WHO DID YOU TELL?

You have to hand it Jen, over at Kids of Queers. She always stirs the pot, or at least occasionally stirs mine. She put a general question to married but gay parents: who did you tell first? My problem with that, of course, is that is assumes either [a] that you had no idea, or [b] you had a pretty good idea, and lied about it for a long time. It ain't always so simple.

So, with typical tact, I waded in with the following comment:

Jen:

you know my story, which parallels Amanda's most of the way. [Amanda blogs at "Ramblings of a Hopeful Artist," by the way] My wife knew about my past before we got together; the only fly in the ointment was my conviction that it was "past." My parents and most of my family knew or had a hunch about my orientation; I wasn't particularly closeted, though easily embarrassed.

I didn't seriously start telling friends beyond the family until well after I was confronted by the evidence that "things" were very much present. And that was always with clearance from my wife. We didn't get into therapist territory until much later. Marriage counseling turned out to be an expensive side-show, and my solo therapy seemed to be all cheer-leading for leaving home.

For what it's worth, as long as I had the feeling that my wife was there for me, even after the demands of the kids and various jobs, the bargain was more than worth it. When I felt like "our" life was ebbing away, it wasn't. I suspect that my telling her that "things" hadn't in fact gone away, and that I now knew a whole lot more about exactly what "things" we were talking about, had a lot to do with her distancing herself.

I left before I started even contemplating "seeing" someone else, though of course I had been in touch with the GMM blog crew for months by then--a relatively short period, in retrospect. I guess by the time I "plugged in," I had crossed some inner Rubicon already. Hindsight will kick in at some point...

yrs T@C

I guess we are all looking for some kind of validation of our own experience, which is why I keep barking at innocent people who make assumptions which, for all I know, are correct 90% of the time. Hey, only 4% of the US population supports uncontrolled further immigration, so I guess I was in a minority long before I came out again.

Hang in there, guys.
Turkey awaits us all, and soon...
C