confused … is just one word, of many many others, that describes me at this point in my life.
I am a lesbian. married 15 years with 3 beautiful children. I adore my family and from the outside looking in we have ‘the perfect family’. I feel I made all the ‘right’ choices in life, according to my faith and the environment I grew up in. I got married at the young age of 21, when I should have still been trying to figure out who I was. I knew then that I was gay but chose not to believe it. and believed that finding a man that loved me, in spite of my past, was the only way to go. and here is why, my faith, my family and my community taught me that being homosexual was a sin. I couldn’t live who I knew I was so I chose to masquerade as a “normal” woman. I know now what a hurtful choice that turned out to be, not only for me but for my husband and now the kids. I realize that getting married was NOT part of the cure (thanks AVB)
I have been trying to use my blog as a journal, and if you are interested the link is below.
[url=http://thejourney316.wordpress.com/
]http://thejourney316.wordpress.com/
Welcome welcome welcome…..so glad to have you here. I trust that this site gives you lots of support and lets you know you are not alone on the journey.
I think one of the good things about posting our stories here is that we can see the progression also in peoples journeys…….some began here very confused…..but over the weeks months or years have found levels of resolution.
Each individual has different layers (eg culture and/or faith etc) and variables (eg finance, relationship with spouse, health etc), to work through. I’ve worked with lots of poeple who are gay or lesbian and in a heterosexual marriage……when sorting out what is the right thing to do right now…….children and their ages can be one of the variables we take into consideration. There probably is no perfect time to tell the kids of come out…..just probably a better time and manage and minimise harm.
you said “I made all the ‘right’ choices in life, according to my faith and the environment I grew up in”
this extract might be useful.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/GLB-Coaching/69395748049?v=app_2347471856#!/notes/glb-coaching/gay-married-what-to-do-faqs/72010016023
Mixed Orientation Marriage – What to do?
A mixed orientation marriage is where one partner is heterosexual and the other is same-sex-oriented (gay or lesbian) or bi-sexual.
The situation we find ourselves in was not one of intentional deception. (In some cultures, families and geographical areas this maybe different however, as it is a matter of survival). For most of us though, our marriages were the result of us conforming to a society, who at that time, believed homosexuality was crime, perversion and mental illness. We married thinking that it was the right thing to do and that it would help to change what we perceived was faulty within us. I know this was the case for me. I wanted to do the right thing. Having a wife and family was everyone’s goal. There are also a number of people whose same sex orientation did not become obvious or awakened till after they married. You, I, and 1000’s of others are the products of an uninformed society. We are at the fault line and our generation is the one caught in the transition.
Had the current knowledge on sexual orientation been available to us growing up, our choices would have been different. If we were born 40 years earlier we wouldn’t have ever considered coming out. If we were in this current generation we would have realized our sexual orientation is natural and normal and wouldn’t have married to help fix it or felt it necessary to conform.
Making a decision about what to do, being gay or lesbian in a heterosexual marriage, can be quite complex. It has many consequences that can include firstly our partner of course but also children, families, employment, business, friends, church, faith. The decisions we make will impact several or all of these.
Living with the internal conflict (dissonance) will eventually impact (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stress-symptoms/SR00008_D) us either psychologically (e.g. depression), emotionally (distancing and unable to have intimacy or strong friendships) or physically (stress related illnesses e.g. high blood pressure, insomnia, ulcers etc). We need to put strategies into place to manage the stress and resolve the dissonance.
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