Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (16 page)

Does this mean you are not good mothers? Of course it doesn’t. It just means that you can’t be the mother you would be if you were happy and living with a supportive, loving husband. Or for that matter, you can live on your own and feel good about life because you aren’t living your husband’s lie anymore.

This confirms what I already know even more so. Living in a debilitating, limbo, or existing state of mind is not only harmful to you, but to your children as well. The longer you stay, the more time you lose that can’t be brought back. As scary as leaving is, it has to be less scary than staying stuck in a relationship where you are constantly feeling that your life is turned upside down and you have lost the sense of who you are.

And so my darling Jennifer, at the end of two years, I’m still hurting for you and for us. I’m sorry that your life was so consumed with the hardship and sadness of addiction. Hopefully you are finally at peace and in a much better place than you were when you were here. Know that I will always have an empty hole in my heart that no one else can ever fill. I love you.

MAY 2004

T
HE
I
SSUE OF
C
OMMUNICATION

The most important part of any relationship is communication. This seems to be something that is sorely lacking in straight/gay marriages namely because they are built on lies and deception. Of course, this is not to say that it isn’t missing in other kinds of relationships, regardless of sexuality issues, but it is even more so for ours. It’s bad enough when we read about straight relationships and the lack of communication because women are from Venus and men are from Mars as the saying goes. But in our marriages, women are from Venus and men are from the Twilight Zone.

I always say that for the most part, straight wives married to gay men are far above the standards of wifedom. You see, women married to straight men have a fighting chance of pleasing their husbands just based on who they are. But we can never please our husbands because of who we aren’t—namely men. But that doesn’t stop us from trying harder and harder to put that round peg into a square hole, does it? And it never ceases to amaze me how so many of us just can’t cry “uncle” and walk away from a no-win situation. We keep trying while we keep crying to figure out where we are going wrong long after we suspect or know the truth. Go figure.

It also saddens me to talk to women who just can’t get it. Even when they are faced with the truth, they keep trying even harder to be the perfect wife as if perfection will turn around the gene pool. And I can say that it’s not always their fault. Often it is the fault of the “confused” gay husband who just can’t let go of the straight world even when he is not confused over what stimulates his sexual organ. Again, go figure.

Excuse me from digressing from my original thought of communication. I have recently revisited a painful part of my past. You see, even when the years have passed, as in my case, and the marriage is long over, the scars still remain. In spite of all of my expertise and counseling skills in relationship issues, I still have to be my own best student. And though it pains me to have to discuss my weaknesses in a forum read by thousands of people, I am a great believer in people learning from each other. So I will proceed to talk about this with you.

One of the areas of self-improvement I work on constantly is selfesteem. This is a definite tie to my ability to communicate in a healthy way in my relationship with my soul mate, which will soon reach the ten-and-a-half year mark. I have found a man who truly loves me more than I could have imagined. And yet, I still have fears that if I ask for some additional emotional support when I need it, I will be rejected. This angers me because it is so typical of behavior by someone who feels she is unworthy, which I do not. So why do I have to keep trying so hard?

My years with my gay husband trained me to be an excellent partner for any man. I am fully seasoned as far as working my hardest to make someone love me like all of you are. And to be honest, I’ve put everything I have into this present relationship. I work hard to keep it exciting and new after all of these years. We’re middle-aged, but we feel like we’re young and in-love. Our relationship is solid. I trust this man with my life. It took years of working at it to get it this way. We have both learned to compromise. He works hard to meet my emotional needs because to me, that’s an important part of a relationship.

Well, to get to the point, several months ago, my soul mate didn’t meet my expectations concerning something that was very important to me. I was hurt and angry. It was something simple that required very little effort, and yet it was very significant to me. He blew it and he knew it. He knew it instinctively and also because I did tell him. I honestly think he felt worse than I did because the last thing he ever wants to do is hurt me. In the following two days, he tried his best to make up for it by buying me flowers and cards that said emotional things. And I acted like I forgave him even though in my heart, I was still hurting.

So life went on and all was well—or so I thought. But over the days and weeks that followed, something was amuck—with me, not him. I didn’t worry about it because I am pre-menopausal and expect to feel highs and lows. But the feelings I had were neither high nor low. There was a slow but gentle decline in my feelings for my soul mate. I went through the motions, but I wasn’t feeling them. My soul mate knew something was off, but I kept saying it was everything but what it was.

Although I made excuses for why this was happening, I was unable to discover the real reason until weeks later. As I started to see that nothing was improving and it started impacting on our intimacy, I realized that there really was a problem that I needed to work on. I did some mental backtracking to the time when my feelings started to shift, and voila—I finally figured it out. It all led back to the time when he screwed up weeks before. And although he tried his best to patch it up with words of regret and flowers, I hadn’t inwardly resolved the hurt.

I analyzed why I buried the hurt and it all comes back to the same thing--lack of self-esteem. Lack of feeling worthy enough to express my true feelings for fear he will back away or think that I am “nagging” or “suffocating” him. My gay ex-husband had me very conditioned not to ask for what he didn’t want to give me. It always started a fight and I always lost because he had better verbal damaging skills than I had. In fact, all these years later, he still knows how to trigger those buried feelings of inadequacy whenever we have an argument. He can shout me down and shut me up because I don’t like fighting on such a low level. I find it degrading.

My soul mate is not my ex-husband. He is kind and gentle, caring and giving. If I am upset about something, he takes it to heart. He has worked hard to change so he can meet my emotional needs. And 98 percent of the time, he does. It’s the two percent of the time that always gets to me. And most times, I let it slide because no one is perfect and I know he has tried so hard to make me feel good about myself and about us. But this one time was something of great importance to me, and the usual “I’m sorry” just didn’t cut it.

Once I recognized where the problem stemmed from, I sat down with him and said we need to talk because I finally understood what the problem was. And guess what? He didn’t laugh at me or blow me off. He wasn’t annoyed or angry. He listened and accepted my feelings, acknowledging that the hurt was deeper than we both realized. All was well again after that conversation. It was like a dark cloud being chased away and replaced by a lovely day.

It taught me a lesson, which is why I am sharing this with you. Through the years that our feelings are ignored or scowled at, we become conditioned not to ask because we would not receive. This behavior is easy to carry into our new relationships because we are still trying hard to please our new partners, subconsciously feeling that we failed with our gay ones. Every time we can’t express our feelings fearing rejection, we are giving in to the horrors of our past marriages. Not being able to assert yourself in a relationship only continues to build on your feelings of inadequacy even when you are sure that they are dead and buried. It doesn’t take much to revive them no matter how much you think you’ve left them behind.

Unless you internally believe that you are deserving of more, you will always settle for less. This is why I tell women who are leaving marriages with their gay husbands to wait before they jump into a new relationship with a man. You need time to relearn who you are and to work on the issues that can haunt you forever if you don’t face them. Coming out of relationships with there is a lack of trust, intimacy, self and sexual esteem, and communication takes time. If you don’t give yourself time to repair, chances are you will jump into the wrong relationship, or take a potentially good relationship and destroy it all on your own.

I have seen women who have met good men but destroyed the relationship because they haven’t resolved their own issues with their gay husbands. They transfer them into their new relationships and disaster occurs. We allow our feelings of inadequacy and mistrust to surface anytime there is a problem, rather than allowing ourselves to rationally work it out. That’s why we all need time and breathing space after our marriages to regroup and regenerate.

Now, this is not to say that you have to stay home and become a hermit like I did for many years. You can go out and have fun—and practice for your soul mate. But before you get in the relationship mode, make sure you work out kinks from your marriage. If you don’t, you are setting yourself up for a big fall. You may choose the wrong partner because you still haven’t restored your own sense of selfesteem. And one thing I’ve learned—no one can make you feel better about yourself except you. Only then can you find long-term happiness and fulfillment.

The most important thing to work on is overcoming your fear of asking for something that is important to you for fear of being rejected. We’ve tiptoed around our gay husbands, not feeling worthy because they could never love us the way we needed to be loved. In a new relationship, stand up for yourself and don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. That’s how communication in healthy relationships works. Don’t allow your insecurities of the past overtake your happiness in the future.

SEPTEMBER 2004

R
ECONFIRMING
M
Y
P
OSITION AND
M
Y
N
EW
E
PIPHANY

Since the “coming out” of Governor McGreevey in August, I have received an onslaught of media requests for information and hundreds of new letters from women in pain. I suppose I should be thankful that the Governor got “caught” in this situation, because it has focused some pretty powerful attention on the subject of straight/gay marriages.

For those of us who feel the pain of isolation and shame for being the wife of a gay man, there has been a sense of real jubilation as so many of you have stated to me in your letters this month. Sometimes after revealing the truth to others we get reactions from even our closest family members or friends like, “You must be imagining it— after all, you have children together” or “But he seems like such a great guy, how could that be?” to “He doesn’t look gay to me, are you sure?” and “He obviously wasn’t gay when he married you. What happened?” That last one, by the way, is not necessarily verbalized, but you see the person looking at you with that look of, “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MAKE HIM GAY?”

Ah, we straight wives have suffered the indignity of the ignorance of society for the same amount of years that gay people have been ostracized and condemned. This accounts to why we are “stuffed in the closet” next to our husbands. Shame. Blame. Insane. We know every emotional feeling that all comes down to the bottom line— INEPT.

But thanks to Governor McGreevey, people see us in a new light. We are now the sympathetic figure, much like the stoic Mrs. McGreevey who stood by her husband’s side while her husband made the announcement that their life together was a lie. Yes, when you are married to a gay man, your marriage is a lie. You can slice and dice it any way you like, but in the end, it’s still like scrambled eggs—beaten up and shattered.

A number of you wrote to me feeling assured that I’ve been in touch with Mrs. McGreevey to help her through this trauma. Others wrote to me asking me to send her a copy of my books. Still others told me to call her to offer her counseling. One writer: “Maybe you should invite her into our chatroom. She could really benefit from the support.” To all of you—the answer is NO. I have no clue how to reach Mrs. McGreevey. She hasn’t called me, and chances are, she’s not looking for me! However, by now, if she’s been reading the New Jersey newspapers about her husband, she will have found my name in the various interviews where I was quoted in case the day comes around that she needs support.

People ask me what I would say to Mrs. McGreevey if I have the opportunity. My answer is this: GET OUT. Run as fast as you can. No trappings or trimmings can compensate the agony you will feel in time from being married to a man that wants to make love to a man instead of you. No outside physical beauty will matter because you will start to feel ugly as rejection takes over your psyche. No amount of selfesteem will save you from the peel down facing you each day when you start second guessing what you were so sure was right but now makes no sense at all. Every time your gay husband tells you that you’re “Imagining things” or “thinking crazy,” you’ll really start wondering why these suspicious feelings keep gnawing at you in spite of his denials, beginning the process of self-confidence erosion.

I have expertise in straight/gay marriage issues. I’m not the only one out there who has experience in working with straight/gay couples, but among others in this arena, I think that I’m the one who makes the most sense. I cannot condone these relationships. I can’t put sophisticated labels on them like “Mixed Orientation Marriages” to try to make it sound better like gay men who label themselves as “bisexuals” in order to make their infidelity with men sound more palatable while they are married to a woman. I can’t dress it up and make it look more attractive to the public eye. AND I WON’T. I will call it what it is—A MISTAKE - a big mistake-or, to term my own phrase, a Mismarriage.