Now, we all live a great life together. She had the kids in another state. He and I live together and he supports both households. All decisions that are made begin with answering the question “What is best for the children”?
With 4 years under our belt, everything runs pretty smooth now. Little arguments with children, but I NEVER hear “your not my dad” come out of their mouths. As a matter of fact, they usually come to me with problems before talking with their biological parents.

I too am shocked by the selfishness of the article. One is allowed to be angry, but if children are involved, you MUST put your feeling on the back burner and do what is best for your children. It is not always the easiest thing to do. Just because a spouse is gay and you feel they have deceived you does not mean that they do not love their children and please do not use the children as a weapon, this only backfires as the children get older.

This describes my husband. He was monogamously and openly married to a women from the early eighties into the nineties for the purpose of having and raising his children (two adult boys).

>None of them express any happiness for their ex-spouse for having the courage to come.

It’s the extreme minority of people who divorce who can do this. It also changes over time, with exes sometimes being more emotionally generous after a good amount of time has passed.

Other than a partner cheating sexually, I haven’t seen many issues cause more wounded indignation than “I married a gay person…I was deceived.” It seems to rock people to the core. As an analogous situation, I’ve seen a similar kind of hurt with people who’s same-gender partner left for an opposite-gender partner. There’s something about that dynamic that tends to wound deeply.

I was one of those married men that considered myself bi and cheated on my wife to get my fix since I thought some occassional man-on-man fun was what I needed since I couldn’t possibly admit I was gay – although I’d known since I was a teenager. Every time I cheated, I knew I was hurting my ex, but I couldn’t tell her and I couldn’t admit it. I withdrew deeper and deeper inside myself and while we had a great marriage on the surface, we both knew it wasn’t what it should be but we never talked about it.

Well, when I finally admitted it to her, her first response was she knew (about me, not the cheating) and she had suspected since the day she met me. So you ask, why did she marry me – well that’s what I asked. And she said, because she married her best friend and the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with and I couldn’t deny that. We talked a lot those first few weeks and months and continued to live togeether while we worked out our new relationship and what divorce would look like. I asked for the divorce since I wanted to finally be completely out and rid of the burden I had carried for 20+ years. She understood and supported me throughout the entire process. She joined the local Straight Spouse Network and continues to attend a year later. I joined a support group for married/formerly married men that have sex with men to help me with my transition and we both agreed that this participation was a priority in our transition. We also participated in couples counseling for a while to navigate the separation process and each had individual counseling to work through our own issues.

While it wasn’t all roses, a year later we are still friends, I talk with her about her relationship issues, she knows I have a boyfriend of 10 months (they haven’t met yet), and we continue to have shared pet-parenting and have had to make difficult decisions together to care for our pets.

You may ask, what took me so long to come out – well, honestly fear. Fear of being rejected from my family, from friends, and starting my life over but exhaustion from living a double-life finally won and I just couldn’t do it any longer and realized it wasn’t fair to either of us to not have the full, happy lives we deserved. I’m sorry that I hurt her for so long, but I have no regrets and finally feel like we are both going to have happy and successful lives as we enter our 40′s and the best years of our lives.

My love and support goes out to everyone in similar situations. While they are all unique relationships, it is up to each person/couple to make those decisions and no one else can judge you for making your life your own, however you choose.

Yet all of these marriages broke up, even though in many cases the man and woman remain friends, and act as co-parents to children. And in a couple cases, the women remarried to men to whom they were introduced by their ex.

But the article really brings out an interesting point. Everything I’ve read suggests that eg 6% of the population admits, at least in blind surveys, that they are gay. And if you add eg 50% of that percentage as people totally terrified into the closet, you get the to a good presumption that 10% of the people are gay.

And if you roll that number together with the 50% divorce rate, it looks really reasonable to say that about 20% of all divorces are because a partner is gay, either openly or secretly. And furthermore, no one knows just how many men or women who aren’t satisfied with their spouse, and run around secretly, really aren’t satisfied because they can never be satisfied with an opposite sex partner.

So when the church says they are protecting marriage, perhaps what they really are doing is destroying marriage. While playing their old game of victimization – making gay people the victims of the church’s ignorance, dogma, and quest for power.

Tom in Long Beach Currently married to my husband.

Too bad No on 8 did not get someone from this group to help make an add.

I am lucky that I had enough positive influences in my life in my early 20s to realize that marrying a woman would not “change” me. Thank goodness for one female pastor of the youth group at the Crystal Cathedral (yes you are reading this correctly) That told me about her break up with her boyfriend that turned out to be gay and helped me realize that I was O.K.

Tom in Long Beach