Mar 7th, 2006
Fortunately, my mom asked my dad to move out when I was five.
New York Times reporter Katy Butler writes about women who stay married to gay men in “Many Couples Must Negotiate Terms of ‘Brokeback’ Marriages.”
At one of my stops on my book tour two years ago, I was asked if I would write a companion book to Families Like Mine about “the other experience.” What did she mean? She meant the mothers and fathers that stay together for whatever reason, namely “for the sake of the children.”
I didn’t hold back. I told her I would not write that book because I couldn’t live with the topic so closely for several years. I would choke on the depression and denial of it all. Couples from long-term mixed orientation marriages criticize me for being judgmental, telling me I have no place telling them what works best for them, mile in their shoes, etc. etc.
I get that. No doubt I have no idea what goes into a wife deciding to stay with a semi-closeted husband, compromising her happiness and self-worth while she accommodates a man who gets the best of both worlds: The convenience and social status of “the wife and kids” and no-strings-attached sex he doesn’t even have to hide from his wife.
(Typically, the husband justifies his extra-marital relationships by pushing for an open marriage — although in many cases, the wife does not have the interest, time, or energy to find lovers of her own. If she does, her husband might have difficulty accepting an even playing field, like the man who wrote for my advice about this very issue.)
I can’t speak to how well mixed-orientation marriages work for the people in these couples. Maybe when they say it is a successful non-traditional model they are truthful and not in denial. It becomes my place to voice my opinion, however, when I see the impact on the kids. I have yet to meet a grown child of a mixed-orientation marriage who admires their parents’ choice to stay together. These grown children are filled with doubt as they attempt to persue healthy intimate relationships with such distorted views of a “functional” marriage, and no sense of appropriate boundaries of affection. They see marriage as obligation and sacrifice. Oh, and the idea that you deserve to find both love and desire in one person? Does not compute.
That’s why I care what arrangements mixed orientation marriages negotiate. It might work for the couples, but it’s not working for the children who are observing their parents’ interactions. How many of the grown children will need to come out about repeating the cycle and marrying their very own closet-case spouses before married couples start re-thinking this “staying together for the children” excuse?
My parents stayed married and living together after my Dad came out when I was infant, they slept in different rooms had different boyfriends but we lived together. My dad’s boyfriend moved in when I was 8. My parents got divorced when I was 17 and my Dad moved out.
I’m not sure why they stayed together - I guess for my benefit, but I think they had other reasons as well. I am not sure if it was better for me or not. I had a closer relationship with my Dad than I would have if he’d moved out, which is a clear benefit. I can’t decide if it was a good thing for my Dad, and I’m sure it wasn’t a good thing for my Mom. But I’m sure it’s complicated.
I’m saying all this because I can see where you are coming from , but it’s just not that neat and clean. This bit was really weird to read:
“They [children of mixed-orientation marriages] see marriage as obligation and sacrifice. Oh, and the idea that you deserve to find both love and desire in one person? Does not compute.”
As screwed up as I may be by my weird hippy/homo upbringing I don’t think it’s left me unable to be a happily married man.
I have always been grateful that my parents got divorced when I was 2. I didn’t see my Dad as much as I would’ve liked to, but at least my Mom and her partner could be themselves in front of me. There was enough secrecy with the family trying to hide from society, I can’t imagine how much harder it would’ve been for my parents if they also had to hide inside the house as well.
I’m speculating here, but if the parents are talking to the children about what’s REALLY going on, I can imagine they could be very confused. The stories they can make up in their own heads to explain the situation could end up being more detrimental the truth.
After growing up in a family that had to hide, I am a big proponent of the truth. I believe that lying (or omitting the truth) to your children can be very damaging.
Just my thoughts.
I just read the article online and I’m wondering what happened to the MEN whose spouses are gay? What about that part of the population? I have not talked to my Dad about the effects of finding out my Mom was gay and then getting divorced (in the mid 1970’s). My brothers tell me he now has a BIG aversion to commitment, marriage and even talking about relationships with women. Where’s the article on THAT?!! Sorry, I just think the article was very one-sided.
The last paragraph of the NY Times article made me furious:
“He added: “I am totally committed on all levels to Paulette. I felt so intimate with her when I was caring for her during her cancer treatments — to me, that’s a stronger expression of love than whether I’m having anonymous sex with a man.”
It makes me so angry that gay/lesbian orientation is again relegated to just being a matter of sexual activity or sexual urges. I mean, my gosh, the whole point of Brokeback Mountain was that it was a love story (yes, a painfully complicated one), and not simply about a married man trying to get his rocks off with another dude. Ugh.
I agree with the original posting. That article, to me, just reads like denial, denial, denial. And I do realise how complicated this issue is because my dad came out after 17 years of marriage. And yes, he did love my mom, intimately. However, he was finally able to accept that his sexual desires were only a PART of the equation and that it really was OKAY for him to fall in love and be emotionally intimate with a man–not just have sex with him. To me, this article is sending the message that “gayness” is a sexual urge and that marriage to women is the true expression of love and commitment.
I thought the article was great. It takes a cultural phenomena and relates it back to real people, creating discovery and discussion. For me, it was a good reminder that, gay or straight, marriage is an intensely personal institution–each couple makes it their own. I don’t pretend to know why their marriages stay together, but if it works for them, who am I to judge?
I think Mary’s got it right!
I was just re-reading this after following the links from your more recent post. I remember from the first time I read it that the term mixed-orientation marriages just sounded really odd to me. I’ve seen it in some of the articles, but it seems to make the assumption that there are only two sexual orientations.
Because a marriage between a bi woman and a straight man would probably not be lumped in under the term of mixed-orientation marriage. I mean, I suppose I could consider myself in a mixed-orientation marriage being a dyke with a partner who’s queer (and yes, those are different sexual orientations).
I guess the distinction that people are trying to pull out is being in a marriage where attraction doesn’t match up with the gender of your partner, but it would be nice if there was a better phrase for it. Perhaps something like incompatible-gender-attraction marriages.
How about calling them sexually incompatible marriages? That’s how I describe my union to the opposite-gender ball-and-chain. We stay together — both of us are celibate because we’re afraid of going to hell — for the kids and because we made a promise before god and, well, we don’t want to go to hell. We are celibate (thank god)… I did the whole “close you eyes and think of England” bit, but when I started feeling suicidal over it, I had to put an end to that. We sleep in separate rooms and we do without (very Catholic). Spousal Unit complies because he does love me (we are caring roomies, I guess, but I wouldn’t call us friends; we are co-parents and roommates) and he knows how much I loathe sex with him, so he leaves me blessedly alone now. But no, we’re not happy. Ever. Yes, the kids (one grown, the other aged 10) know. (I am out to everyone. My kids may never see their mom happy, but they know she is honest to a fault - my late coming-out had to do with inexperience and figuring out after the wedding that I HATE sex with men).
[In response to comment from "dyke spouse"]
Oh, for heavens sakes! What a waste of energy and productivity. Your “honesty” may also be emotionally paralyzing to your own children. As a non-Catholic, I don’t know which books to recommend, but there must be some contemporary Catholic theology that would give you a better understanding of “hell” so that you could free yourself from that fear and all four of you could live more creative and fulfilling as well as loving lives.
I have been married to a lesbian for 20 years and I am three years postdisclosure with two young boys. Like most mixed orientated couples that I know, our reasons for staying together are complex. Certainly, the happiness of the kids has something to do with it, but we also stay together because we simply love each other and we are committed to a life together — even though we have our struggles. Our family is a celebration of togetherness and love, not misery. Our challeges are many, but they simply do not outweigh the many reasons we want to stay together.
In the end we may not make it — the odds are surely against us. In the meantime, though, we will continue to define our own marriage, our own values, and our own happiness. Our children are joyful and happy. They know what is appropriate for their age. As their age and maturity permit, we will explain to them why our marriage is different and how love has held our relationship together. At some point, I hope that they will look back on our relationship after we are both gone and explain to their children that their grandparents stayed together not for the “sake of their children” but because their love far outweighed the challenges added by the fact that they had different sexual orientations.
If we seperate later in life, I hope that our children will see our efforts to stay togehter not as a pitiful exercise of misery, but as a celebration of effort to overcome that ended with two people who loved each other enough to let go when they knew the time was right.
At the moment, the time is not right for us to let go. It may never be. In the meantime, we will just do the best we can and not let the fear of failure drive us apart.
God bless all people strong enough to love even when other people tell them it’s not right.
How lucky we are in this day to hear that we are not alone. Twenty years ago, when I told my divorce lawyer that the reason for the divorce was that I was gay, he acted like I was a side show freak–which is pretty much the way I felt.
I tried the cohabitation route with my ex-wife for two years and found that it didn’t help the kids, didn’t decrease the Catholic guilt, and was the worst choice I had ever made in my marriage. Lies, half-lies, and lots of hurt feelings. Thank God I eventually got the sense to get out of the house and live the life my body was designed for. If I ever really seriously hurt my children psychologically, it was undoubtedly in this period when the fabric of the marriage was torn to shreds right in front of them.
I have wanted to talk to children of families like mine. I am afraid my kids haven’t shared much with me about their emotional responses to these events…especially my son. He was ten when I came out, and suffered through it in ways my 7 year-old daughter may not have. Now he seems to be a well adjusted adult, quite successful professionally, and appears to be happy in his personal life. But those years between 12 and 20 were difficult at best. I don’t remember him smiling much.
I wonder how much of the depressed affect he showed was a response to simple divorce, and how much was confusion about the reasons for the divorce. What could I have done to make things easier and happier for him?
That is the past, of course. Maybe it is best not to go back. How wonderful that children today can speak, though, of their lives coming from families like mine. You have such an ability to help give guidance to parents coming out of “mixed orientation” marriages, to show them the pitfalls and the successes and hope for a happy outcome.
I am a straight married mother of 2 grown kids. What amazes me about this discussion is the bald selfishness of the parents. My mom was gay, and left me and my dad when I was 15, but never “came out,” though of course I knew in my bones that she was. After she died, her lover admitted their long-term relationship to me. To this day, I deeply feel that I never really knew my mother. The most basic fact of her life never was shared with me, despite many, many opportunities. Her leaving to go live her secret life did nothing but show me that she was far more important than I, and that I was someome who could be thrown away by the most important person in my life. It is a loss that will never be filled. How different it all could have been if she trusted me with her truth!
LISTEN TO ME, GAY PARENTS! Especially if you are in a mixed-orientation marriage, you owe your children absolute honesty (once they are old enough to understand). Parenting demands the whole enchilada, the REAL you, authenticity every day! It is pure selfishness to hide yourselves from your children. They did not choose to be in your family - they are at the mercy of the adults in their world. How will they feel when their family is revealed as a fraud constructed to protect you - at least as long as it suits you? Your children deserve to have the chance to know and accept the real you as you are, and the right to make choices about their relationship with you, whether they embrace it or turn away. Your integrity as a human being is at stake, and so is the long-term emotional health of your children.
A mixed orientation marriage can be complicated. I do agree that if the only reason for staying together is because of the kids, then it is probably best to separate/divorce/move out.
But if they decide to stay together for more than financial or child-rearing issues, I say more power to them. However, at some point, I think they need to be honest with their children.
I am a women married to a Gay man. We have been together for 10 years and I have known about his orientation since before we were engaged. Of course we both hoped being married would take the “Gay” out of him, but we were young and wrong. Well, we are still married, have happy children and we stay together for many reasons which all vary depending on our communication and honesty we have with one another. Our primary purpose is that we love and like one another more than we love or like any one else. He has his own personal gay life when time away from the family permits. I love him more now that he accepts his orientation for what it is. This type of marriage is challenging, but we are committed to the family, each other and our children because we think we are special. This is a family worth fighting for (to keep). I realize how it may seem “insane” to even try, but as long as we are providing a happy home for eachother and our children, I think we have it better than most.
As one of 3 children of a dysfunctional marriage on many levels, including sexual orientation, I agree wholeheartedly with this take on the effects these types of relationships have on children. My father “came out” to me when I was 18. I knew he was wierd and had “alot going on” but I was floored when I found out. My older sister and younger brother basically knew about it and decided not to tell me. So did my mother and father for at least 4 years. It’s now 10 years later and I’m still upset about everything and have social issues that I believe never would have been there had my parents divorced. I begged my mother to do so, but she was ill and subsequently died one year after I found out. From reading her journals, I know that she felt “stuck”, used and ultimately responsible for the problems that her children had and still have. I know that my Dad loved her, but he didn’t love her enough. His lifestyle was disrespectful to my mother and she, in turn, took that out on her children (stuck at home while her husband was out playing). Anyway, I can and probably will write a novel on this whole subject but I definitely agree that it’s not good for the children, especially when they’re grown and trying to find love for themselves. It’s also difficult to trust anyone.
I can’t believe the awful, judgmental, reductionist, and short-sighted tone of the above article. What about mixed orientation marriages where both spouses have always been honest with each other - starting a relationship knowing that one person is straight and one is gay? And what if, in such a relationship, there was no infidelity? Even more important, what if being gay was not a secret, for either partner or the rest of the family? What about mixed orientation marriages, as above mentioned, where neither partner identifies as “straight”? How about considering the flexibility and changing nature of sexual and romantic attraction for individuals over their lifetimes, as well as other (non-binary) sexual orientations of individuals who are in long-term relationships?
Romantic, sexual, marital, and familial relationships are complicated. And while honesty and respect are foundational elements of successful relationships, who says these principles (of honesty and respect) are absent from mixed orientation marriages?