Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Talk: A Collection of Her Best Newsletters About Gay Husbands. Bonnie Kaye
ANOTHER EXPLANATION TO THE SEX THING
In the last issue, I spoke about the recent healing conversation that I had with my ex-husband. In that article, I asked my ex about our sex life when we first met and how he was able to “pull it off” in the beginning. He explained how in his 20’s, when we met and married, he could become sexually aroused because sex under any circumstances was something that could “feel good.” Add into it a mix of emotional attachment and determination to be straight, and all things were possible, at least for a short time.
A friend of mine, Dina, sent me a much better and detailed explanation that she had discovered a few years ago. I asked her for her permission to share it with you because I think it sheds the best insight that I have found to date:
In late adolescence, young adulthood up to about 30’s, a guy is driven by raging hormones and need for release - basically he could “do it” with anything or anyone just to get off. As time goes on, and they are not as driven biologically, they have to supplement the drive with some fantasy thrown in - that’s the time when the male fantasies become prevalent. In turn it becomes harder and harder to get turned on “normally” and eventually even the male fantasies are no longer able to make him perform.
That is usually the “crisis” that leads them to actively fool around and/or eventually come out and leave. I think this is a good point to make to those straights who rationalize that if husbands can perform or could at some time that is an indication that they were not “totally” gay blah, blah, blah. Bottom line folks is that they could perform at a point in time when they did no discrimination at all....we were just one step better than taking matters into one’s own hands!
Thanks, Dina, for that insightful explanation. I think this clarifies the situation for so many women who can’t understand how their gay husbands are able to have sex with them in the beginning, but not sustain it throughout the marriage.
Some women wrote to me asking me to discuss the “Psychological Sexual Warfare Games” that their husbands play with them. That’s my coined terminology to these demoralizing situations. Some gay men keep the games going in order to divert the thoughts of confirmed suspicions. This happens usually once the wife accuses her husband of being gay, or when he knows that she is barking up the right tree, as the saying goes. By this time, the wife is usually totally turned off to the thought of having a sexual encounter with her husband. This is when he turns on the charm and amorous moves.
Now, the gay husband knows that his wife knows, at least on some level. He also knows that it has been a long road of unfulfilling sexual experiences over a number of years. And he also knows at this point that the last thing his wife wants is sex—at least with him. That’s when he starts to touch her knee, her shoulder, hold her close, make the overtures, and goes for the gold. He is now an Olympiad in wimps clothing. He knows that it is a safe bet that he is going to be running a solo act here, because there’s no way his wife is going to respond to his tainted touch.
The worst part is that now he claims the victor’s spoils. Now he starts throwing those accusations around like a Herculean master yelling, “Whenever I want to have sex you reject me,” or “Don’t ever say I didn’t try. It’s not my fault that we don’t have a sex life.” And that’s how he weaves the web of self-doubt again. Just when you are so sure that he is gay, well, maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s changing. Maybe it’s your fault. Maybe if you had been more receptive to him through the years. Maybe you were reading him wrong. Maybe all of that evidence that you compiled really did belong to someone else, right?
Wrong. It’s a game. It’s a game of desperation because you have gotten too close to the truth and he knows it. Some of these guys just love to catch you off-guard. It gives them great pleasure to keep you confused while they are trying to figure themselves out. Or, if they have figured themselves out, they want to make sure that you don’t because it leads to the potential disaster of hurting them. And that’s why they do it.
I always tell women that if your husband tries this, don’t get too spooked out. Expect it, but don’t sweat it. By the point in the marriage that this happens, it’s almost guaranteed that if you would turn around and say, “Let’s do it dear,” he would develop a sudden crippling backache or migraine headache. He is making a calculated guess that you will say no. By this time, you’ve already been stripped of your sexual esteem, and one calculated shot in the dark isn’t going to restore it. You know that, and so does he. That’s why he feels confident in “offering” you something that he thinks you want so badly emotionally but knows you will reject physically. .
And feel free to laugh when he throws up in your face, “I was always the one who wanted sex. You’re the one who is cold blooded.” Ha ha. You don’t have to laugh a big, boisterous howl, just a little haha will get the point across. Then go back to doing something that would be far more interesting than having sex with your gay husband—like washing the dishes or ironing the clothes. At least you know when you do something like this, it will turn out right!
LOW SELF-ESTEEM ISSUE
I can never talk enough about the issue of self-esteem. When I reflect back now, at the age of 50, I can honestly say that I have spent a lifetime building up my own self-esteem. I can trace this back to my early childhood days when I was always the “chubby” girl. Eventually I transitioned from being a chunky teenager to being an obese adult. I have spent my adult years being fat. There have only been short periods of perhaps several years from time to time when I was heavy instead of obese.
When I met my gay husband, I was physically at the best point of my adult life. I had lost over 100 pounds and I was feeling and looking good. My self-esteem and confidence was at a new height. I was NOT desperate when I met him, so I can’t use that as an excuse of why I married a gay man. Like almost all of us, I honestly did not know that he was gay. It’s that simple. He made sure to let me know that he wasn’t by yelling up a storm when I mentioned a friend of mine suspected that he may be “bisexual.” I remember that feeling of total relief when he stood up in the middle of the restaurant and nearly turned the table over in sheer anger. Ah, the man was protesting— and it couldn’t be nearly enough--forget too much.
Why would I even think he was gay? He was tall, athletic, very handsome and extremely charming. We had sex in those early days. It wasn’t the best sex, but it wasn’t that bad either. I had worse in the previous years, and I believe that all of them weren’t gay.
My ex-husband married me because he loved me and wanted to have all of the things that straight men had. And in his mind, at that time, he was NOT gay. Yes, he had gay sex. Yes, he had a string of sexual encounters with men before we married. But in his mind, he believed that he was straight because there was no emotional commitment to these men. He enjoyed women and dated his fair share of them. And he believed that sexually he could pull it off as long as he loved someone enough. Through the years, I have come to terms with the fact that most of these gay men really don’t believe in their hearts that they are gay when they marry us. They can have gay sex galore, but they are not gay in their minds. They don’t even view themselves as Bisexual, just straight men dabbling with same sex encounters. Go figure.
Getting back on track here, I married a man who was mentally abusive to me. Not all gay husbands take this route, but many of them do. They are frustrated with life because they are living a lie, and the one they lash out at is the one responsible for living this lie in their minds—namely, us. Yes, I know it makes no sense at all, but that’s just the way it is. Even though my self-esteem was quite high when I got married, it didn’t take long for it to get battered back into oblivion within a relatively short amount of time. I was on a temporary high when I met my husband. I was feeling good about myself for the first time in my 28 years of life. I had not even had two solid years of good feelings about myself before this marriage. That means that I had numerous years of personal insecurity, loneliness, poor self-image, and peer-inflicted pain scars from adolescence that carried over into adulthood.
I was the girl who was picked last to be on whatever sports team that gym class played on any given day. I lacked the motor coordination to be an effective sportswoman, and my