When religion makes a promise reality can’t keep.
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“My eyes opened around 2:00 A.M. to the sound of a crowd screaming in the background. I had fallen asleep on the sofa and was, once again, being awakened by a late-night airing of The Jerry Springer Show. No sooner did I regain consciousness than depression wrapped itself around my psyche like a tight-fitting shoe. I let out a barely audible sigh. Sleep often eluded me; insomnia was now as much a part of my routine as brushing my teeth. I slept when I could.
“I hated the Jerry Springer show, but changing the channel required too much effort. “What are you going to tell our son?!” the distraught guest screamed at her husband, a transgendered cowboy who was on the show to come out to his wife and introduce his Harley-riding boyfriend. “Our son’s only ten,” she said, her voice growing quieter and more desperate. How could someone do that to his kid? I thought. And why on national TV? As I watched her bury her head in her hands, shaking with sobs, a tear formed in the corner of my own eye and slowly drifted over the bridge of my nose. With my own divorce imminent, my emotions were raw.
“It had only been a couple of months since my wife told me our marriage was over. We had been married for six and a half years and, though our marriage was rocky from the start, I never expected to be in this situation. I made a commitment for life. In addition, the thought of not seeing my daughters every day, putting them to bed at night and waking them up in the morning, was more than I could bear. I was devastated.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free“Another roar from the raucous Springer crowd brought my attention back to the television. The husband’s cocky attitude made me angry. I didn’t know if the story was real, but my heart ached for his little boy just the same. This man projected the self-centered callousness I saw in my wife. I hated him. I hated her. I mustered the strength to find the remote and press the power button. The screen went dark.”
Excerpt from: Going Gay My Journey from Evangelical Christian Minister to Self-acceptance, Love, Life, and Meaning (Rymel, CK Publishing, 2014).
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We were young, in love, and believed that, with God on our side, the whole world had been laid out before us.
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Like most couples, my wife and I, full of hope and promise, walked down the aisle of the church where we married. We were both dedicated, Evangelical Christians. I was in the ministry at the time. We were young, in love, and believed that, with God on our side, the whole world had been laid out before us.
But I was gay.
People frequently ask if my wife knew I was gay when she married me. The answer is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no. I had gone through an ex-gay ministry, the most famous one in the country in fact, and was working for them when we got married. My wife and I believed I had been “healed” of my homosexuality, or was at least in the process of being healed. Our faith taught us to trust, pray and believe that God could do miraculous things.
It wasn’t too long into the marriage before we both began to sense something was wrong. There was an invisible wall that separated us emotionally. I wanted to believe it wasn’t there and denied it vehemently when she brought it up. We prayed harder. I had sufficiently suppressed my sexuality in the years leading up to the marriage. I believed my lack of sexual attraction meant God was healing me. What it really meant was that I had learned to subdue it to the point that I felt almost no sexual attractions at all. This gave me a sense of satisfaction, feeling as though my spirituality was higher than my carnal self. At the same time, I only felt half-alive.
I controlled practically everything around me, from how I dressed to how my house looked, to what I wanted others to perceive about me. It was exhausting. I detracted from intimacy by causing an argument, making a joke, or claiming to be too tired. The latter was mostly true since I put so much energy into pretending. In those rare times we had sex, it was more like building a fence than building a relationship. I was proud of the fact that I got through it, all the while hoping she didn’t notice how uncomfortable I felt.
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The emotional strain grew worse and the friendship that once held us together began to come undone.
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By the time we were pregnant with our first child, the relationship had nearly reached a breaking point. Divorce, however, wasn’t an option because of our Christian commitment. We prayed harder. We read our Bibles. We faithfully attended church, Bible studies and Christian fellowship. The emotional strain grew worse and the friendship that once held us together began to come undone.
Nearly as miraculous as the virgin birth itself, she was pregnant again. We knew exactly when it happened, in a moment – a brief moment – of truce. The pressures of life weighed on us as we both became disillusioned with church. The lack of answers and spiritual guidance for our troubles left us blaming each other. I hated her.
Soon, there was nothing attractive about her at all and I felt my marriage – the unspoken golden promise of ex-gay ministry – was an albatross that kept me from finding God. But I was trapped. With divorce out of the picture, I prayed God would take her home. I could make it as a single dad with two daughters, but I couldn’t bring myself to divorce her. That would be a sin.
Still, I wasn’t prepared when she took the initiative and divorced me. I reeled from the pain of failure, wondering how a just God could allow me to go through so much turmoil in one life. Wasn’t fighting the sinfulness of homosexuality enough? Now divorce? Where was the Christian promise of abundant life Jesus talked about? Why didn’t the magic formula of Bible reading, prayer, fasting, worship and fellowship work? I was an ordained minister, of all things. If anyone knew how it worked, it was me.
For six years following my divorce, I sat mostly in silence, isolating myself from the rest of the world. I frequently stared out of the large pane glass window in the back of my house, trying to figure out what happened. Faith and sexuality had been neatly compartmentalized to keep me from going insane. Now they were merging into one. Questioning my beliefs felt blasphemous. They were the very foundation on which I made decisions, lived, breathed and raised my children. I simply could not be wrong about them. The Bible could not be wrong.
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It’s been 12 years since my divorce. My ex-wife and I have jointly worked together and raised our children, even spending holidays and birthdays together. Our beliefs are drastically different than they used to be. It’s difficult to go through decades of inner turmoil and come out completely unscathed. Most of what I once believed about Christianity, I now see as nothing more than religious fervor, organized into murky factions of the same basic ideology. We call these denominations. There are 34,000 of them. Which one is “right” is anybody’s guess. I no longer care. I don’t think God does either.
I believe that God is bigger than the minute details that too frequently occupy our thoughts.
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The Evangelical Christian Church’s idea that God can change people from gay to straight is misguided at best and malicious at worse. Men, women and children have been sold the promise that people can and should change their sexual orientation, based on interpretations of canonized texts. When it doesn’t work, the person wasn’t trying hard enough, didn’t have enough faith, was never a Christian in the first place, didn’t do it right, didn’t do it long enough, didn’t have the right counseling, and on and on goes the list. It all boils down to religion making a promise reality can’t keep.
I believe that God is bigger than the minute details that too frequently occupy our thoughts. When I let go, I discovered life was never meant to be an uphill battle. Rather than simply trying to survive I can focus on helping others. That seems more Christian to me, and lines up perfectly with reality.
#BornPerfect
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Yayyyyyyy!!!! I am a Scripture-loving, Christ follower who believes that “conversion therapy” is cruel and useless. THANK YOU to both you and your wife for not continuing in the farce, but coming out as Christ followers who know that we are made uniquely to love and be loved in varied and wonderful ways!
What a selfish man
Selfish
Hi I am John gay married
Thank you Tim. I was an ordained Baptist minister and missionary. The fact that I am gay was medically proven during electronic shock therapy organized by the President of the Baptist Church here. He was a Dr and I saw him in an ex-gay ministry he ran for 16 years. I have been married to my wife for 45 years. She has had MS for 21 years and I am her carer. She has been unable to stand or walk for many years. I use a hoist for every transfer. The Baptist Church no longer forms any part of my… Read more »
I can think of some similar situations heterosexual couples have. One would be if one spouse has virtually zero sex drive or is impotent whle the other spouse has a high sex drive. That can cause a marriage to fail.
Another is if one partner is not attractive to the other, for example, when one of them gets fat.
I do not believe you wanted your wife to die but only wanted out of the situation.
The author basically told my life. First I would like to say that not all same sex attracted men enter a marriage fraudulently. My wife knew about me before we got married. I sincerely wanted to make it work and fought hard for it. We are best friends and I have never been unfaithful before or during the marriage which was why we were so optimistic the marriage would work. The same sex attraction lingered over me like a strict schoolteacher. I asked God to take this away, I prayed, fasted, tried meditation but still the feelings persisted and got… Read more »
I so feel for you both and yes I do understand this well. I am a retired Baptist Pastor. Most people, esp in our situation have not studied the scriptures as conservatives anywhere near seriously enough in the original Hebrew and Greek. I should have done it years before I did. So v important to do that. BTW I do not use the term same sex attracted. It is usually used by people who refuse to accept anyone is gay, but claim that everyone is heterosexual. That is not true. The fact that I am gay was proven medically during… Read more »
You are the exception if what you say is true.
I’m slightly (no, more than ‘slightly’) horrified by the vast amounts of jugement here. Why is it so hard just to listen with respect and compassion to someone else sharing their deepest, most painful and shameful experiences? There also seems to be so little understanding of how much our world has changed, and what it was really like those xx years ago when some of us here made our choices and decisions. We’ve been married 36 years in a few days. It took my wife 33 years to understand that she was really a lesbian, that all the deep passions… Read more »
I feel and relate to much of the article. Thirty+ years ago I was engaged. Weeks before the wedding I went to the Bishop and stated my struggle, I was to be marred yet was attracted to men. The Bishop clearly stated go ahead and get married, keep the commandments and the homosexual feelings will go away. So in joy I married. My life was so much the same as the authors though the marriage lasted for 27 years. In that time I found that this counsel had been given to 1000’s of gay men to marry a straight woman.… Read more »
Tim, I am so grateful to you for putting out there the all-too-common experience many of us have had with self-delusion and deceit of others. Your story is my story, and sadly, my ex-wife’s story too. I’m glad you’re telling it so that there can be fewer of “us” in the future.
I am a bisexual and I would be pissed off if I was with someone pretending they were bisexual.
Dude, you actually asked God to kill your wife so you didn’t have to deal with your own issues? No wonder she divorced you, that is unbelievably selfish, not to mention psychotic.
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t… Read more »
What would have been the best thing your ex-wife could have done or did do to support you after the divorce. I love my husband, he is gay, we are divorcing BUT I want to love him through life.
I wish we could talk, I need your help
As I said, “When it doesn’t work, the person wasn’t trying hard enough, didn’t have enough faith, was never a Christian in the first place, didn’t do it right, didn’t do it long enough, didn’t have the right counseling, and on and on goes the list.” Your comments are neither new nor insightful, simply another dismissal of others experiences without all the facts.
One thing the author of this article failed to mention is this. Change doesn’t come from trying hard enough. True change comes from a Christian going deeper in their faith in Jesus Christ. This man used to work for Exodus. Unfortunately in later years this ministry didn’t help people to go deeper in their walk with Jesus. It was merely a platform ministry where the leaders moved about the country being talking heads. The leadership of Exodus in FL did not know how to help people with SSA go deeper in their relationship with Jesus. The writer of this article… Read more »
Too often the focus is on the plight of the gay married man… and not the plight of the woman he married and the children he fathered. Marriage was a choice, whether or not pressure was felt. A lie is a lie. For women to heal check out B&N http://bit.ly/1ihG3gm, or Amazon http://amzn.to/1uHhvEX
Thank you Caroyn, you hit the nail on the head. I’m still wondering after 28 years of being married to a gay man why he betrayed me and our kids let alone betrayed himself. He hates me and I hate him, but I have forgiven and have moved on. He refuses to communicate with me. The years being married to him were the worst years of my life in looking back, I was so unhappy. I have fallen in love again, but refuse ever to get remarried again. It was a tragic experience I will never forget.
I’m glad to hear you have found true Christianity now: To help others! I wonder what would’ve happened if you and your wife had focused on that instead. You’re story is so real and I feel your pain. I understand how you felt trapped by religion. I am not gay, but I know that trap too. I know many Christian couples who have similar intimacy problems, even though they are straight. I think they are in the same religious trap too. I think it has nothing to do with sexual orientation, but to do with the trap: “serving God without… Read more »
I believe that God is bigger than the minute details that too frequently occupy our thoughts. Wow. All that sewage you slogged through was the direct product of religious nonsense (“sin”, etc.) designed and intended to keep gullible people ignorant and deluded and afraid and compliant (and paying, don’t forget paying!), and yet here you sit, still babbling about god. Oh, no, no, the problem was…um…the marriage! No, wait, it was the ex-gay industry! It was my…my sinful thoughts, that’s what it was! Wait, no, it was…er…it was my fault, I just hadn’t opened my heart to god enough! Maybe… Read more »
Wow. As a man who went through ex-gay therapy, I’m so glad I never took the step of marrying a woman. After reading this, I think I never will. Ex-gay therapy is just so devastating. I cannot believe what it did to my life and I was alone!
Whoever you are attracted to, marriage is no joke. Commitment is 200%. If a woman married a man for his money, the strains of being married will destroy that relationship. We all know that hindsight is 20/20, and we have polarizing positions on sexuality. But I never forgot what a bisexual man said on TV, when asked what he would do if he married a woman or vice versa: ‘respect your partner’. We may commit to one person, but we still notice other people. So what keeps us from having sex with every person we are attracted to? Respect for… Read more »
Celibacy is not mandated in Scripture anywhere.
Thank you for writing this article and posting it to this website. I came to this through my Facebook feed. First off, I want to say I felt so much pain reading this. I felt pain for you, for your faith, for the ex-gay therapy you went through, the notions of the “right” life biblically, I felt pain for your wife, I felt the pain of how your faith community and your church culture treated you, and treats other gay men. I felt pain in wondering what my experience would’ve been like in an even more conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist religious… Read more »
How you can find any anger towards the wife is astounding to me. If you met a guy who primarily dated men but told you he was bi and you married him or committed to him and he left you for a women or started sneaking off to fulfill those needs should someone be mad at you?
Daniel your thoughts are very ignorant. I am a man that deals with SSA. I am married. I am attracted to my wife. My primary orientation is other men. I knew this before I was married. She did too. We thought I was healed. I wasn’t. Found out 6 months after being married. I am still married after 4 years. She is just now finding out. It is breaking her heart. I am optimistic that we can have a meaningful marriage.
So you are one of millions of gay men who married a straight woman. And I am one of millions of straight women who suffered in a marriage to a gay man for many years. My ex husband still insists he isnt gay. He just likes looking at gay porn. And he has close personal friendships with younger gay men. And poor poor him, his crazy ex wife just didnt understand him…. THat has also been the attitude of the liberal church we attended, and his highly educated, sophisticated know it all enablers. Poor him. Crazy angry you. Heal by… Read more »
Wow! This was one of the most sobering and poignant web comments in a long time.
Thank you.
I have to ask something that may seem callous, but I don’t mean to be offensive. If indeed you felt that your marriage was a sham or that you were being abused, why on earth didn’t you just file for divorce and get out? It’s clear that you have a lot of anger, but I have to wonder if part of that anger is self inflicted because you failed yourself as much as he failed you.
Women are taught to stay til the bitter end. This is a world that is not very welcoming to single women of a certain age. Your comment is a bit callous. The reality is that she would have to want to believe that her marriage was over. Her anger is rightfully directed at the man who used her and lied.
You raise a good question. But unfortunately it follows the pattern that many straight spouses encounter when we speak the full truth. Somehow, it must all come back on us. It is a question that is used to put abused women in their place when light is shed on the abuse that they endured that was ignored – well, why didn’t YOU LEAVE? Often, we cannot, especially when there are children and we are isolated by the gradual processes of gaslighting and marginalization. The truth is, in any marriage there are issues that fall on both people. The straight spouse… Read more »
Pastors, not partners. Stupid auto correct. “I am still angry that conservative partners tell men who have a “same sex attraction” that it can be cured by marrying a girl”
Best comment ever.
Great word. Well said. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
I have gone through the same things that you have! I have cried and wet my pillow with tears countless night, I have suppressed my guy feelings for 35 years! I am free now! I am myself! I love who I am and I love your attitude and courage! I have two beautiful children that I love and am very glad to have them in my life! Thank you for sharing this article! You have my appreciation and admiration!
This is the first time I have visited this site. I am horrified at the judgement and hatred shown by some, towards a person to whom I can relate, and totally understand. But, would I ever share my story in this site of jackals? “Cast not your pearls before swine…”
I am sorry you feel you would be judged Rick. I would never judge a person for being gay. I do have a hard time accepting that we are just supposed to accept that someone can wish someone dead because that person inconveniences them. I do have a hard time accepting that a person can marry a person knowing that they are a gay and then we are supposed to just ignore the other person (usually the straight wife or husband) in order to celebrate the other person’s coming out. The more I hear of these stories the harder it… Read more »
But what you keep failing to take into consideration Tiffany is that the author had been deeply enmeshed in the ex-gay movement. He experienced what is quite literally brainwashing. When he entered marriage in his eyes, it was his only salvation from being doomed to eternity in hell. That really fucks up a person’s sense of reality. In this case, both husband and wife entered this marriage in an altered state of reality, believing that religious faith could make a sham a real marriage. Blind religious faith has led people to do much, much worse.