The New "Mixed" Marriage

When One Partner is Gay

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I gently told Eric that if he wanted someone to approve his living a lie with his wife and himself, he was correct—I wasn’t the right therapist for him. "Until you get honest with yourself and your wife," I said, "I can’t support your belief that having sex with someone outside of marriage is okay." Even more important, I told him, "Until you act from a place of integrity, I don’t think you’ll feel any happier or more whole than you are right now."

If Eric wasn’t prepared to tell his wife, I said, there was another viable option—to stay married and make a commitment to never again act on his homosexual urges. I made very clear that my perspective on this was different from practitioners of Reparative Therapy (RT), who tell gay people that sexual reorientation is possible and, indeed, highly advisable. I believe that’s nonsense. However, I do believe that people who self-identify as homosexual, but don’t wish to come out as gay, can choose to create a heterosexual lifestyle.

But Eric wasn’t open to this option, either. At the end of the session he left quickly, mumbling over his shoulder that he’d call if he wanted to reschedule. I figured there was a good chance I’d never hear from him again. But a month later, he called, sounding desperate. His depression and anxiety had worsened. "I gotta tell her," he said.

Coming Out

When a gay person comes out to his or her straight spouse, the couple is likely to embark on a roller-coaster ride of emotional stages that often encompass humiliation, revenge, renewed hope, rage, and, finally, resolution. While each couple is unique, these stages can serve as a rough road map for therapists trying to help mixed-orientation couples make sense of their feelings, communicate honestly, and, ultimately, make informed, healthy decisions about their future.

When Eric told Ann that he was homosexual, she was stunned and horrified. "Did you marry me just to have kids?" she railed. "Were you just using me all along?" When he then admitted that he’d been having an affair with Harris, her hurt and horror turned to cold fury. Blaming him for ruining her life, she ordered him out of the house and threatened to tell their two teenage children and their families of origin. She also planned to see a divorce lawyer to get full custody of the kids. "You do realize," she hissed, "that no judge would let a homosexual even have visitation rights!"

Beneath Ann’s rage was a deep sense of humiliation. "What kind of a person was she to choose a homosexual husband?" she wondered. Eric, in turn, felt humiliated by Ann’s accusatory response, which only reinforced a lifetime of shame about his essential "wrongness." I explained to Eric that Ann was trying to shame him because of the humiliation she felt, but that he needed to take her threats of reprisal seriously. At my suggestion, he asked her to join him for a therapy session, and she reluctantly agreed.

Before they came in, Ann sent me a long e-mail detailing everything she knew about Eric’s dysfunctional childhood, neurotic personality traits, inadequate fathering, problematic work and sleep habits, and more. This wasn’t unusual. Typically, when spouses learn that their partner is gay; their first response is to focus on their partner’s failings.

As the joint session got underway, Ann was quick to let me know that she didn’t trust me. "Why would a gay therapist be interested in helping us decide whether to stay together?" she demanded. She wasn’t sure she wanted to stay with Eric, she said, but she wanted to keep the possibility open. Her concerns made sense to me, and I explained my perspective on mixed-orientation marriages. "If you both want it to work, then so do I," I assured her.

For most of that first session, I listened to, and validated, Ann’s flood of thoughts and feelings. Both Ann and Eric wept, insisting that they wanted to stay together but weren’t sure it was possible.

I then appealed to Ann’s sense of integrity. If she wanted to remain married, it needed be a conscious choice free of shame and darkness. But Ann was unwilling to look at her contribution to the issues in the marriage. Spouses in all marriages—gay or straight—choose partners, in part, to meet certain unconscious needs. I tried to explain to Ann that straight individuals rarely marry gay people accidentally. Either they have sexual issues themselves or they need emotional distance from their partners. Ann didn’t want to hear any of this. Instead, she projected all of their problems as a couple onto Eric... continued