I looked at my father as he studied the check and pulled bills from his wallet. It occurred to me that maybe he wanted me to get involved with someone, date, get married again, and move out of his house. No. That wasn’t it.
“Dad, what made you ask me that?”
He looked up at me for a moment, slapped a generous tip on the table and started to stand up before saying, “I just wondered if you get lonely. A little companionship is a nice thing. You don’t have anyone around here.”
“Do you ever wish you had someone to catch a movie with?” I asked.
“I think it would be nice,” he said, “but I wouldn’t ever want to get married again, and I think many women want to get married. I married your mother. She’s my only wife. And, besides, I could never go through losing someone again. I just couldn’t do that.”
I nodded. He and I weren’t so different. We didn’t take risks when it came to emotions and love. We were all in or not at all. And once in, we were there for the duration.
CHAPTER 16
An Unsatisfactory Situation
DAD’S QUESTION about whether I thought about or wanted a “companion” made me think. I checked in again with my unmarried girlfriends. They were of mixed minds. Some, like me, said, “Hell, no! Not at this stage of my life.” But most missed having the company—not necessarily marriage, but someone they could share the joys of travel, theater, food, or nature with. I thought about what I missed about having a husband.
I missed hugs. I missed slow dancing. Dancing is like a moving hug with music. I liked leaning up against someone and having him wrap his arms around me. I missed feeling as though I fit perfectly within someone’s embrace, close against him, as though there were no space between us at all, just part of them, skin to skin, the physical warmth, feeling his heartbeat. That feeling when it seemed my own heart began to beat in rhythm to his. I missed knowing someone other than my girlfriends, children, or father cared about and missed me when I wasn’t there. When I thought about what I really missed it wasn’t about being married. I missed aspects of the relationship. The jokes, the shared history, the favorite songs, places, and moments only we knew.
Dad’s question made me entertain the idea at least of a friendship with another man. Yet it also made me think about the end of my second marriage—something I had not and wasn’t capable of doing to the extent I should have when it happened.
On reflection now, my heart still hurts for the two of us then. Had I paid attention to what I was feeling or been capable of feeling anything after my husband’s disclosure that Sunday morning, I’d have recognized the early stages of grief and might have handled things differently. Now I am more able to see that I could not have possibly understood what he confronted.
As best I could, I presented my “we can do this and we can do it well” face, when I wasn’t flat on my back on the couch listening to Bonnie Raitt sing “I Can’t Make You Love Me” over and over. While I experienced shock and denial, my husband seemed to easily embrace and accept that he was gay. Even if he did not have specific plans to lead a new life at that time, one he’d had to deny for too long, I knew he could not and should not be prevented from living it.
I replayed our conversation over and over. I parsed what he said.
Talking to myself, I’d say, “He said, ‘I think I might be gay.’ He didn’t say, ‘I am gay.’ Maybe he isn’t really gay and just thinks he is for some reason.” Then I’d try to think what those reasons could be. In those days, and for the first time in my life, I grasped for ambiguity over certainty.
I searched my memory of the time before our marriage. Had I missed hints that he was gay? There was nothing that I would have pointed to. Nothing I would have seen as a red flag. As someone who had lived all over the United States and lived in or visited other countries, my approach to measuring or categorizing others differed from a lot of people I knew.
My husband wasn’t interested in watching football, basketball, or baseball teams, unlike my father, brothers, and many friends and neighbors’ husbands. He was athletic—a runner and long-distance bicycler. He liked to garden and cook. Where my friend’s husbands could not care less about the color of paint or wallpaper they put on the walls, I enjoyed his interest. Given his talent at and willingness to do all painting, I thought that only fair.
He was more fastidious than I. While he took great care in his appearance, I did not. My not caring about those things as a woman didn’t make me gay, did it? It didn’t occur to me to assign any label to him. As one of my friends said, “I love how he is so comfortable with his feminine side while you are cool with your masculine side. You balance each other out.”
Okay. That made sense. And, by the way, the term ‘metrosexual’ appeared in our lexicon about that time. I thought he was trendy, in fact—avant-garde.
We were both creative. He excelled at the visual arts and design. My creative endeavors were focused on the written word and music, though he loved music, too. I saw creativity as more of a force within him than I think he did then. Because our talents and interests meshed as well as they did, nothing stood out. But really, why would or should it?
I felt that he was the first man in my life who seemed to appreciate my mind as much as my body and how I looked. Was that a gay thing? I didn’t think so. I was just lucky. Right? That made me love him even more. I found it respectful.
I did remember a time during the first year after we were married when he came home one Sunday with a pierced ear. I jokingly asked him if there was something that he wanted to tell me. Obviously annoyed, he’d given me an indignant response, “No!” I took the earring in stride as another example of my husband’s strong sense of individuality and not caring what anyone else thought. I admired that trait in him, too.
After revisiting the past to see where I’d missed clues, I started to bargain.
Maybe he wasn’t “totally” gay but on the lower end of the spectrum. Maybe he was bisexual. But all that did was provide a possible explanation for why he’d married me. Then I decided it might be easier for all of us if he were just gay. It was clearer cut. In the end, my mind always returned to how after almost twenty years of knowing this man and almost fifteen years of marriage, I could not have known my husband was gay. Or why he finally chose to tell me after all that time. Eventually I became mentally and emotionally spent.
I did not want to be angry at him, just the situation. After exhaustive sessions of overthinking, during which I tried to come up with answers to all my questions as well as any that others might ask me, I would turn in another direction. What if he were not my husband? What if he were a relative, friend, or neighbor who chose to tell me this?
That made things easier. I did not believe that someone chose to be gay. I understood how familial, religious, and societal pressures would prevent someone from disclosing this. In that frame of mind, for brief moments of strength and understanding, I held anxiety and anger at bay. In those moments of clarity, I understood that it was unfair to expect someone to be who they were not or to live a life that wasn’t the one they were meant to live. Still, fear about what the future held for me, the children and, indeed, him, lurked.
For a short time, we enjoyed a honeymoon phase. We attempted to start where we were then. Though I admit I wasn’t happy about the situation, I was happy for him. He seemed more comfortable, less depressed, and even excited. Many times, I smiled to myself as I watched him approach this phase of life as he did all new projects. He read, studied, and talked to me about his thoughts on what he learned. To this he added joining support groups. I could not explain then, nor can I now, how easily my excitement for him and my own dread coexisted.
Though I was happy to see my husband’s happiness for himself and the potential for his life ahead, it also pained me. I knew it meant that eventually I would move from co-traveler on the journey to bystander, whether he realized that or not. That time came far sooner than I thought.
“There’s a group for
gay married men,” he told me. “I’m going to attend their next meeting. They go out to dinner at a nearby restaurant afterward.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Sounds like a great resource.” All the while my mood slowly edged forward from denial and closer to anger as I thought how lovely it was that the wives stayed home alone, taking care of the children, cooking dinner and cleaning up, while the husbands shared a dinner and drinks downtown. Then I’d snap out of it and think, “I’m such a bitch.” I hoped when he met those men, he’d see that he was not gay after all.
The weekend after he attended the meeting, I answered the phone to hear a woman introduce herself.
“Nancie, your husband gave my husband your phone number. He attended the Gay and Married Men’s Association meeting last week. He thought we might be a resource for you.”
I said nothing before she recognized the silence and said, “You didn’t know that I’d be calling. I’m sorry.”
As she told me about the group of women who were married, separated, or divorced from gay men, I came to understand that she knew exactly where I was in this process and how I felt. She encouraged me to join them at their next meeting.
“To be honest, this is all so new to me,” I said, “that I don’t know what to think or what to do yet.”
“You don’t have to promise anything. Come when you’re ready. And please do not hesitate to call before that if you need to talk.”
She gave me the date of the next meeting, then added, “By the way, for your first meeting it’s not necessary, but we do ask each woman to bring a dessert. After we meet, we socialize.”
I sensed a shift in my feelings. Where I’d been edging from denial to anger from my husband’s disclosure up until just a few minutes before, I was now up to my ears in rage. No more denial. I was married to a man who was gay.
My husband looked at me expectantly as I hung up the phone and turned to him.
“You gave them my name?” I practically snarled. “And my number?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you about the Straight Spouse’s group. One of the guys suggested it. He said he’d have his wife call you.”
I began to laugh and noticed his expression had changed from hopeful to wary.
“You realize that outed me, right?” I asked. My raised eyebrows and half smile belied a seething swirl of emotions, menacingly close to the surface.
I realized fully for the first time that though I’d known I was along for the ride while someone else drove, I would have no say in determining the speed at which we traveled.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, genuinely apologetic. “I thought it would be helpful. I thought a group of women going through what you’re going through would be a good support for you.”
I was not laughing by this time. I turned my back on him and walked away.
“Oh and by the way,” I snapped, “I think it’s typical and ridiculous that you men have a night on the town, get drinks and dinner at a nice restaurant after your meeting, yet expect your wives to stay home, take care of the children, make their dinner, and clean up when we have to bring our own damn dessert to our meeting.”
I walked away. Then, over my shoulder, I said, “I will not arrange for babysitting.”
“So you’ll go?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I responded.
He told his family and close friends first. A few called me after he spoke to them. Though I was so appreciative that they thought to call me after hearing from him, a ringing phone threw me. I had a hard time knowing what to say. Sometimes after a few minutes of banter, I’d begin to cry, then quickly recover, and try to put on a brave front. One friend said, “Oh, Nancie. You still love him.”
Of course I did. It would have been easier for both of us had I not.
I called my mother, and after the typical, “How are you and Dad?” I told her the news. I cannot remember what I said, but I’m sure I was very calm—as though it were just another typical day at our house and the water heater had gone out. “Mom, I have something I have to tell you.”
I do remember that there was a short silence. And then, “How are the two of you? This had to be extremely hard. For him to tell you and for you to hear it.”
I told her everything I knew—that we still cared about one another, that we were committed to working on it together, we were still friends, family. We wanted the children to be affected as little as possible. No, they didn’t know.
Looking back now, it’s hard to fathom how naïve I was. But I was relying on defense mechanisms I’d utilized my whole life. Break things down into pieces the size you can handle. Order them. Put away the ones you don’t have to deal with now. At some level I knew that once again I’d be leaving the life I knew and marching into a new one. But right then, I just needed to deal with the information we had at the time and process that.
My mother called back on Monday morning to check in and to let me know she’d told my father.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said he was sorry. But that gay or straight, he’s still the same man we’ve known.”
From then on, Mom was the conduit between me and Dad for information about what was happening. Not that I couldn’t have talked to him about it; it just seemed that Mom and I did all the communicating. That was not unusual. It had always been the case.
We agreed to tell the children together, but I felt we needed to wait longer than he did. They were fourteen, ten, and seven.
I did not believe the girls were ready or that they could understand our decision to separate. I did not know how much we should tell them. I worried that they were too young to understand the reasons why. I think now that I still hoped he’d come to me one day and say, “I’m not gay after all. I thought I was because ….”
But I underestimated and did not anticipate the urgency behind my husband’s need to tell the children so soon. Had I tried to hold off until we worked out our relationship and processed how his being gay changed that first? Honestly, I still hoped this was a phase.
In hindsight, I see that prior to his disclosure, our relationship had changed and been deteriorating slowly. His being gay was not the only issue. Even if he had not stopped caring about me entirely, his feelings for me had shifted. I felt like a distant relative. And I remember questioning whether he even liked me at all, let alone loved or cared about me. Again, rather than ask, I brushed off my concern and filled the gaps in our relationship with child-related activities, classes, volunteer work, and my new job.
Soon, I felt like a reflection in his rearview mirror. While I remained, rooted stubbornly to the landscape of what had been our life together, he wanted to move on to meet me in a new place. I did not want to move, yet I could not stay either.
One day after returning from an event at our younger daughters’ elementary school, I found my husband raking leaves in the front yard. It was then he revealed to me that he’d told Rachel he was gay. I stood for a moment, staring at him in disbelief.
“We agreed we would tell the girls together,” I said while he looked at me as though confused as to why I would be upset. “Why didn’t you wait for me to come home?”
That was the moment I accepted the impending end of our married relationship and the possible end to any relationship at all. I had not expected damage to what had been up to that time a solid parenting partnership. And I had not expected my own reaction to this first fissure in the foundation of it.
Internally, my reaction was more about a piece of territory I had occupied and guarded alone—one not really shared with anyone—the fear and anxiety that our current situation might provide my first husband and his wife a reason to sue for custody. There had never been any indication prior to this one that they felt inclined to that. There was no indication that there ever would be, but I had not discussed this with them yet and now I worried that my daughter would. In anticipation of our eventual separation and dissolution of the marriage it became and remained a point of
high anxiety for me, one of my biggest fears.
Rachel had been two and a half years old when I married for the second time. Though she had done her best to keep him at arm’s length during the first six months or so, her stepfather remained unflappable and consistent, eventually winning her over. He loved her as fully as Sharon and Jane, the two daughter,s we had together, always there for her after her every-other-weekend, alternating major holiday, and summer visits with her natural father. I venture to say that she and her sisters, like I, forget and must be reminded of their half-sibling status, so seamless was his love and care for them.
Without realizing it at the time, I shape-shifted then from spouse, friend, and partner to single mother. I stared at him briefly before turning to run across the lawn, up the porch steps, through the front door, and up the stairs to her bedroom on the second floor. My worry for my daughter overrode my fury at him.
I knocked at her bedroom door, not knowing what to expect. I looked into her eyes when she opened the door part way trying to determine her reaction. Her face was expressionless. No, not expressionless. It wore that expression one has when the person they’re looking at has not met expectations. No disappointment, really, but more “Ah, well. What else did I expect?”
We talked for a few moments through the crack in the door until she said she wanted to be alone.
I made my way downstairs to the kitchen. I put the kettle on the stove. I needed tea. I didn’t know what to do next or what I’d say to him. I just drank my tea and paced back and forth, wiping down the kitchen counter. Clearing things off the table. Picking children’s things up off the floor. After he finished up outside, my husband came into the house and sat in one of the chairs in the family room. He made a few statements about how he thought the discussion with Rachel had gone. He felt her reaction less mature than he’d hoped. It was probably not the most mature thing for me to say, but I responded that she was fourteen and that her job was to be immature.
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