To want to marry a man even though I am gay

[strawberryplants]

I just want to be normal so much.

Straight woman here so I won't bother telling you not to feel this way. I'm just so sorry you have to, when people say "why do we need pride, straight people don't need to rub their sexuality in everyone's faces" I will just direct them to this thread.

I'm sorry you have to be you in a time where people still haven't moved the fuck on from judgement and hatred.

This is incredibly selfish. The damage you would do to him, living a lie, until you finally came out, would be horrendous.
How could you even consider doing this to another person? The mn'er threads I've read where Dh/dw have finally admitted they always knew they were gay, have been awful to read.

I’m sorry you feel you can’t be who you need to be but don’t marry a man. I’ve seen what damage this causes long term. Don’t do it

Basing marriage on a lie is a shitty thing to do. So either find a man whose happy to marry a gay woman (I think that'd be a smaller pool than lesbians tbh), or stay single or embrace who you are.

Please don't marry a man because you're gay. Just don't do it.

Unless you've been on the receiving end of homophobia, it's difficult to fully understand.

The temptation to 'identify out of' the thing in your life that's so offensive to complete strangers (and people you love) does drive people to hide in plain sight sometimes by pretending not to be gay. Sometimes it can feel like it would be so easy to 'fix' the problem that's causing so much grief.

It's all very well saying it's selfish to marry and I'm genuinely sorry for the people who've gone through having a spouse come out as gay, but I can't imagine many people do it just for laughs.

Don't do it. I did. Learn from my mistake and don't waste your life.

Longines there is absolutely no excuse for wrecking some ones life by deceiving them to such a degree and making them unknowingly live their life as a lie, it’s beyond low. Anyone who does that, esp if they have kids is completely selfish. Basically you are saying my need to feel “normal” ranks over every single thought and feeling you may have. It’s so far beyond acceptable

bear, I agree with you in principle, but I can't help feeling you're imagining a particular, quite narrow, subset of the possible situations here?

It would be very wrong for someone who knows they're gay, and believes that this means they couldn't have a happy marriage with a straight person, to marry a straight person who didn't know their feelings. So there are several possible situations:

1. The OP hasn't suggested marrying someone who doesn't know her feelings. Marriages of convenience may not be all that romantic, and you might not like the idea of them, but I'm not sure there's much ethical issue there?

2. The OP might be trying to persuade herself that a gay woman can be happy in a marriage with a straight man, being honest with him that she is attracted to women. This isn't remarkable - some men (or women) will want to marry someone who they know isn't really attracted to them. It's very sad, but not necessarily dishonest.

3. The OP might be trying to persuade herself that a gay woman can be happy in a marriage with a straight man, even if she doesn't tell him. This isn't unheard-of. A friend of mine, on coming out to her mother, received the unexpected response 'yes, dear - everyone feels like that - but we get married anyway'. Her mother had rationalised her feelings, telling herself they weren't 'lesbian' but 'just what everyone feels,' and so she never felt the need to tell her husband.

I would also say that it is wrong to imagine that a bad marriage 'ruins' a life.

It's all very well saying it's selfish to marry and I'm genuinely sorry for the people who've gone through having a spouse come out as gay, but I can't imagine many people do it just for laughs.

I doubt you have any idea how horrific it is to be married to someone who doesn't feel in any way sexually attracted to you. I doubt you have any clue how that affects your self esteem as a woman (and most likely as a man too).
Hint - think of your worst nightmare. Multiply it by 100.

Nobody owes a gay person anything. Yes, it is hard to be gay. Yes, a gay person would like a family. But everybody, straight or gay, has the responsibility to live with integrity. Nobody has the right to foreclose someone else's options and set them on a path that has lifelong repercussions just because you have dreams. Everybody has dreams. Not included in the vast majority of people's dreams is the prospect of living with someone who doesn't actually desire your body. Don't ask someone to sacrifice their happiness for yours.

Everybody owes any potential children they might have the prospect of the best possible life they can give them. You are deluding yourself and being massively selfish to think that marriage to a straight man would be happy for either of you, and that any children you had would not be affected by that.

You are deluding yourself if you think marriage to a straight man would have any more than a slim chance of avoiding divorce as a result of that unhappiness.

The effect on children of all that is horrendous.

My DCs lost their lovely home and garden, their friendly neighbourhood, their unitary family, their childhoods, essentially. They had to spend every second weekend away from home, packing clothes and shoes and homework and school sports gear and tampons and iPads as if they were heading for a weekend out of town. They had to spend half of every Christmas holiday with exH, sometimes leaving on Boxing Day for the eight remaining days of the holiday. My youngest DD remembers no other way of living.

Speaking very personally here, I still feel immense anger that my exH even considered bringing children into the world, knowing what he did about himself. I mean, what chance did he really think our relationship had? He took me and my dreams completely for granted. I was a one dimensional being as far as he was concerned. I was merely the facilitator of everything he needed to live a 'normal' life. It came as an enormous shock to him that I was miserable. He simply hadn't factored me into his neat equation at all.

Bearhunter09 Wed 27-Jun-18 00:17:11

...there is absolutely no excuse for wrecking some ones life by deceiving them to such a degree and making them unknowingly live their life as a lie, it’s beyond low. Anyone who does that, esp if they have kids is completely selfish. Basically you are saying my need to feel “normal” ranks over every single thought and feeling you may have. It’s so far beyond acceptable

Yes to THIS^ , a thousand times.

It took me ten years to recover from the feeling that my life had been stolen from me. Which is what my exH did to me. There is no other way to look at it.

I have never told my children that their father is gay. Only DD1 knows, because she came across letters between exH and a man - he had left his email account open and she clicked to open the screen. I do not know what feelings it might evoke in my children if they were to ever find out that their existence is the result of a comprehensive deceit.

My uncle was gay and struggled with it a lot. He was insanely jealous of my father because my dad had married a woman plus had some children. My uncle craved that 'normalcy'.

Sadly he died from AIDS in the early 90s in his 40s. His mother nursed him as she refused to let anyone else care for her child. He sold his home, his large possessions and closed his life down when his health started to deteriorate.

The sad part about this is that he met a fabulous man in the final 4 years of his active life. He was truly a wonderful man and my uncle was happy for the first time in his life. It took him having AIDS and knowing he would die to let his preconceived ideas go, forming a lovely relationship with someone who fulfilled him. My uncle refused to burden him with his illness and broke up with him when he became terminally ill. It was a tragedy that it took him having AIDS to find peace with himself.

Please do not be my uncle. His relationship with his boyfriend was so beautiful. My siblings and I call him our uncle squared. What you are experiencing in craving normalcy is very common. There is professional help available at no or low cost from LBGT charities and it's really worth getting it.

math

DHs cousin went through something similar in that her 'D'H ran off with a 17 year old boy. I admire her strength and her mettle. Her exH is one of the most awful people I've had the displeasure of knowing.

I'm not straight. You are normal, but society that hasn't caught up yet. I know the pressure, I know the desire to just be what society thinks is normal, because it's just so much easier than the minefield that life can be otherwise.

I understand your feeling. I've had it myself. But know that there's nothing wrong with you. What you wan't isn't to be normal, it's for the world to stop acting like you're not.

Here's to you finding your One, wherever and whoever she may be.

I have a dear friend who is going though agony right now. She is gay and married to her lovely, wonderful DH. She's breaking his heart, she's breaking her heart and they're both trying not to break their daughter's heart.

I know it's not easy. But marrying a man won't be easy either if you're gay.

I'm sorry the world is still shitty.

Don’t do it. It’s grossly unfair to the other person. I married a closeted gay man (I didn’t know either) and spent 18 years wondering why I wasn’t good enough, why he didn’t fancy me, and why we never had sex. It was sound destroying. And then I found out he had cheated on me with loads of men. It was awful. Don’t wreck someone else’s life because you have some twisted old fashioned idea of what ‘normal” means. Being your authentic self is the most normal thing of all.

I'm bi and met my wife without on-line dating and while being an anti-social introvert in a more conservative country than the UK. There are women who like women everywhere. You'll likely meet someone who is right for you, and it would be a shame if your unhappy sham marriage stopped her from realising that you would be interested.
I used to wish I was more average, but I came to realise that there are much more interesting things in life than being normal.

Lelly.

Thank you, Want2Be.

I'm straight but my best friend is gay and through him I have become good friends with many gay people, in fact the vast majority of my friends are gay so although I can't claim to understand how you feel or what you're going through I do have a bit of understanding. I have known several gay men who have married women because they didn't feel able to 'come out' to family/friends/colleagues and they felt under pressure to live a straight life. It's wrong on so many levels. Life is short and you only get one shot at it. You deserve to be with someone that you love (and fancy!) and your partner deserves to be loved (and fancied!)
The wives of these men are living a lie and they're not even aware of it. One chap in particular who I have become close to over the last couple of years adores his wife (in a non-romantic way) but still has affairs with men as she can't fulfil him, for obvious reasons. He feels terribly guilty as he really cares for her and this just adds to the feelings of guilt and shame that he has about his sexuality. It is such a waste of life for all concerned.
Sorry for going on a bit but I have seen what sadness comes with this situation. I really hope things work out for you

Normal. Wtaf do you mean by that?

math. I’m sure you’ve said other things about your ex too. Sorry to learn that.

As sweet said, it isn’t just people not in heterosexual or couple relationships, who are sidelined. She has experience being autistic. I have experience being chronically ill. For example I was asked periodically to go out for meet up with the school mummies, which were and probably still are organised periodically. Dh goes out with the dads. I went twice maybe 5 years ago but was too ill after that. So just dropped. It was incredibly hurtful. would like to have been asked continually as I had a better year 3 years ago and would have been able to join them. I was too hurt to ask to join them again as it was the same time as I was slowly dropped by the bunch of women, who went out on these things. And I knew I couldn’t guarantee I’d be well enough on the particular evening and couldn’t handle the eye rolls I thought would ensue.

Last week I had a hysterectomy and all of a sudden because I have a diagnosable Medical condition, someone, who dropped me as a friend around 3 years ago was concerned about me. Other people have shown concern when there was very little before. Until then I “just” had ME/CFS. (I’m now hoping it was my uterus making me ill for the most part as it was humungous.). Ironically I am recovering well and from 2 full days post op I felt about the same as I have for the past year or so and it’s a very large midline cut, not keyhole op.

As for single parents, I actually tried to befriend one of the single mums but she wasn’t interested. Im obviously too much of a reject. It’s ok, I’m slowly finding reject friends.

LRD
You’re right. As a heterosexual woman, I am shocked at the way you were treated. Of course as the majority of women have children by a partner or ex, i would assume you had too unless I knew otherwise. Then when I did, I’d be fine. Having been chronically ill for so long, I know not everyone is the same. I’m sorry you’ve had such prejudice.

On the flip side, I’m sure the people, who treated me crappily would be shocked about my feelings as for the most part people just go about life on auto pilot and don’t look left or right or see past the end of their nose.

One woman. The pool may seem small but you only need to meet one woman who is right. Have faith.

To all those saying being gay is normal, when was the last time you saw a gay couple holding hands? I can count on one hand with some fingers missing. Or a gay couple cuddling/kissing in public?

I stumbled upon DB and his partner having a cuddle outside one time, and they shot apart like they'd been electrocuted, when I came round the corner.

It made me so sad that their automatic reaction to someone witnessing them doing something so banal and usual for straight couples - so normal - was to do whatever they could to undo it, so to speak.

DB didn't come out until he was in his thirties because he found it so hard to deal with and admit to. Wasted all those young, carefree years being celibate. On the flip side, his partner was forced to come out to his family in high school because he was being so badly bullied. It's just awful - what's 'normal' is these sorts of experiences. We straight people don't have a clue.

Being gay is so far from the normality that straight people experience.

Sorry OP. I know this isn't helpful. But when you find the right person, I hope it will be easier for you.

Being gay, however you feel you have been treated does not give you the license to fuck up someone else’s life (Lrd having a bad marriage might not wreck your life but having a massive proportion of your life built in lies and deceit, constant sexual rejection without knowing why destroying your self esteem, having your kids taken away from you half the time does how the hell can you ever trust anyone again). I say again this is selfish selfish selfish. This is not about a gay person feeling better. Doing this would be the action of a very cruel person. It’s selfish, it’s all about them. If it is a marriage where the husband knows, it would be up to the couple for one to be sterilised so no kids could be brought into the complete fuck up of a relationship. If you’re considering doing this read maths post, then read it again. If you still think this is ok I would suggest there are other reasons you’re single rather than your sexuality.