That’s not important. What is important is whether it fits their idea of a marriage, not yours or mine or anybody else’s. If they’re both satisfied with staying married while living as roommates, why wouldn’t it work?
All I’m saying is that I think they should be upfront about it and not sandbag their family with it years down the road. That’s the only thing I have a problem with. My definition is much like mhendo’s; I really don’t care what consenting adults do, actually.
I’ve never been able to understand how someone could get all the way to middle age (and having kids!) and not know their orientation, at least at some level. Stranger things do happen, though, so I suppose it’s just another one of life’s mysteries.
I apologize if that seems untoward.
There’s the Straight Spouse Network. I would start there.
Regardless of how many genuinely tragic cases there are, there’s no excuse for cheating on your spouse, with either gender. I think a lot of people in this situation rationalize it as “it’s not cheating, it’s not another woman, this is just something I have to do for myself,” which is IMHO reprehensible.
Not sure why your Credibility Meter should be going off. Like the OP said, the kid found a MySpace page for the father when he forgot to log it off. I’m assuming the page wasn’t a “Oh boy I’m a happily married father, wanna chat?” kind of page which led the kid to a little snooping.
Your last paragraph seems absurd based on the info that’s been given here. Either I’ve missed something huge, or you really like made for TV dramas.
An acquaintance of my sister’s was in the situation where the wife realized she was gay, the husband was straight. They were also best friends and soul mates, so in their case, they worked it out by maintaining the domestic partnership aspect of their marriage, but they dated other people and slept in separate rooms.
That situation was the status quo until all their kids moved out.
I don’t mean to be rude, but that has nothing to do with the OP, I don’t want to hijack this thread, so I’m leaving that statement alone.
bluekitten here is another link for your friend to start with. Good luck to her.
Your friend is thinking way too far down the curve. If hubby is getting bottomed, topped or covered in icing by other men, and she “wants to marriage to continue” unless she’s effectively asexual, or weighs 400 lbs, or whatever, I don’t see the logic here.
Re the usual “stay together for the kids” rationale is a bit strained when the kid is playing Sherlock Holmes after findng daddy’s anal lube and condoms.
If Daddy is running about with ass lube in his jacket he’s not “confused”, he’s gay. Gay gay gay. I think your friend needs to find out what her hubby wants before she makes any long term plans. They may not inlcude her.
True, but what I was talking about was those cases where young men think they might be gay and they are counselled to ‘cure’ themselves by trying really hard to be straight, including getting married.
But some people don’t figure it out early enough. It’s not like everyone has a clear-cut roadmap. A good friend of my mom’s didn’t come out to herself until she was 37 and had two kids. (ETA: I knew the family growing up, but her kids were a lot younger than me and my sister, so we weren’t really family friends. I remember them, but I didn’t know them well.)
She had married the guy she loved the most and always thought to herself: “This is just what love is like” and thought it was the same for everybody. She didn’t really feel the passionate bond that she now experiences with women, but with no other frame of reference, at the time she married her now ex-husband, she believed that what she felt was what “being in love” felt like for everyone.
It wasn’t a matter of being “upfront” about it. The fact that she might be gay was honestly something that never occured to her because it wasn’t on her radar. It was a heartbreaking situation for everyone involved and she felt horrendously guilty as if she had screwed everything up for everyone.
Back to the OP:
Aside from my sister’s acquaintance, I’m pretty sure most mariages dissolve. There are a few women in her lesbian baseball league who were previously married to men, but the marriages never worked out even for the ones who remain on the best of good terms.
Umm…how exactly do they know he’s gay? To be truthful I’m straight and I own condoms and lube? Plus i don’t understand how exactly understand how you “discover” you are gay I always regarded it more as a choice. I have no problem with gay people and have a couple of gay friends but I don’t think you can be born gay. To me being born gay would be indicative of the fact that you are genetically pre-disposed to being gay, and it seems like that set of genes would have been done away with by evolution over the course of human existance.
Not trying to ruffle any feathers just my 2 cents.
Well for the longest time I believed I didn’t like broccoli. Then one day, there was some broccoli set in front of me and I tried some, just for the hell of it. Now I’m a flaming broccoli-eater and I’ll never quit.
Maybe it’s kinda like that?
When did you decide to be straight?
Oh, you didn’t?
Well, neither did I. And I’m reasonably sure that Antinor01, Sampiro, wallflower or Swampbear, to name a few, didn’t one day go and decide to get teh gey, either.
I had a horrible time when I was in 7th grade because, horror of horrors, I didn’t like blonde guys and “rebel” types gave me the pukeys. Since I had such a bad experience just by being “the wrong kind of straight”, I find it hard to fathom why someone would go and choose to have a kind of sexual leanings that really, really complicate one’s life. Unless we assume that all GLBT are masochists as well.
Being born gay could be indicative of something that’s part of fetal development without being genetic, as well. There is no gen for spina bifida, yet you’re born with it.
I’ve never heard of anyone being totally unquestionably straight with no gay thoughts, ever, as an adult and then later as an adult “becoming” gay. I don’t know if its in you from birth or you develop it at an early age, but you definitely don’t develop it after you reach adulthood. So yes, a closeted gay trying to convince others or himself he’s straight by having a wife and kids, and then coming out and potentially ruining their lives by dating men is wrong- if you’re not sure of your sexuality, don’t involve others until you are sure, or stick with the ruse forever.
“When did you decide to be straight?”
Well I was in 7th grade and I sat down one day and said to myself “I wonder if i could be gay?” And then I saw this senior girl named April walk by and said “No, No, I want her and other girls like her.” Thats when I knew for certain that i was straight.
But you didn’t “decide”. You “noticed” you were straight. It’s completely different.
I have a friend on another message board that I don’t visit much anymore. Maybe 7 or 8 years ago, when he was in college, he was most definitely straight, he just didn’t have much sexual desire. All these years later (I missed much of the drama), he’s finally starting to figure out what’s really going on, and he’s really trying to come to grips with it.
It’s entirely possible to be gay and not know it.
By this logic, it is also genetically impossible for someone to be born infertile.
And yet it happens. Fancy that!
Not necessarily. There are theories about how a “gay gene” might continue to exist (though I think the current thinking is that being gay isn’t a matter of a single gene). It’s possible that there are different “gay genes” for men and women. If that’s the case, the men’s “gay gene” might do something in women who inherit it like make them super-fertile. It’s pretty easy to see how that gene would continue to exist. There’s also the theory that, as social animals, maybe say a lesbian aunt might help her straight brother or sister raise their kids, thus increasing those kids’ chances of survival. You share a lot of genes with your siblings, nieces, and nephews, after all. Or maybe the “gay gene” is recessive. If you have two copies of it, you’re gay and don’t reproduce. But having one copy of it might give you some advantage over people with no copies of it (like how having one copy of the sickle-cell anemia gene protects you from malaria).
cite?