PROFILE #3: SALLY T. - 58, Texas, married 31 years, divorced five years, two children, departmental secretary at a university.
Red Flags
Looking back to my years growing up, I cannot remember ever discussing or even knowing anyone who was gay. I grew up in a small community of cotton farmers in West Texas and was very isolated from the real world and especially from such issues.
I met my husband at a university after graduating from high school. We had a wonderful relationship and marriage for about seven years. We had two beautiful daughters. I had no clue there was a problem and thought I had the perfect husband and life.
Our sex life began to change after our second daughter was born. He became distant as well, and I remember crying at night because he never came to bed with me and he would stay up late. I rarely had any of his attention. His excuses at that time were that he was taking care of our older daughter because I needed to be with the baby. He also told me that we fight so much that he didn’t feel like making love.
He became very depressed and complained about his unhappiness with his job. We had been married 17 years when he decided to transfer to another city. His depression had become worse and I thought this was a good idea. He moved into an apartment to start his new job and I waited behind for our house to sell. It took about six months for the house to sell and he had still not found a house for us to move into. The girls and I moved into an apartment waiting for him to find a house in the new city. Not long after that, he announced to me that he was unhappy in the city that he had moved to and he felt that the girls and I would be very unhappy there as well. The city was large, the traffic was horrible, and he wanted us to stay behind. He gave the excuse that the schools were better here and he would travel home on weekends, which resulted in him coming home about every three weeks or longer.
We began our long distance marriage, and I was very unhappy. He came home less and less. I cried so much that even today the girls remember my crying more than anything else. He said he loved me and didn’t want a divorce and we remained in the marriage for 14 more years.
As I look back, there were years of depression for him. He seldom came home. He was unwilling to find us a house. I believed everything he told me, and I believed all of his excuses. Even later as more red flags appeared, I continued to ignore them. I was depressed as well and could never figure out why he wouldn’t or couldn’t talk to me.
He found a roommate to save money and moved in with another man. As the years went by, I accidentally found out that this roommate was gay. Our sex life became more and more non-existent and he preferred positions where he couldn’t see my face, which now makes more sense to me. I never caught on to that before either.
To add to the misery, I asked him several times if he were gay. He denied it and was disgusted that I would think such a thing. He asked me once why I thought that, and I told him that it would make more sense.
Even though the red flags were everywhere, some of them alone would not indicate that a person is gay. If you put them together, I think you would see clearly that he had a deep dark secret. Keeping that in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to just list as many as I could think of, but remember my husband was not home much. The list included:
