She’s My Wife. He’s Just Sex. Sue Joseph ISBN 0 9586754 2 2

Women’s group.
From an interview with Philippa C. who (in 1996) was running the Women Partners of Bisexual Men Peer Support Group in Sydney Australia...
Some women come the meetings for the first few time and just cry, they sin in the corner and cry. It’s no big deal. We just put a box of tissues in front of them and leave them alone. They have to do this....
Most women just collapse in a heap for a few months before they decide what to do. This is happening secretly and to most of the women I speak to , it’s been happening for a year, five years, 10 years, 30 years without them knowing and they say: “ I never had any choices because I didn’t know what was going on. If I had know what was going on I could have made the choice whether to finish this relationship or for me to have affairs.” Or whatever. They just feel that their basic human right to decide what they want to do with their life has been completely abused.
We all have the right to make choices too. It is her life, as well. Not just his.
A woman said to me quite recently: “I feel like I have been used and spat out.” That’s very common.
Because some women feel that they have been just cynically used – you know: “My partner is in the kind of work where he needed respectability, he needed a wife. He needed to look ‘straight’ and he’s just used me.”
Of course not all the men have been cheating on their wives for years and years. Some don’t become aware of (or confront for the first time) their emerging homosexuality until they are 30 or 40 or even older. The problem is, there is a perception in society that gay men are usually aware of their sexuality from their teens or at least early 20s. This is why a woman may be angry when her 40 year old husband announces he’s gay. She thinks: “you must have known this for years and been lying to me all the time.”
Many of the woman walk away from their relationships doubting whether their partner ever loved them at all; whether they were just being cynically used from day one. He needed a woman in his life. Maybe he wanted kids too and she was just an instrument for him to achieve those things. And when he didn’t need her any more, he walked away. Spat her out.
This is very sad because they feel their whole married life has just been a lie – even a joke – and they don’t know whether to believe their husband when he says he really did love her, and maybe still does...
...there are woman who are married to bisexual men and feel isolated in many ways because they can’t talk to other people about their situation because people think they are weirdos.
...most women had found out after the relationship had started that their partner was bisexual. Bisexual is just a simplistic way of describing it... it’s a much more complex thing than most of them imagine.
I look at the Kinsey continuum of homosexuality at one end and heterosexuality at the other. I regard these men as people who are moving up and down that continuum, sometimes continuously. Sometimes they may stop in one spot for a while but other times they will move.
I think to put labels on these men is completely inappropriate but they accept labels because society pressures them into having to have a label. And they choose a label according to the sort of lifestyle they prefer. A lot of these men are not attracted to the gay lifestyle at all and a lot of them want to have children. They like the company of women and they often love their wives but are attracted to men as well – attracted to men often just once a month or under stress. I don’t know what it is that triggers this. Many obviously regularly have sex with other men, and for others it might just be once a year.
It’s extraordinary because it is so different from how society views sexuality. Society views sexuality as very much black or white and now the concept of bisexuality is becoming more accepted as well but still very much in a simplistic sense. A bisexual person is someone who fancies men and women but not someone who may fancy women for the first half of his life and fancy men for the second half of his life; or fancy women six days a week and men on Sundays. That’s not acceptable at all, yet, but it is going to have to be eventually, I think.
Not a lot has been written about it...
... these men have often lied, even to themselves, for many years, so they have developed a habit of lying...
All the women who ring say: “He definitely is” or “I’ve just found out” or “I am suspicious”.
Nearly all of them know. Most of them don’t come out to me until they are pretty sure and they have got some evidence either from him personally or they found a letter of something like that. But I do have a couple of women – one with a husband, one with a boyfriend who are very suspicious and it sounds to me like their men are doing something, or thinking of it. One woman’s husband hasn’t touched her for many years. He visibly stiffens if she tries to give him a hug and he has a lot of gay male friends. That’s actually unusual. But I would agree with her that her suspicions are probably correct.
Most of the women in accordance with your interviews have a good sex life...
The first reaction on disclosure is usually denial and then often the denial is mixed with a sort of euphoria: “I’ve been hitting my head against a brick wall for years. I knew there was something wrong. Now I’ve found out. Now we can fix this up. Great.
Whether it is get on with my life and make some choices or actually fix up this relationship and we can set some ground rules here and get the relationship back on track. Often you know it is the first time the guy has opened up to his wife in 10 years or something. He has been a really closed kind of person and suddenly he is talking to her about his feelings and she is delighted.
Then it starts to hit her about how she has been betrayed and anger kicks in – it’s hard to generalise. Anger doesn’t kick in with all of them. If he is still obviously being dishonest then anger will kick in pretty soon.
It’s hard to separate what the anger is about. The lack of choice is the biggest thing but the betrayal and the humiliation, the hours of agonising this woman has been through thinking it is her fault that the marriage isn’t working out. He may have encouraged her to indulge in sexual practices she didn’t want to be involved in like anal sex and that sort of thing and then she finds out why. The absolute fury of that.
A lot of men tell their wives because of their guilt. Some tell their wives before they have done anything – they tell their wives this is the way they are starting to feel and they tell them before they act on it. Some tell their wives the day before they leave to go and live with a new boyfriend. And some wives find out by discovering letters or gay magazines.
The earlier the wife is told, and the more sensitively she is told, the more quickly and easily she will recover and be able to start rebuilding her life, whether that is with her husband or without him.
Two scenarios: Wife Number One, married for 20 years, is told by her husband that he has fallen in love iwh another man and is planning to leave her. He says that he is always known he was gay, even beofred they were married. She is in complete shock, the marriage has had its ups and downs, but she thought they were basically happy.
She says”” I can’t believe this. I thought we were happy together.” He says: “Get real. I’ve been miserable for the past 20 years. It’s no wonder I prefer men – you’re fat and ugly. I’ve just been waiting for the kids to grow up so I could leave you. Anyway, if you don’t believe me, take a look at this.”
He takes the wedding photo off the mantelpiece and point out how the best man had his hand on the groom’s behind on their wedding day.
Wife Number Two is told by her husband that he is experiencing some disturbing feelings, that is a sexual attraction to other men. He might even have acted on these feeling once or twice, perhaps when he was drunk. He is very confused because he still loves his wife dearly, but he wants to be honest with her and, hopefully, work thing out with her support as well as allow her the right to have some input and control in what is, in effect, a family crisis.
... Obviously, you can see that Wife Number One is not going to handle this very well. Her husband had done everything wrong – late timing, many years of deceit, insensitive manner of disclosure, and blaming her for his attraction to other men. She feels humiliated, used and abused. All the power has been taken out of her hands, she has never been given any choices, and now he’s leaving her, she has no choice about that either.
Her whole married life has been a lie, even a joke, with the evidence in that photo taunting her from the mantelpiece these past 20 years. Her self esteem and ability to trust others will be blown to pieces and will take many yeast (if ever) to recover.
Wife Number Two will also be shattered by her husband’s revelation, even angry for a time, but the important thing here is that she has been treated with the utmost respect and consideration. Ant this will enable her to eventually emerge from the crisis with her sense of self still very much intact, as well as with, probably, a continuing good relationship with her husband, whether or not they decide to stay together.
If children are involved, you can also see how these two scenarios will impact on them. Wife Number One will be so angry she will infect the children with her hatred, and probably do everything in her power to prevent her ex-husband from seeing them.
This is very sad, as children need a father and being a disappointment as a husband does not necessarily mean you’re a lousy father.
On the other hand, the children of Wife Number Two will probably benefit from the presence of two loving parents (whether or not they live in the same hours) and grow up to be very tolerant and accepting individuals, because their mother will go out of her way to encourage these values in support of her husband or ex-husband.
I guess the bottom line is that if you’ve had your won right respected, you’re more likely to respect the rights of others. Aren’t you?”
We have a group of woman who are still with their partners who are still working it out and they tend not to have so much anger as those who felt they had no choice. I counsel them by saying: “If you really think your partner is telling the truth that is the most important thing” but I also encourage them to discuss safe sex: negotiate, negotiate, negotiate! Relationships like this can work if both partners are on an equal footing and have an equal say in everything.
A comment from some of the women whose relationships have ended is: “I wish he had died rather than doing this because then it would have been finished. I could have dealt with it. It would have been out in the open. I would have got all the sympathy from friends and relatives.” Because a lot of the women can’t tell anyone, they are also in the closet. And getting no support from anybody because they can’t tell their families. Can’t tell their friends. The isolation is unbelievable.
Humiliation is probably a better word than shame. It’s like I said before, it’s either” “what’s wrong with me? Totally inadequate.” To the point where they even question their own sexuality: “Perhaps I am not a whole woman, a real woman. Not a good enough woman.” And they think people will judge them, so they stay in the closet. Also, many of them are protecting their children from this knowledge about their father.
Very few of the women kick their husbands out immediately. Most of them will stick around and try and work it out for a while and then leave or ask their husband to leave. Where there is a knee jerk reaction is more often when the man says: “OK, I’m out of here.”
I can’t get over how amazing these women are and how hard they are prepared to try and work to keep their families intact and they will only give up when they realise it is a total loss.
So they try talking first to see if there is a way thought the problems. Maybe their husband is prepared to give up his activities.
Of then the attitude of some women who mange to stay with their partners is to turn a blind eye or be aware that occasionally he will go off with a man, but it is nothing to do with them. They seem to rationalise in the sense that””I love my husband. He is my best friend and to ask him to repress a whole side of himself would be to turn him into a shell of the person he is and I don’t want to do that.”
But it is important that they also feel free to have affairs if they want, not that they always want to, but it’s got be equal, like I have already said.
I suspect if he wanted to have an affair with another woman the response would be different. I suspect they would say: “I’m a woman. You want a woman here I am.”
They are quite strong. I think it is easy to assume these women are wimps with no self esteem who think they couldn’t get another man if they split up. But that are not. They love their man and probably are women who are not social conformists anyway. And they are prepare to accept something which is different from the norm and they have worked out hot it can suit them.
I think women can accept that men have different equipment and they can’t compete with that.
I’ve spoken to one woman whose first husband left her for another woman and then she found out her second husband was having sex with other men. And I asked her which is worse and she said the men because of what it did to her inside because it made her feel inadequate as a woman. She said with a woman she felt she could compete. Whereas with a man you feel completely impotent to do anything about it.
You have either got to accept it and say: “OK, I accept I cannot compete here.” And you keep doing it. Or you say: “I don’t accept it” and you get out of that relationship.
I see this as something I would like to believe then men can control but I don’t believe they can. Maybe because they can get away with it, they choose not to control it. Maybe they don’t have the maturity, the sense of responsibility. I don’t know what it is. I don’t fell equipped to even start to speculate why they can’t control it.
All I know is these men give up so much when their marriages disintegrate and they seem to be genuinely distraught about having to give up so much, but hey still do it. And the only answer I can come up with is it is something they can’t control.
It is more than something they like doing.
This will never be accepted as normal by the majority of women. It’ can’t be. If you were a 25 year old woman about to get married for the first time and your partner said: “By the way I am also attracted to other men and would like to have sex with other men occasionally.” And you are thinking of having children? Few women are going to have children with that man; with that insecurity ahead of them. When women have kids that is like a lifetime investment and commitment for that woman and she wants a man who she thinks is going to be by her side both physically and emotionally not just until they have left home. By that time she is going to be in the middle age. She wants someone who is going to be her companion in old age as well.
If you have a choice of a man who is going to be there for you, or might not be there for you, most women will want to maximise their chances of having someone who is going to be there for her.
These marriages might be more accepted on day but I think when it come to the crunch, most women will not accept it so the problem will continue to be driven underground.
The only way I can see the situation being helped is if society becomes less homophobic. Things are improving already, but still not enough. If society were more accepting, then young men might feel more free to think about their sexuality with less pressure to conform to the ‘norm”. But I don’t think this problem will ever completely go away – never.