hey wayne. taking the honesty road is the hardest one to travel, but in the end its the one with the richest reward – for all concerned.

i’ll be prayerfully thinking about you and your journey mate.

we’re here any time you want to pm any of us for a chat and support.

rob.

Hey Wayne………I share the pain and trauma of your experience. We do welcome you to your forum and so glad you felt comfortable to tell us your story. I’m not if you are aware of mine…….it is available on amazon.com now i think…….it might help.

I often help people in your situation so let me know if I can be of further help. Below is a recent email and responce that might be of help also. Hope to hear more from you. We have a few other Canadians here. Will be thinking of you buddy as you make these important life decisions for you and those around you.

Andrew posted this message on a yahoo support group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ozmarriedgays/message/889

I’d previously emailed and spoken to Andrew about his situation but thought it might be helpful to others in the group to share my thoughts.

Hi Folks,

Andrew

Hi Andrew

Your email has brought back to me the heart wrenching time I had grappling with the same questions. I went back to that trip I made driving from Brisbane to Toowomba, weeping as I drove while the questions and implications rolled over me like thunderous surf. What will people think? How will my wife cope? Will my kids turn against me or God? Will I go to hell? Will we all be able to survive what could be the most traumatic experience in our lives?…….and ……of course, I will be the one who will cause all their suffering and pain!

At that time, in 1991, there were no support groups ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ozmarriedgays and http://www.gamma.org.au/ etc) or the options of mixed orientation marriages or closed loop available as far as I was aware. I was totally alone in the decision making experience because of my fears and sense of shame. The other thing that needs to be acknowledged is that we all have very different experiences as same sex attracted individuals from having a sexual addiction (like myself) or having never acted on the desires during the heterosexual marriage. From my experience, there is everything from one end of the continuum to the other.

You know my whole story so you’ll be aware that it has not always been easy but I can’t think of a moment when I actually regretted the decision to be honest with myself, every person in my life and begin for the first time in my life to be authentic. The peace, fulfillment and resolution I have today was way beyond my comprehension back in 1991.

You know from our conversations that I would never advise but you may find what I say here a bit more directive because I know there will be lots of others reading this who are also in a similar situation.

The consequences of you being true to yourself will be wide ranging. How others respond will be their choice and decision. That is what life is about. In life, we either become bitter or better. Our response to what life brings our way determines what we become. I used to preach that and still believe it.

I’m glad I took the courageous step (although I must admit it didn’t feel very courageous at the time, I think it was more a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable). There is only so much time you can live with that internal dissonance without it affecting you and those around you in some way. Mentally, emotionally and even physically. The impact will always be negative in the end.

In hindsight, I think when I decided to leave my wife and family I was actually setting us all free. Free to live openly and honestly. What is the alternative? I knew that in staying I would only be propping up the false reality we’d lived in. Anthony Venn-Brown the heterosexual husband/father/preacher with it all together.

When I left, I set my wife free from false hope and denial. (it seems she has been able to move on and find a man who will love her completely and she no longer lives with the stress of suspicion)

When I left, I set my children free from so they could learn to love the real person who was their Dad and not a false identity. (today there are no secrets between us and they love their gay dad)

When I left, I set my friends free to love me unconditionally and without judgement (very few passed that test but the ones I have today give me that)

That is not to say that it was all wonderful immediately or there wasn’t any pain. But with time we worked through most it I think. I know I have. If there are any issues left to resolve, they are other people’s issues. I’ve been open and honest…..at last. What people do with that is their choice? They can go on blaming another for the rest of their lives if they choose……but they will never serve them.

As for your faith. I thought I walked out on that when I walked out on the family. Surprise surprise….it popped up again 6 years later, richer and fuller….and more importantly very very real spirituality. I’m glad my false concepts of the Source of the Universe died. I realize now how stupid it was to believe some of the things that I used to believe.

As I’ve said many times in interviews on TV 1. & 2. and radio . Look at the big picture. Had we been born 50 years earlier we wouldn’t even be coming out. If we were of this younger generation now we most likely would never get married as we would have realized our sexual orientation is natural and normal and wouldn’t have got married to help fix it…..or possibly felt it necessary to conform.

So don’t blame yourself. You, I, and 1000’s of others are the products of an uninformed society but one that was evolving. If you need to blame anyone, blame an unenlightened society that used to take aboriginal children from their parents believing it was in the best interests of everyone. An unenlightened society that didn’t allow black people the right to vote or even counted them on the national census because they were considered not quite as human as white people. A society that imprisoned blacks and whites if they married (only 50 years ago interracial marriages were still illegal in many states). A society that’s educational system tied children’s left hands to their chairs and force them to learn to write with their right hands. A society that said women were the weaker sex and their only role was to look after the home and bear children. And certainly couldn’t be trusted with the awesome responsibility of deciding what political party should be in government. A society that imprisoned two men if they loved each other in the privacy of their own bedrooms (till 1984 in NSW, 1994 TAS)…….etc…….etc……etc.

These things horrify us today…..and we say “how could they have ever done such cruel things”.

So I guess there is even a bigger thing at stake here. We can either reinforce the old uninformed paradigm or be a catalyst to create a better world for our children. A world where people are not judged because of their race, gender, colour or their sexual orientation. If any of your children were gay or lesbian would you want them to have a heterosexual marriage which is false and possibly doomed to failure or would you want them to marry the person of the same sex they fall in love with and want to spend the rest of their life with.

When you make this decision in situations like ours its rarely very empowering like a young gay or lesbian teenager might experience. It’s more like jumping off a cliff into the darkness. Some are dashed on the rocks below………but many of us find wonderful things inside us we never knew existed and learn that we can fly.

Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own journeys. A journey to profound self-love and self-respect, free of the pressures to conform, free of the negatives of the past and to live an empowered life of integrity.

If you show love, respect, honesty and integrity to your wife, children and yourself you will fly. What they do in return determines if they will as well.

Anthony Venn-Brown

Author of ‘A Life of Unlearning – A Journey to Find the Truth’

“When we choose to live authentically, we chip away at others prisons of pretend”

Well, Anthony, since you asked:

October 30th: My wife wanted to talk… about moving to Australia – since we had decided months ago to work towards that. Eventually, I just said “stop”, and launched into how I know I am gay, and that I felt it was time for me to be the real me, etc etc.

That was the bombshell…

It’s been a roller coaster ever since. I’ve shared it with a few of my colleagues (I work part time in a counselling centre for abusive men) – they are supporting me. But I’m still not really sure I’m doing the right thing. Last night, for the first time in months, I looked at gay porn on the internet…(I’m starting to understand the difference between sexual addiction and sexual orientation) Today she found it on my computer. I got a sermon… “this is your pearl of great price”… “this is your turkish delight” (remember The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe?). Today she talked to John Howard, from New Directions in Toronto. I had been attending a support group with him. She wants us to go talk to him together. I said I would, but if I was going to a counsellor I didn’t want one with an agenda for me.

Anyway, it’s been two weeks of feeling good about who I am, and of feeling horrified about the possibility of breaking up my family, and what this would do to my children. I’ve looked a the Courage – UK website, and wondered how these married “Side B” guys do it.

Right now, I want to repent and just say that I’ll never leave, that I’ll always be the Dad she wants me to be, that I’ll stay away from porn… but those promises have been made before and broken too many times.

I want to hear from God.

its not uncommon Wayne……I came out at 21….didn’t like it….wanted to have a wife and children and ‘normal’. when everything was discovered and I’d fallen in love with a man…..I planned to leave………then went back to marriage again thinking about all i would loose.

the natural grief you feel complicates things. One minute you can feel great because of the relief of finally being honest with yourself and others…..then grief of loss overwhelms you……its a bugger. You can’t have one without the other. In fact the freedom you feel creates the sense of loss as well.

You could vasilate for a while…….its normal……in the end though everything becomes clear what is the right thing to do now……and what you choose to do now might not be right in 12 months time.

Good to be able to distinguish between the sexual addiction and the sexual orientation……too many people think they are one and the same thing.

Hi guys,

Magsdee was wondering where I got to. Well, I’ve still been hanging around.

I decided to start my own blog, just to see what feedback I might get to some of the issues I am thinking about.

You can read it at http://throughthestorm.wordpress.com/

Wayne