[Sean responds to a husband who expects that if he tells the truth he will end up divorced and miserable.]
I agree with you that life is complex and varied and there could well be circumstances in which I would judge it best for someone to choose to remain closeted. However, I also feel a strong pull for honesty in relationships. To me, the argument for being out is not that the marriage can survive disclosure, but that it gives the wife an honest chance to decide what SHE wants for HER life, given that she has a gay husband. Even if it does end in divorce, and maybe misery for the husband, does that give him the right to keep his wife married to him if that isn't what she would want? That is the sense in which sometimes staying closeted seems "selfish". I can see the rationale: I want to stay married, but if my wife knew, she wouldn't want to stay married, so to keep her married I have to lie to her. This CAN be put in altruistic terms (to save her suffering, to preserve the family). But I guess for me, the question is: Why should you get to make that choice, rather than letting your wife decide, as a grownup, whether she wants to be married to a gay man?
Another way I'd put the honesty argument is: If you were in your wife's position, would you want to know? If your wife was gay and having affairs with other women and lying to you about where she is and what she is doing, would you want her to continue to do it to save the marriage and your pain, or would you want her to tell you? Or for those of you who don't love your wives passionately enough to care, maybe it would work better to ask: If you were with Mr. Right and loved him deeply, and he was having an affair with a woman, would you want him to not tell you, in order to save the relationship? Or would you want to know?
I say all this recognizing that it is only one piece of a total picture. I am not saying that there aren't reasons to lie sometimes, and sometimes very moral reasons. I can even imagine, stretching my mind, that there are reasons to lie pervasively and over years to someone you are close to about something that matters very much to them.
But I do think it is important to be genuine with ourselves, and admit that some of our reasons for lying ARE self-serving -- they are because WE want to maintain our marriages and our relationships with men. WE don't want to lose one or the other. So we aren't willing to give our wives the information that would let them make a choice that we wouldn't like.
Sean
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[Will responds.]
Sean,
It's hard to disagree with your argument in favor of honesty. When we lie to our wives about who we are and what we have done and continue to do, we are not allowing them the information they need to make their own decisions. I can imagine that if I had read your message at the right time in my marriage, it might have made a difference. My wife said at one point that the decisive issue for her was not my bisexuality (I made that clear before we were married, and it wasn't a secret through all those years when I was chastely devoted to her), and not even my being unfaithful, but my continuing for several years to be unfaithful, even in very careful and limited ways, without telling her. What she couldn't forgive was my betrayal of her trust, and my denying her the freedom to make a new life for herself when she was younger than she is now, and before the sad years of strife that ended the marriage.
But what would that "right time in my marriage" have been? Looking back, it's easy to recognize evasions and postponements. Maybe the day after my first infidelity would have been the right time. But how could I know then that I would drift so far away from her in the coming years? All I knew then was that I couldn't stifle my feelings and wishes any longer, and that I would do almost anything to stay true to the marriage and true to myself. Of course that word 'almost' is the clincher. Looking back, I can see that the first infidelity, like a first martini, gave me a burst of liberation that clouded my judgment. But there's no way I could have been ready then to begin a discussion with her about the limits of monogamy. It felt then as if the marriage would certainly end. Looking back, I realize that I was mistaken in thinking that secrecy would preserve the marriage. But I don't think I was mistaken in thinking that the discussion would have been the beginning of the end of our marriage, given my wife's wish to be at the emotional center of my life and the exclusive sexual partner.
Of course I had another option. I could end the sexual relationship with my friend, and have intimate lunches with him in public places rather than his apartment. But, without going into my feelings at that time, I simply couldn't do that. And after a week went by, the stakes were higher. Then a month, a year, then several years went by without ending it.
When I talk to my gay and bisexual married friends, I tell my story in ways that I think make these issues clear, as I experienced them. I hope they take from my story what is useful to them. But I don't advise them that honesty is the best policy. They may, sadly, come to that conclusion, and by then it may be too late, as I suppose it was for me. It may also be true that by the time I tell them my story, it's already too late. In any case, they have to find their own way.
Will