Seven Years Straight

Dear Readers,
I would like to give a warm welcome to our Straight Wife contributing writer, PJ. PJ is a Straight Wife that knows the heartache, pain and suffering that comes along with unknowingly marrying a gay man. PJ thank you for your honesty and helping other Straight Wife readers with your story.
Love and many blessings to all,
Misti


Seven years ago this month I was a bride in love, marrying the man of my dreams, and the wedding photos certainly convey images of happily ever after. I had taken my time to remarry, about twelve years because marriage was a sacred, holy vow and I knew this time it was forever. Besides, I had done a lot of self improvement work in the years following my divorce and felt I had my life together as a mature and wiser woman of 44. I was comfortable in my own skin and with living alone. I trusted that I had done the work to attract a loving, trusting relationship with a man who would love, honor and cherish me if that’s what I wanted for my life.

Only hours after exchanging those vows on a beautiful autumn day, I sensed a shift in my newly wedded husband. He wasn’t at all interested in having the reception party end or get to our honeymoon suite for our own private toast. I justified it because it was his first wedding, a 40 year old bachelor celebrating his long-awaited day; one that he had shared with so many friends as their best man throughout the years. (Besides, we’d been living together as a couple for the past year, so why not let him celebrate?) Eventually, in the early morning hours, he invited a few close friends to join us in our suite for yet another bottle of champagne. One friend in particular (whom I’d only met once before) continued to drink with my husband until it was clear he was unable to drive. To my astonishment, my husband asked me if the friend could sleep on the sofa in our suite. Of course I did! I tried to dismiss it with the fact that he also was drunk and not thinking clearly, but what I couldn’t dismiss was that I felt invisible and second to his friend. Fortunately, a couple intervened and took the friend to their home. We carried on with our wedding night, robotically, with the passion of the plastic bride and groom wedding cake topper. I never spoke of how uncomfortable I was on my wedding night with anyone. A couple of days later we left for our honeymoon in Paris. It would be the third night there, in the most romantic city in the world, before we would have sex again and the only time of the trip. I realize now it was just sex and never love-making. I convinced myself at the time it was, because to not, would have been unbearable. After all, HE was the man of my dreams, my soul mate for life. Surely the man of my dreams understood my desires, and wanted to fulfill them. Just as I wanted to fulfill his dreams as the wife he’d waited 40 years to marry. He just needed time and I just needed patience.

Why would I always recall our wedding night with such a strange chill and sensation? Was my wedding night a blessing or curse because I was given insight so soon of things to come in this marriage? I have struggled with those questions for the past seven years. Only recently I’ve come to learn my marriage is almost a text book case of a gay husband in deep denial of his homosexuality. There has been no shortage of red flags waving while I’ve been maintaining a white picket fence around my own denial. The alcoholism, constant job changes, drama, defensiveness, entitlement, and the tactics to become either distant or create a fight rather than be intimate with me. But of course, this was either my imagination or my fault and there was no apology large enough to make it right.

In my search for truth and honesty about our marriage, I have to acknowledge plenty of good times together. My husband can be incredibly funny and charming. There have tender and kind moments from the same man who is a mean alcoholic and narcissist. Were those times that felt so genuine and real just a big lie? Were they the accessories to the package deal sold to me during the two years before the walk down the isle of denial? All my spiritual teachings emphasize focusing on the good that is present in everyone to create more good. Perfect reasoning to ignore the bad behavior of the man I no longer recognized as the one I fell in love with. It seemed that the more I focused on his good qualities and worthiness, the angrier he became. He drank more and became even more distant. It defied all that made sense in a loving and intimate relationship between a man and woman. I felt like I was like trying to change the order of the seasons just to co-exist. Forced to my knees countless times, I have prayed for an absolute, conclusive event exposing his lie so we could just have one big fight and end what should have never began. I’ve wanted a fast marital death, not years on life support.

I do have reason to celebrate my seven year anniversary; if for no other reason than to be grateful for the truth and my decision to accept it even if my gay husband cannot. I realize there’s plenty of pain to go along with it, but I get to choose the length of suffering. I’ve earned that right. A close friend of mine, who has experienced a good deal of her own pain, has a saying when she thinks she is feeling sorry for herself. She’ll jokingly say “I guess I should get down off this cross so someone else can use the wood”. It makes me laugh every time. I have no doubt I’ll climb onto my own cross often while I grieve over my marriage or the illusion of one. And I will let myself, for however long it takes, until it’s no longer mine to climb or carry.
PJ -
A Straight Wife