Gay men in straight marriages

Home / gay topics / Gay men in straight marriages

“You’ll be okay once you find the right woman/man.”

If the exposed spouse has not come out, the betrayed spouse may be asked not to share his or her secret, such as in this comment:

Many straight wives are unable to share their stories without being lambasted as being homophobic. “This is just who I am.”

Later that night, Dale came out to Shelly.

The first thought Shelly had was whether he wanted a divorce.

For Dale and Shelly Lykins, it was the beginning of a journey of self-reflection and strength aided by counseling and therapy.
Coming out
Dale and Shelly live outside Cincinnati in a home decorated with affirmations and gay Pride.
I am truly sorry for your pain.

Others talked about a variation of an open relationship—in which each partner could be sexual outside the relationship, but with only one other partner, who, ideally, was sexual with only one other partner also—known as a closed-loop relationship (CLR).

They'll understand from an early age that dad's gay, just like dad has brown eyes."
Normalizing different relationships
The couple say they're so public about their relationship to help normalize such arrangements.
"It feels good to share. In my case, denial operated unconsciously.
He contacted a therapist in Chicago who identified as gay and, upon hearing Rob’s story, took a decidedly different therapeutic tack: in his first session, he advised him to move out and begin the process of divorce. Three themes dominated my thoughts: 1. Dale resigned and started his own affirming and inclusive church, the Open Table.
”People started talking to me about how they were leaving the United Methodist Church because they were tired of the same things I was,” he said.

Unlike the last group, she found it to be “very positive” and “encouraging.”
“Someone posted something about how their husband had come out maybe 12 years before, and they were doing fantastic,” Shelly said. For most of those years, we thought it was as good as it gets as she told me when I interviewed her for my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight. My experiences cannot be used to generalize about all gay men in mixed-orientation marriages, and I would not encourage anyone to seek rapprochement with an abusive man, but gay men are as different from each other as are heterosexual men.
Love and risk are inseparable, and pain is an inevitable consequence of loving someone.

Denial is commonly used to prevent one from seeing the consequences of their behavior. Projection is blaming another for your own failings or finding your negative qualities in somebody else while denying them in yourself. He engages in systematically breaking me down as a woman and a human being. Often it is accompanied by doubt and self-blame, for example, "If I'd been enough of a woman (or man), he (or she) would not be gay.”
Since all men and women have been raised in similar cultures, they have incorporated these “ideals” of masculinity whether they are gay, straight, bisexual, or other.

Here is a typical comment from one of these gay fathers:
It feels wrong to simply follow my wants as if I have no concern for anyone else. But after months of reparative therapy, he found himself even more depressed, drinking more heavily, unable to function at work, and still lying to Mia about his sexual attractions.

“[They can] find themselves later on in the relationship realizing that’s perhaps not necessarily the relationship that would feel best for them and has maybe come to a place of affirmation and acceptance.”
Despite that realization, the LGBTQ+ individual in the relationship can still feel this emotional relationship to their straight spouse that they don’t want to let go to waste, Fuller said.

Dale assured Shelly that’s not what he wanted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Shelly recalled Dale saying.
But Shelly was afraid of the future.
“I literally Googled, ‘My husband is gay. The feedback he received from his partner was that he was “too intense” and “moved too quickly.” He talked about how awkward dating was for what felt like the first time in his life.

Many women (and men) in this situation feel that not only is their sexuality under attack but also their very person-hood. She felt betrayed and angry. He described a long struggle with his sexual orientation, growing up in a devoutly Roman Catholic family, where he learned that his sexual attraction to men was cause for eternal damnation. But despite an invitation to couples therapy, Mia refused to join us, fearing that as a gay man, I’d be too aligned with Rob to be able to hear and support her.

“I’m so much less clear about who I am,” he joked, “and that feels so good.”
This blog is excerpted from “Between Gay and Straight” by Jeff Levy.