'Did I ever really know him?': the women who married gay men | LGBTQ+ rights | The Guardian

Contents:

• 'DID I EVER REALLY KNOW HIM?': THE WOMEN WHO MARRIED GAY MEN
• WHEN GAY MEN (MIS)MARRY STRAIGHT WOMEN: BONNIE KAYE'S STORY
• IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND
• ‘HONEY, I’VE GOT A SECRET’ : WHEN GAY MEN E OUT TO THEIR WIV

'DID I EVER REALLY KNOW HIM?': THE WOMEN WHO MARRIED GAY MEN

Megan Holgate uldn’t que believe where she was the height of the Aids crisis and she was the wag room of an ner-cy STI clic, equented by those most at risk of HIV: gay men, jectg dg ers, sex, as she had been, a monogamo married had felt “too ashamed” to ask her doctor for the HIV tt.

A posive rult, back then, would have been a ath the clic a iendly gay unsellor asked Megan to step to his room and asked her if everythg was OK. “This poor gay guy was the target for all my built-up anger. As her dad pulled up she opened her purse, fat wh not, and phed them all to the bewilred man’s hands before beg whisked is one of a potentially dyg breed of women: those who married closeted gay men.

“Some women ntact the service before their hband is even aware they know he’s gay, ” she says. Never once did she spect he was gay. I’m not gay but really nfed and I thk I need you to move back to Atralia so I n work myself out.

WHEN GAY MEN (MIS)MARRY STRAIGHT WOMEN: BONNIE KAYE'S STORY

Lucy, now 24, hid at school the fact her dad was gay. I don’t believe bisexualy, I thk he was gay, ” she says. “When you love someone and you know you’re gay, you don’t marry them.

And many of the men, embolned by the sense of eedom and h excement afford them by disverg the gay scene, pletely scrib the impact had on her children. “My sons’ iends would e over and ask, is your dad gay?

”Siarly, Patricia took issue wh the blok who took her hband out for a beer so they didn’t look homophobic. ”Jt like many gay men do, their wiv n go through nial perds, Roxanne says, believg they n work thgs out. “I know my hband is gay, he n’t stop himself om beg wh men, ’s impossible.

IS MY HBAND GAY? SIGNS OF A GAY HBAND

Her anger wasn’t at him, but at his fay and culture for not lettg him be who he should have been the first place: “It was like he didn’t know how to be gay. “People still go to beats [public plac where gay men meet discretely for sex].

He probably didn’t know he was gay at the time, ” she wr. I recently spoke wh Bonnie Kaye, thor of Straight Wiv, Shattered Liv: Stori of Women wh Gay Hbands, among other books, and host of Bonnie Kaye’s Straight Wiv Talk Show on BlogTalkRad. Bonnie has spent much of her adult life first livg wh and attemptg to love a gay hband and then helpg other women the same mis-marriage suatn.

‘HONEY, I’VE GOT A SECRET’ : WHEN GAY MEN E OUT TO THEIR WIV

Bee I know untls gay men who were once married to straight women, wh varyg gre of short and longer-term happs and misery, I wanted to discs this topic, and I wanted to do so om the straight wiv’ perspective.

Our discsn was wi-rangg, begng wh her own marriage to a gay man and progrsg to how she was able to move on post-marriage, eventually beg a rock for other women siar suatns. So if somebody told me they’d tried somethg but they didn’t like , there would be no reason for me to thk that the person was gay. But I certaly didn’t want to marry a gay man.