Gay Husband, Straight Wife: Can It Work?
By: Loren A Olson Md
Tags: LGBTQ, Equality, Religion, Family, Psychology

LGBTQIA/Relationships/Family

Gay Husband, Straight Wife: Can It Work?

Perhaps some people can contain their same-sex attractions, but at what cost?

Photo: Stetsic/25051445/DepositPhoto.com

Many lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people come out years after they have been married to an opposite-sex heterosexual wife or husband.

Often enough people have asked me with some skepticism, “How could you not know you were gay?” I used to wonder that myself. Then there’s the follow-up question, “Weren’t you hiding behind your wife?”

I guess you could say I was in a “mixed-orientation relationship” (MOR) for eighteen years. But neither my wife nor I knew that we were. When my wife and I divorced, we were homo-naive. I don’t remember others talking about MORs until much more recently.

Some people don’t believe a person can be gay and remain in a heterosexual marriage. Or they ask, “Why would you?” Others condemn those in MORs for promulgating the idea that gay men and women can change.

My story about the loneliness gay men feel in MORs prompted this comment:

If these so called “Mature” men had BALLS!!! They wouldn’t have found themselves in the situation. LOSERS, thats what they are & selfish. They hurt other people because their dishonesty with themselves & others.

I’ve grown inured to it.

People who make these comments can’t imagine the culture of the 1950–60s. Men and women (especially men), even if only accused of being “homosexual,” could be sent to a state mental institution “to remain until cured.”

In medical school, I studied “homosexuality” as a “pathologic deviancy.” We feared being locked up or thrown out of a profession on a morals charge.

As difficult as it is for young gay people to imagine that world, it is equally difficult for me to visualize today’s world. It is difficult, for example, for older gay people to understand that medical students put “he/him,” “she/her,” and “they/them” on their name tags to remind people of their gender pronouns.

I’m not proud that I lied about being gay, but it is evident to me now why I lied, even to myself. I know I hurt people in the process, people I loved and still love. Like many gay people, I didn’t want to want what I wanted.

One of the biggest hurdles I needed to leap was my mother’s belief that I would go to hell. She was a woman of strong faith, and her minister counseled her that she would not see me in heaven.

But the threats I felt are not an anachronism. I hear from so many men who feel threatened; some are convinced that acting on same-sex attraction could lead to their deaths. It happens in Falluja and Baghdad but also in Iowa and Utah. Even in progressive urban environments, people struggle with these fears.

Some ask, “Why don’t you leave then?” Most of them want to. For many, it is impossible. For others, it means giving up the life they have known for one they can’t conceive. Those with a strong religious faith fear eternal damnation. Suspending the values you’ve been taught isn’t without pain.

One wrote, “Don’t I have a right to want what everyone else wants?” Many of these gay people ache for just one person in their life with whom they can be genuine and authentic.