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Author Terry McMillan learned last year that her husband, Jonathan Plummer, is gay. A messy divorce is now unfolding. Husbands and wives who find themselves in similar situations, on both sides, handle the news in different ways.
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Gay Married Men’s Association, a group for gay/bi men with straight wives, meets fourth Fridays, 7:30-9:30 p.m., at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 1772 Church St., NW. GammainDC@yahoo.com or www.gay-married.org.
Gamma Wives/Straight Spouses, a support group for heterosexual spouses of gay men. Second Fridays, 8 p.m. Member’s home.
703-548-3238.
Women Coming Out of Marriage
Meets 7 p.m. on Mondays in Northern Virginia
202-797-4419 or e-mail wcoom@wwc.org
Classic Dykes Online
www.classicdykes.com/married.htm
Straight Spouse Network
8215 Terrace Drive
El Cerrito, CA 94530-3058
510-525-0200
www.ssnetwk.org
dir@ssnetwk.org
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HOME > ENTERTAINMENT > FEATURE
By: ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG COMMENTS
 
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that gay men were child molesters and perverts.
“I knew that wasn’t me,” he says.
In college he dated several women and fell in love with his wife. He never acted on his attraction to men. And until his early 40s, he and his wife had a “great sex life.”
“I’m very disciplined; I worked full-time through college,” he says. “This was another area of my life that required discipline. It wasn’t normal so I simply ignored it.”
At 41, he said, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, forced him to face the truth. He often took the flight that was flown into the Pentagon.
“It shook me to the core,” he says. “That could be me and I could die with my wife never knowing the truth.”
Finally, he told his wife he is gay. Vince hoped, naively, he admits, that they could stay together.
“[My wife] very quickly made the decision she did not want to be married to a gay man,” he says. “It’s taken three, four years to see that she’s probably right.”
But Vince said he is like many married gay men in that he doesn’t regret marrying his wife. He does regret, however, the pain he knows he’s caused her. His two children, he says, were more distraught about the divorce than his sexual orientation.
“I sure enjoyed the 20 years with her,” he says. “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that.”
Most important for the straight spouse can be a need for clarity. Several women said they had an endless stream of questions for their husband.
“Why wasn’t there any intimacy? What was wrong with me? Why was he depressed? Why was he withdrawn? Why did he think he was in a prison?” says Amity Pierce Buxton of the Straight Spouse Network, recalling the questions she had about her own marriage. Her husband of 25 years came out after they separated.
Her ex-husband, a World War II veteran, compared getting married to going to war – “a moral imperative,” she says.
Buxton has studied thousands of “mixed orientation” couples since the 1980s. When asked what the biggest misconception is, she said, matter-of-factly, “That gay men can’t have sex with their wives.”
I HAD MY own set of questions
for my ex-boyfriend, and still close friend. Since he’s come out, he’s patiently answered the questions he can. But some will always remain elusive to both of us — like just how did this happen?
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