Honey, I’m gay
Malavika Velayanikal
Sunday, January 25, 2009 3:31 IST
Mumbai: Put it down to societal norms or personal fear of alienation or the need to earn respectability, a significant percentage of gay men are, or have been, married. In most cases the woman only finds out after the knot is tied.
Waheeda* was a bright girl, full of life, and, being the youngest, her parents’ pet. When they found her a handsome groom with a well-paying job in London, dreams sprouted wings. She did not think twice about quitting her MNC job in Chennai to fly out with
her husband after the wedding, little knowing what lay ahead.
When her husband chose to spend their first night together in London with his British friend, she was sad, confused. However, the traditional baggage she carried within stopped her from asking for reasons. When he repeated it the next day, and the day after, she forced herself to confront him. Her worst fears were confirmed: He was in love with someone else and, worse, that the ’someone else’ was a man. She felt cheated, humiliated. Alone and alien, she had no lifeline. Even her parents felt helpless and asked her to ‘adjust’.
Today, Waheeda has found a job, but is still a broken girl. Her dreams are dead. Her health fails her often. A victim of panic attacks, she is an embarrassment to her husband, whom she still lives with.
Waheeda is hardly alone though. Countless others have similar tales to tell. “When a woman learns that her husband is gay, a myriad of emotions overcomes her, ranging from devastation to repulsion,” says Bonnie Kaye, who runs the website www.gayhusbands.com.
Once married to a gay man herself, she offers counselling for straight wives and has penned two books on the subject — How I Made My Husband Gay (Myths About Straight Wives) and Doomed Grooms: Gay Husbands of Straight Wives. She calls a straight-gay marriage a ‘mis-marriage’ or a ‘mistake of a marriage’.
She feels that, in most cases, gay men marry hoping that their sexuality would change, but it can’t. “However, whether or not to stay in such a marriage is your choice,” she adds. Homosexuality, though, is not a choice for the man — he is helpless in this orientation.
“I come from a very orthodox and respectable Muslim family. They are also homophobic. I did not want to cheat my wife, but I couldn’t help it,” was Waheeda’s husband’s reply when asked why he refused to tell her the truth before marriage. In fact, it is the tag of respectability that makes many men closet gays. “Society is almost unforgiving when it comes to homosexuality,” says Bangalorean Divakar*. Apart from close friends, not many know he is gay. “Despite active groups like Alternative Law Forum in the city, I dare not come out in the open about my sexuality,” he adds.
Psychiatrist Dr B Kapur has had homosexual men asking for help in convincing their conservative families against marrying women. “Truly gay men hardly marry, but bi-sexuals do,” he says. In such relationships, he feels women merely have Hobson’s choice. “Living with a bi-sexual husband is dangerous, what with the high risk of Aids and other STDs. And a person’s sexual orientation cannot change, so the woman can only walk out,” he says.
An unscientific survey of visitors to www.marriedgay.org by The New York Times found that more than half of the married gay respondents said their wives did not know of their sexual inclinations. Of those, a slim majority considered coming clean but a third said ‘never’. Statistics on straight-gay marriages is scarce and unreliable. Studies in the 1970s and 80s, using inconsistent methodology, found anywhere from one-fifth to one-third of gay men were, or had at one time been, married. Society being a little more accepting might have lowered the percentage today.
Dennis J Schleicher, author of Forbidden Love with a Married Man; E-Mail Diaries, cites fear as the reason why people chose to go into the closet, get married, and develop a family. In his memoir, he says: “Typically, most children are brought up in a society where finding love in the opposite sex is bred into them. They are taught to start a courtship, which will lead to marriage and later on, children, a house with a white picket fence, a dog, an SUV and a double income family.”
He encourages gay husbands to be open about their sexuality and from personal
experience, assures that the consequence is almost never as bad as expected. “Leave the brain to math, science and technology when it comes to matters of relationships. Use your heart openly and without fear as best you can,” he says. He blogs at http://gayhusbands.wordpress.com/ and offers help to parents, families, friends and the straight spouse as they come to terms with finding out their loved one was gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
Most women find it frustrating to stay with husbands who refuse to confess. “I would say he is absolutely repulsed by me. Always has been, since our wedding night, when he wouldn’t touch me. It made me feel really bad about myself,” says Katie*. “Eight years of marriage that has stripped me of my self esteem. You know what it is when a gay man marries a woman? Abuse. I am now going through a separation.”
With dreams deferred, many stay shackled to their marriage; but some, like Preeti*, find escape. Preeti discovered her husband’s sexual preference after two months of living together. Though she found his lack of interest a little exasperating, she dared not wonder why. But when he confessed, she walked out. Perhaps the job security she had, helped. Also she was in her comfort zone, Bangalore. A year later, she got a legal divorce. “It was tough, no matter what. I had no way but out,” she says.
Since then, she has met him a few times when biking out on weekends. “I was indifferent and he, embarrassed,” she says.
Today, she is happily single; except for a shaken faith in men.
* Name changed on request
by Malavika Velayanikal
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1224760
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