I told one of my sisters when he first came out, but I had not told anyone else in my family. My father does not have the best of health and I did not want to unnecessarily worry him if we were going to be able to work this out. After we made the decision to separate, I knew I had to make a difficult phone call to my father. (He lives out of state.) My father was of course surprised and upset. He is very old school and sees "gay" as a choice rather than an inherent part of who my husband is. I elected not to get into a debate with my father about that point, because it is not going to change his mind, at least not at this point in time. Its probably a good thing my father has as many health problems as he does, otherwise I think he might have come to my house and killed my husband.
Just to pour salt in this wound for my father, I have a step sister who was married to a gay man, so my father has been down this path once before. I guess we have mastered the fine art of finding gay men in my family! I tried to assure my father that my situation was going to be different from my step-sister in that I was not expecting my husband to go wild like my former brother-in-law did, but my father only has that situation to measure my situation against. My sisters have conveyed to me that my father is very concerned about me. Two days after I told him he called me up and asked if I had taken an AIDS test. I assured him that I did not believe my husband was fooling around, but he said my former brother-in-law said he was not fooling around, and my step sister got a call from the health department notifying her a man my brother-in-law had slept with tested positive for HIV, and my step sister had to get tested. Fortunately her results were negative. I told my father I would get the full scope of STD tests so he could sleep at night. (Just did the blood work, waiting for results)
I had a brother and sister still to tell. I called my youngest sister and told her. She is very liberal, and a big opponent of Prop 8 so she of course had no issues with my husband being gay, other than concern for how I was feeling. My brother.....well he is another story. My brother was 14 when my mom died and is emotionally stuck at 14, despite the fact he is 31. He is unmarried, not active in the Church, drinks, does drugs, sleeps around (with women), works when he is in the mood, and you don't call him he calls you. He happened to call me on the Sunday we told our children. After we told our children, and my husband took them to his new house, and I had an appointment with the Bishop. This was a Bishop who had been in for two weeks. I had not been to my prior Bishop, just because we had not made our decision yet on how we were going to proceed with our relationship, and once we made the decision, I knew our Bishop was going to get released so I decided to wait to address the issue with the new Bishop. The new Bishop had a little bit of a heads up about the situation, because the wife of the former Bishop was one of the two sisters in the ward that I fully disclosed to, and during the transition the old Bishop told the new Bishop I would probably be visiting with him soon. The meeting went fine, I don't know this Bishop very well, and he of course does not know me, but he was understanding and assured me he would not share the information about my husband being gay with anyone in the ward.
Ok, back to my brother, he calls me about 10 minutes after I have come home from meeting with the Bishop. I am emotionally exhausted from telling the children and speaking to the Bishop. I can barely form any sort of a sentence, and I am certainly not in the mood to have a "strained" conversation with my brother. (All conversations with my brother are "stained" due to his lack of emotional maturity. It is basically like talking to a 14 year old) So I tell my brother to sit down and proceed to say "(the name of my husband) is gay and we are getting a divorce. " A stunned silence on the other end of the phone, and my brother responds "Wow I did not see that one coming." To his credit he was really concerned about me, which was a shock, because generally he is not capable of having any thoughts outside of himself. I told him I was really tired and just could not talk right now and could he please call me back later in the week. He agreed to do that.
Its been three weeks and I still have not heard from him.....I guess he is still processing......
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2 comments:
My heart goes out to you. I don't know what to say, because our situations are different. I wish that your husband had searched for friendships that were more encouraging to staying strong for his family, but perhaps he did. Really, he has made his choice, and until he is ready to work on his testimony, you can only react to his decision.
I pray for you and your family. I pray that you will find peace and healing in your life. I know that it is possible, because I experience it often in my life. God bless you.
I just read your blog up to this point. I'm so sorry to hear about this situation.
I'm on the other side of this... a formerly married gay Mormon man. My wife and I divorced about 20 years ago. My two kids are now grown and are in graduate school.
After my wife and I separated we put our focus on raising the kids. It sounds like your husband is an involved father, and it sounds as if you encourage this. Even though it is hard, I think the kids really benefit from the active involvement of both parents.
My kids turned out just fine. I think they are more accepting of difference than they would have been if they had grown up in more traditional circumstances.
I really respect you for the amount of empathy you have for your husband's situation. He's lucky to have you.
From my experience I can say that things do get better with time. It takes a long time.
I wish the Church would really get its act together and come out strongly with advice that people with incompatible sexual orientations should not marry each other. They just are not taking a leadership role here in helping young people avoid the situation that you found yourself in. I can tell you as a gay man that I felt a lot of pressure to "do the right thing" and marry a woman. (I did discuss my sexuality openly with my wife well before we got engaged; she went into it with eyes open.)
Anyway, my thoughts are with you.
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