About

Gay husband, out to my wife for the second time after 20 years of marriage (the first time was before we started dating). Throughout most of my life, religion has shaped my understanding and experience of same-sex attraction. As a result, I’ve viewed it as a defect, and thought the only tenable response was to resist. I no longer believe that, and encourage young or unhitched gay individuals to pursue a life consistent with their identity. The situation is complicated, though, for people already in committed relationships. My wife and I are four years post-disclosure, and we’re still working through the repercussions, trying to create a narrative that fits us.

Here are some of my most read posts:

15 comments

  1. Greg, I cannot express to you how thankful I am for you and your blog. I have been out to my wife of 19 years for 9 months. I genuinely, deeply love her. I have been struggling to find the words to express what I am feeling. It’s actually eery how your blog seems to be drawn from my own heart and soul.

    I pray that you find the peace God has in store for you, whatever that looks like. I pray the same for myself. And I pray, for the sake of being able to continue in this life, that peace comes soon.

    I hope to someday be able to share my story with you; for you to know that you are not alone, for it to be acknowledged that I am not alone.

    There is healing, and great, soul-screaming pain, in reading your words. Please be encouraged that your words have reached another man walking an extremely similar path as your own.

    God bless,

    JD

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  3. Pingback: Inspired by Koreanish, My Year in Review: 2014 | Lit Grit

  4. You have my support Greg! Thank you for your courage and openness – it helps so many people out there and speaking your truth is also helping to heal yourself. I’m looking forward to reading your posts! Hugs, Richard

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    1. Hi – yes thanks for mentioning GCN. I became aware of GCN early in my journey, and got involved with a local small group of GCN people. I’m not on the website as often as I’d like, but I try to check in from time to time. Looking forward to reading more of your blog!

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  7. What you can’t forget, ever, is that pain and confusion are universal. Yours was related to sexuality, but every day straight men and women leave their partners for their own reasons. Your experience and identity are simply variations. They don’t make you worse, nor better. And the future should be about solutions that fit you, not cliches.
    My life has never fit into the ‘standard’, it never will, and that’s why it works for me.

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    1. That’s an excellent point. I’ve been thinking about that very thing recently, on how being gay served as a focal point for much of my own experience of pain. But as you say, pain itself is part of the universal condition. In the best of circumstances, our families, our friends, our societies equip us in various ways to deal with the challenges in life. But for many if not all of us, our families, friends, and societies also fail us at some point in this very way. The religious context in which I was raised did not provide any helpful means of processing my experience of being gay. I’m hoping that the world is becoming a better place in this regard, and am trying to do my part to make it so. Even if that only means sharing my story and sharing in the stories of others.

      Thanks for your comment!

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      1. I speak from a somewhat different experience… but there are commonalities.
        When I left my fiancee a month before the wedding, suddenly it felt like all the world’s evils were to do with my gayness. It was all piled on from every direction.

        Two months later a straight guy I knew also broke off with his fiancee- and that was ‘just fine.’
        At that point I realized the measuring sticks people used (including myself) weren’t entirely fair.

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        1. What a great example! As you say, our experiences are different; and yet I feel I can relate to your story. Attributing something in my own life to ‘being gay,’ yet when I see the same thing in the life of a straight friend, having a totally different reaction.

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  8. Thank you for this, for your sharing so honestly. I am the straight husband of a woman who ‘came out’ to herself and to me as a lesbian after 30 years in a low-sex marriage. We’re staying together, and staying monogamous. So a low-sex marriage has become a no-sex one, since she can and does feel zero desire for me. ‘Mixed orientation marriages’ mostly break up quickly. We’re a small minority of a minority who hang in there and try to make it work. So many of those around us see us as a loving older couple with a happy marriage. But we’re more room-mates and friends that a married couple: there’s this massive hole at the heart of it, where a natural exchange of desire should be… And it hurts like hell. Every day. I’ve struggled with a sense of being cursed by God. The two things that I most wanted in life, to be a parent, to have children, and to sexually connect with a woman, have both been denied me. Denied us both, in fact. And we were both trying to find and follow God’s will for our lives… to serve him. And his loving plan for our lives has brought us to this terribly painful place… Can we still find love and meaning and peace? So many years of unanswered prayers. For Him to take away her same-sex desires, for Him to give me peace of heart and plenitude despite our brokenness.

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