Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (11 page)

Five steps forward, one giant step back. Add a few external messages from the hubby (“I swear I didn’t have these feelings when we married.”), the parents (“Why would he turn to a man? Are you sure? Maybe your imagination is over active. Maybe you aren’t meeting your wifely duties.”), the friends (“You must have known something. Come on, I could tell. Do you mean to tell me you couldn’t? Everyone suspects him.”), co-workers (“You didn’t know your husband was gay? Or is it you didn’t want to know? You must have been pretty stupid not to know that.”), or well meaning casual acquaintances (“He’s such a great guy. I can’t believe he’s gay. And even if he is, I wouldn’t mind having a guy like that anyway. He seems to be such a great husband. I could live with that little flaw.”)

How about when we bring it up to future potential dates or partners? First question: “Have you been tested for AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases?” And if you tell them that you haven’t had sex with your husband for 10 years, they still want proof. They still think AIDS can be spread through the air in your house. Some of them will not call back after they learn that your husband was gay as if you are carrying around a disease that can “turn” them gay. Or you feel so afraid of turning someone off whom you are looking to turn on that you leave out that part of the story of the past marriage. You are hoping that the new man will love you enough in time to overlook that part of your past and the news can wait until then. You are still living your husband’s lie for him long after he’s telling the truth.

It is difficult having to be an activist for a cause, and especially a cause where you are starting off with so much misunderstanding and ignorance. Sometimes it’s just less exhausting to keep mum. After all, your husband did it for years. And maybe you’ve been doing it for years. Thankfully there are others who are able to go out there and say, “My husband is gay, but I’m okay.” They share their stories with the newspapers, television, and radio getting the word out. Even I have become semi-closeted to protect the privacy of my son and my ex-husband. I wish I could do as I did in the old days and just show up for national television shows that keep inviting me now to let the world know how it really is. But as I tell others, always put the children first. They had no choice in being here. We have choices. I’ll just keep plugging away in the less visible media with hopes that the word will keep spreading.

JANUARY 2003

DISTINGUISHING THE TRUTH

The word “truth” is always controversial to me. You can have two people watching the same exact event, and yet, when they report it, you receive two very different versions of the actual event. Is one being honest while the other is being dishonest? No, not at all. It’s all a matter of perception, or how people filter the information in their own minds.

Keeping that in mind, I question a gay married man’s perception when it comes to a particular issue. It is not uncommon to hear gay men say that after they leave their marriages, the relationship with their children is estranged because the ex-wife is alienating them by bad mouthing, discouraging, and turning the kids against them.

Although I know that women are angry about losing their marriages to homosexuality, I have rarely met a woman who isn’t more than willing to have her ex-husband be part of the family life. Out of thousands of women I hear from yearly, I have maybe heard one or two women who have stated they don’t want their children around the father because he is gay. They may not be happy about the gay thing, but they would never let that stand in the way of a father-child relationship.

Personally, I think a lot of gay men use this as an excuse for being irresponsible to their families. It’s much easier to blame the wife and children than to accept responsibility for their own actions. And do I think they are making up this story because they are looking to feel better about themselves? Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some men, I give the benefit of the doubt because of what I feel is their distorted perception of the “truth.”

We all have truths, but all truths aren’t the same. I hear many gay husbands say that they had no idea that they were gay when they got married, and I definitely believe that is the case for the majority of gay married men. But then somewhere in the marriage, there were episodes of infidelity while they went out and had gay sex. And yet, they still claim this isn’t “gay” or “cheating.” In their minds, they believe this to be the “truth.”

Some gay men will tell you that their wives were argumentative and difficult to please. But they are telling you this from the point of view of a gay man. When a woman feels that she is unfulfilled and missing out on life, why should she act happy? But how often do these men say, “I can certainly understand why she was unhappy. I didn’t know how to make her happy”? I only occasionally hear that from ex-husbands. It’s more often a list of complaints of where their wives fell short.

These marriages are what I call, “A Mutation of Life.” All perceptions of what is real versus untrue is a mutation. We are always reacting to our husbands based on what they “think they should do as a straight man.” They do their best to play the part, like an actor in a television series. In this case, it’s more like a long running soap opera.

It reminds me of the movie, “Imitation of Life,” which was made in the 1930’s and remade in the early 1960’s. It is one of my all time favorite movies. In this story, two very poor women, one white and one black, both single parents of young girls, meet and become instant friends. The black woman is seeking shelter for her and her daughter. Both women are almost penniless, so the white woman agrees to have her move in as her housekeeper. The white woman becomes a famous actress. The black woman runs her home and helps raise her daughter. As the girls grow into their teenage years, their friendship takes a different direction due to the racial differences. The black woman’s daughter is very light and tries to pass in the white world as a white woman. She leaves home and starts her life as a white woman. Her mother keeps finding her because she loves her so much, even though the daughter begs her to stay away lest her secret be exposed.

The ending of the story always makes me sob no matter how many times I see the movie. The mother dies and the daughter gets there too late. She is crying for her mother, but she didn’t have time to say goodbye and I love you. It’s a great movie classic. Anyway, the young woman who “passes” as white lives in constant fear of being discovered, much like our gay husbands. She can act the part of a white woman, and even believe hard enough that she is a white woman, but her background will always come back to haunt her.

I can’t imagine having to play a role as someone who I’m not for more than a day. I can’t even conceive of living a lie day in and day out for years. But gay husbands do it all the time. And guess what? Since they are living a lie, we are living their lie with them, even though we may have no idea while it is happening.

Does this mean that our marriages are lies? Well, in a big way, I think so. We are reacting in our own lives to the actions of our husbands. They are acting in their own lives based on what their perceptions of being a “straight” husband should be. So when they get annoyed or irritated, we start looking to please by changing who we are and what we want to accommodate their happiness.

This translates into us doing things that we wouldn’t normally do or ways we wouldn’t necessarily want to be if we had a husband who loved us just for who we are instead of resenting who we aren’t. That’s why so many of us feel so betrayed when we learn our husbands are gay. The feeling that hurts so much is that we remolded ourselves to be “better wives” in the hopes that our husbands would love us more. Some of us “tiptoed” through life trying not to step down too hard fearing ridicule and criticism. Some of us gave up our own hopes and wants because we were too busy working at getting our husbands to love us better.

Since our husbands’ perceptions of us will never be true ones, their perception of how we are alienating our children from them is also not usually a real one but rather a distortion or justification in their own minds. I have heard from thousands of women who wish their husbands would take a more active part in the co-parenting of the children after the marriage is over. They long for some free time to breathe and wish their husbands would take the children for a while. They feel overwhelmed by their new responsibilities and lack of time to think. And in so many cases, the financial responsibilities that now are thrown our way choke us. Gay never seems to be the issue— responsibility is.

Too often, I have women write to me that their husbands claim there are “turning the kids against them,” when in fact, they themselves are turning the children against them. Children need to feel that they are just as important to their fathers after they leave as they were before. And when they start getting ignored because their fathers are into some other world that they have no idea about, the resentment starts taking place. The children do not need to hear a discouraging word from their mothers—they are watching the actions of their fathers and reacting all on their own.

When these fathers decide to find the time to be with their children, they expect the children will be happy just to see them. If they haven’t been around or active in the children’s lives, the children can become resentful or alienated without any help from their mothers. Children have their own feelings and perceptions that no one has to influence. I have rarely seen a wonderful father who is active in his children’s lives banned or alienated because he is gay.

Instead of these men having pity parties bemoaning their “angry, bitter wives” who are brainwashing their children, let them spend the time constructively figuring out what they can do to improve their children’s lives and repair the relationship. Being a good father shouldn’t have to be a sexuality issue. It’s a parenting issue. My children would have never resented their father’s sexuality because it was different; what they did resent was being made to feel that they weren’t as important as a hot date when their father broke his promises and commitments. These are the realities that we live, not the distortions.

So, the next time you read about a gay father’s rejection by his children due to his wife, think twice. Chances are his wife was very similar to us in nature. Chances are she wanted her husband to be more involved with the children than less involved. And chances are he screwed up big enough to make it easier to blame his wife rather than take the responsibility.

FEBRUARY 2003

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY TO ALL MY GIRLFRIENDS

It’s that painful time of the year again for many women who are presently married to gay men or still recovering from the aftermath of their gay husbands—namely, Valentine’s Day. I don’t forget the sting of that day that stung me so many times in subsequent years of my life while my heart was frozen in the “void” status. I was always a romantic that thrived on being in love. But through the years of my marriage to my gay husband and the recovery years that followed, it was like that Gershwin tune that goes, “They’re writing songs of love, but not for me….”

For those of you who are struggling through your marriages, Valentine’s Day always fall short of your expectations. Some of you have not lost your enthusiasm—you’ve made all the plans in your head for a fantasy that never comes true. You plan a romantic evening with a beautiful home cooked dinner of his favorite food. You psyche yourself up for that yearly hope that the hearts of the day will make your husband’s heart change and create an evening of passion. After the anticipation builds throughout the day, the reality becomes a good night peck on the cheek intermingled with the words, “I love you,” and off to bed he goes—meaning off to sleep, not sex.

I wish I would have known through those lonely years what I learned later in life. It would have lessened the stabbing pain at the end of the evening and the tears that left my pillowcase soggy. Here’s the message: Don’t lose your hope for romance or passion. They are both somewhere in you future. That’s the good news. That part of you doesn’t have to die at all, no matter how much your gay husband wishes it would. You see, to him, it’s a major pain in the neck. Every time you get those “touchy feely” urges to go touching and feeling him, it gives him the willies. Yikes! What’s the new excuse of the day going to be? How many headaches, toothaches, ulcers, depressions, and exhaustion excuses does he have to come up with? It’s such a nuisance.

The other good news is that there is someone out there waiting for your love. It’s not going to be your husband, so you can put that thought out of your mind. But your soul mate is out there looking for you. I believe that. I see it happen over and over again. It happened to me when I had written off the possibility. Women whose hearts have been deadened through the lack of nurturing by gay men who are not capable of giving it, one day have their hearts awakened again by straight men who know what it means to love equally and unconditionally. And no one is happier than me when I hear from a woman who is “born again” after being buried under for years. I cheer my girlfriends and applaud their courage in coming alive again. I tell them, “Go for it.”

I have watched the transition of some of my wonderful friends in our online support group this year. I have seen women who never felt that love would come their way once again feel their hearts flutter. Even if things didn’t work out, they didn’t retreat or give up. I tell them keep practicing for the real thing. Practice makes perfect. For most women, it’s been so long since they’ve been around straight men that they’ve forgotten what to do. That’s where the practice comes in.

If any of my readers would like to share their stories of feeling alive again, please send them to me so I can share them with the several thousand readers who need this kind of inspiration. As always, your stories can remain as anonymous as you like. To those of you still waiting to feel those flutters again, Happy Future Valentine’s Day to you. It’s always within your reach.