Homosexual's wife tells her story After 10 years, husband (and father) admits he is gay

Press, 16 May 1985, Page 13

Homosexual's wife tells her story After 10 years, husband (and father) admits he is gay

By

GARRY ARTHUR

More and more homosexuals are coming “out of the closet” with wide discussion and controversy over the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. Many of them — some say as many as 80 per cent of all gay men — are married and leading a double life.

When they accept their real sexual orientation and declare it, the effect on wives and families is certain to be traumatic. One Christchurch woman whose husband announced that he was homosexual after more than 10 years of marriage wants to see a support group started in Christchurch for women who find themselves in this situation.

There is such a group in Wellington, and she says similar groups are urgently needed in each centre. “More gays are coming out of the closet,” she adds, “and more women are wanting help — not just wives, but parents and in-laws too.”

Angela was nearly 30, several years older than Brian, when they married. (These are not their real names.) They had known each other for four years. They developed a good friendship from the start, but Angela noticed that there seemed no urgency to take her to bed.

“He didn’t give me the come on, the hurry along, that others had. A girlfriend asked me if he was gay, but I just laughed it off, a bit nervously, and changed the subject.” She had the idea that all homo-

sexuals were effeminate, whereas Brian was involved in all kinds of male sports, and was physically a hard worker.

They lived together for a while before the marriage, and Angela became concerned about a close relationship Brian developed with a male friend. “I felt I was being left out in the cold, and I confronted him. I said, ‘You’re not gay are you?’, and he said, ‘No’.”

They got engaged, and were married, and she put it out of her mind.

Their married life was heterosexually normal, she says. They were married for nearly 11 years, and had two children. But three years ago she felt that things were not going well, and brought things to a head. “I pushed him into a corner emotionally,” she says. He pressured her into going with him to a movie, “Making Love,” about a gay man who was married. “He went very quiet,” she recalls, “and I began to feel that this was the problem. I said it must be terrible to be trapped in a marriage when you are gay. Next day we met for lunch and he told me.

“He kept saying how much he loved me and the kids, but he had to pursue that life. He said he hadn’t been leading an under-cover gay life, but that he felt strong attractions to some of our male friends.”

Angela’s reaction to Brian’s declaration was utter shock. “The table was shaking,” she says. “I felt very sad for him and how difficult it must have been to tell me. I tried to show how much I loved him. I suppose I was trying to prove that it was more interesting to be in a heterosexual relationship. But it didn’t work, and the anger and resentment set in.” Angela says it would have been much easier for her to handle if it had been a case of another woman. As it was, she felt that she had been used. “I had this feeling that when we were making love there must have been this third person looking over my shoulder. My whole womanhood went out the window, and I began to wonder who I was.”

She says that her husband on the other hand was on a “high,” as she had since learned is the case with many gays when they finally come out of the closet.

Their married life continued apparently normally, as they tried to make it look right for the children. Angela went to a counsellor she knew and that helped her to come to terms with herself as a person. Brian went too, for a couple of sessions.

“I think I believed that he would change back,” Angela says, “but I was being blind to what homosexuality is.”

Brian got his support from a Christian gay group that he joined, and even brought two of his new friends home to tea. “I enjoyed it and liked them,” Angela says, “but I was very angry that he expected me to be part of that scene.” Brian told her that he wanted to go out and “find his real self,” but at the same time stay in the family. After two years of this, Angela gave him an ultimatum: either he went or she would. She started a relationship with another man, and finally Brian left because of that.

She felt the loss deeply. “It was like going through all the same stages that you know people go through in a bereavement,” she says. “He’d been a very good husband.”

She felt bitter and rejected, feeling it was all very unfair. “I totally lost my confidence,” she says.

“I really think it’s not said how the wife feels. I can compare it to nothing else. You feel you’re neither one thing nor the other. There’s no network of support as there is for wives of alcoholics and battered wives. I couldn’t go to my friends, because they couldn’t handle it. I felt isolated in the community. And the church was definitely lacking in this area; they didn’t known how to handle it.”

When the word got around, she had one anonymous call saying she was a danger to others because she might spread the disease A.1.D.5., and a couple of “moralistic Chris-

tians” told her that her husband was a sinner, but if he repented and came back to the family they would all live happily ever after. She recognises that each person has to work through the problem in her own way, but is convinced that women in these situations need to be able to telephone someone else who has been through the same experience and can offer support. “We need a group of women who can share the support,” she says. “You feel so utterly alone, with nowhere to go. I rang Gayline, but they clearly weren’t sure what sort of advice to give me.” Angela says the discovery that a husband is gay affects the whole family circle, including the parents and in-laws. “They want to say and feel that he’s bad, but if they think about it they realise that he’s not bad; he’s just being how he is. So they do nothing — they withdraw.” Angela does not believe that Brian deliberately married knowing he was gay, to cover up his homosexuality. Even so, she does resent the fact that her husband turned out to be gay. “If I’d known he was gay I’d never have had children.”

Angela herself is only now starting to come to terms with the matter. "Our neighbours, those who know, have accepted it and been good to me. Friends in the church have been unable to handle it, and I have to heal the rift. I hope I’ll be able to make them see more clearly what homosexuality really