door (he had been escalating in his anger, and I wasn't sure how he would react). I said "I know what you've been doing and I want a divorce." He then said, "I do, too." My reply? "Then let's talk business." I had the separation agreement in my hand all ready to sign (if he would; my best friend is a notary, and was waiting down the street with her stamp, just in case he agreed to sign the papers.) When I confronted him about his being "gay" -- I asked him if he knew he was gay when he married me and he said no. He also waffled over being "gay" -- "I guess I am". He also said to me, "I guess you've been screwing around" -- I told him "actually, I haven't. I've been faithful for 31 years; but apparently you haven't. Get yourself tested -- you gave me herpes." His response, "Oh." Oh, indeed. When I asked him whatever made him think that cheating on me was ok, he said "I wasn't getting it from you." Us women know that sex, for us, begins in the mind, by the way we're treated and made to feel, long before the actual physical act begins; he was clueless. For him "it was just sex; us men can do that." I told him, "So can women, but I honored my vows." He also told me that "I don't have any guilt about what I've been doing - you deserve everything you got" -- I was incredulous -- "including herpes?!" "Yeah, everything." I looked at him and, in that moment, knew why women killed their husbands. Fortunately, I had already decided that I was worth 100 of him and he wasn't worth the trouble.
By 2:06, I called my son's friend (who was down the street, ready to protect me; my son was out of state) and said, "no drama, we're reading the agreement." A short time later, all signed and notarized, we were legally separated. I couldn't believe it -- in the end, it was such a simple procedure! All of a sudden, I felt a HUGE burden lift from me, I took a deep breath and said "I'm free!" I left the house with friends and my daughter and went to celebrate, leaving him in the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong; I knew it was partially relief that it was out in the open, but after so many months of pain and fear, the relief was welcome.
We moved him out twelve days later (he was supposed to leave twenty days later, but he started ransacking the house every time I left, so I threw him out). It was ugly, hostile and nearly violent; it also removed any hope I had had of remaining friends or, at least, being civil to each other. Sadly, my children were with me. They knew, somehow, who he really was; I never saw it (or wouldn’t see it). As much as I was grateful for their support, it saddened me that they had to see the awful end to what had been so good long ago. My husband had been at odds with my son for years; my son told me that he kept his peace for me; my daughter has her own relationship with her father. So ended my former life. The same day he left, I had my son and his friends start to repaint my living room; with that beginning, "Project Refeathering My Nest" has been ongoing; I have been happily industrious and am enjoying the peace in my home and the freedom to rearrange and change my home to suit me and my daughter.
People keep telling me how good I look, how "radiant" and "have you lost weight?" I tell them "yes, I lost 250 lbs. of ugly attitude!" Life is different; sometimes a little harder. I kept the house, so now I've got all of the responsibilities to deal with alone. But I am so much happier now. Yes, I do miss being part of a couple and the husband I married so long ago. May 26th was my 25th wedding anniversary; I went on vacation with my children and celebrated my independence instead of my now defunct marriage. I am loving my freedom and the glory of being free from the critical, belittling and the overall mean and petty, angry man that my husband had become. I am free of the futile, numerous attempts I made to rekindle our intimacy, thinking that if I was better, more open, more accommodating, that he would be more loving and accepting of me. I'm free of the constant battle of trying to bury my needs and trying to fulfill his. Free of never, ever, being "good enough". When I found out about my husband, I was thinking "maybe I can live with this; maybe we can live as friends, maybe ..." I was trying so hard to live with his lie. But, thankfully, I had such wonderful people to support me, as I finally, painfully, decided to end my marriage. But it was the right decision -- of that, I have no doubt.
I’ve read letters from gay men on this website; I’ve read about their pain and uncertainty and all of the rest. Part of me wants to be sympathetic; perhaps I would have been, had I not been lied to and treated so shabbily. Had my husband been truly “a man” and sat me down, truly talked with me and not blamed me for “pushing him” into affairs with men, maybe I wouldn’t have been so shattered when I found out. For all my “failings,” I deserved (as we all do) much more than finding out from email. I’ve wished him dead more than once; the closure would have been much easier and the memories of the good years would have remained untainted. Now, almost every memory of my life with him is shadowed by “when did it start?” “Why didn’t I see the signs?”
This is my advice to anyone still living with this nightmare. Be fair to yourself! Go on those gay/bisexual websites and read those emails. These men are selfish, egocentric and arrogant -- they may not be totally happy with their situation, but they're satisfied to get their needs taken care of, whine about being unhappily married but enjoy all the rest of what "normal" married life is like. They rationalize their behavior to assure themselves that they're OK -- that they're not hurting anyone, that they're still "good husbands", so they have the "right" to do what they're doing. My husband complained constantly, but enjoyed my income. Get out of that hell and go on with your life. Take back the "real you"; not the "married you" you've become so that you can "keep him happy"; "keep the peace", etc. You'll NEVER make him happy! He doesn't want you, but he's too cowardly and self-serving to let you go. He doesn't even care if he brings home an STD and passes it to you -- I'm so angry that I was faithful for over 30 years and STILL got herpes. Their world is a sex-focused, self-serving, man-to-man "bonding" subculture of society that exists. These men are a slow-acting poison, making any relationship with them toxic; they're like leeches draining the life out of the women unfortunate enough to be married to them. They build themselves up, while ruining the very women they vowed "to love, honor and cherish". Cherish? Like hell. Too harsh an indictment? I don't think so.
Bonnie, thank you so much for all that you do. I never thought I would survive the upheaval and pain, but I did. I never thought life could be so good, but it is. I never knew how strong I was until I freed myself from the imprisoning life sentence my marriage had become. Now, I'm even ready to go out and date again, make new friends and maybe find someone who'll appreciate the person I've become. Thank you, thank you for validating the strong, resourceful, valuable "me" that still remained deep inside; I'm joyous to be back, whole, powerful. To my sisters: there truly is a wonderful life waiting for you; it'll be better, because, just being yourself, you will be "enough."
Theresa
Dear Bonnie,
“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. “
Ladies when I read Bonnie’s May newsletter I did not know whether to laugh, scream, or cry so I did all of the above. You see what she said in that quote was so true,. And yes, Gay, it is Gay.
I joined this group two years ago when a man I was madly in love with told me over dinner how he wasn’t gay but his boyfriends are. He was serious! I wish I could have used that line Gay, it is gay to explain to him that when you sleep with men you have won the homosexual Triple Crown. He could not understand why this was not welcome news and why I wanted him out of my life immediately. That lead to the second phase of shock and awe on my part.
The icing on the cake is I went on line to meet someone three months ago after a few years of being shell shock and leery as you can imagine. The site was recommended by a family-oriented morning show and hosts I trust.
The gentleman picked me and we clicked instantly. I corresponded with him for about a month and then had wonderful telephone calls. I could never arrange my schedule to meet him but I finally planned for the Memorial Day weekend to be the time.
Then he dropped the “G” nuclear bomb the night before I was supposed to meet him in person. First he asked if I had ever been with a woman, At that point my radar kicked in because the one two years ago accused me of being gay when I suggested one night after dinner that we go to a “gay” area for coffee. Hell, neither of us had a car and it was the only place Metro accessible. I asked him if he was gay in return and he acted as if I asked him if he ate his young.
Back to the future, Internet lover then said he slept with men! I gave him points for honesty but the room rocked.
I did not handle it well with the first gentleman two years ago—I cursed him vigorously for about half a mile as we walked home from the restaurant.
Obviously the professional counseling degree and church reconciliation classes are kicking in. I told him I was not going to judge him for what he did in the past because it was not my right. I decided to try to talk him down from the heterosexual ledge and encourage him to embrace his true sexuality like I did with the first one.
He is from a culture where this is taboo and anathema. His mother is in town from overseas and I began to think I was in an Indian version of “The Wedding Banquet,” the film where the gay man marries a woman to avoid telling his parents he is gay. As if parents don’t have eyes to see and ears to hear. Momma probably knows.
In any event, he retracted it later and said he only said it because he wanted to see if I would sleep with him if he said he slept with other men. I suppose he forgot that he had also asked me if I would be interested in a ménage a trios with another man. Ladies, this is not what I call courtship behavior of a straight man!
Gay is not an aphrodisiac for straight women.
It was late at night and he works on Wall Street, so he must have been at happy hour too long and short term memory was impaired. Mine wasn’t. I remembered what he said. Counseling classes teach you to attend. Okay, this is denial taken to a dangerously deep level!
On a positive note, I can see how this group and the support of others have helped me. I am not devastated as I was before and I did not lose my religion by calling him out of his family name. I simply said Adios
I was trying to figure out what I did to attract another one of these mentally disassociated people when this Newsletter came in the mail.
So thank you Bonnie. I see that I am a woman who is too kind, too compassionate, too loving, and too forgiving. In other words, they seek the best women for the worst treatment.
Oh, and guess what internet guy. You are gay, it’s gay!
Anon.
Hi Bonnie,
Your June newsletter somehow seemed rather sugar coated to me.
Most of us did not have these experiences, and I believe some of these men are skipping over a very important part of "their process"--like the truth. The man who had sex with many men before he married his wife -- did he inform her of this before the marriage or did this part of the truth not seem important to him? Did he even consider that she deserved that "little bit of truth"? No. He just married her to fit in. She never had the chance to choose whether she wanted to marry a man who liked having sex with men. It was his decision to lead her blindly into this "marriage." I have no sympathy for him.
Also, I feel many of these men are skipping over the cheating during the marriage. I think they see it as "being true to themselves" and not as cheating on their wives, not to mention that they potentially exposed their wives to life threatening sexual transmitted diseases.
Sorry, I just found it really hard to read these sugar coated stories. Too much of the woman's pain was ignored. But, too many times, that is par for the course as far as they are concerned. It's all about the poor gay man, while the wife is left to pick up the pieces of her life.
And so it goes...
J.
Dear Bonnie,
I read this month’s letter but what about the women like me who were tricked by a man into a gay marriage in which he knew exactly who he was and what kind of a life I was in for? My husband withdrew all sex and affection beginning on the honeymoon and had a regular sex life with men throughout the marriage. He used me as a beard and to improve his standard of living there was no love on his side it was a con job. I was wife number five. He spent the whole marriage trying to convince me that the life we led of no sex or affection was normal, that I was unworthy of love and it was unreasonable of me to expect him to want to have sex with me or show me affection since I was such a bad person. Once when I asked him about his refusal to have a normal relationship with me he said that if I gave him complete access to all of my money he might feel like having sex with me. This man nearly destroyed me. I would like to hear more abut this kind of predator.
Thanks
Marilyn
Dear Bonnie,
I had thought I was dealing with what happened to me, until I read the self justification of gay husbands in your June newsletter.
I truly believe that no one has a choice about whether they are gay - that this is somehow built in and cannot be changed or altered. But everyone does have a choice about how they live their lives, and the same standards of decency and honesty apply to gays as well as straights. No one has a right to harm others and then whine about how they can't help it. No one has the right to cheat and lie and steal years of a woman's life, then wring his hands and whimper about his pain. Was your pain great enough to make you change your life? MINE WAS!
Kay A.
BTW, Kay lives in Sioux City, South Dakota. If there are any other women in this area who would like to get together for support, please let me know and I’ll refer you to Kay.
Bonnie,
That was very interesting, but somewhat hard to read. It is only hard because I still don't know if my husband is in denial or not. I am weighing my options anyway because he is not good at loving me and the girls in the way we need (because sometimes I feel like he uses our marriage problems to be less of a dad at times...like when he's out of town for work and doesn't call for days or weeks or is unaccountable by not answering our calls...he has told me he doesn't want to call because he doesn't want to talk to me...this is just stuff from the past....he's been around a lot and better at this when he has been away, yet his job is ready to take him away a lot again).
So I am planning. I have finally come to a point that I’ve realized my love is not enough for both of us. (oh, he says he loves me and shows it in his own ways...yet at the same time he is so hurtful and negative about me....). maybe it helps that i had to do the same with my mom a few years back because she is a lot like him....cares more about being right than anything else. He has so much anger, i don't know where it comes from.
I still don't feel like there is any excuse to lie. I feel like even if a man has lied 399 times, then start telling the truth the 400th time. The past lies don't make it okay the next time. The man can never start to gain respect from his wife and children unless he starts somewhere. I’m not saying it would be easy at first and I wouldn’t react or get cold toward him. But the sooner he told the truth, the sooner I could go through the cycles of loss and just get to a better place. Right now i just have intense loneliness. I know things are not right. My heart aches....he has hurt me so many times worse than any break up I’ve ever had in my dating years. This is the father of my children and his lack of love and intimacy and acceptance hurts me to the core. Sometimes I have wailed (how else can I say it...it is a cry of agony that comes from pain so deep inside...a mother's cry for a child lost or in trouble)...all alone because his actions and words are so heartless and just break me down (and I cry for my children, their father that I chose, me...their
mother, and this family. This hurts way worse because of my desires and hopes for my girls...and I feel like he's cheating them when he cheats me.)
This hurt is also from the lack of support he gives me as a person....I don't want only the financial; I want him to want to take care of me as a man could. Believe me it's the last thing I want to hear that he's gay. But this little feeling I always get that he might be is so much more painful. If I knew this were the reason he isn't loving and intimate towards me in the way I know exists....then it would give a reason for everything. It's not what I want...but it's just like someone avoiding going to the doctor's when they know they are dying...they can feel it and/or they can see the signs, yet it doesn't change that they need to face it. They can't stop themselves from dying by denying it's happening.
I am making plans to put myself first so I can show my girls how strong I am and how much I love them and that being a woman doesn't have to be demeaning....not because he's told me the truth, but because I have just hit that point where he can't do this to me anymore. I don't want our girls to think of me as I am in this relationship. I’m tired of being labeled as if I’m one with him....like I’m just as sick and hateful....like I just "love fighting" as he puts it. I feel darned if I do and darned if I don't with him. I’ve reached the point I’m going to stop fighting for us...because it is useless. I’m done talking, and I’m done caring. I’m done trying to explain my feelings to him in millions of different ways in hopes of him "getting it."
I’m done initiating sex (it finally got past the begging stage...not sure if he's just doing that to pacify me.) I do love him as only a wife of this long could, but I’m realizing that it's okay to love him, and still put myself and therefore my girls first and just take care of us. I’ve tried to work on this marriage, it seemed to get better, but it really never will.
If he never tells me the truth and I find out some other way...which I will...the truth almost always comes out eventually....I don't think I could ever go through those cycles of loss and begin to find acceptance. Because I would always know that he was not a man to tell the truth to me and for the girls. I would know that, as usual, he put his own need to avoid personal pain or reactions from others over being man enough and caring enough to put us first. As one of your gay ex-husbands said in the letter....the only way to be a role model to his kids was to start being true to himself. The lies in the past will not be made right, yet he is being a person of honor from that day forward. And that would be a start.
And I know there's a possibility he may not be gay...he may just be a confused soul who is selfish and not good for me. It is not enough to have somebody love me only to pacify me. That is not what I have given, and I’m ready to open my heart up to friends and loved ones who are more like me. When my time is being eaten away by a user, I am passing by true love and friendship, the kind we all need to get us through and make the burdens of life a little more bearable!
I can never forgive him unless we start moving forward, someway...making changes....honesty...which i know i may never get...so I have to make my own life.
One more thing....I don't think he cares that I’ve had this pain...not one bit. He knows about the tip of the iceberg of the pain he's caused. And he makes it clear that I’m just playing the world's tiniest violin. He makes it impossible for me to ever even touch on just how I feel. I know that's defensiveness because of his shame and he has a hard time wanting to deal with how his actions have affected other people. which is funny how his actions always end up affecting me and the girls the hardest...yet he's always so busy worrying about his own self inflicted wounds.
Mother and human being with value."
Well ladies, thanks for sharing your feedback. Please feel free to respond to any of our letters or issues. If you would like to have your letter republished, I will contact you and you can sign it however you like.
Have a good month!
With love and hope,
Bonnie
July 2009 Volume 8, Issue 97
A monthly newsletter for straight women and gay men in or out of marriages to each other
Please visit my website to view and purchases my books at www.BonnieKayeBooks.com. Your sales help support the website and monthly newsletter.
IN RESPONSE TO THE FATHER’S DAY JUNE ISSUE
Last month, I published my first newsletter featuring letters only from some of our gay men who support our efforts. I asked them to contribute insight that would help women understand the demons they faced that contributed to their living double lives until they came to terms with themselves.
I wanted to do this because when women experience this myriad of confusion, hearing how this happens can sometimes give us understanding that can lead to our healing. It wasn’t intended to make you feel better about your situation, but rather more aware of what some men go through in their own struggles.
I had a large response to this newsletter with various points of view, some of which with their permission I have reprinted to share with you. Some women really appreciated reading the words of these men because it gave them a better understanding of how their husbands were thinking. But others were angry because they felt the men were trying to “justify” their behavior. I viewed it not as a “justification,” but rather as an “explanation.” I am a very understanding woman whose heart hurts for men going through this nightmare. However, that being said, I will never justify the misbehavior of their cheating on their wives emotionally or sexually during the marriage.
I’ve said this numerous times before. Homosexuality is not about “infidelity”—it’s about “sexuality.” It’s about a man posing to be a straight man and living in a straight world while being a homosexual man and making his wife feel inadequate because she is a woman. Here are some points that I want to reiterate.
1. Nothing makes me feel angrier than when gay men tell their wives, “It takes two to make a marriage fail.” No, it takes one—one gay man living in a marriage to a straight woman where he doesn’t belong. That’s a fact—not an opinion. No matter how “nice” some of these guys can be, they aren’t into you because you are a woman. They may cuddle with you, hug you, even perform sex with you, and love you on some level, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want a man to have sex with over making love with you. No woman should have to feel that she has to compete with a man for a man’s love. First, she can’t compete; second, she can’t compete. I thought I would restate that for you in case you didn’t hear me loud enough the first time!
2. Most married gay men look for reasons to blame their wives for their unhappiness. Although the wife is the cause of the unhappiness, it’s not because she’s a wife—it’s because she’s a woman. They try criticizing, controlling, and micro-managing the marriage to make you think that what’s wrong is your fault, but that’s because they are miserable living within their own lies. Rather than accept responsibility, it’s so much easier to blame you for their unhappiness. How many of our women tell me the same thing my ex-husband used to tell me—he felt “trapped.” I used to feel like an ogre expecting my husband to do what a husband should do—want to spend time building a life with me and making love with me. Yep, that was trapping him, right? There is only so much belittling that women can take before they start to believe there is something wrong with them—and so they stop asking and stop expecting. This creates a loss of self-esteem and sexual esteem. No man should be allowed to do that to a woman on a continuous basis, year in and year out. Who is really “trapped” here? The man is leading his life “outside” the marriage while the woman is truly trapped by her own insecurities and feelings of failure.
3. There are no easy ways to end a marriage. If I hear one more man tell his wife to “get over it” because she’s had six weeks or six months to come to terms with it, I’ll get really angry. A man has his whole life to deal with who he is. He spends years in denial and living a double life because he can’t accept who he is. So now that he has come to terms with himself, we’re supposed to move at the speed of light to just accept that everything we thought we had in our marriage is now gone. Guys, give me a break. It took you years to accept you—don’t expect us to “get over it” in record time so you can enjoy your new life. It isn’t going to work that way. So many of our women still love their husbands when they lose them. They have spent years loving these men. Even when they know the marriage has to end, it doesn’t mean they can turn on and off the love.
4. What hurts so much is the betrayal. I think that if a husband was honest with his wife before he acted on his homosexuality, she could deal with the situation so much better. But in almost all cases, men (even the nicest ones) are out there playing while they are married. I have heard from hundreds of members of this support network who have STD’s brought home to them by their unfaithful husbands who had no consideration about infecting their wives. As I always say, no man has a choice in being gay—but he does have a choice in being honest. The honesty should come before the husband decides to go out there and do his thing. That would be the right thing to do.
So guys, if I hurt your feelings, I’m sorry. But you know me—I have to say it as I see it and have seen it for nearly 30 years. But I’m always happy to listen and share, so continue to send in your letters and I’ll continue to share them with our women in hopes of creating a better awareness and understanding.
Here are some letters from the last two months:
Dear Bonnie,
7 months ago, I sent you this:
"Dear Bonnie, my new good friend:
Please, please add me to your newsletter at this address, and let me know how I can get your book, "Straight Wives, Shatter Lives." This is so how I feel.
My 52nd birthday was October 29th. A few minutes past midnight on the 30th, my entire world was rocked by concrete proof of my husband's infidelity, and life "in the closet." He inadvertently left his email open, and I got the shock of my life. I printed out several of his emails (I had the presence of mind to realize I might need proof); I also figured out his password, since he uses the same one for everything. Funny enough, he has yelled at me because I vary passwords; he told me to keep the same one. Little did he know that that would provide me easy access; also ammunition, in case I have to take him to court. I don't like this hard side of me; it's almost as unknown as the man I found in those emails. He's been doing this for a year. How could I not have known?
I found emails setting up "dates" -- when he should have been looking for a second job. I work about 50 (sometimes, up to 80 hours) a week. He's been complaining about "doing everything", while playing with other men. I found pictures he's sent to other men "displaying his wares" -- I wouldn't brag if I were him. But, apparently, he's had takers.
I have been married for 24 years, with him for 31. I feel so betrayed and angry, frightened to death of the future, in mourning for my future life I envisioned -- I burst into tears without warning, am hanging on only with the support of my friends and my children, who, interestingly enough, have told me for years that "you know, Daddy's gay." Their friends (and some of mine) have said to me since this "you have such great 'gay-dar': how have you missed it?" I honestly had no idea. I feel like the biggest fool.
I look back over 31 years, and think that there were warning signs I missed -- I thought the worst thing to happen to me was incest as a child, then teenager. I was wrong. That was a walk on the beach compared to the misery that my marriage has become, more increasingly over the past 10+ years. I have wracked my brain and my soul over these years, trying to figure out why I am so miserable a failure as a wife, why I can't do anything right, walking on constant eggshells, afraid to "upset" him. This sets him off in a verbally denigrating, berating diatribe of my failures; he's blamed me for everything from the condition of the house to the "turning against him" of our children. Thankfully, our children are now 18 and 20, so custody issues are nonexistent.
He is extremely self-righteous about attending Mass -- interestingly enough, he apparently has hidden his sexual proclivities from everyone. I am harboring feelings of vengeance; I want to out him to the congregation: my Scorpio is hard to override in this.
I am in the process of obtaining a formal separation agreement from my lawyer (also one of my friends), and I want to be able to have all of the facts at my disposal before I sit him down. It won't be pretty. He will probably blame me, as always, and become vindictive. It is killing me to make him leave, but I see no way of salvaging this relationship. By entertaining men, he has also given me HSV 1 and 2, and that is unforgiveable. My children have told me "you deserve someone who will treat you right", so I know they are very supportive.
I do have outside interests -- my community theater involvement is my passion. He directly blames my involvement in this as a reason for our relationship to suffer "your theater has come between us". It is my relationship with my theater friends that is saving my life. I also have a good career as a nurse manager that has provided me a support network at work as well.
Thank you, thank you for being here. For the first time since I discovered the horror that my marriage and life has become, I am starting to feel hopeful about an "after life." I still feel that my chances for a romantic afterlife are just about nil.
I apologize for the length of this -- but I am so grateful that I am not alone. Bless you.
Sincerely, Theresa"
June 14, 2009
That was November 15, 2008. Hard to believe it's been 7 months since that letter -- so much in my life has changed. I'm writing back to you to let you know how GOOD life is now. If you want to share any of this in your newsletter, by all means, please do -- maybe it will help other wives of gay men.
As you know, I found out October 30th. All the details are above; I kept my secret through Thanksgiving (fortunately, it was a small dinner). I made it through Christmas (I had a hysterectomy on December 18th -- my children were with me, and my mother came to help out and stayed almost to the New Year. This helped, since they all knew the truth (how we all kept it a secret, I really don't know!) Christmas was awful as was New Year's Eve (I went out with friends, since he had to work -- a small blessing).
Every time I looked at him, all I could think of was, "You lying bastard. How can you go on like you're so innocent? Don't you feel any guilt? You son of a bitch!" It took all the strength I had not to tell him right out. I was working on my separation and property settlement agreement, and I wanted to have all of my pieces in place before I confronted him. For three months, I kept my silence. At times, I thought it would kill me. Every breath I took was painful – I had panic attacks at night, waking up gasping. He slept blissfully through it all. The first month I was devastated, the second angry and the third putting the final touches on my planning. I had to be so careful; losing his income had to be taken into account seriously; our daughter (age 18) was still living at home and in school. I had to consider more than myself; unlike my husband, who was willing to throw it all away.
Finally, finally, on February 1, 2009 at 2 pm, I walked in my front door and said "We need to talk". He snidely said "about what?" I told him to join me at the table by the door (he had been escalating in his anger, and I wasn't sure how he would react). I said "I know what you've been doing and I want a divorce." He then said, "I do, too." My reply? "Then let's talk business." I had the separation agreement in my hand all ready to sign (if he would; my best friend is a notary, and was waiting down the street with her stamp, just in case he agreed to sign the papers.) When I confronted him about his being "gay" -- I asked him if he knew he was gay when he married me and he said no. He also waffled over being "gay" -- "I guess I am". He also said to me, "I guess you've been screwing around" -- I told him "actually, I haven't. I've been faithful for 31 years; but apparently you haven't. Get yourself tested -- you gave me herpes." His response, "Oh." Oh, indeed. When I asked him whatever made him think that cheating on me was ok, he said "I wasn't getting it from you." Us women know that sex, for us, begins in the mind, by the way we're treated and made to feel, long before the actual physical act begins; he was clueless. For him "it was just sex; us men can do that." I told him, "So can women, but I honored my vows." He also told me that "I don't have any guilt about what I've been doing - you deserve everything you got" -- I was incredulous -- "including herpes?!" "Yeah, everything." I looked at him and, in that moment, knew why women killed their husbands. Fortunately, I had already decided that I was worth 100 of him and he wasn't worth the trouble.
By 2:06, I called my son's friend (who was down the street, ready to protect me; my son was out of state) and said, "no drama, we're reading the agreement." A short time later, all signed and notarized, we were legally separated. I couldn't believe it -- in the end, it was such a simple procedure! All of a sudden, I felt a HUGE burden lift from me, I took a deep breath and said "I'm free!" I left the house with friends and my daughter and went to celebrate, leaving him in the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong; I knew it was partially relief that it was out in the open, but after so many months of pain and fear, the relief was welcome.
We moved him out twelve days later (he was supposed to leave twenty days later, but he started ransacking the house every time I left, so I threw him out). It was ugly, hostile and nearly violent; it also removed any hope I had had of remaining friends or, at least, being civil to each other. Sadly, my children were with me. They knew, somehow, who he really was; I never saw it (or wouldn’t see it). As much as I was grateful for their support, it saddened me that they had to see the awful end to what had been so good long ago. My husband had been at odds with my son for years; my son told me that he kept his peace for me; my daughter has her own relationship with her father. So ended my former life. The same day he left, I had my son and his friends start to repaint my living room; with that beginning, "Project Refeathering My Nest" has been ongoing; I have been happily industrious and am enjoying the peace in my home and the freedom to rearrange and change my home to suit me and my daughter.
People keep telling me how good I look, how "radiant" and "have you lost weight?" I tell them "yes, I lost 250 lbs. of ugly attitude!" Life is different; sometimes a little harder. I kept the house, so now I've got all of the responsibilities to deal with alone. But I am so much happier now. Yes, I do miss being part of a couple and the husband I married so long ago. May 26th was my 25th wedding anniversary; I went on vacation with my children and celebrated my independence instead of my now defunct marriage. I am loving my freedom and the glory of being free from the critical, belittling and the overall mean and petty, angry man that my husband had become. I am free of the futile, numerous attempts I made to rekindle our intimacy, thinking that if I was better, more open, more accommodating, that he would be more loving and accepting of me. I'm free of the constant battle of trying to bury my needs and trying to fulfill his. Free of never, ever, being "good enough". When I found out about my husband, I was thinking "maybe I can live with this; maybe we can live as friends, maybe ..." I was trying so hard to live with his lie. But, thankfully, I had such wonderful people to support me, as I finally, painfully, decided to end my marriage. But it was the right decision -- of that, I have no doubt.
I’ve read letters from gay men on this website; I’ve read about their pain and uncertainty and all of the rest. Part of me wants to be sympathetic; perhaps I would have been, had I not been lied to and treated so shabbily. Had my husband been truly “a man” and sat me down, truly talked with me and not blamed me for “pushing him” into affairs with men, maybe I wouldn’t have been so shattered when I found out. For all my “failings,” I deserved (as we all do) much more than finding out from email. I’ve wished him dead more than once; the closure would have been much easier and the memories of the good years would have remained untainted. Now, almost every memory of my life with him is shadowed by “when did it start?” “Why didn’t I see the signs?”
This is my advice to anyone still living with this nightmare. Be fair to yourself! Go on those gay/bisexual websites and read those emails. These men are selfish, egocentric and arrogant -- they may not be totally happy with their situation, but they're satisfied to get their needs taken care of, whine about being unhappily married but enjoy all the rest of what "normal" married life is like. They rationalize their behavior to assure themselves that they're OK -- that they're not hurting anyone, that they're still "good husbands", so they have the "right" to do what they're doing. My husband complained constantly, but enjoyed my income. Get out of that hell and go on with your life. Take back the "real you"; not the "married you" you've become so that you can "keep him happy"; "keep the peace", etc. You'll NEVER make him happy! He doesn't want you, but he's too cowardly and self-serving to let you go. He doesn't even care if he brings home an STD and passes it to you -- I'm so angry that I was faithful for over 30 years and STILL got herpes. Their world is a sex-focused, self-serving, man-to-man "bonding" subculture of society that exists. These men are a slow-acting poison, making any relationship with them toxic; they're like leeches draining the life out of the women unfortunate enough to be married to them. They build themselves up, while ruining the very women they vowed "to love, honor and cherish". Cherish? Like hell. Too harsh an indictment? I don't think so.
Bonnie, thank you so much for all that you do. I never thought I would survive the upheaval and pain, but I did. I never thought life could be so good, but it is. I never knew how strong I was until I freed myself from the imprisoning life sentence my marriage had become. Now, I'm even ready to go out and date again, make new friends and maybe find someone who'll appreciate the person I've become. Thank you, thank you for validating the strong, resourceful, valuable "me" that still remained deep inside; I'm joyous to be back, whole, powerful. To my sisters: there truly is a wonderful life waiting for you; it'll be better, because, just being yourself, you will be "enough."
Theresa
Dear Bonnie,
“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. “
Ladies when I read Bonnie’s May newsletter I did not know whether to laugh, scream, or cry so I did all of the above. You see what she said in that quote was so true,. And yes, Gay, it is Gay.
I joined this group two years ago when a man I was madly in love with told me over dinner how he wasn’t gay but his boyfriends are. He was serious! I wish I could have used that line Gay, it is gay to explain to him that when you sleep with men you have won the homosexual Triple Crown. He could not understand why this was not welcome news and why I wanted him out of my life immediately. That lead to the second phase of shock and awe on my part.
The icing on the cake is I went on line to meet someone three months ago after a few years of being shell shock and leery as you can imagine. The site was recommended by a family-oriented morning show and hosts I trust.
The gentleman picked me and we clicked instantly. I corresponded with him for about a month and then had wonderful telephone calls. I could never arrange my schedule to meet him but I finally planned for the Memorial Day weekend to be the time.
Then he dropped the “G” nuclear bomb the night before I was supposed to meet him in person. First he asked if I had ever been with a woman, At that point my radar kicked in because the one two years ago accused me of being gay when I suggested one night after dinner that we go to a “gay” area for coffee. Hell, neither of us had a car and it was the only place Metro accessible. I asked him if he was gay in return and he acted as if I asked him if he ate his young.
Back to the future, Internet lover then said he slept with men! I gave him points for honesty but the room rocked.
I did not handle it well with the first gentleman two years ago—I cursed him vigorously for about half a mile as we walked home from the restaurant.
Obviously the professional counseling degree and church reconciliation classes are kicking in. I told him I was not going to judge him for what he did in the past because it was not my right. I decided to try to talk him down from the heterosexual ledge and encourage him to embrace his true sexuality like I did with the first one.
He is from a culture where this is taboo and anathema. His mother is in town from overseas and I began to think I was in an Indian version of “The Wedding Banquet,” the film where the gay man marries a woman to avoid telling his parents he is gay. As if parents don’t have eyes to see and ears to hear. Momma probably knows.
In any event, he retracted it later and said he only said it because he wanted to see if I would sleep with him if he said he slept with other men. I suppose he forgot that he had also asked me if I would be interested in a ménage a trios with another man. Ladies, this is not what I call courtship behavior of a straight man!
Gay is not an aphrodisiac for straight women.
It was late at night and he works on Wall Street, so he must have been at happy hour too long and short term memory was impaired. Mine wasn’t. I remembered what he said. Counseling classes teach you to attend. Okay, this is denial taken to a dangerously deep level!
On a positive note, I can see how this group and the support of others have helped me. I am not devastated as I was before and I did not lose my religion by calling him out of his family name. I simply said Adios
I was trying to figure out what I did to attract another one of these mentally disassociated people when this Newsletter came in the mail.
So thank you Bonnie. I see that I am a woman who is too kind, too compassionate, too loving, and too forgiving. In other words, they seek the best women for the worst treatment.
Oh, and guess what internet guy. You are gay, it’s gay!
Anon.
Hi Bonnie,
Your June newsletter somehow seemed rather sugar coated to me.
Most of us did not have these experiences, and I believe some of these men are skipping over a very important part of "their process"--like the truth. The man who had sex with many men before he married his wife -- did he inform her of this before the marriage or did this part of the truth not seem important to him? Did he even consider that she deserved that "little bit of truth"? No. He just married her to fit in. She never had the chance to choose whether she wanted to marry a man who liked having sex with men. It was his decision to lead her blindly into this "marriage." I have no sympathy for him.
Also, I feel many of these men are skipping over the cheating during the marriage. I think they see it as "being true to themselves" and not as cheating on their wives, not to mention that they potentially exposed their wives to life threatening sexual transmitted diseases.
Sorry, I just found it really hard to read these sugar coated stories. Too much of the woman's pain was ignored. But, too many times, that is par for the course as far as they are concerned. It's all about the poor gay man, while the wife is left to pick up the pieces of her life.
And so it goes...
J.
Dear Bonnie,
I read this month’s letter but what about the women like me who were tricked by a man into a gay marriage in which he knew exactly who he was and what kind of a life I was in for? My husband withdrew all sex and affection beginning on the honeymoon and had a regular sex life with men throughout the marriage. He used me as a beard and to improve his standard of living there was no love on his side it was a con job. I was wife number five. He spent the whole marriage trying to convince me that the life we led of no sex or affection was normal, that I was unworthy of love and it was unreasonable of me to expect him to want to have sex with me or show me affection since I was such a bad person. Once when I asked him about his refusal to have a normal relationship with me he said that if I gave him complete access to all of my money he might feel like having sex with me. This man nearly destroyed me. I would like to hear more abut this kind of predator.
Thanks
Marilyn
Dear Bonnie,
I had thought I was dealing with what happened to me, until I read the self justification of gay husbands in your June newsletter.
I truly believe that no one has a choice about whether they are gay - that this is somehow built in and cannot be changed or altered. But everyone does have a choice about how they live their lives, and the same standards of decency and honesty apply to gays as well as straights. No one has a right to harm others and then whine about how they can't help it. No one has the right to cheat and lie and steal years of a woman's life, then wring his hands and whimper about his pain. Was your pain great enough to make you change your life? MINE WAS!
Kay A.
BTW, Kay lives in Sioux City, South Dakota. If there are any other women in this area who would like to get together for support, please let me know and I’ll refer you to Kay.
Bonnie,
That was very interesting, but somewhat hard to read. It is only hard because I still don't know if my husband is in denial or not. I am weighing my options anyway because he is not good at loving me and the girls in the way we need (because sometimes I feel like he uses our marriage problems to be less of a dad at times...like when he's out of town for work and doesn't call for days or weeks or is unaccountable by not answering our calls...he has told me he doesn't want to call because he doesn't want to talk to me...this is just stuff from the past....he's been around a lot and better at this when he has been away, yet his job is ready to take him away a lot again).
So I am planning. I have finally come to a point that I’ve realized my love is not enough for both of us. (oh, he says he loves me and shows it in his own ways...yet at the same time he is so hurtful and negative about me....). maybe it helps that i had to do the same with my mom a few years back because she is a lot like him....cares more about being right than anything else. He has so much anger, i don't know where it comes from.
I still don't feel like there is any excuse to lie. I feel like even if a man has lied 399 times, then start telling the truth the 400th time. The past lies don't make it okay the next time. The man can never start to gain respect from his wife and children unless he starts somewhere. I’m not saying it would be easy at first and I wouldn’t react or get cold toward him. But the sooner he told the truth, the sooner I could go through the cycles of loss and just get to a better place. Right now i just have intense loneliness. I know things are not right. My heart aches....he has hurt me so many times worse than any break up I’ve ever had in my dating years. This is the father of my children and his lack of love and intimacy and acceptance hurts me to the core. Sometimes I have wailed (how else can I say it...it is a cry of agony that comes from pain so deep inside...a mother's cry for a child lost or in trouble)...all alone because his actions and words are so heartless and just break me down (and I cry for my children, their father that I chose, me...their
mother, and this family. This hurts way worse because of my desires and hopes for my girls...and I feel like he's cheating them when he cheats me.)
This hurt is also from the lack of support he gives me as a person....I don't want only the financial; I want him to want to take care of me as a man could. Believe me it's the last thing I want to hear that he's gay. But this little feeling I always get that he might be is so much more painful. If I knew this were the reason he isn't loving and intimate towards me in the way I know exists....then it would give a reason for everything. It's not what I want...but it's just like someone avoiding going to the doctor's when they know they are dying...they can feel it and/or they can see the signs, yet it doesn't change that they need to face it. They can't stop themselves from dying by denying it's happening.
I am making plans to put myself first so I can show my girls how strong I am and how much I love them and that being a woman doesn't have to be demeaning....not because he's told me the truth, but because I have just hit that point where he can't do this to me anymore. I don't want our girls to think of me as I am in this relationship. I’m tired of being labeled as if I’m one with him....like I’m just as sick and hateful....like I just "love fighting" as he puts it. I feel darned if I do and darned if I don't with him. I’ve reached the point I’m going to stop fighting for us...because it is useless. I’m done talking, and I’m done caring. I’m done trying to explain my feelings to him in millions of different ways in hopes of him "getting it."
I’m done initiating sex (it finally got past the begging stage...not sure if he's just doing that to pacify me.) I do love him as only a wife of this long could, but I’m realizing that it's okay to love him, and still put myself and therefore my girls first and just take care of us. I’ve tried to work on this marriage, it seemed to get better, but it really never will.
If he never tells me the truth and I find out some other way...which I will...the truth almost always comes out eventually....I don't think I could ever go through those cycles of loss and begin to find acceptance. Because I would always know that he was not a man to tell the truth to me and for the girls. I would know that, as usual, he put his own need to avoid personal pain or reactions from others over being man enough and caring enough to put us first. As one of your gay ex-husbands said in the letter....the only way to be a role model to his kids was to start being true to himself. The lies in the past will not be made right, yet he is being a person of honor from that day forward. And that would be a start.
And I know there's a possibility he may not be gay...he may just be a confused soul who is selfish and not good for me. It is not enough to have somebody love me only to pacify me. That is not what I have given, and I’m ready to open my heart up to friends and loved ones who are more like me. When my time is being eaten away by a user, I am passing by true love and friendship, the kind we all need to get us through and make the burdens of life a little more bearable!
I can never forgive him unless we start moving forward, someway...making changes....honesty...which i know i may never get...so I have to make my own life.
One more thing....I don't think he cares that I’ve had this pain...not one bit. He knows about the tip of the iceberg of the pain he's caused. And he makes it clear that I’m just playing the world's tiniest violin. He makes it impossible for me to ever even touch on just how I feel. I know that's defensiveness because of his shame and he has a hard time wanting to deal with how his actions have affected other people. which is funny how his actions always end up affecting me and the girls the hardest...yet he's always so busy worrying about his own self inflicted wounds.
Mother and human being with value."
Well ladies, thanks for sharing your feedback. Please feel free to respond to any of our letters or issues. If you would like to have your letter republished, I will contact you and you can sign it however you like.
Have a good month!
With love and hope,
Bonnie
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