Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (19 page)

We all have one life to live. If we give up and think there is nothing better than our current status quo, then we are doomed to a life of existence rather than living.

APRIL 2005

S
OME
P
ERSONAL
T
HOUGHTS FROM
B
ONNIE
K
AYE

First, let me congratulate myself on the start of my fifth year of newsletters. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been churning them out month after month, but it’s true!

Some months I have to really discipline myself to sit here to write because you think to yourself, “How many things can I keep writing about without sounding repetitious?” And sometimes I am repetitious. But guess what? None of you seem to mind or complain. That’s because some of these words need to be repeated again and again and again.

Nearly two hundred people have remained on my mailing list from the very early issues of my newsletter. Since that time, my newsletter has now grown to a readership of just over 7,000 people each month. Some of you live locally in the United States; others live internationally including Europe, Australia, the Middle East, and Asia.

As difficult as it is to keep writing each month, nothing is more rewarding or inspiring to me than the number of letters of appreciation from my readers that come to me after each newsletter. How can I not feel wonderful to know that I have brought sanity to the marriages of insanity? How great is it to hear from women that I have saved them or rescued them from a world of isolation and confusion? I am proud to have letters from women who have thanked me for saving their lives because they were seriously on the verge of suicide. What could be greater than helping save a life?

Some of you have written to me that this newsletter is your “life line.” That’s why as I embark on this fifth year of newsletters, I am going to speak some serious business. My words will have to hold you over for the next month because I am about to embark on a new chapter of my life—one of better health. On April 25, I am scheduled to have a gastric bypass to help resolve some of my health problems that have resulted from my lifetime of obesity. As I have progressed into my 50’s, my health issues have become more plentiful. And now at 53, I feel relieved and excited that something other than my lifetime of frustrating dieting will truly make the difference in my weight and health.

Of course, anytime you go to surgery, there is always a risk. And although I plan on being one of those successful statistics, you never really know. And so, I am going to write all my words of wisdom as if this could be my last newsletter because too many of you need to hear them. I’ve said them before, but I need to say them again.

Here are words you need to take to heart. These are 10 most important lessons I have learned about being in or out of a straight/gay marriage. And by the way, I never dignify them by calling them something chic like “Mixed Orientation” marriages. To me, “Mixed Orientation” means Jewish/Catholic or White/Black, where people know way up front before marriage what the obstacles are. Straight/Gay marriages are more like Alice in Wonderland marriages—distorted at best. Never feel the need to have to “apologize” for these marriages by cleaning up the way they sound because it’s hard on the ear. If anything, call them what I call them— MISMARRIAGES, meaning a mistake in marriage.

Here are my lessons learned:

L
ESSON
1

Some of you have been languishing in a destructive marriage for years. You are throwing away valuable years of your life that can never be returned. Once they are gone, they are gone. Some of you feel compelled to stay in these marriages because you have no proof that your husband is gay. You know you’re unhappy. That’s enough of a reason to the leave the marriage. You don’t have to prove that a husband is gay to get a divorce. Just suffering in a marriage with someone who lacks passion, compassion, intimacy, and respect is grounds for a divorce. When women who are married to straight men decide they want a divorce, they don’t have to spend years figuring out how to justify it. Why do you?

L
ESSON
2

This expression has come up several times in recent newsletters. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t. However, I will repeat it: Stop spending your life being a detective. There is nothing more debilitating than to spend your valuable time investigating your husband. I did it for several years—checking his pockets, his notes, his papers, listening to his phone calls from the other side of the wall with a glass—you name it, I tried it. Why did I keep obsessing over this? I needed to know that my suspicions were more than my imagination. So when I thought I had concrete proof and I confronted him, he went into a rage telling me that I was crazy. And guess what? I was relieved because
I WANTED TO BELIEVE
. And please don’t tell me that I was stupid because I know the majority of you out there want to believe as much as I do that this nightmare is anything but what it is. You don’t have to confront your husband—you just have to know the truth for yourself. That should be enough. And when you do know the truth, then you need to set yourself free, because living with a gay man can never fulfill your expectations of what you want out of life. No way. Ever.

L
ESSON
3

Although it takes two to make a marriage, when you’re married to a gay man, it only takes one to make it fall apart—namely him. Any other natural failures of straight marriages are not applicable here because your life is a distortion when your husband is gay. Whatever he objects to is through the eyes of a gay man. When he is angry with you, it is because he is frustrated being in a marriage with a straight woman and will look to find fault with YOU rather than face up to his responsibility of being honest. This is not to say you are perfect, but it wouldn’t matter if you were. He would still find fault with you because you are a woman. And a lot of you are almost perfect. That’s because the unhappier he is, the more you try to make him happy, internalizing and personalizing that his unhappiness is your fault. Untrue. He can’t be totally happy or fulfilled living with a woman no matter who the woman is. Accept it. It’s his failure, not yours. And this is not to say that he is a failure as a person. He is just a failure as a husband to a straight woman. He can be a great guy, but he belongs being your friend, not your mate.

L
ESSON
4

Love hurts. Loving a gay man really hurts. Even losing a gay husband in many cases hurts. This is why it is so difficult for us to recover from these marriages. Sometimes we have wonderful men who are our best friends. Then one day out of nowhere, a new man appears who is a stranger to us. The man we thought we were tied to for life now tells us that he can’t go on being “untrue” to himself. He tells us that as much as it pains him, he has to tell you that he is gay. By the way, the ones who tell you are really the wonderful ones although it’s hard to believe when you’re hearing the truth. It’s the ones that refuse to tell you and accuse you of being crazy that are contemptible. It is going to take time to get past the pain of this. You need to give yourself the time you need to go through all the stages of mourning just like you need to mourn for someone who died. This is the death of a marriage, and in many cases, it is a very ugly death.

L
ESSON
5

You are not stupid. You start beating yourself up over your stupidity in not recognizing that your husband was gay. You start looking back and examining all of your moments in the marriage wondering how this could have happened. How is it that the person who was supposed to love you and cherish you forever was leading a life or thinking about leading a life that was totally foreign to you? You trace and retrack your years together. You look for the clues or the signs that something was wrong, but you keep missing the clues. This is because you were fooled by someone who was most likely fooling himself. And when he stopped fooling himself, he kept fooling you because he was scared. He was scared that if you knew the truth you wouldn’t want him anymore. These guys can be great deceivers. And we of good hearts want to believe in the love we have for our men.

L
ESSON
6

Some women find it so hard to say that they knew something about their husbands prior to marriage lest they be accused of knowing they were marrying a gay man. UNTRUE. I say we don’t understand homosexuality. We don’t understand how someone who is supposed to be going with someone of the same sex is now marrying someone of the opposite sex. We believe that even if they did try it, they didn’t like it because they are not gay. Even if your husband hinted that he was attracted to men, he has now “outgrown” those feelings because he loves you. And after all, sexuality can be confusing, so maybe he was just confused. But now he knows what he wants and there’s nothing to worry about. Stop kicking yourself for being blindsided by this. There is no way that we can understand such a complex situation when our husband’s can’t understand it.

When I was 25 years old, I reunited with a high school boyfriend after seven years. He had become a doctor and had nurses galore dating him. When we found each other again in a different place and space, he revealed to me that he had tried a relationship with two men on two different occasions. He actually lived with these guys for a period of months. He then told me that he also lived with two women for a period of time. He realized that he was not gay from those two experiences with men. Women were his thing and I believed him. He dated me, made love to me, and wanted to move in with me. Although I knew that something was missing, I didn’t think it was an issue of sexuality. I thought it was because he was a Cancer. Hey, astrology was big back then. People believed in the zodiac signs. I thought that his July birthday accounted for his sometimes-aloof reactions to me and to us. It wasn’t for another 8 years that this man came to terms with his sexuality and found his man mate. Ironically, I left this guy for my future gay husband. Like how stupid was I, you want to know? I don’t think I was stupid. I think I was uninformed. Look, I had sex with both of these men. Maybe they weren’t the best, but they were adequate. And in your 20’s, adequate is good enough. It takes us time to realize that making love is so much more than sex.

You find these good-looking, sensitive, conversational men who want to spend their lives with you. Gay? We may think there are issues, but gay isn’t one of them. Even before I married my gay husband, someone came to me with his suspicions that my soon to be hubby was bisexual. I felt a sick knot in my stomach much like the same knot that occurred years later when my suspicions started to kick in for real. When I told him about my friend’s accusation, he took the table where we were dining and nearly threw it over, yelling, “How dare someone accuse me of that?” I was so relieved. Hallelujah! My heart told me to proceed without caution because I had the confirmation I needed. Was I stupid? I think not. I was just UNINFORMED. Some people may think that it’s not normal to find yourself involved in two relationships with gay men. Well, I had been involved with dozens of relationships over the years with straight men. It was not something I was seeking out. It was just by chance that it happened--chance and ignorance.

L
ESSON
7

Some of us in our desperation to hang on to something that we should let go of will look to make a million excuses of why we need to stay. One of the common reasons I hear is “THE CHILDERN.” People want to believe that children need two parents living under the same roof no matter how miserable they are or how that roof is always caving in. WRONG. One important lesson I have learned from my own life experience is that children will not be happy unless you are happy. My mother stayed with my father for far too many years. They would both fight and inevitably, fight about the children. This made me feel as if I were to blame for their misery. CHILDREN KNOW WHEN THEIR PARENTS ARE UNHAPPY AND THEY DO PERSONALIZE IT. Trust me on this one. If you or your gay husband is unhappy, your children know it and most likely internalize the blame.

The other problem of staying in this type of marriage is role modeling. Children copy their parents. If they see you staying in a loveless marriage, chances are they will think this is the norm for marriage, which is very sad. Certainly you don’t want your children to be condemned to a life of unhappiness when they get married, but we often repeat the mistakes of our parents. I marvel at how many women who had abusive fathers marry the same type of man. So, if you are staying in your marriage and think you need to do this for the security of your children, STOP.

L
ESSON
8

WAITING FOR YOUR HUSBANDS TO CONFESS CAN TAKE A LIFETIME. Too many of you are hanging in there waiting for a confession to something that will be the DECISIVE factor in your decision to leave. All you have to do is CATCH HIM, right? Then you’ll get him to confess. Well, let’s forget this one. Some of them will never get caught, and many of them will never confess—EVER. Some gay husbands are in deep denial. If they can’t even admit it to themselves, why do you think they’ll confess it to you? When you do catch them they come up with the world’s best stories on how the porn got on the computer, how the condoms got into their briefcases, how they contracted a sexually transmitted disease (which they usually claim to be your fault), or how your imagination is running away with you. It’s just not happening, so stop looking for it. If you are questioning your husband’s sexuality, YOU HAVE A REASON. Whether it’s a hint, an instinct, or proof positive, go with it. Women don’t suspect their straight husbands of being gay. Trust me on that one. This goes back to a few of the previously mentioned lessons. If you are unhappy in your marriage, no matter what the reason is, get out.

L
ESSON
9