Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (17 page)

Here’s the interesting thing. We all make mistakes. It’s part of being human. When gay men marry their wives, I believe there is no ill intent in almost all of the cases. Our gay husbands don’t marry us because they want to be gay and lead secret lives. They marry us hoping that they will be straight. And yes, some of them have no clue because some men’s gay feelings don’t surface until they are in their 20’s, 30’s or even 40’s. And no, not all gay men knew something was different or wrong when they married us. Some knew—some didn’t. And for those who knew, well, they hoped against hope that those feelings would vanish if they loved us enough. Most of them tried— and tried very hard. But it doesn’t work. It can’t work. As the old saying goes, you can’t shove a square peg into a round hole. In the case of gay husbands and straight wives, one or the other will try to shove those pegs and holes into each other as if by forcing or by pushing hard enough, it will make them fit. All you end up with is two bashed pieces, broken, splintered and whittled away.

To err is human. To keep the mistake going is inhumane. You need to stand up to the error and correct it as quickly as possible. The longer you stay, the harder it becomes to leave. Now some of you would think that the longer you stay, the more disgusted you’ll become and the easier it will be to leave. That is not the way it works. The longer you stay, the less confidence you have in yourself and this makes it more difficult to leave. The longer you stay the more comfortable you become with physical surroundings versus a healthy mental state so you are willing to sacrifice happiness for material security. The older you get, the more difficult it gets to start over. The longer you stay, the more of your life you throw away.

Sometimes women feel trapped in their marriages. I understand. I am not without sympathy and understanding. But even when you’re trapped physically, it doesn’t mean you have to be trapped emotionally or mentally. You can’t lose sight of getting out of your marriage at some point of your life. Otherwise, you’ve given up hope and surrendered. This is sad. It’s also bad. It means that you’ve settled for living in the land of the zombies. You’ve accepted the fact that you’re going to exist to please everyone but yourself. You’re like a Stepford Wife. Mechanical. Yuck. This is why I refuse to give support to women who write to me for ways to stay in their marriage. I refer them elsewhere—to the groups that work with “Mixed Orientation Marriages”---after I explain to them that they are wasting valuable years of their life.

I have many women say to me that they can’t wait until they have the proof they need to confirm their husbands’ homosexuality. They hang in there day after day, watching, waiting, checking pockets, wallets, cell phone bills, computers, websites, and anything else you can imagine. Still—no proof. To those of you who are spending years in a loveless, sexless marriage, you need not wait any longer. You have your proof. Straight men want sex. It’s their nature. And when they go through personal stuff that lowers the libido, the good news is that it returns when the problem subsides. Gay men just reject you. Period. They don’t want to make love to you. They do it because they think they “have to” to keep up their illusion of straight. And in time, they just stop doing it and turn it around to make you feel like you’re the “abnormal nymphomaniac.”

I had this new epiphany while I was in my Sunday chatroom a few weeks ago. I don’t remember what made this new point so very clear to me. I have an epiphany every few years. The last one I had was in 2001 when my friend Jay inspired me with his words to realize that we could have all been very different women if we were married to straight men who nurtured, encouraged, and inspired us with love that gay men are not able to give us. We have no idea what we could have achieved if we hadn’t spent years becoming prisoners of our own insecurities.

Now, I realized why I can’t encourage women to stay with their gay husbands under any circumstances. Here is my new epiphany: If a woman was living with a straight man who was physically or emotionally abusing her, I would never tell her to stay in that relationship and try to work it out when I knew there was no way it was going to change because her husband could not change. Living with a gay husband is living in an abusive situation. No matter how nice your gay husband is, knowing that he wants to be with a man and not you is emotionally abusive. And I refuse to condone this situation because it would make me irresponsible. This is not to say that your gay husband is intentionally abusive—but the whole situation is abusive.

I have advocated and strongly encourage couples to co-parent their children from separate homes. I have also said that people can make all kinds of financial readjustments in their lives even if they have to live without so many materialistic objects. But peace of mind and sense of worth is something you cannot achieve when living with a gay man. Period.

As I embark on my 53rd year of my life (September 26), I felt the need to relay that message to you, my readers. Some of us have been together for a long time forming a deep friendship over the years. Others of you keep in touch with me through occasional emails letting me know how your life is progressing. Some of you have moved on to new wonderful lives; others of you are still struggling to find the way through the Alice in Wonderland mirror of twisted, upsidedown life. But for those of you who are physically stuck, you’re not giving up. You write to me letting me know that these newsletters give you the courage to hang in and think ahead.

I also needed to restate these thoughts because this summer, I’ve had some real scary times with health issues. Thankfully, I’m on the mend, but it made me realize how valuable every day of life really is. It made me think about how lucky I am to be free of the mistake that I made 26 years ago. I am also so blessed to have found a soul mate who makes me feel good about myself throughout my own years of weight struggle. See, a gay man would find fault with the looks of Mrs. McGreevey. But my straight lover finds me beautiful even though I’ve gained 80 pounds in 10 years. More of me to love, he says! Well, now I’m working on less of me to love so I’ll be around for him to love!

And so my dear women, please do what you need to do and salvage the years you have ahead. We are given one chance at life, and every precious day you stay in a debilitating situation is another day that can’t be taken back. Every day that you live in your unhappy marriage is another day lost that can’t be returned to you. Start preparing to take back your life!

OCTOBER 2004

L
IVING IN
F
EAR OF
B
EING
D
ISCOVERED

I bet you’re thinking that I am going to write about your gay husband and his fear of being discovered, right? Wrong. I’m going to talk about you—the straight wife. And I’m going to talk about a situation that may hurt some of you to think about, but we need to discuss it so that you will stop feeling worse about yourself and this situation than you already do. And this does NOT apply to many of our sisters in pain, but it does apply to enough of you to compel me to write about it. So for those of you whom it doesn’t apply to, just read along for the ride.

The complexity of straight/gay marriages has enough twists and turns just by the nature of what they are—distortions of life. We spend years trying to unravel all of the threads of this situation, thinking to ourselves, “Where did we go wrong?” Sometimes thinking about where we went wrong stops us from thinking about something else that we have conveniently tucked away in our subconscious—namely, WE ALWAYS KNEW. Ouch. That one really hurts.

Truth be known—some women suspected or knew something ahead of time. There is no shame in this—NONE WHATSOEVER. Why? Even if we knew it, we DID NOT UNDERSTAND IT. I would stake my reputation on the fact that less than ONE PERCENT of women who know or suspect their husbands are gay want to marry a gay man. Yes, there is always an exception to a rule, but the rule holds pretty steady. For that rare woman who has issues with sexuality and prefers to remain mostly celibate because it is meeting an emotional need rather than a physical one, you are the odd woman out here. The rest of us are women who want straight husbands. And if we had any clue that our husbands were “bisexual” or “gay” before we married them, we didn’t think they really were, but rather they had one or two same sex experiences. According to sex experts across America, a little dabbling in same relationships is not that uncommon and DOES NOT define sexuality or rather homosexuality. WHATEVER.

We were so sure. We were so sure that even if we knew there were inklings or attractions they would go away because we would love our husbands enough to help them overcome those fleeting feelings. We thought those feelings were similar to indigestion, which can be resolved with a bubbling pill every time it attacks your stomach. In time, we found out this was not the case. The harder we loved our gay husbands, the more “trapped” they felt. Our love started to strangle them and they started to strike back at us. And even though it’s difficult to be nasty to someone who is so good to you, it didn’t stop our husbands from the barrage of mental haranguing. These men don’t want to be there, and every day that they look at you becomes a painful reminder of their unhappiness, no matter how hard you work to make them happy.

Most of us are raised with the concept that homosexual means “same sex.” We see gay people everywhere in the media—television, movies, magazines, and radio. We think that this is what gay people are: funny caricatures of men with either extreme distortions in their walk and talk, or little effeminate tones. Those are the gay men that are easy to spot. Those, for the most part, are not the “marrying kind.” It’s the variety of men that we marry that no one ever suspects. Well, for the most part, we don’t suspect. But sometimes we do suspect. Sometimes it’s a subtle clue or hint. It could be a lingering look, a slip of the tongue, or an insinuation to something sinister in the past.

But when we fall in love with someone, a person’s past seems to be just that—his past. We believe that if we are the present, we will be the future. And our husbands, with their trails of “I love yous” following every step they take, are most convincing. Marriage is the ultimate commitment. Surely if a man wants to make a LIFETIME commitment and cement it in front of God and everyone in a long line of family and friends, why would we think that he is gay? After all, the vows state forever and ever, not just for a number years until the gay thing takes over.

I know that I’ve addressed this in the past, but I felt the need to bring it up again. This stumbling block seems to stop women from moving on to new relationships. It seems that some of you fear that if you made the mistake once, you’ll make it again. I’m not saying people haven’t made this mistake twice, but it is so, so rare. Most women learn from this experience what to look for in a new relationship—namely passionate sex—and won’t settle for someone who wants to be “respectful.” We all know what that sense of “respect” really means!

NOVEMBER 2004

W
ORDS
M
Y
M
OTHER
T
OLD
M
E

This was a card from my mother who sent it to me nearly 17 years ago following my divorce decree. I thought for sure the card was gone with the wind so to speak, but there it was, carefully hidden away inside a file box that I wouldn’t have ever looked in if Jay hadn’t inspired me to do so.

My mother passed away in April of 2000 from lung cancer at the age of 67. She was the most beautiful of women both inside and outside. My mother was my best advocate throughout my life. She encouraged me no matter how much she may have disagreed with my decisions. I was the oldest of five children, so I had the benefit of spending the most years with my mother, developing a close a loving adult relationship with her after a rocky relationship throughout adolescence. I always walked to the beat of a different drum, which can be quite taxing to those who are walking on a straight line. But over time, my mother came to appreciate our differences and never failed to supply whatever material help or emotional support I needed in the difficult years of being a single parent after the breakup with my gay husband.

My mother’s life was not an easy one. As I always tell my readers, gay husbands do not have a monopoly on irresponsibility. There are multitudes of straight men who are equally if not more irresponsible— my father standing high in the ranks. My father left my mother walking away from five children, bankrupting his business, moving 3,000 miles away, and leaving us virtually homeless while he lived next to Beverly Hills with all the luxuries life has to offer. Back in the 1960’s, the courts were not very responsive to child support and my mother lacked the resources to fight my father in the other end of the country. And so my mother began a struggle to survive and feed us. They were very bad years, but she had a great sense of inner strength. With nothing more than a high school diploma, no viable work experience, and five children, my mother went to work as a typist for $75.00 a week, and struggled to jump over every possible obstacle life presented. I was 16, but my sisters were babies—2, 4, and 6 years old. I was rebellious and clashing and always on my own page. And yet, my mother was able to overcome whatever adversity was thrown her way. She battled back, educated herself in the world of business, and in time, became a highly respected marketing manager for a major insurance company, spending her last working years in the World Trade Center in New York. When people ask me where I get my strength, I tell them from MY MOTHER. She was my role model to look up to and emulate.

My father tortured my mother long after he walked out on her. He purposely delayed getting a divorce for years playing all kinds of psychological warfare games with her. One day, many years later when he decided to get remarried, he gave her the divorce. I mention this so you’ll understand the context of the words she wrote to me. Here are those words:

Dearest Bonnie