Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (18 page)

This is not the funny card I was going to send, but instead one the
color of sunshine, the sun bringing to mind that whatever happens to
people, joys, tears, health, sickness, weddings, or divorce, the sun
always rises bringing new life, spirit, and vitality to the world.
Remembering the words, “On This Joyous Occasion” from the first
time, those occasions change, and we do the best we can to look
ahead to brighter days and happier times. Divorce is a finality and a
conclusion to a mistake. You should be proud that you brought this to
an end from a legal standpoint and a morale standpoint. Your children
will someday admire your decision, as to not divorce but know of his
life would lower their feelings of strength they see in you and count on
for their future. Someday, they may have to accept his failings but
never your weakness. My life, in limbo all these years to suit your
father’s fancy, has been unproductive, restrictive, and foolish on my
part. Now it is too late to recapture my years, but I’m comforted in the
fact that you face a free new road. Enjoy your freedom and strength. I
am proud of you always.

Love Mommie.

My mother was a woman of few written words. That was why I was so overwhelmed when I received this card with pictures of rainbows and sunshine. Re-reading it all these years later reinforces for me how lucky I was to have such a wonderful mother. That’s why I feel so saddened when I get letters from some of you who tell me how your mothers don’t support you or your decision to leave your gay husbands. It’s not bad enough that we have to travel through a maze of confusion and hurt, but to not have family support with this makes it so much more difficult.

So, that’s why I wanted you to read the words my mother told me. In case your families don’t give you the support you need, hang on to the words of my mother, because they were written to me, but I’m sending them to you for support.

DECEMBER 2004

O
NE
M
ORE
G
AY
H
USBAND
C
LASSIFICATION

Several years ago when I coined the phrase
“Limbo Man
,
”
women from all over the world congratulated me on finding a way to describe those men who were caught in between two worlds. These are men who are emotionally straight and physically gay who hover in between the two worlds never really feeling comfortable in either one. You see, these men pass as “Bisexuals” to the outside world. They have them convinced themselves and sometimes their wives that they could actually be husbands to their wives and lovers to other men. Sad to say, there are some women who buy into this concept—but NOT MY WOMEN! There are women who belong to other groups that get give and get support to keep these mismarriages (my term for marriages of mistake) in tact, and, in fact, expect the woman to be happy living this way. But—NOT MY WOMEN! My women know that there is no way in hell that they are going to be happy in these marriages. They may be temporarily stuck due to circumstances—but they are not doomed forever.

Then after that, I realized there is another category of gay husband and I gave him a new terminology –”
The Straight Gay
Man.”
This is a gay man who parades in the skin of a straight one, never admitting to himself that he can possibility be gay because he’s so straight. In fact, he’s so straight that he’ll make fun of gay people, imitating their stereotypical effeminate walk and talk. He’ll refer to gay people as “faggots” and other derogatory terms to really throw you offtrack because in his heart, he knows it isn’t him, when it fact, it is his sense of self-hatred that pushes him to talk that way. This is the kind of man who doesn’t have gay relationships, but rather sexual encounters only. Anonymous sexual encounters for the most part that won’t follow him back to his comfortable house for fear of being “misunderstood.” After all, he’s in denial anyway. He blames you for all of your unhappiness in your marriage—”You’re the one who isn’t happy—I’m perfectly happy in this marriage.” And this is the man that will definitely remarry if you leave him. He’ll be happy to make the life of some other “unsuspecting” woman just as miserable as he is making you. Besides, he’s trying to make you think you’re crazy, so even if you think of revealing any of this to his next wife, DON’T BOTHER. She already thinks you were the cause of all of the problems in his marriage with you. He’s convinced her. Trust me on this.

And recently it dawned on me that there is a third kind of gay husband. I have named him the
“Have Your Cake and Eat It Too”
gay husband. This is the man who knows he is gay, knows that you know he is gay even though he won’t admit it exactly, and he’ll deny it after he lets it slip out because he doesn’t really care what you think. You’re stuck with him, and if you decide to ditch him, well, you’re the bitch. How dare you?

These guys don’t dare reveal their sexuality to the public or to their families. They are not like the Limbo Men who are really stuck in between both worlds and never happy totally in either one thinking that they are “bisexual when in fact they are gay. They are not like the Straight Gay Men because they don’t live in a sense of denial. They are a class unto themselves.

These are the men I dislike the most because they feel they have you where they want you—stranded in “Never Never Land.” You may as well join the Lost Boys because you will be feeling lost. Well, actually, you may as well take over the role as Wendy because you will be the mother to this man who won’t grow up. Wife? Let’s not be ridiculous. You will be his “caretaker.” He won’t be a husband to you because a real husband would be there for you emotionally, physically, and sexually. He’ll be there physically taking up space in your life, but forget emotional and sexual. Knock, knock—nobody’s there.

The Have Your Cake and Eat It Too gay husband will leave just enough information and clues around to let you know he is gay. He’ll get caught in some way or another at least once. Then he’ll tell you it was a mistake. He really loves you. And you’re not going to break up a perfectly good marriage for one little indiscretion, are you? Of course not. And he’s remorseful for a few days or weeks. He shapes up temporarily sometimes to be a model husband—acting like he cares about your emotional feelings and even approaches you physically for probably the best sex to date. But it’s a temporary stopgap or as I call it, the false illusion of a second honeymoon. It fades as fast as the first honeymoon. And then you are left with a pocketful of doubts that he keeps reinforcing in odd little ways. These are they guys who need to remind you over and over and over again how inadequate you are as a wife, mother, woman, human being, worker, etc. By knocking you down a notch on a regular basis, in time you start believing it. These guys perfect their style of beating the hell out of your sense of self-esteem and self-worth. It’s not necessarily by yelling and screaming, it’s by their utter looks of disapproval or needling comments and remarks that make you feel stupid. Mission accomplished. On some level they think you really are stupid. After all, you know they are gay and yet you stay married to them. How smart is that? Well, since you’re not that smart anyway, why not knock you around some more. That’s what these guys think. Urgh. That’s my sound of throat gurgling while growling at the same time.

These are the men who are so controlling that they make you fearful of finding any support or telling anyone about their homosexuality. And these are the guys who will blame you when you bring it up. You are the cause of their gay indiscretions because you have failed as a wife. And some of you are convinced that there’s a strand of truth in those accusations because you have been stripped of who you were before the marriage. You have become a dishrag, much like I was during my marriage. I was slumped over looking like one emotionally. These are the wives that have to fight so hard to regain any sense of self in hopes of someday being free. But it can happen and it does happen so you can’t give up hope. If you are married to a Have Your Cake and Eat It Too gay man, please grab support wherever you can get it. You’re going to need it. That’s why people have generously volunteered to be pain pals and why we have online support chat twice a week. Help is always there. Just ask!

FEBRUARY 2005

H
APPY
V
ALENTINE
’
S
D
AY TO
M
Y
R
EADERS

I’d like to wish all of my readers a Happy Valentine’s Day, even though this message is a few days late. Valentine’s Day is traditionally a day of love for people, and of course, without clouding the issue, a day of love for lovers. While so many of you are living in the mist of confusion and depression, it’s hard to feel happy about a day that makes you feel cheated in a big way. It is difficult to find kind and loving words to say to a man who is living his lie with you on a daily basis. For those of you who have recently moved on, you are feeling a sense of hopelessness that all of us feel when we first leave our marriages. Then there are those of us who have lived past the black hole days and life has resumed—better than ever. We can once again appreciate the meaning of this day and give hope to others who need inspiration.

During my eleven-year exile away from men following my marriage, I looked at Valentine’s Day differently. I tried to take the “romance” aspect out of it and just put the love into it. I looked to my loved ones like my children and family, as well as my friends. I started enjoying it much more than when I was living with my gay husband and wondering who his real valentine was going to be on that day— because it never was me. That’s not to say that he didn’t give me flowers or jewelry, but the love and romance was not there. And usually, he wasn’t there either, so I knew he was with someone else. This made the gifts seem very trivial in comparison to the pain.

One of life’s great lessons to me is that the most important person to receive love from is YOU. This means that you need to find yourself again or the person you were before you married your gay husband. Most of us lose ourselves in our marriages to our gay husbands because we are trying so hard to be who we are not, just like they are trying to be who they are not. I know that may hurt to hear, but it’s the truth. When you feel like a failure in a marriage on an ongoing basis, you make every adjustment that you can to make to try to keep making your husband want you, because you personalize the fact that he is not responding to you as a man should. And for most of us, we look for reasons to blame ourselves rather than find fault with our husbands, especially when they throw us some loving crumbs. The crumbs are the words with no back up with the action. And the longer you stay in these marriages, the more you realize the true meaning of the words, “Actions speak louder than words.” That’s because we have no action—only a lot of lip service filled with excuses or a finger pointing in our direction placing the blame.

So my friends, wish yourselves a happy Valentine’s Day with a pledge to work on loving yourself better and harder so that some day, you’ll be free of the unhappiness you feel when this day comes around. From a woman who knows, there is life after gay husband, the best is yet to come!

L
IVING IN THE
D
ISCOMFORT
Z
ONE

I have approximately 7,000 people who read my newsletters each month. It is always rewarding to me when I have people write to me telling me that for the first time, things that were incomprehensible finally make sense. I have women who are in all stages of life with a gay husband—those who just find out, those who have known for a while, those who are planning their futures to be free, those who are “stuck” due to numerous circumstances due to health, those who can’t walk away because of finances, and those who are “just there” because they are “just there.” No real reason so they say—just afraid to find out where somewhere else will be.

Now, I don’t like to alienate people who are taking time to read my words. I always hope that when they are ready, they’ll know that there is someone out there who is trying to be their advocate. So I try not to push or probe too hard when I see women who are sitting on the edge of the fence hoping to fall over to the other side with gentle nodding. But every now and then a woman in pain makes a comment to me that I feel so shaken by that it forces me to comment.

Recently, I was chatting with a woman who was telling me about the painful existence she was living with her gay husband. When I asked her why she is staying in an abusive situation, this was the answer she gave me:

I am comfortable living in the discomfort because this is the way it has always been.

Ouch. That hurt. That’s probably the saddest statement I’ve ever heard. It’s like that saying, “Is it better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all?” So let me see if I can rephrase this. “Is it better to have never been happy in your marriage than to have been happy and then made miserable when the news about your gay husband happens?” Or, “Is it better not to be happy through your whole marriage so you won’t be disappointed when you remain unhappy throughout the years?” I’m not sure of the right way to phrase it, but it all ends up the same. Some women stay because they are so used to just staying and accept that this is what life has to offer.

Why does this sadden me so much? Women who don’t remember what life was like without this stress or unhappiness lose sight of what life can be like again when they walk away from it. Unlike those who are temporarily or even permanently stuck due to circumstances beyond their control, these are women who are stuck because they don’t know what it’s like to be “unstuck.” They don’t feel the sense of “urgency” to get up and go for something better because they have forgotten, or in some cases, never knew any life that was better. They know something is wrong, but they don’t have a need to fix it. They accept it because life without any substantial meaning has become acceptable to them. And this is what really what saddens me.