BONNIE KAYE'S STRAIGHT TALK
SEPTEMBER 2017 Volume
18, Issue 186
Bonnie’s Mantra:
LIFE WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE THIS COMPLICATED. PERIOD.
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STRAIGHT
WIVES TALK SHOW CONTINUING IN OCTOBER!!
The Straight Wives Talk Show will
start its new season in October. Some of
our best experts will be returning, and we will be having some new guests
including straight wives who will share their stories with you. Stay tuned for
some amazing programming!
GAY HUSBAND
RECOVERY
A topic of discussion I have with
many women is about how do you work through Gay Husband Recovery, and why does
it take so long? I hope my words below will explain this to you.
One problem that we all face is the
pressure from family members and friends and their well meaning slogan to “get
over it” when it comes to “recovery” from our marriages. Our loved ones, no
matter how well meaning, can’t understand why we are having such trouble doing
this. Their intentions are good. They want us to get past the nightmare and
move on to a happier place. They see
straight marriages ending in divorce all of the time, and those women seem to
manage to start over again and find new relationships more easily than we do.
I do get upset when I hear these
stories of additional pressure from my women who are trying their best to move
through the stages of anger and hurt but not at the pace that others expect of
them. The end of a marriage is like the death of a loved one, and we all have
to pass through the various stages of grieving before we can come to the point
of acceptance. And acceptance for us is twofold—accepting the marriage is over
and accepting the homosexuality of our husbands which will now be part of OUR
lives forever, especially when children are involved..
What other people don’t realize is
that there are numerous issues that we have to deal with after a marriage to a
gay husband ends. Some of these issues are unique and unlike those that women
with straight husbands face. For instance, we have to figure out what to say to
the children and when to tell them; we also have to decide what to tell family,
friends, and co-workers. We live in a world where many people still don’t
understand about a "gay husband" married to a woman and fear the
ridicule we will face from this ignorance. Even in this day and age, people
say, “What did you do to make him gay? After all, he wasn’t gay when he married
you.” Yes, ignorance abounds.
We have to rebuild our own
self-esteem, which has been sorely damaged through these marriages by not only
feeling the failure of a marriage, but also wondering how much of a lie we were
living. We have to rebuild our sense of trust within our own decision-making
processes knowing that we walked blindly into a situation where we were so
misled and blindsided.
Most of us have lost or never had
the feeling of what real intimacy means in a relationship. We have difficulty
trusting men again and trusting our own ability not to walk into this situation
one more time. And this is a genuine fear that many women express—“It happened
to me once. How do I know the next man I get involved with won’t be gay?” After
all, why couldn’t we tell the first time around? This is confirmed by the
ignorance of others who insist that we “must have known but married him anyway
because we thought we could change him.”
There are other complications as
well. There are those women who still feel some sense of responsibility for
their husbands’ homosexuality. They are convinced that they played some part in
their husbands turning to men. That’s because some gay husbands are cruel
enough to say that to their wives rather than take the responsibility for the
truth.
We have to
deal with our own feelings of homophobia. Even if we were accepting of
homosexuality in most cases, it took a whole new meaning when it entered our
marriages and destroyed our futures with our husbands. We have to deal with our
own feelings about our ex-husbands bringing lovers into the lives of our
children and how that will affect our children emotionally. We have to fear how
other people will treat our children if they find out their father is gay. And
of course, we now have to consider the possibility that our children will be
gay because this is a new reality.
Certainly
straight marriages that end go through emotional upset and turmoil. We have to
go through those same problems including single parenthood, financial problems,
selling the home, going to work, and legal tangles. But in addition, we are
forced to deal with all the additional issues stated above. This is a double
whammy that just doesn’t end when a marriage ends.
What saddens
me are the dozens of letters I receive each week from women who just can’t work
their way through the maze of emotional complications that they are left with
not only during the marriage, but also after the marriage. This is a process
that takes time. But without going through a number of these steps, it will
take much longer or just leave wounds that will not heal. I've adapted these
ideas from other 12-step recovery groups, and I hope you will find them
helpful.
THE TWELVE
STEPS TO GAY HUSBAND RECOVERY (GHR)
1. You admit that your husband is gay, and you are
powerless to change his homosexuality. You accept that you had no
responsibility in “turning” your husband gay, and he has no choice in being
gay. You also accept that your marriage
has become unmanageable living with homosexuality.
a. The first step in working
towards recovery is to admit those words that are so difficult and painful to
say—“My husband is gay.” You have to accept this as the beginning
premise and not look to find excuses or lull yourself into a false state of
security by saying the word “Bisexual” because he has you for a wife.
b. Once you can accept that your
husband is gay, you must understand that you are in no way responsible for
this. Your husband was gay long before you met him even if he couldn’t
understand this himself. You in no way brought this out in him or caused him to
change into this. You had no influence one way or the other on when his need to
act on his homosexuality would surface. There is nothing you could have done to
stop this from occurring.
c. You realize that your marriage
is in turmoil because your husband is gay, not because you failed as a wife.
Even if there are numerous other problems in the marriage, they are all tied in
to this basic fact.
2. You believe that once
you turn for help for yourself, you can restore yourself to sanity.
You cannot change your husband, and
no matter what you do to improve your beauty, intellect, or personality. it
will not make a difference. You must turn to others who can lend help
and support to understand how and why this happens so you can start thinking
clearly and rationally. You need to rebuild your self-esteem and sense of
self-worth so that you can start thinking ahead to the real solutions that are
necessary. You do not need to waste time or money going for family counseling
to try to make this marriage work. When you are living with a gay man, the
bottom line is he will always have the physical and/or emotional need to be
with men. This is not something that can change if you both go for marriage
counseling together. Instead, go for counseling yourself to work on regaining
the emotional strength you need to cope with in the marriage until you are able
to move out of it.
3. Make a decision to take back your own life, which has
somehow been misplaced through your marriage.
Throughout your marriage, you have
focused on your husband instead of yourself. This is for the most part because
you have spent your time trying to please him because he doesn’t seem
fulfilled. You personalize this as your failure and so you try that much harder
to be a “better wife.” It is not
surprising if you have lost sight of who you are or who you were before the
marriage. You have somehow misplaced your own life and aspirations while trying
to make yourself into someone whom your husband can love better. It is now time
to start focusing on you and what your goals were prior to the time of the
marriage. You did have a life before your husband as well as dreams and hopes.
It’s time to revisit that period of your life.
If you married at a young age, you
may have never had time to work on personal goals. View this as an opportunity
to sit down and figure out the life you want. Mentally visualize yourself in a
place where there is happiness based upon trust and truth rather than chaos,
confusion, and lies.
4. Make a search of personal inventory to see what it is
within yourself that has allowed you to lose sight of your own identity and who
you were before your marriage.
It is common to get off track while
trying desperately to make your marriage succeed. Now it is time to do some
personal inventory to see why you have allowed yourself to regress to the low
emotional state you are in. What is it within you that keeps you hanging on to
this marriage long after it should be over? What insecurities and fears are you
facing? Living with a gay husband brings about a number of common emotional
problems such as lowering or loss of personal self-esteem, loss of sexual
self-esteem, and feelings of hopelessness.
You need to focus on a major issue
that will haunt you for the rest of your life unless you deal with it
upfront—namely, TRUST. You have lost the ability to trust your own
judgment. You must learn to trust your own instincts again and not allow a
mistake beyond your control to jade your ability to make future decisions. You
must first trust that you were a worthy woman prior to your marriage. You were
able to think rationally before you met your husband. But after living in an
“Alice in Wonderland” existence over a period of time, you start thinking with
upside down thoughts, which develop through living a lie. Once the lie is
exposed, it is time for you to start examining how that lie impacted on your
important decisions or fear of making important decisions.
When going through the step of
taking personal inventory, start making a list of all of the qualities you
have. Start recognizing your wonderful strengths and traits that have somehow
been minimized in the shadow of your husband’s problem. Start thinking about
how those positives would have been accentuated if you had been married to
someone who could have been a real husband to you by being encouraging and
supportive rather than finding fault with you because he was frustrated living
his lie.
5. Admit to yourself and to others what the real problem
is in the marriage—your husband’s homosexuality—and not look to place the blame
on yourself.
Until you can internally believe
that your husband’s homosexuality is not your fault, it is impossible to move
on. You need to understand and accept that you were not “stupid” walking into
this marriage or even naïve. You were uninformed, inexperienced, and lacking
the knowledge of understanding homosexuality. You thought that gay men were
attracted to the same sex relationships, not relationships with straight women.
Even if you knew about past gay encounters in your husband’s life or suspected
there had been homosexual contact, you believed in all good faith that your
husband had “chosen” to change and you accepted his explanation when he told
you this. Remember, the overwhelming majority of women who marry gay men had no
idea whatsoever about this prior to the marriage. Those who had any suspicion
or knowledge didn’t understand that homosexuality was not just an adolescent
encounter or fantasy. For the handful or women who went knowingly into the
marriage with a gay husband, you believed in your heart that if your husband
loved you enough, he would change. Stop punishing yourself by thinking that you
didn’t see the “unobvious” signs.
6. You are ready to develop a
mental plan for a positive future and believe that life can become rewarding
and fulfilling after your marriage.
In order to regain hope, you must
believe that there can be life after your marriage. Some women don’t believe
that this is possible and view their marriages as a life sentence. This is not
the case. Even if you can’t leave your marriage at this moment, you can start
to plan for a positive future regardless of your age. Stop putting up negative
roadblocks such as, “I can’t financially support myself,” or “I’m out of
shape,” or “I’m too old to start over.” These are self-defeating messages which
allow you to stay “stuck” where you are. All of the money in the world can’t
buy your happiness. It doesn’t make sense to stay emotionally dead just to keep
a roof over your head. You can put your life back together in time as long as
you start believing in yourself. It may take you a year or five years, but the
bottom line is that if you want it, it will happen.
Part of developing a mental plan is
realizing that you may be taking anti-depressants because you are depressed
living in your marriage. So many women are coping in their marriages or after
their marriages this way. If your depression is due to the marriage, antidepressants
will numb the pain as well as other feelings. However, medication can also stop
you from dealing with your feelings which is essential if you expect to move
ahead to a produce and happier life. If you are taking medication as a result
of your depression from your marriage, realize that you need to put limits on
how long you can suppress your emotions. Medication doesn’t change the
situation that your husband is gay, nor will it make you any happier living in
a marriage with a gay man.
7. You are willing to accept you have your own
insecurities and low self-esteem issues and need to start working to change
them.
Women in these marriages are often
plagued with insecurities and low self-esteem. This is because marriage to a
gay man is an unnatural state of marriage to live in. Staying in a marriage
void of passion and intimacy is also an unnatural state of marriage no matter
how nice a partner is. If you wanted only friendship, you didn’t need to get
married. You wanted a husband and a complete marriage that includes physical
intimacy. Too many women end up “redefining” marriage justifying that there’s
all different kinds of relationships. This thinking may make you feel better
temporarily, but certainly not in the long run.
Living daily knowing that your
husband desires a man over you strips away your sense of self-esteem one layer
at a time. It is a slow process that erodes your mental state over time, not
all at once. When you don’t know that the problem is homosexuality, the
feelings of personal rejection are even worse because you believe that you are
doing something wrong in the marriage. Gay husbands who won’t be honest will
often say that “you” have the problem, not them. They claim they are happy
because they can’t come to terms with their truth and would rather continue
living their lie. They make you start believing that you are the cause of your
own unhappiness because they claim to be “happy.” This is why so many women
invest so much time and money going for therapy to help a problem that they
don’t even know exists.
I know women who have gone to such
extremes as developing eating disorders, investing in surgery including breasts
implants and liposuction, and even going to sex therapists in hopes of getting
their gay husbands to desire them more. They don’t understand how their
husbands loved them enough to marry them but now won’t continue to desire them
in the bedroom. They don’t understand that no matter what they do, they can’t
make themselves attractive or more desirable to their gay husbands because they
are not men.
8. Make a list of all aspects of your life that have been
altered through the marriage and look for ways to mend them.
I know that
having a gay husband alters the lives of most women. When you live in a state
of constantly trying to please your husband, you lose sight of what you can
achieve for yourself. Some women have never received the emotional support or
encouragement from their husbands and have given up on their own aspirations.
In our desperation to keep the “status quo,” we have put a freeze on the idea
of education, employment, and social contacts.
It is
important to start focusing on goals that will help you build or rebuild
yourself. It is time to start mapping out a game plan on how you can achieve
these goals whether you are with your husband or no longer with him. When I
lived with my gay husband, I became a prisoner of my own insecurities like many
of you have. We are afraid to walk away from the house for fear of what will be
going on in our absence. This leaves us in a state of paralyzation--afraid to
make a move in any direction--including a positive direction. We stop
socializing with friends and family; we put any plans of improving ourselves
through education or employment on hold; we literally become locked up in our
own fears of what will happen if we walk out the door.
I wasted so much valuable time not
doing for me because I was afraid of what he would be doing for him if I left
the home. You must accept the fact that you cannot be a 24-hour guard against
his homosexuality. You cannot stop him from acting on his needs just by
surrounding him every moment. He will find ways to do what he needs to do
regardless of how hard you try to stop in. And in doing so, you are only
stopping yourself from moving ahead. Start focusing on you because otherwise
you will be wasting years of your life that could be fulfilling and
productive.
9. Make contact with other people however you have to in
order to feel connected rather than isolated and alone. You must not be afraid
to seek out help wherever you can even it is against the wishes of your gay
husband.
You cannot put your husband’s need
for privacy and discretion ahead of your need for support and help. You must
understand why you keep putting his need for secrecy before your need for
sanity.
.
It is amazing
how ashamed so many women feel when it comes to discussing this subject with
family members, friends, co-workers, or medical professionals. This is a
subject that has been kept quiet for so long because we are afraid of how
others will judge us. Our greatest fear is that people will believe that we are
the cause of our husband’s homosexuality. On some level we still internalize
that this is our fault and haven’t accepted that our husbands were gay when we
married them. Some women who finally come to terms with this fact continue to
blame themselves and feel that these were suppressed feelings in their husbands
that they have somehow triggered by not being good enough wives.
When we seal ourselves off from
others and deal with these thoughts alone, we feel an even greater sense of
isolation and failure. In order to recover, you must be willing to share this
news with others and seek support. Once you can say the words, “my husband is
gay” to someone, it is a major step forward in finding personal
independence.
10. You are willing to confront your gay husband on any
issues and not be afraid that you are going to do more damage than has already
been done.
When you
suspect that your husband is gay, or in some cases, have proof that your
husband is involved with gay activities such as porno, websites, emails, etc.,
it is important for you to confront him with your suspicions and findings. This
is not an easy thing to do, but carrying this burden yourself is
self-defeating. You need to let him know as soon as possible why you suspect
there is a problem. If he denies this, or tells you that you are crazy, don’t
give up. In some cases he will be very defensive and angry, but that should not
be the basis of your shutting down. In some cases he may be in denial, but you
must continue to tell him about your feelings in hopes that he will do the
right thing.
You need to accept that this is a
problem that will not go away no matter how hard both of you wish it away. In
many cases, your husband fears telling you the truth because he is scared that
you will have the confirmation you need to walk away or use it as ammunition
against him. His fears will often keep him from admitting the truth to you. Don’t
“give up,” “shut-up,” or “shut-down.”
11. Seek answers through support
and professional help so that you can ease your knowledge that will give you
the courage to change your life. You will explore all avenues that will result
in your personal independence.
Finding out that your husband is gay is one of the worst experiences a
woman can have. There is no way that you can expect to recover from this
problem alone. You need help and support to help guide you through the
difficult days ahead. There is no shame in going for help. In fact, now that
you know that there is help and support, the shame is in not going for it. Find
help that works for you in a meaningful way. Just like all therapists are not
for you, not all groups claiming to be “support” groups are the right ones for
you. If you are not comfortable with the support being given by various
organizations, keep searching until you find the right one. In time, you will
find help that is of the comfort level you need. If you need a good therapist
who understands this situation, contact me for help to direct you.
12. Having a new insight and education as a result of
these steps, you try to carry this message to others who need to understand
what your situation is about. You also try to extend yourself to others crying
out for help who are lost and confused.
An
excellent way to work through the healing process is to support others who are
going through the same problem that you are. First, it gives comfort to others
who are just starting on this path. Next, it helps you to know that there are
others out there in the same situation so you don’t feel isolated or alone.
This will help you in your personal journey to Gay Spouse Recovery. As a number of you tell me, "PAY FORWARD!"
The
important thing is to keep moving ahead. Realize that this is a process that
takes time and doesn’t happen overnight. In time and with help, you will reach
your goal of rebuilding your self-esteem and self-worth. Then it is time to
step away from this period of your life and move on to a new part where
positive self-discovery will bring you the happiness you seek and deserve.
Remember, as with any recovery program, you have to
work these steps daily. You have to make them part of your internal belief
system and look at them regularly to reassure yourself that you are on track.
Any time you feel yourself slipping back instead of forward, read them over
again. You can and will recover!
Love, Bonnie ♥
