BONNIE KAYE'S STRAIGHT TALK
June 2015 Volume 16,
Issue 165
HEROES
Many of you have asked me my opinion about Bruce/Caitlyn
Jenner's transition into transgender. The last few months have consumed many of
our waking moments with him becoming her including sexy feminine pictures
featured--well--everywhere you look.
People praised Bruce/Caitlyn for the bravery of publicly transitioning in front of the world after
having his fair share of relationships and marriages to straight women which
produced a number of children and families.
Across the board, I heard the word "HERO" when referring to this news
that shocked many of us. After all, Bruce Jenner had been our macho athletic
hero for so many years. He had been highly visible as a devoted father since
his marriage into the "K" family (no, not my "K"). He was
never out of the public eye for the past four decades. And now a champion among
men is being hailed as a "hero"
because he took such a brave step in stepping up the transitioning at this age
of his life. He said he waited until now in order to spare more pain to his
children. I think that's why he waited or said he waited.
Anyway, I looked up the definition of hero. Here is what
I found:
Hero: a man of distinguished courage
or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
Allow me to set my personal
opinion " straight." A few
months ago, Joel Grey was being hailed as a hero when at 73, he came out
to the public. People thought he was so brave for him to be true to himself
after spending his "happiest years" (according to him) being married
to a woman. I wrote in my February newsletter that the real hero wasn't Joel
Grey, but rather his wife who spent those years in a marriage based on
dishonesty.
So now I will make a comment
that will no doubt have some hecklers, but it is how I feel after spending a
great amount of time processing these situations.
I work with 100 - 200 gay
men each year who ask for help in coming out to their wives. In most cases,
it's because they have met a man and want to leave their marriage. However,
there is a handful of men who wrote to me for guidance because they haven't
acted on it yet, but they can't keep living in the hell they have created for
themselves being married to a woman knowing they aren't "straight."
Honestly, I do understand
the pain that these men face. And yes, I
do have compassion for their struggle. They really are caught between the
compartment walls of compartmentalization. They live with guilt, frustration,
sorrow, anger, depression and all other kinds of emotional turmoil. And it's all
true. My heart goes out to anyone who is so deeply suffering. I will
commend them and praise them when they have the courage to do the right thing
even if the motivation is skewed, but I will never call them
"heroes."
Why not?
Since I started my support network
in 1983, I have had thousands of gay married men try to explain to me why they
felt pressured to get married. I do understand how family, religion, and
society in general pressured gay men for so many years to make this choice at
the cost of being vilified, punished, condemned, and in many cases,
ex-communicated from their families and community. To some it seemed like the
"best way" out. I won't say the "easiest way," because
living a lie on a daily basis pretending you are something you are not is never
easy.
Both husband and wife went
into their marriage with great hopes for the future. We--the wives--hoped that
we had found our soulmate to spend our lives with--someone to build a family
and grow old with. They--the husbands--hoped that loving us enough would
magically turn them "straight." After all, if they could love a woman
and MAKE LOVE to a woman--even if it was fleeting or irregular--that would
count. Then they could convince themselves that they were not gay. After all, someone who is "really"
gay would never want to be with a woman. Right?
We know these stories don't
end happily ever after. How can they? How can any man be happy living a life he
wasn't destined for, and how can any woman be happy living with a man who isn't
happy because he feels like a prisoner and looks at her as the prison warden?
We all know in time those feelings of love turn to feelings or resentment on
his part, and you--the loving wife--become his enemy.
Okay, you already know my
feelings on this subject after reading them for over 14 years. But here is the
real issue. Why don't I believe these men are heroes?
Because
they aren't heroes. They are men who made a mistake. Fixing
a mistake doesn't make you a hero. It does make you brave to fix it--but not
a hero.
I know many of our women may
not agree with me that this takes courage, but think about it. How many of you
are stuck in horrible marriages with husbands who will continue living with you
forever and never tell you the reason why you are so unhappy in your marriage?
How many will deny the truth even when you confront them with proof? Those
selfish men who stay because their convenience is far more importance than your
happiness will drain you emotionally every day of your life. You will never
find the happiness you deserve or hoped for because they won't allow you. After
all, if they can live a lie and be miserable with you, you can be miserable
too. Far too many of you give your lives
away to selfish gay men who won't let go.
Giving you that missing
jigsaw puzzle part to complete the picture of why your marriage is failing is a gift. It's not the "gift" you
wanted, but at least it's the gift that will explain the problems in your
marriage weren't you--they were your husband's problems all wrapped up into a
box called "gay." When you are married to a gay man, it doesn't take
two to screw up the marriage. Both of you can't be held responsible for living
in a marriage that wasn't meant to be. As a gay man, he needs to take that
responsibility.
But there are real heroes in
this story. According to the gay stats I have read throughout the years, it is
estimated that approximately 10 - 20% of gay men marry straight women. Even if
it is 20%, that means 80% do NOT marry women. Does this mean that the 80% are
not under the same pressures that the 20% are under? I think not. I think
across the board no matter where you grew up, gay was a "doom
sentence." Not a death
sentence--but a "doom sentence" meaning that those closing doors in
family, church/synagogue/mosque, employment, and community were quick to slam
shut if the truth was known. Often gay people were singled out to be "gay bashed"
physically and mentally and discriminated against by ignorant people.
I grew up in the 1960's, and
I lived in California in 1968 - 1969. In the years of the "sexual
revolution" of the 1960's, gay was common and accepted. Gay couples would
stroll the streets of Santa Monica arm-in-arm and no one yelled
"deviants" or threw rocks at them. It was a sign of the time--the age
of Aquarius. Gay was looking up and when
I returned here to the East Coast, it was kind of more accepted as well. What
changed the progress of gay acceptance was the horrific disease of AIDS that
sent its shadow of death around the country and the world.
The AIDS panic was real. It
wasn't a perception. Medical personnel did not even want to treat the patients.
I lost two good friends to this death sentence, and their lives back then were
so painful and isolating. AIDS became known as the "gay disease," and
all gays were viewed as potential "killers" of mankind. I remember
that horror in 1986 when a mother at my son's nursery school found out his
father was gay. She petitioned the school to expel him or she would take her
child out of the school immediately. The school stood by me. But several
parents did pull their kids out of school. Neither my son nor my ex-husband had
AIDS, but the scare was enough to create terrible chaos and for me.
I know that many men during
that era--yes, some of the men you are/were married to--worked so much harder
to be straight even if they had those nagging male attractions. They truly were
"scared straight" in their own minds. And understandably. No one
likes to be persecuted for being different during a witch hunt like AIDS
produced in the 1980's and 1990's. And even more so, many of these men didn't
want to die a horrible death for having sex with a man. The religious
leadership in the country was quick to show these "lost sheep" a way
to a happy life by promising them health and happiness (maybe not in that
order) if they would see the errors of their ways of thinking gay. With
thousands of people dying because they were "gay," marrying straight
sounded like the logical answer. I even remember seeing religious freaks
claiming that AIDS was the way that God was punishing gay people. Yes, life was
very painful for many people back then. I am just laying out the background of
the climate back then that I vividly recall.
That being said--don't you
think that every gay man faced the same ignorance and threats? Don't you
think that many of them had to take a step back into the closet rather than
being labeled as a killer? Every gay man was a target for hatred back then by
someone, but 80% of them still chose
not to get married. Many of them could have. played the straight
game--but they chose not to. They may not have shouted out that they were
"proud and gay" like in the 60's and 70's, and may have kept their
sexuality quiet--but they didn't get married.
Let me be very clear. I am
not wagging fingers or calling names. None of us know what we would do if we
were faced with such horrific choices in life. How many of us would stand up
and fight for ourselves if we knew what the consequences would be? So trust me,
I'm not trying to shame or embarrass any gay husband/ex-husband here for making
the choice he did. But at the same time, the point I'm making is simply this.
If I had to give an award to someone who is gay for being a hero, it would be the 80% of gay men who never got married to
a woman. It would be the man who had the strength to fight the pressure by not
allowing himself to take a road that would entwine some hopeful, loving woman
with him for the ride through hell.
There is a small percentage
of gay men who married knowing full well they had no intention of changing but
wanted a "cover" or as they call it, a "beard." These were
men who were in roles like the clergy, servicemen, doctors, and company
executives who needed that "family" image to find success in their
careers. They were not loving their wives; they were using their wives.
But I know that the
overwhelming majority of gay men loved their wives to the best of their
ability when they got married believing their kind of love would be
"good enough." When a gay man tells me that he "loves his
wife," he truly believes that because he does love her--but his love is
like that for a sister or a cousin. He doesn't realize that the love of a gay
man is not the love of a straight man no matter how he tries to believe that it
is. It's empty and hollow no matter how much of an effort he makes, how many
gifts he buys, or how many times he says, "I love you." Something is
always missing. It's not his fault--he is gay. Gay men are not straight no
matter how much they think they are doing a good imitation. We know something
is wrong. Maybe not in the beginning, but soon enough.
Getting back to my point,
yes--there are gay heroes. They are not Joel Grey or Trans Bruce Jenner. They
are the millions of unsung heroes who realized that even if gay or transgender
wasn't okay by society's standards, they weren't going to marry a woman that
they couldn't love in the "straight" way--which is the right way. No
one is giving them an award or calling them heroes, so allow me to do it.
To all of the gay men who
never went into a relationship or married a woman, let me applaud you for being
a hero which means you had the courage to say NO when the tide turned
against you. This was truly the noble quality that make a hero.
As I tell the gay men who
approach me with doubts prior to getting married, if you have one doubt about
your sexuality--don't even think about marriage. Spend that time learning about
self-acceptance. I tell them you don't choose gay--it chooses you. Trust me
when I tell you that if gay men had a choice, they would choose to be straight,
not gay. I tell them to learn to accept it and love themselves for who they are
which is easier than pretending that they are someone that they are not or will
never be.
On this June Straight Talk
edition, I like to give thanks and credit to the gay men who are part of my
support network, I thank you for having the courage to do the right thing after
you made the mistake of getting married under the best of intentions. Thank you
for helping other gay men come to understand that they need to do the right
thing as you did. A special thank you to Doug Dittmer who did most of the
writing of our book, "Over the Cliff: Gay Husbands in Straight
Marriages." Doug is wonderful at peer counseling with men who need to make
the right decisions as well as our women who go to him for support. Another
special thanks to my friend Chuck who challenges me in some of my thoughts, but
appreciates our common bonds more than our few differences. Chuck is also there
to help others.
I would also like to thank
my in-house doctor, Dr. Brian Hooper, who co-hosts my radio show the last
Monday of each month. Dr. Hooper, a gay therapist who works with men going
through the process of coming out and divorce, helps all of us untangle it all
of the time! Hopefully, through all of our efforts, the future will seem
clearer and better for many.
Hopefully in the future, the times they will be
a-changing!
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