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 learnt of GAMMA from reading an article in SSO ‘Gay Men Living Straight Lives.’ That article accurately describes the complexity of the issue; I lived it myself. My realisation came after ten years of marriage. My wife and I struggled for the next eight years to hold our marriage together. There is an unfortunate perception that gay men hold on to their heterosexual marriages out of selfishness, wanting to ‘pass’ as straight. Outside observers mistakenly conclude that these men simply want the safety and security of straight marriage while enjoying trysts outside the marriage. Not so. I lived it and have peer-counseled hundreds of men who have come to the painful realisation that they are bisexual or gay. They all go through a denial phase, all the while wondering, just how deep does the rabbit hole go. It often takes years for them to accept the fact that they are not heterosexual and they begin climbing the Kinsey scale…
- 0 = straight
- 1 or 2 = a little bit bisexual
- 3 = ‘Good grief I'm fully bisexual’
- 4 = ‘Oh my God I'm hanging to a cliff by my fingernails’
- 5 = ‘I'm gay and will spend eternity in Hell’
- 6 = ‘I'm gay and it's okay; there is life after revelation’
That process does not happen overnight. Our sexual identity is fluid and it unfolds from our adolescent years through our mid twenties. Add a few years to that scenario if you lived a life repressing your true feelings. Some days you think you're a 2 on the scale and a week later you're a 5, and a few weeks later you convince yourself it's just a bad dream and you're a 1 again. No one just wakes up and decides “I'm going to quit the straight life and go get a gay life.” It's a protracted painful and terrifying process.
My shrink told me that our sexuality is like one thread in a fabric of our personality. But the moment you start pulling at it, the fabric unravels – a personality disintegration. That's a terrifying prospect in your 30's: tear yourself to shreds and re-weave your personality fabric with new threads. It's also terrifying because bisexual/gay married men know if they acknowledge the problem, (being married and in love with the wrong sex) they might actually be forced to make a decision they desperately don't want to make. Most married gay men eventually come out to their wife. It becomes an undeniable truth and the struggle to hold the marriage intact requires the couple to make compromises or quit the marriage. Many choose to try various methods of accommodation but the vast majority of these accommodations don't work and the marriages fail.
In the early phases, gay married men try to compartmentalise things: their love stays with the wife, while they try to satisfy their sexual needs through anonymous encounters or monogamous sexual friendships. But anonymous encounters are like ‘a cocaine high.’ As soon as you come down off the high, there is depression and emptiness that can only be displaced by another encounter. Quantity is no substitute for quality. Eventually, they make an emotional connection with someone and that is transforming. Perhaps for the first time in their life they experience the infatuation, the yearning, an emotionally fulfilling and sexual relationship – like it was meant to be. As the Bible puts it, “And it came to pass, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”
Continued next column
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Continued from previous column
In my own case, I learnt that my need for another man was not just some sexual need that could be compartmentalised. It was an emotional need that my wife was never going to be able to fill. I had no right expecting her to do that or accommodate it; it was my problem. I am created as I am and I was hijacked into a straight life and continued down that path through arrogance, ignorance, denial and vanity. I went down the wrong road and it was hurting me, my wife, my kids, and every guy that would want to love me. Only I could solve the problem and stop the hurt. Allowing the charade to continue would be insane. She deserved better and so did I. However, she and I had this problem: we both still loved each other very much. We were high school sweet hearts, married for 18 years and had two great kids. We were best friends and confidants. She did not want me to leave, I was the love of her life; and yet the source of so much pain for her.
Balancing the two worlds is a feat very few can achieve, often winding up cheating everyone involved including himself. A life half-lived is no life worth living. On Christmas Eve, who does he disappoint and hurt, the wife or the lover? Who waits in the wings hoping he'll find the time to be with them? I was not willing to do that to anyone so I had to make a choice; I could turn my back on my own needs and never be with another man. But then I would grow to resent the choice and would eventually view my marriage as a prison with my wife as warden. I couldn't do that to her or my kids. I knew the odds of making ‘the double life thing’ work for everyone, but neither my wife nor I had the courage to end it. The pain of leaving someone you still love is the pain of having flesh torn from your body. It's got to be worse than childbirth because that memory subsides in a few days. The pain of walking away from someone you love doesn't go away. You never forget it. Some guys don't make the transition. Some commit suicide, others drown themselves in alcohol or drugs to kill the pain. Some discover they waited too long and life has passed them by. But many survive and find someone to love and be loved by. I was fortunate and though my first gay love did not work out, I knew I made the right decision and went on living. I came ‘Out’ in a big way. I joined a Gay Rights group and eventually became President. I met politicians and leaders I would have never met otherwise. I met lots of wonderful people and I met my partner who I've now been with for 13 years. I'm glad I got off the wrong road. It was tough and painful but I am so much richer doing so. I know many feel that being ‘Out’ and true to themselves will destroy them, but it's not so – not unless they choose adversity over living.
Some years after my divorce I had occasion to refer a bi-married acquaintance to my former shrink. I hadn't spoken to him in a few years and he asked—hindsight being 20/20—how was I adjusting, how did I feel about the outcome. My response was this: “I've lived two very different lives and I've had two people love me to the core of my existence. How many people do you know that have that kind of fortune in life?”
Anonymous
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