BONNIE KAYE'S STRAIGHT TALK
August 2016 Volume 17,
Issue 178
STRAIGHT WIVES MATTER
We are
living in a world that revolves around "political correctness." Over
the past ten years, I have watched this
develop and to some degree get it and agree with it. I agree that people need
to be accepted for who they are. I agree that it is unkind to mock people
because of how they look. And I agree that no one should have to live in a world
feeling uncomfortable or feel "left out." So yes, political
correctness has certainly made some major inroads.
I have to
admit I don't understand all of these inroads. Maybe it's my age or maybe it's
because it's too hard to "get it" all--and especially when it comes
to sexuality. It was difficult enough for me to comprehend it when I learned
that homosexual people were marrying straight people. That was a real eye
opener. You see, I didn't grow up with that knowledge. I was told that if a man
was gay or a woman was a lesbian, it meant that he or she wanted to be with
someone of the same sex. Honest--that's what they used to teach us. This was in
the day before the Kinsey ladder climbing up or down on the number chart
ranging from straight to gay and everything in between. I didn't realize there
was an "in between."
When I was
in high school in the pre-enlightened 1960's, people would whisper the word
"homosexual" or some horrifying derivative of the word, but I really
didn't know anyone like that. There was one boy in high school--yes one--where
rumors were whispered behind closed doors--but no actual confirmation. I went
out of my way to be nice to this pimpled peer because I, too, was a teenager
who never fit in to any crowd. I wanted to--but somehow, I didn't at that age.
Therefore, I tried to find others like me for some kind of camaraderie. When we
would speak, I never dared mention the rumors I heard about him for fear of
making him feel worse than he already did. This was the closest I got to the gay
world until 1968 in California.
At the age
of 17, I moved to California to stay with my father. It was such a different
way of life. Gay was very prominent back then as if it were the land of milk
and honey for the new gay immigrants continuing to arrive daily on its shores.
Here in California one could live an openly gay life. Actually, in California
you could live whatever life you wanted because back then sex was over-the-top.
There were orgies and swinging. It was quite liberating to those who needed to
feel liberated. It was there that I met the first "openly" gay man in
my life. At 17, I knew so little that I was so sure that gay was just a
condition that came from lack of proper love. I was so sure that loving him
would make him straight. And I tried the best I could for a girl of 17--but
there was no change. I guess he tried to because why not? He was 24, and it
seemed like something he thought might work--but he found out quickly it
didn't. That's when I learned to understand that gay men were going to stay gay
men. They couldn't change--and they shouldn't have to change.
As the
years went on, I thought I had that whole issue figured out--but I didn't. At
the age of 25 I rekindled a romance with a man who was my high school crush. We
were both adults now and thinking that maybe we could make us work. Something
was off from the beginning--but I wrote it off to the Zodiac signs. He was a
Cancer--I was a Libra--and the two signs weren't meshing. At least that sounded
logical in the 1970's. And talk about not knowing--I will tell you this. We
were parted for six years since we had last seen each other. When we reunited,
he told me that he had been with four other people during those six years--two
men and two women. Did it strike me strange that he had been with two men? Not
at all. Don't forget--the 60's and 70's were a time of "sexual
experimentation" for people. He assured me that he tried it--and didn't
like it. Or he liked it, but not as much as being with a woman. And guess what?
I bought it. It sounded logical to me. Why else would a man want to be with me
unless he "decided" he was straight?
We were
very misled in those days by reports by "sexual experts" such as Dr.
Kinsey who talked about sexual fluidity long before it was acknowledged as
"accepted behavior" as it is today. Of course, he was stating that a
large percentage of men had some kind of "homosexual" encounter if
their lifetimes, and it was "normal." So that's what I thought. When
that boyfriend said he "tried it" and "didn't like it," it
made sense to me. And although I left him before our plans to move in together
hastened to the date of action, I was having doubts because something was
"off." I still was attributing it to the moon being in the seventh
house and Jupiter aligning with Mars. Yes, it must have been that Zodiac
incompatibility again. It's funny--we had sex, but I always felt he wasn't
there with me--much like his moodiness and brooding. It wasn't until ten years later and several years
after the marriage to my gay husband that I learned that he, too, was gay. I
was smarter by then. I knew the moment I dialed him and a man picked up the
phone that that was his lover--and he admitted it.
Oh well,
enough of my history. I like to tell you my story because so many of our women
kick themselves over and over for not seeing the red flags. That's because so
many of us didn't know they were red flags. We just didn't know enough. We
didn't have computers to check on the facts or find explanations to the
behaviors that we attributed to astrology. Yes--for those of you grew up during
the age of Aquarius, didn't the signs of the Zodiac explain everything?
Anyway,
getting back to my point--over the past 10 years or so, political correctness
has taken over in our country. It seems that you can't say much about anyone
without getting condemned. We have to accept things which in the past would not
be acceptable. And I admit I am somewhat weary of having to try to be
understanding of behavior that seems somewhat mixed up and jumbled, but that's
me. It was difficult for me to understand straight vs. gay--and now there are
so many other variations of the sexual spectrum that I never imagined. And I'm
not knocking it--I'm just acknowledging it. But I do have a problem with it,
and I'll explain why.
It seems
that we keep rallying to the cause of fighting for people who are coming out of
some closet. The closets are different ones ranging from gay to transgender and
include a whole new vocabulary of in-betweens that I won't get into. But it seems
the more that these men come out and end up with barrels of praise for their
bravery, the further back we, their wives, are shoved back into their closets.
How we,
the straight wives, are feeling is never the issue, is it? Is anyone out there
asking us Straight Wives what it feels like to have our lives blown away and
devastated? I don't think so. I do know that I get at least two or three
requests from media shows each month asking me for people in my group who are
finding ways of "making it work by readjusting their thinking." I
tell them they have come to the wrong person and refer them to other groups who
may know these women. Of course, that's after I ask them if they would be
interested in doing a show on the "real lives of straight wives"
focusing on the devastation of what it is like to be one. Not one production
company has ever said to me, "What a great idea!" Well one did--but
they were only willing to do it if the husbands were willing to go on the
show--and I don't think your husbands wanted to do it. Heck, they don't even
want to talk to you about it. But they'll tell the world?
People
don't take us seriously because there are no consequences. There are no
advocates out there shouting for OUR rights. There is no one writing about OUR
pain except an occasional Huffington Post blog or comedy cable show. We are
judged by others without compassion or empathy that they are so willing to give
to our husbands. People still think that either we knew and were desperate or
missed all the signs meaning we were stupid. And then there are those who
understand less than we did who still think that these men weren't gay when
they married us, so it must have been our bad cooking that made them gay.
We were
questioning our own judgment throughout our marriage wondering what was going
wrong. When we found out, then people started questioning us as if we were
"blind" or "responsible." Is it any wonder that we prefer
to stay silent? We are double whammied--first by our gay husbands and then by
society as a whole. While people are so busy cheering on the bravery of our
husbands, who is looking our way with awards for enduring the suffering all of
the years if our marriages were bad or if our marriages were good, awarding us
for losing what meant most to us in our lives--namely our husbands. For some
women, they look at the man standing in front of them and still see these men
as their HUSBANDS--not as their GAY HUSBANDS. They still can't understand how
gay crept into their marriage when they weren't looking. What changed? This
takes years to figure out in many cases.
Why don't
producers of shows want to know what it's like to survive this kind of marriage
for us? Why do they only care about the 5% of marriages that try to make it
work by living in an open marriage? What about the other 95% of us? Why aren't
the members of the gay community taking up our cause like they want us to take
up their cause? Where are their warnings to men getting married knowing that
they aren't exactly straight even if they don't know they are exactly gay yet?
And where is the condemnation from the gay community of men who are married and
living this double life? Why are certain support chapters of gay fathers
encouraging their members not to tell their wives until "after the divorce"
so they won't have to end up with less financially? Where are the groups
telling these men to FIX THE MISTAKE in a way that the wife comes out a winner
after she has lost so much?
No one is
parading for us around the country. No one has even suggested that we have a
special "Straight Wives Matter Day"
for us whose lives were thrown into turmoil without a warning. We are expected
to be "understanding," "accepting," and
"advocates" for the gay community now that we are somehow attached to
it in a different kind of way--namely through our husbands. But what gay
organization has said, "We embrace the millions of straight wives who have
lost their husbands and families and welcome them to our community"? I
haven't heard of any yet who are looking to share our grieving. And until I
start to hear it, I guess no one except us will really care if Straight Wives
Matter. Sad, isn't it?
MAILBAG
Each
month, I receive numerous letters of appreciation from my readers. If I think
your letter will help others, I always ask your permission to republish. Here
are two letters from this month.
Dear Bonnie,
I hope my email finds you well. I always think about you. It's been years since I met you in Houston. It's also been a long journey for me. I've ducked in and out of GayHusbands.com and the Straight Wives Radio Blog for years now because I still find it so helpful to my recovery. I credit you for telling it to me 'straight' and for saving my life. I put all of my trust in you, and you gave me the strength to be honest with myself, to trust my own intuition and to leave the relationship. After struggling with my recovery for about two years (I finally realized there had to be more to my story then just being duped by a gay man). For some reason, I don't know why but at the time I never fully understood what you meant about the crazy making, gaslighting and narcissism nor did
I
realize that was exactly what I was suffering from and why I was having such
difficulty moving on. I went back to your material, listened more closely
to some of your guests like Mary Ann Glynn and Donna Anderson and then started Googling
those terms and watching videos and so began my true healing. All of the pieces
just fell into place and now I know I was severely gas-lighted by a covert narcissist.
It's actually fascinating how these people work and even more fascinating
to learn about the symptoms of someone who has been abused in this way and how
very little the professionals know about this type of abuse. Needless to
say, I exhibited most of the symptoms like not knowing what just happened to
me, ruminating (a biggee!), feeling hopeless, suicidal, isolating, not being
able to concentrate, etc. It was heartbreaking but at the same time
knowing what happened, what he deliberately did and more importantly who he
really is as a person has ended most of my pain. For the first time in
years, I feel like I'm finally getting back to myself (kind of, still afraid to
date) and to some of the things I love to do like sewing and writing (my therapy).
So speaking of writing...I wrote the poem below, and if you want to share
it or any part of this email on your website or elsewhere, please do.
From the bottom of my heart I thank you for what you've
done for me and also for all of the other straight wives. Hugs!
The Letter To Him I
Never Sent
It's been a long and lonely last three years
Still I fight back some
of those old salty tears
Stupidly I thought you
would be my last love
Only later to be
strangled like a too-tight glove
Was the making of that big, beautiful home
Your secret plan to
leave me all alone
Should have known you
gave me many clues
Just a sick little game
to watch me lose
And all that gaslighting and crazy making
Shattered my world and
left me shaking
Of all the happy times I
thought we shared
Now I know you never
could have cared
Because you treated me
like a big 'a hole'
That ripped right
through my very soul
Every day it felt like a
slap without a slap
But more than that I
felt so trapped
Always telling lies, the
biggest 'I am not gay'
Like a cat on a mouse I
was only your prey
You are the biggest
down-low pretender
A bait and switch I'm
not your defender
Played me day and night like some old fool
But I'm here to tell you
that was so not cool
I ain't no longer your cover
girl or your beard
Go on and continue
living the life you feared
Don't you know you can run but cannot hide
Behind that mask your
fake and phony side
Learned many years ago
how to avoid your eyes
That when it ended, I
never said any goodbyes
See you skipped no beat and moved right on
You think you may have
found a better swan?
Another good woman you
will probably destroy
Hey abuser, user we are
not your lil' play toy
Clear off the table now so I can place my bet
Cause a man like you,
I'm sure she's never met
Maybe in a few years
she'll reach out to me
Then I'll tell her all
about 'The Bonnie' who set me free
Trisha
Dear Bonnie,
I have been thinking a lot about the theme of "I will
never be the same" and learning " to live with it." Most of the
time, I think I'm actually better in spite of it all! I was so naive before
this experience. I blamed myself my whole life because i refused to see other
people's bad behavior and mental illness. It was too scary. And i think I
believed people would change if I acted " better." I refused to think I didn't have control. So
weird. Fear drove me in my life. I made bad
decisions. I stayed too long. I lived in denial and fragmented my mind to
tolerate terrible situations. I didn't know I had the power to leave. I didn't
know I could like and care for myself. I relied on others for that, and they
were not safe. My whole life was like some sort of reward/punishment, tit for
tat experiment. I was keeping score, everyone was keeping score! This is not
love.
With
my gay ex, I could not understand the disconnection between us. I rationalized
that I had some attachment disorder. ( I'm sure he loved that!) After I found
out the truth, I felt stupid. I felt shame. It made me feel even more
worthless. And my so called friends? They said" how could you.....?"
I didn't realize they needed to invalidate me to protect whatever crap they had
going on. This experience has sucked. But I have learned a lot about myself and
other people. I have learned that caring for ourselves is seen as selfish. I
have learned that most people unconsciously are manipulative and out for
themselves but can couch it in caring and concern and looking "
nice", but they really don't care, because they are focused on themselves.
So now, I look for those few people! The truly caring ones! I actually think I
found one in my therapist of all people! I am learning what caring relations
looks like and that maybe I deserve it after all. I have also met some amazing
women on the internet, and sadly, they are not here, but we connect in
cyberspace.
So,
do we ever get over" it"? The trauma? No. It is part of me. But it
doesn't define me. I am working on bringing all the parts of me together for
wholeness and maybe liking myself one day ( loving myself is a stretch lol!).
If I had stayed with my gex, I could never have had space to do this. I'm
pretty confident that he will leave me alone as I made sure it got back to him
that I knew what he was! Maybe healing just looks like wholeness and not
putting up with anymore toxic people. I don't miss that torture!
Many
blessings to you today on our little soul journey! xoxo
A Straight Sister
Thank you, ladies, for sharing your heart-felt
words.
LOVE TO YOU ALL!!! ♥ BONNIE
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