Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (27 page)

I spent this past year of what you call “gay husband recovery” getting to know myself again—the real me. This was the me that somehow was lost for all of those years trying to be someone he wanted, not someone who I wanted. I isolated myself from my family and friends over the years—or shall I say my ex-husband made sure I was isolated. I have spent this year reconnecting with people who can give me the support I need.

I have just recently gotten up the courage to start seeing a wonderful man that I met at a company in-service day. I have only been on five dates with him, but wow—I feel like a woman for the first time since I can remember. This is a man who thinks I am beautiful, interesting, and intelligent—all of the things I never heard from my husband after the first year of our marriage. I’m not ready for sex yet, but I love how he holds me, cuddles with me, and kisses me. In time, I will be ready to move to the next step. Even if he’s not my “soul mate” as you call it, I will do as you say—”practice, practice, practice” for when my soul mate does show up.

Bonnie, I know this is a long story, but my life has been so enriched through your help that I wanted to tell it the way it is. I am forever grateful that you brought light into my darkness, and hope to me when I was hopeless. I wanted to let your other readers know that the holidays are a painful reminder to all of us about what a family should be, but isn’t. I ended my marriage last year right after Christmas and right before the New Year. The thought of being alone of New Year’s Eve was very frightening—but not nearly as frightening as not being alone and being with a man who held me in such contempt. As you said, “You are alone even if he is there—if not more alone!” You were so right.

Waking up every morning without knots in my stomach and colitis and spasms during the day is just one of the many benefits of being on my own. I may work harder because of the financial situation and now being a single parent of two teenagers, but it’s worth every ounce of effort to work hard so I can be independent. And it doesn’t take me hours to fall asleep anymore! I can do it in minutes and have peaceful dreams about my future—not nightmares about my past.

Good luck to all of our women who have to make that tough decision to save themselves. Please know that your life will be enriched and feel fulfilled once you “take it back” as Bonnie says.

Happy holidays to all of you,

Catherine C., North Dakota

Thank you, Catherine, for sharing your story of hope. Let’s hang on to that hope and know that it is within your reach! Happy holidays to all of you, and a happier New Year filled with the dreams that you want that you can make happen if you start to believe in yourself again.

JANUARY 2008

S
EEING AND
B
ELIEVING

Happy New Year to the thousands of my world-wide support network members who faithfully read this monthly newsletter. Many of you write to me monthly to tell me how my words are your “lifeline” to get you through the dark days of your marriage and after-marriage mourning phases. I hope this is a year of peace, happiness, and love for you. When I say love, I mean love for you because that always seems to be the hardest obstacle to climb over. Women who marry gay men in general love too much, but their love is misplaced. Too many of our women don’t understand the concept that love should first be about yourself—and then you can function as a healthier human being making the right decisions instead of dwelling in the muck of smoke and mirrors. This is because too many of us focus all of our strength in trying to get our gay husbands to love us enough to be the kind of husbands we were hoping they would be, while our own feelings of value and self-worth evaporate until they disappear. We focus so much of our own time and energies on being “detectives” and trying to “prove” or “validate” what we already know, fearing people will accuse us of making up this information. Add to that a splash of strong denial by our gay husbands every time we ask, and it’s a recipe for even stronger self-doubt in our ability to see what is sitting right in front of us.

There are still numbers of women who write to me each month stating that they are afraid of ending a marriage because they don’t have enough proof of homosexuality against their husbands. What is enough proof? For some women, it will be nothing short of walking in and seeing their husbands engaged in hardcore male sex. Obviously, finding websites, emails, cell phone bills, and credit card bills still doesn’t give them the proof they need. All their husbands have to do is say, “I was curious,” or “I love you too much to ever act on it,” and their wives feel redemption from the whole sordid mess. Then they write to me to tell me that they have to give it another chance because their husbands are “trying” to change things around.

Please! Give me a break. If you’ve read the huge mounds of newsletters I send to each and every woman who wants the past editions as well as every new one, you have to know that this problem doesn’t go away—it just hides for a while in a bigger and better way. Once your gay husband knows you are on to him, he finds new ways to keep you from learning the truth. He gets smarter and wiser. He learns how to hide his evidence better. And you, the loving, trusting wife want to believe that some miracle has occurred—at least at first. Then he reaches his comfort zone of your lull back into denial and he says a big “Whew!” He’s safe again. Eventually when he lets his guard down, that’s when I hear from you again. This time, you’re SMARTER AND WISER. You know that old saying—”hit me once, shame on you—hit me twice, shame on me.” Sometimes that second blow is what does it.

Women need to learn that gay isn’t a choice—it’s not a lifestyle. Just because your husband doesn’t hang out in gay bars or participate in gay pride parades doesn’t mean he isn’t gay. Gay men can be straight looking, straight acting, and some even homophobic just to throw you off kilter. They think that if they protest enough, this will allay your fears. And “Whew!” again. It generally works!

MARCH 2008

L
EARNING TO
L
OVE
Y
OURSELF
—G
REATEST
L
OVE OF
A
LL

Last month, I wrote about finding new love after a disastrous marriage. My dear friend, Melody, shared her love story with you about finding true love after the horrific end of her marriage of 25 years when her husband was discovered soliciting a policeman in the park. When Melody first came to me, she was shattered. But she was determined to salvage the good years left in her life and start a new chapter. I just heard from Melody following her new marriage and honeymoon. This made my own heart feel so, so good. Nothing makes me happier then when a woman can take back her life and salvage it.

That being said, I did hear from a few of you who nicely reminded me that you don’t have to find a man to have happiness in your life. Sour grapes? No not at all. It’s the truth. Many of our women have found happiness on their own and don’t feel the need the need to have a man in their lives to make them happy. Is this possible? Of course it is.

I remember how I felt in those early years following the break-up of my own marriage. Yes, I was wounded emotionally. The thought of meeting a man was my very last thought. I had to put my own life together before thinking about a man. I had two little children to raise, college to attend, a career to put in place, and somehow find a way to rediscover who I was before my marriage. A man in the mix at that point didn’t make any sense to me.

I spent the next 11 years of my life without a man. Guess what? I was quite happy and fulfilled. I didn’t feel as if I was missing anything by not being in a relationship. I wasn’t angry or bitter against relationships or men. I was just happy to be on my own. I had spent most of my life up until that point under the false illusion that I needed a man to validate my existence. I was a child of the 50’s who grew up on the Cinderella story. I was expecting Prince Charming to enter my life and bring me my happiness on a silver platter. As each of my princes seemed to revert into toads, I realized it was not going to be easy. This, however, didn’t stop me from trying, because in my immature mind, I truly believed that BEING LOVED BY SOMEONE WAS BETTER THAN NOT BEING LOVED BY ANYONE. And guess what? A lot of you when you’re honest with yourself will admit the same thing.

I did love my ex-husbands. Yes, husbands with an “s” meaning more than one. I didn’t enter into marriage just to be married. I was in love, or as my loving departed mother used to tell me, “I was in love with love.” Maybe, if I’m honest about it. I have always been a romanticist. I do love being in love, but it took me many years and hard knocks to learn that love is a two way street. I don’t have to love someone who can’t love me back or who can’t meet my emotional, intimate, and sexual needs. In my earlier relationships, that’s what I did. I did most of the loving, and the men did most of the taking. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t ready to find love again UNTIL I learned to love ME first.

This was a process. It didn’t happen overnight—it took years. First, I had to learn who I really was, not who I had become in the shadow of the men who overpowered me. I had lost myself in my constant need to make them love me by becoming the woman I thought THEY wanted me to be—not whom I wanted to be. And after I found myself, I had to learn to LOVE myself. I had to take those words from the song “The Greatest Love of All” which states: Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.” Those are powerful words when you really think about them.

Is loving yourself a selfish act? No. Quite the opposite. It’s the most unselfish act. You can’t truly love someone else in a meaningful way if you don’t love yourself enough to have the expectations of what love should be. If you love someone more than yourself, your needs are not taken care of. That’s when you become needy and codependent and willing to stay in a relationship that is never going to give you the satisfaction you deserve.

Don’t confuse loving yourself with being self-absorbed. It took me nearly half a decade to love myself and believe that I was worthy of love in a positive way rather than a negative way. And if you do enter into a relationship, loving yourself gives you the ability to communicate your needs rather than to feel crushed when your partner isn’t meeting them because you are afraid to tell him what is bothering you. Most of us are coming out of marriages where we were shut down or degraded when we expressed our feelings of loneliness in the relationship. How many times have you told me that you were more lonely living with your husbands than without them?

If you learn to love yourself, you can find the peace of mind of living on your own. Not every woman has the same needs. Not every woman wants the same thing. And guess what? That’s fine! The most important thing is for you to be happy with YOU—whether it’s on your own or in a new relationship.

MAY 2008

B
UT
Y
OU
M
UST
H
AVE
K
NOWN
….

A few weeks ago, my support network member Shawne was on Dr. Phil with her ex-husband on a show talking about marital problems. The couple was telling the story of their marriage and how homosexuality was the cause for the problems they were having. Since the show aired, the couple has split, but they were together when they taped it last year on their way out of it.

I’m not a Dr. Phil watcher, but I made sure to watch Shawne on that day. Although Dr. Phil gave the couple the correct advice in dissolving the marriage, he said something else that really angered me. He was admonishing Shawne for not admitting she knew about her husband’s homosexuality before the marriage. After all, he had so many “obvious” characteristics that should have convinced her. So on some level, she needed to accept responsibility.

Okay, let me get ill. How sick am I of hearing that “on some level, we must have known”? It feeds into all of our already shattered selfesteem when people confront us on this. So let me ask you this. Are there really signs we should have seen but didn’t? Does it mean that a man who listens to you and cares about what you have to say is gay? How about a man who likes to shop? Or a man who likes the same movies you do? Is every man who has an eye for decorating a queer guy with a queer eye? Does that mean that straight men don’t ever like decorating? And how about the men who cook? Is every male chef gay?

I can guarantee you that almost all gay men who marry us had not come to terms with who they are when they marry us. They didn’t believe they were gay, so who were we to challenge that? They loved us, made plans to spend their lives with us, have children with us, and do all the same things that straight men do. Some of these husbands are our best friends which is why it’s so difficult to end many of these marriages. It’s not like you’ve been living with the “enemy” from the beginning. You were often living with a man who was your best friend. And marriage is supposed to be about living with your best friend— just not your gay best friend which is why the marriage fails.

The point is that there is no way for us to anticipate that we are marrying a gay husband. Trust me, if we did, we wouldn’t do it in almost all cases. I say almost because there will always be women who are trying to change men because they are young and confused. Or older and confused. Or even old enough to know better and confused. But I say that 95% of us go into this marriage with the hopes and dreams of living the rest of our lives with a straight man, not a gay man. For people to assume that on some level “we should have known” is truly insulting and upsetting. But, come to think of it, that’s why our latest book is titled “How I Made My Husband Gay.” People think we can do magic tricks as well!

JUNE 2008

T
HE
“P” W
ORD

As my long time readers know, “DENIAL” is a very powerful thing. That’s why so many of our women linger in relationships long after they should—seeking the “TRUTH” while wasting years of their lives that can never be returned. I’m not quite sure why so many of the women who come from me have to have “POSITIVE” proof before taking action to end their marriages to gay men. I always give them my standard line of, “Look for the symptoms, and you’ll eventually find the disease bringing toxicity to your marriage,” or “Look for the clues, and you’ll evidentially find the evidence.” I try to relate it to medical and legal terminology to make it simple.