The following comment was left recently on the post I wrote about why coming out was the right thing to do:
Thank you. I think the harm caused by living a lie is huge. There is another choice that can be made that I rarely hear discussed. The man who discovers he is gay later in life could actually start being honest with his loved ones, and choose to stay in the marriage and be loyal to the vow he made his partner for life – the whole life – and to his children and his own integrity as a man – and live up to his commitments. I think the coming clean about his gayness would go a long way. Everyone in a marriage is tempted to have sex outside of marriage. Deciding you are gay should not automatically entitle you to have sex outside of marriage. You DEAL with it, and remain in your commitment, include your wife in the struggle you are going through, get therapy, etc. Once you make a life commitment you don’t get to have sex outside marriage – gay or straight matters not.
I have to say, I think you sort of missed my point. First of all, as Jen pointed out in her reply, coming out to your wife and family but not ending the marriage closets the family, unless you expect to share with the community that you are in a mixed-orientation marriage.
Second, the point of my post was that everyone should live an authentic life. You’re making it sound like the decision is totally in the hands of the gay partner, when of course the straight partner can choose whether or not s/he wants to be married to a gay person. Why should your wife have to settle for someone who isn’t attracted to her? Can a marriage really recover from a shock like that? Whether or not she ever finds anyone else, she deserves not to be shackled to someone who isn’t interested in her. I realize that is a controversial statement. I didn’t realize just how controversial until I got into a discussion about this with Sam in the comments of a previous post of Jen’s.
My interchange with Sam got me thinking about a lot and gave me a lot of insight into how it was possible for my dad to honestly love and cherish my mom despite his sexual orientation. And I understand there are a lot of reasons to stay married beyond sexual attraction. Heck, lots of straight couples stay together long after sexual attraction has waned. But we’re talking about all of this as if being gay or straight is ONLY about sexual attraction, and I don’t think that’s true. I also think the the effects of being in such a marriage long-term, even if the homosexuality of one partner is known to both partners, would be devastating. Surely there must be exceptions. But I can’t imagine them.
I take your point about not being allowed to have sex outside the marriage just because you’re gay, but sexuality is different than lust. A man who has never known the love of another man is in a totally different boat than a man who wants to bonk the hot young secretary.
Understand I am am coming at this from a position of thinking there is nothing wrong or sinful about being (or acting on being) gay. If I thought being gay was wrong or immoral, I might take a “love the sinner, hate the sin” approach and say that you should be honest about who you are, but never act on it and never leave the marriage.
But I think that one partner discovering/admitting they are gay is an atom bomb in the relationship. You may be able to get back to some semblance of normal, but things will never be the same. You deserve better. Your partner deserves better.
I wanted to address another comment by bose, who says: “One of the hardest parts of that process, though, was that the person I cared for so deeply and never wanted to hurt was not just hurt, but became convinced that our 10 years together had been an elaborate scheme in which I had defrauded and manipulated her from day one.”
Bose, does it make you feel any better to know that every wife I’ve ever talked to who has been in this position feels the same way? And probably most children, too? I’ll tell you one reason why: the gay parent has had a long time to come to terms with his/her homosexuality. Coming out and embracing the gay lifestyle is fun. It’s a relief. Sure, it may be scary, but it’s also exciting. It’s a second adolescence of sorts: very self-centered, appearance-obsessed, dramatic, emotional, etc. The point is that there are good parts and bad parts forthe person coming out. For the family, at least initially, there are only bad parts. So if the couple separates and the gay partner is dating and exploring gay culture, it looks to the family like that person got exactly what they always wanted, while the straight partner gets shit. It’s hard not to believe it was all calculated.
And you DID defraud and manipulate her from day one, whether you did it intentionally or otherwise. Sounds like in your case, you also defrauded and manipulated yourself (if you didn’t really know you were gay, which by the way, is also what my dad says. He could have written your description of why you didn’t know you were gay until later in life. Wait–are you my dad?? Just kidding, you’re much younger.). You constructed a life and a marriage to protect yourself from the truth about yourself, which obviously became so overwhelming that you couldn’t keep it in anymore. How could your wife NOT feel defrauded? She thought she was marrying one thing, she got another. Either she believes you are gay from birth (in which case you lied to yourself and to her) or that you chose to be gay despite being married (which means you are a real asshole). For the record, obviously I believe people are born gay and not that they choose it, but you have mentioned your family is religious, and I know sometimes religious people believe it is a choice. So if you were born gay–how could you not know it? How could you marry her anyway?
I don’t mean to be directing any of this specifically at Bose, who seems like a thoughtful person who is genuinely tortured at the way things went down. But it is a pet peeve of mine when the gay partner feels surprised and shocked when the straight partner is not only hurt, but ANGRY. Is the straight partner supposed to be just quietly and meekly weepy for awhile and then get over it? Imagine if you were dating a man who came to you one day and said, “I have something to tell you. I’m actually attracted to women.” You would flip out! You would feel lied to, betrayed. It would be impossible for you to believe that he didn’t know this in some corner of his being and that he hadn’t been using you.
I know coming out is really, really, really hard. And I think sometimes people don’t want their families to make it any harder than it already is. But that just isn’t fair. Whether or not you divorce or separate, admitting homosexuality is breaking the marriage vows, and that is a betrayal. It’s a shame that it has to be that way, but to pretend otherwise isn’t fair to the family.
–Anna
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Something that I think gets neglected, though I’m sure that it doesn’t make the straight spouse or children feel any better, is the era in which many of us grew up and what we were told by the “experts” at the time about our sexuality. Yes, I knew from about the time I was 11 or 12 that I had strong attractions to other boys and yes, I felt like I was somehow different from the other boys but I didn’t consider the possibility that I might be gay until I was 17. At that time (the late seventies), I started looking for information that could help me make sense of my sexual “confusion”. The “experts” at the time encouraged people like me who could have pleasurable sexual activity with the opposite sex and who didn’t want to be gay to consider ourselves straight and act on that assumption. That is what I did. I believe that my actions in dating, marrying, and having children were taken in the good faith assumption that I was a sexually confused heterosexual. It took time to erode that belief and, when I finally came out to myself 2 1/2 years ago, I resolved to be honest with my wife. I can certainly understand how she might feel deceived, but there was never any conscious thought to use her or my children to hide my true sexual orientation. I will admit that there were times when I felt relief that my wife and children were “proof” to the outside world that I was straight, but I married and had children because I wanted a family and I believed that it was the right thing for someone in my position to do–not as a cover for my homosexuality.
If there was one message that I could get to straight spouses and children of GLBT persons, it is that most of us acted in good faith and only came to a full understanding of what it means to be gay over a course of many years.
I also want to agree with you that coming out is the right thing to do and that it must truly be coming out–not dragging the family into the closet for company. There is also no getting around the devastation that this causes to the people the people who mean to most to us.
I would like to echo melvil’s comment – that is certainly my story. I would also add, there seems to be an implicit assumption here that the gay spouse is blithely coming out of the closet, with little to no consideration of how coming out would negatively affect their family. For most of us, deciding to come out to our wives, while probably the right thing to do, was preceeded by great agonizing over how they would be affected. I don’t think any of us are shocked or surprised that there is hurt and anger. In fact it is hurt and anger that makes it so difficult to do the right thing in the first place. I love my wife and my kids — and the guilt I feel at causing this pain is something I will carry with me always. That is not to say I view myself as the victim here, just to say I know I am responsible for the pain and hurt.
Anger by the spouse is an imortant part of dealing with the situation and is necessary before any kind of resolution can be reached. I know in my case, my wife started out supportive, but until she got angry she really wasn’t engaged in figuring out what she wanted for her future and figuring out the best path forward.
I think what some of us hope, however, is that the anger isn’t enduring. Not so much for ourselves (though that would be nice) but for our wives and children.
James
I’m a “straight spouse” and I’m a little surprised that more of us haven’t found this blog, as Jen has posted a couple things on a straight spouse message board I run.
There is SO much to address here, but I would like to just address the last comment James made.
Yes, James you are right. For most of us (at least the ones who had no clue beforehand like me) the anger must come out. However, anger, like many strong emotions, doesn’t tend to be enduring unless nursed. Most straight spouses I know felt it in varying degrees…. for me it was mostly the fact that I spent many years in a relationship that I knew was unsatisfying to my ex but couldn’t figure out why. She was more than happy to imply that it was somehow my fault.
However, for most straight spouses I know, and for me, the anger fades once experienced and acknowledged. For some few, however, it evolves into lasting bitterness, which is not healthy.
It is possible to salvage the good parts of the relationship, whether together or apart. For me, apart was better because it eliminated the bad parts. The jury is still out on how it affected the kids, they do not discuss it with their mom or me. However they seem to be doing ok, both now in college and doing well.
I do know my daughter is uncomfortable when I discuss my Straight Spouse Network activities and is very uncomfortable around my girlfriend, another straight spouse. They both seem fine with my ex’s girlfriend.
Bottom line James, there will be anger, but if anger turns to bitterness that is a choice.
Melvil,
You are right, the era that you and my dad and Anna’s dad married in was different than it is today. Which is why I am surprised when I hear that MOMs are still around. And yes a lot of “professionals” gave very poor advice.
I think Sam is correct about the anger. It usually subsides but it can turn into bitterness. I know many couples who have weathered this storm and even though they did end up divorcing they remain best friends. I know straight couples who divorced and remain very bitter. It really depends on the individual. Some people like to be the victim.
I’d like to address what James said about anger from a personal perspective. In the first couple of weeks after I came out to her, my wife expressed a great deal of grief and sadness but overall she was, and remains, supportive. I have felt that the fact that she was able to express her sadness and that she had people that she could talk to are positive signs. Yet, there have been no overt expressions of anger. A few times, I have noticed that she will needle me in front of other people knowing that I can’t respond. I think that this is a passive-aggressive expression of anger (and my wife is usually not passive-aggressive). Of course, she says that she is just being playful and that I am overreacting, but I’m not so sure. James’ comment makes me wonder if she hasn’t really accepted the truth of the situation yet.
Jen and Anna:
looking at the comments here already, I realize that this is now pretty much redundant, but here it is anyway:
I have to take violent exception to the statement that “admitting homosexuality is breaking the marriage vows… and is a betrayal.” That is in one case at least, errant nonsense. Isis knew when she married me what my past was, and believed me when I said that I had made a choice to leave all of that behind me. I have written far too much on the fact that “all of that” had not agreed to be left behind, as I discovered many years later; in fact, I had no problem being (to whatever extent) gay and being married at the cost of my supposedly all-important sexuality.
What brought the house down was the recognition of what connecting the dots about leather did to my view of my entire life, including but by no means exclusively, my marriage. Those were two things I could not hold in my hands at the same time and still be the person Isis wanted me to be. She is called Isis here for a reason: she is the wife/mother goddess of Egypt, the fabulous paradise of fleshpots that you have to leave to find liberation, even if it means forty years of wandering in the desert. She too is a jealous god, and would brook no other gods but her.
When it came down to choosing between a life I knew and loved and finding out what the other side of myself (the “dark side of my moon”) actually was, I chose to leave. Not because I loved her any the less, but the conditions were too exacting: I had promised never to act on the other half of my desires if I could only be open about who and what I was, and that was not good enough.
It’s not like I don’t understand: as it is, Isis feels that she has been publicly shamed and humiliated, and adding on top of that the public judgment of her staying in the marriage would have been intolerable for her, as it probably would be to most women.
It’s not like I don’t understand: what human being does not want to know that he or she does indeed come first, no matter what else may be going on?
But the human heart does not conform to any set of neat, little rules, let alone the insane Procrustes bed of American middle-class morality. We aren’t here, in John Patrick Shanley’s profound phrase, to make things perfect:
Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice–it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess.
We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit.
What Anna says about the fact of homosexuality, or bisexuality, if it exists, and isn’t just people unable to make up their minds, being a breach of the marriage vows, approaches storybook status, and condemns people who acted in good faith to being by definition the sole guilty parties. In a marriage of any kind, in a relationship of any kind, there is never one guilty party.
If only life were that simple.
T@C
http://trollatsea.blogspot.com/2008/08/anna-speaks-so-do-i.html
T@C wrote:
“In a marriage of any kind, in a relationship of any kind, there is never one guilty party.”
I agree wholeheartedly. Straight women do not marry gay men by accident. I believe that what drives many to nurse the anger and blame is the fear of facing themselves and their own part in creating the situation in which they find themselves. With the exception of the rare situations in which there was conscious deception of the straight spouse, there really should be no guilt or blame only an acceptance of responsibility which BOTH partners must share. The only parties to a MOM without such responsibility are the children.
Melvil,
Now I must take some exception…
There are a number of straight spouses that I know who married knowing their spouse had gay feelings or gay experiences or “sexual confusion” in the past, but they are in the minority. I think your generalization may have got a bit out of control.
Very many did not have a clue. Whether deliberate deception or the fact that their gay spouse didn’t know, or wouldn’t admit, or somehow thought the relationship would “straighten” him/her out, the fact is that on this point the majority of straight spouses I have met DID NOT know they were getting into a mixed orientation relationship, and in many cases would not have had they known.
I’m the last person to cry “victim”, not trying to come off that way. However, in a situation where a huge percentage of your life is turned upside down and you find things you had taken for granted never existed, some amount of grief and anger is natural.
I think it is impossible to make any sort of generalities in these cases. I am lesbian and was married for 20 years and had 2 children before divorcing. I only discovered I was lesbian after the first 15 years of marriage.
My first point is that it is truly possible to not know your sexual orientation until midlife. I believe this happens because we are born and raised and socialized with the assumption we are heterosexual. Therefore, it is always a discovery process to realize you are homosexual. Depending on our life experiences, cultural exposure, religious background and level of introspection, it may take some of us longer than others to come to that point of realization. At any rate, it is NOT an uncommon phenomenon in the lesbian community. As a result of our assumption of heterosexuality, we do what society expects us to do…marry and have children.
Second, the decision to divorce is not always as clear-cut as it would seem. Before coming out to my husband, but after I realized I was a lesbian, I tried very hard to make the marriage work. God knows there was a lot wrong with it. I expressed this desire to my husband and spent quite a few months doing everything to please him. During that time, I felt NOTHING come back to me from his side.
From my point of view there were 2 overwhelming problems: He held grudges in our relationship and could not seem to get past them to start fresh. And there was an alcohol problem and a physical problem which resulted in a virtually sexless marriage, which was for me sheer torture.
After quite a few months, and confronting him with his lack of “trying” he stated to me, “I could NEVER be intimate with you on ANY level.” Those were his exact words, burned into my brain. That was my defining moment, the one where my path became clear and the marriage was over.
The point of this story is that the gay issue is sometimes, maybe even most times, not the only issue that results in the break-up of a MOM. There can be many problems, but somehow, after the fact, the only issue that gets the blame is that one party came out as homosexual. I was willing to put everything I had into the marriage–”deal” with my sexuality–but not at the expense of a life with no hope of intimacy.
Pat
Sam,
I must not have been clear about the point that I was making. I didn’t mean to suggest that most straight spouses knew that they were entering a MOM (I agree with you–most do not) but, rather, that there is something in the personality of the gay spouse that meets a psychological or emotional need of the straight spouse.
I don’t want to minimize the legitimate shock, pain, anger that the straight spouse feels on finding out that the marriage wasn’t what they believed it to be. But I don’t fully accept the “innocent victim of a deceitful spouse” either. It takes two parties to make a relationship–even a dysfunctional one.
Point taken Melvil, and it is an interesting one.
That is a common topic on straight spouse private forums… What about our spouses attracted us and what about us attracted our spouses. Seems a variety of things, but hard to make even a vague generalization. Some have admitted that they were attracted to traits which are stereotypically considered gay, but not a lot. Some of the women I have met have traits considered to be masculine, some of the men feminine, but not a lot. Hard to find a common thread or series of threads.
Thanks for clarifying, Melvil.
Lots to respond to here.
Melvil: I believe that many gay partners acted in good faith and only came to a full understanding of what it means to be gay over many years. I do believe that. But it is cold comfort to the rest of the family, KWIM?
Troll@Sea: I don’t really understand your point, and I don’t think you made a good argument against my claim that coming out was a betrayal of the marriage vows. I mean….you made marriage vows. Did you keep them? If not, then you broke them. You may feel that’s a harsh standard, and if you’ve read my posts, you understand that I think in the long run it was the right thing to do. It’s not a black and white world. Also, I don’t really understand your allusion to leather. I understand leaving a marriage because of sexual orientation, but because you’re into leather and Isis isn’t? Perhaps I should check out your blog, but I am heartily confused.
Pat: you said: “the gay issue is sometimes, maybe even most times, not the only issue that results in the break-up of a MOM.” You have inadvertently stumbled on a real pet peeve of mine. I hear gay partners say this ALL THE TIME as a way to minimize culpability. Maybe it was true in your case. I don’t know you. My dad does this and it makes me so angry. Sure he and my mom had problems. But they were married for 20 years. They wouldn’t have split if not for “the gay issue.” Perhaps I am too sensitive to be rational on this issue. But when I hear gay partners dredging up everything bad from the marriage and acting like “the gay issue” was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, it seems disingenuous to me.
Same to you, melvil. I’m sure there is a reason that a straight spouse chooses to marry a gay person. And yes, it takes two people to make a relationship. But my warning bells just go off whenever I hear gay people generously sharing culpability around for problems in a marriage.
–Anna