I just came across the blog Gay Husbands, Straight Wives that takes an unapologetically negative tone in describing gay men who marry women. Some of it seems fair and true, other parts seem biased and heavily clouded by the negative experience of a mixed-orientation marriage that ended in disaster.
My wife and I are miserable right now. She wants to stay married but keeps telling people that I deceived her when we got married and that she deserves a decision about whether to plan on spending her life with me. None of this is new to anyone who has read my blog.
What is new is that reading this blog has helped me become aware of the ways that I am continually damaging my wife in ways that are seemingly beyond my control. I have come to realize that I take out a lot of anger and frustration on her that she does not deserve. I don't want to do this anymore but don't know if any amount of counselling, faith, and self-sacrifice will remedy a problem that simply would not exist in a normal heterosexual relationship.
help . . .
It sounds like your wife is waiting for YOU to make THE decision about divorcing. If you are both miserable, maybe it is time to move on, let her be free to find a man who is not gay, and you move on, too. I know, as a gay woman who married a straight man, I felt like I would rather be dead than stay married, so I was the one who choose to pull the plug on the marriage. I have never regretted staying alive and leaving it. It was better fit both of us and I am so glad I did not being a child into that situation.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your decisions. I know this is a hard time for you. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet and make a decision, one way or the other, finally. Love to you and your family.
It sounds like your wife is waiting for YOU to make THE decision about divorcing. If you are both miserable, maybe it is time to move on, let her be free to find a man who is not gay, and you move on, too. I know, as a gay woman who married a straight man, I felt like I would rather be dead than stay married, so I was the one who choose to pull the plug on the marriage. I have never regretted staying alive and leaving it. It was better fit both of us and I am so glad I did not being a child into that situation.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your decisions. I know this is a hard time for you. Maybe it is time to bite the bullet and make a decision, one way or the other, finally. Love to you and your family.
I have a married couple friend, and she is always upset at him because she felt like he lied about his financial affairs before they were married. It has been a few number of years since it happened, but she still brings it up from time to time and is bitter about it. This type of bitterness, even though it is much more deep than just financial issues, can eat a person and the relationship alive. What got me and my wife through it was two things, first, that she understands that I wasn't being deceptive to just her, but to myself as well, and that I didn't do it with maliciousness, but with the honest belief that getting married would fix everything. The second was us going to a marriage counselor that wasn't LDS, but that did understand our situation and did not have an agenda one way or the other, but truly cared about giving us the help we needed to make the right decision for us.
ReplyDeleteBe careful with that GHSW site, those people have had some bad situations and the founder does have beliefs that no gay man can be successfully married to a straight woman. I don't believe in absolutes, I do believe there are some gay married men who cannot be married to straight women, but there are also those who do, and are successful at it, it all depends on BOTH people in the relationship. Maybe that it the key, both of you need to come to the same conclusion and work towards it together, whatever the decision is.
BSH,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this. Much of what you say here and in your other posts really resonates with me. For example, I can really relate to this: "She wants to stay married but keeps telling people that I deceived her when we got married and that she deserves a decision about whether to plan on spending her life with me."
My wife frequently plays variations of that theme. I certainly understand where she is coming from, but I also find it guilt-inducing and strangely paralyzing.
Is there such a thing as a 'normal heterosexual relationship'? No relationship is perfect. I think we all are damaged by and also damage those we love. But I also know that we build each other in many ways. In every relationship you have to evaluate what is happening the most, damage or building, and determine if the good outweighs the bad. If you see value in the relationship, build on that and try to forgive when things are difficult. At the end of the day you shape your life. In every situation you will find those who will tell you something is impossible. Those who change the world and live authentic lives don't listen to those negative voices, but they do what they know will work for them.
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