Bonnie Kaye's Straight Talk (26 page)

The issue of trust becomes a major issue—not just trusting other men, but more importantly learning to trust ourselves. We lose the ability to trust ourselves because we were not able to trust our ability to know what was wrong in the marriage. The person who was closest to us was not the person we knew at all. And often, rather than accept responsibility for who they are, our gay husbands made us doubt everything we were doing including our parenting skills. It was so much easier to throw us off track than take the responsibility and tell us the truth.

The list of issues goes on, but since we all know them, I won’t keep harping on them. I bring them up to you because I never want you to feel for one moment that just because you can’t “get over it,” that there is something wrong with you. It’s a lack of understanding and sensitivity of those pointing that accusing finger—not you.

One way to get past the holidays is to try to make an major mind adjustment—at least to get you through the worst of holiday times. Those of you who have read my newsletters and have known me for a while are aware that I lost my greatest treasures in life—my son, Jason, in 2005, and my daughter Jennifer in 2002. Holidays have become so difficult because like everyone else, I seem to focus on what I am missing, rather than what I have. I try to remove myself from that space and place and surround myself with caring, loving people—like so many of you who have become my own personal support network and friends. I keep busy which doesn’t allow me time to think too hard about anything too horrible. I close my eyes when those images appear and place a happy thought in there—like my soul mate of 14 years in January or my family and friends. I reach out. I make a call. I send an email. I break my never-ending diet and eat something I want but shouldn’t eat. It always soothes the soul. I move forward—pushing, pushing, pushing, knowing that in a few days, the holidays will be over. My sorrow won’t be over, but the constant reminder of what I’ve lost will be if you keep busy and distracted enough.

That reminds me to thank all of you who are there for me all year round who give me friendship and support. I never take your caring for granted for even one minute. Whether you are in my support chat, part of our support network, or one of my gay men friends who is always there to give me insight and guidance, I thank you. I wish all of you the happiest of all years. So many of you have moved ahead this year to places you never believed you would be a year ago, and hopefully, many more of you will be there by next year at this time. The New Year is a new chance for hope for all of us!

Remember—you are never alone. There are many of us out here who want to give you the support you need. Just ask! Isolation is the surest way of desperation. Don’t allow yourself to stay in that dark place.

I would like to share the following letter with you that will hopefully start you on that path to hope. I felt it was a wonderful way to confirm this holiday message:

Dearest Bonnie,

As the year of 2007 is ending, and the New Year is about to begin, I feel compelled to write to you to let you know why this year is so much different than the last 20 or so that have passed me by. This is a year that I can celebrate—not the New Year as much as my New Life. Since you were the main instrumental part of that, I wanted to share my story and thank you, as well as ask you to print this story to give our other women the hope that they need during this time of year.

When I came to you over two years ago, I was scared and feeling mentally depressed. I had known for years that something was “rotten in the state of my marriage.” It was there, but there was no passion or compassion. I was walking through the days, one after another, knowing that each day would be the same—VOID. I spent 20 years trying to “fix” something that I didn’t know how to fix. I told you embarrassingly at that time that I had tried EVERYTHING to make my husband happy, but nothing worked. My husband was detached. For all intents and purposes, I was in a marriage all by myself. It was almost like I was living with a shadow that I could never grasp or hold on to.

In the early years of our marriage, when the sex seemed to vanish like smoke, I kept asking him what was wrong. First it was the pressures of the job. Then it was the pressures of having a new child. Then it was one ailment after another. And then it was the emotional battering down of how inadequate I was at EVERYTHING. I was never a good enough housekeeper; I was not as attractive as I was when we married (I gained 10 pounds over 20 years). I spent too much time taking care of our two children. I wasn’t supportive enough. What did that mean? I LOVED MY HUSBAND. I spent year after year trying to figure out what would make him happy, but nothing did.

I believed that I was the cause of his unhappiness—not that he was the cause of mine. I spent long hours crying and asking him to help me become the kind of woman he wanted. He would snarl some nasty words at me and tell me to stop complaining and expecting so much from him and from our marriage. He would tell me that I was watching too much television and that we were not “Ozzie and Harriet.” Those marriages were not real, so stop expecting him to be that way.

When I told him I wanted to go for marriage counseling six years into our marriage, he started yelling at me and telling me that our marriage didn’t need counseling because there was nothing wrong with it except I wanted too much. And in time, I learned to stop asking and start accepting that I must be the problem.

Everyone who met my husband thought that I was the luckiest woman alive. He was a chameleon. His outside face to the public was charming, loving, and personable. How many women told me, “I wish I had a husband like yours!” That was funny because I wished they had him too. I wished they knew how all of that energy shown in pleasing the crowds magically disappeared when we were alone. All the communication that seemed so easy to him to have with others was “un-haveable” with me.

And then two and a half years ago, the day of suspicion came for me when I overheard a phone conversation that was not meant for my ears. It was late at night, and I was lying in bed pretending to be asleep as I often did because it often would take me hours to fall asleep. His cell phone in the den was ringing and he jolted out of bed to answer it. I heard him laughing quietly, telling the person on the other end how he couldn’t wait to see the person the next day and how excited he was about the fun they would have. I felt as if I had been hit by a bowling ball right in my heart. I didn’t say a word but waited to see how he would handle the next day ahead where we had “family plans” with my family.

At breakfast, the cell phone rang and my husband answered and made a big fuss about a problem at his job. He put on an act like there was a crisis that suddenly arose and he was being summoned to his office. This certainly wasn’t the first time—but it was the first time that I realized there was no office crisis. Just to confirm my suspicions, I went to his office and his car was not there. I checked five times that day, circling a five block radius around his office, just to believe it myself. Now I knew. He was having an affair.

There was a woman out there who was able to make him laugh, unlike me. There was a woman out there he was willing to see at all costs including lying to me—unlike being with me. I cried my eyes out wondering why he could be so happy to run to another woman but so unhappy to stay with me.

I was determined to be what you call “my own private detective.” I started looking through every scrap of paper around the house searching for clues. I don’t know what made me think to check his computer, but I was hoping to find something there that would tell me who my demon was. I wasn’t very computer savvy at that point, but I knew that my husband was spending a lot of time on it. I saw a history button and decided to look there. In between a bunch of websites for insignificant information came was the name “BroadMan.com.” I hit into it just on impulse, and to my shock, a site of naked men appeared with inviting other men to “come and have fun.” I found myself wanting to vomit. This couldn’t be—it had to be a mistake.

Thankfully, when my husband came home and I told him how I “accidentally” discovered the site, he told me it was a mistake. A friend sent it to him in an email as a joke. He thought it was a site for large men’s clothing. He was tall and muscular and needed specialized clothes. When BroadMan.com appeared, he assumed it was a specialized catalogue for large men. He told me how he had gotten “ill” when it popped up seeing a gay sex site, and I felt relieved. I then confronted him with my suspicions that he was having an affair, and he got very belligerent telling me that I’m “paranoid.” Again, I felt so relieved. When we went to bed that night, I lovingly approached him hoping to find something that would encourage me not to believe he was looking elsewhere. He pecked my forehead and told me how exhausted he was from working all day. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him I went by his office looking for his car.

Once those pictures of naked men were in my head, I became obsessed with the thought that my big strapping handsome husband might be gay. I found you on the Internet when I typed in “gay husbands,” and I wrote to you with the signs, and you assured me that he was gay. I remember sending you a nasty note back stating that considering you didn’t know me or my situation how could you just so quickly “jump” to that conclusion? I wanted you to tell me that the website was a fluke. I wanted you to reassure me that one gay website does not a gay man make. I wanted you to get rid of the horrifying fear that I was facing. You were of no help to me at all that day.

Even though I wasn’t very nice to you, you were very nice to me. You sent me a long set of your past newsletters, and I forced myself to read them. All of the emotions that I was reading about were MY emotions. All of the circumstances you talked about were MY circumstances. All of the denial you spoke about was MY denial. I kept sending you short notes hoping you would tell me that I could be wrong, but you refused to allow me to stay in my own state of denial. You told me to install spyware so that I could find out the truth. I did— and I did.

In those following weeks, I became glued to the computer every time my husband left the house. I became obsessed with reading about his life, as if I were reading a novel about someone else. Who was this man that I lived with for nearly 20 years and thought I knew? He was a stranger to me. I had no clue who he was as I read email after email with notes about “hook ups” and “casual sex encounters.” I didn’t say a word to him. It was as if I was watching a soap opera of someone else’s life and I was glued to the television.

I started to write to you almost daily, sending you the information I found. I didn’t know how to confront him with the truth. You advised me, consoled me, and listened to me when I was almost banging my head against the wall. You encouraged me to take one step at a time rather than jumping into quick sand that I couldn’t pull myself out of. You advised me to get legal advice before I did anything because I feared the financial repercussions of leaving the marriage. You had me make a plan—a week by week diagram for the next few months of how to take each step when I seemed overwhelmed with just waking up in the morning.

I carefully stepped one step at a time. Sometimes I went three steps forward and two steps back, but you told me to get up and keep moving “straight” ahead. Each day I woke up and read my goals as you had me put down on paper to keep me focused. The funny thing was my husband never suspected a thing. He was so unemotionally involved in our relationship it never occurred to him that I was now just as unemotionally involved with him anymore. This made it easier for me to do what had to be done.

It took me over a year to put all the pieces together, but you were there with me every step of the way, never pushing—just encouraging. And then the day of confrontation came. I was totally prepared. With evidence in hand, I told him to sit down because it’s time for a discussion.

Of course, he was annoyed. He was on his way out to meet with one of his sex mates and I was taking up his valuable time. I didn’t beat around the bush. I had my folder of evidence in my hand. I told him, “This is your day of reckoning. I am letting you know now that I know you are gay. I know you have been lying to me and cheating on me for years. Don’t bother denying it—all the proof is in this folder. Don’t try justifying it—there is no justification for it. Don’t try running from it—the truth is out, even if you’re not. Most importantly, our marriage is now ending—and it’s not just because you’re gay—it’s because you were dishonest and unfaithful. If it were just gay, we could have ended it being friends. But because you ruined every ounce of self-worth I had by blaming me for your unhappiness, I don’t want to be your friend. I will do my best to be civil about this as long as you do the right thing. That means leaving immediately and being responsible to your family.”

I had this all written down as you told me to do in case I got nervous. I practiced it 100’s of times in my own mind, waiting for the day when I could say it. I didn’t leave it open to discussion or argument. And for the first time in 20 years, he didn’t try to argue. He said okay and raced out of the house. Of course he was late for his date, but I didn’t care what his reason was.

The next day, he packed whatever I hadn’t had a chance to pack and moved in with a “friend.” I didn’t cry, but I was still feeling stunned. Women have to understand that even ending a bad marriage is difficult. You told me that so many times, but I didn’t believe it until he took out his suitcases. Our two children, in their late teens, were told the truth. I told them. I felt they had the right to know. They were at peace with my decision. They loved me and were tired of seeing me beaten down. I told them both that this was not the right way to live, and I apologized to them both for having them endure the years of mistreatment with a man who was frustrated with himself and taking it out on all of us.

December 28 will commemorate the one year anniversary of being out on my own. It’s been a year of rebuilding and rediscovering who I am. I like this new me much better than the old me because I didn’t even know who the old me was anymore. I was living in my husband’s closet, living in his shadow, living to please him without thought of pleasing me. That has now changed.