At that point, I wasn’t sure whether he was lying or telling the truth. My husband had lied to me so many times in our short marriage that it had become very hard to believe him. I guess I’ll never know truly if he had already had sex with another man at that point in his life or not. If he hadn’t, he surely did want too and was killing himself by hiding in the closet. My husband would not come out and admit or say the words, “I’m gay,” but I knew he was deep in denial and living in the closet. At that point, he probably had not admitted to himself that he was gay.
I told him that since we had a new baby, I was a new mom, breastfeeding and needing to wean our child and go back to work early since he lost his job, that we would have to just ‘table’ this for now. Basically I was juggling all the plates that I could and wasn’t physically, emotionally or spiritually able to confront his ‘gayness’ at that moment in time. I told him we would table it and go to counseling the next summer when school was out. We agreed to continue to sleep in separate bedrooms, like we had since we married, and simply pretend – for now – that everything was ok. He loved that – pretending – he was quite good at it. He’d been pretending his entire adult life.
He wanted to stay married and continue to keep up the front at church, work, with friends, by having a wife and new baby – how could anyone suspect he was gay? He wanted us to raise our child together and just pretend to the world that we were a happy, normal couple. For me, it was very depressing and draining – living a lie – everyday knowing that my husband down the hall is gay. It was like living with your guy cousin – but worse – because I was so angry with him for being gay and being the cause of the demise of our marriage. When the summer arrived I scheduled counseling for us to meet this homosexuality issue head on. To my surprise, the counselor basically turned things around to ask me, “What would be wrong if your husband is gay?” Then my husband started private counseling with the counselor. I was left completely frustrated with zero self-esteem again feeling like I was to blame. It was so hard to try and continue on living this lie with my husband day to day.
By Christmas I decided that I wanted him to leave and wanted a divorce. I basically realized that I would rather be lonely alone then in a marriage to a gay man while allowing him to use our child and me as his props to appear heterosexual. I also thought about what it would be like when our child started kindergarten someday and mentioned “Mommy’s room,” and “Daddy’s room,” and how that would affect her. I also realized that it was horrible for her to grow up seeing a Mommy and Daddy who never touched, hugged, kissed or were in love. I didn’t want her to think that is what love is and that it was a loving, normal relationship when parents don’t share a bedroom. I decided I had to do what was best for our child and me and divorce him.
Happily Ever After – For Real!
Happily Ever After for me has been not dealing with the constant negativity and tearing away at my self-esteem by being married to a husband who is such a coward and cannot be honest with himself and live an authentic life. No, I have not moved on in regards to dating or relationships whatsoever. In fact, I haven’t dated at all.
My concentration has been on trying to regain my self-esteem and be the best single parent-working Mom I can be to my toddler. It’s taking a long time to feel like I can finally truly talk about what has happened with my marriage. I pray that in the future I will begin to love myself and heal from the wounds this ordeal caused. I don’t regret meeting/marrying my husband, because I wouldn’t have my precious beloved child if it weren’t for him. However, that is truly the only good thing that came from our union.
PROFILE #6: PATRICIA P., 58, Illinois, divorced, on disability. I am an only child. My father was an angry alcoholic, and my mother suffered from depression all of her life with two suicide attempts as far as I know. She also suffered from OCD, washing her hands countless times a day. Their Draconian drama was a battle for control. They played off one another like Laurel and Hardy except that it wasn't amusing. I spent all of my childhood with a knot in my stomach and walking on eggshells because I never knew who was going to drop the day's bomb first. One thing my parents did agree on was that they wanted a boy instead of a girl. Early on, I learned to put the FUN in dysfunctional or else go out of my mind.
I have been married twice, and both marriages ended in divorce. The first ended because he had an affair and the second because I was on the rebound and married the wrong man for the wrong reasons.
My father was Catholic. My mother was Jewish, but her family converted to Christianity in Germany (massacres and all). She attended a Lutheran church. I was raised Catholic but left the church in my 20's. Today, I am a non-denominational Christian and have been for about 15 years.
Red Flags - Signs I Missed
I first met Chuck when we were both sophomores in high school. There didn’t appear to be anything gay about him at that time. But then, I didn’t even know what “gay” was. After graduation we went our separate ways. He found me after 39 years after tracking me down on the Internet. He didn’t know it, but for all those years I was still in love with him. We were not married; we lived together. In retrospect, the signs were everywhere:
