For every gay or transgender man who's ever been married, there's an ex-wife no one thinks of. We are the invisible ones, the forgotten ones…. Until now.
So – More on Travolta being gay hits the fan(s). Just reading this junk brings back all the feelings of nausea and soul-sickness I went through when I found out about DH.
I’m praying for Kelly Preston Travolta – I hope you will, too. It’s bad enough going through this in private; I cannot imagine (thank God!) going through the ordeal of the public synthesis of one’s husband’s every… everything. She’s going to need all the moral and spiritual support anyone can give her.
Hard week. Can you tell? I haven’t posted in days. It’s been one of those anniversary weeks where a bunch of junk has come out of the background noise, where it usually sits, to the fore of my brain, distracting me and wearing me out.
This has been accompanied by a small surge of emails and contacts from people who’re reading this blog. One of the really hard thing about doing this blog is hearing from so many people – I’m astonished how many people have contacted me! – to tell me “I’m going through this,” or, “My close family member is going through it. The really upsetting thing is the acknowledgment of depression in 100% of the people I’m hearing from.
And being angry for you compounds my anger – because I’m really angry for me, right now.
The balance of holding on to my joie de vivre, my joy of living, is sometimes fragile. Weeks like this, the memories of incidents, words, attitudes are vividly close. Believe me – I get depression.
But I am not willing to let DH have me this way. I mean, holding on to my anger and resentment like one of our daughters used to cling to her “blankie” doesn’t inflict a moment’s unease or discomfort on him. It only eats away at me – at my soul.
So I – so you, too – have to let go. This letting go is the practical process of forgiveness. It’s refusing to cling to the hurt. It’s recognizing that rampaging about what a selfish bastard he is doesn’t have the minutest impact on him – but it will rot me from the inside out and turn me into something bitter, selfish, hostile and ugly if I don’t let go.
Forgiveness means recognizing that there’s really only one justice for us – and that’s the justice of the Judgment Seat of Christ. He’ll get his, on that Day…
And so will I, by golly! So I’ve got to keep laying it down. Every time it sneaks up on me and throws itself in my way, trying to dominate my thoughts and feelings – I’ve got to lay it down.
Our Lord told Peter – we have to be willing to forgive 70 x 7. That’s not for 70×7 offenses – it’s 70 x 7 for a single event. Every time the bitterness rises, when our gorge rises… that’s one time of forgiveness. Now we have 70 x 7… minus 1 to get through.
But this really does have a redemptive value. This really, truly does serve to our good. Here’s another verse for you: all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord… (Rom. 8:28) All things. God will take our sorrows and wounds and sufferings and use them for our greater good and for His greater glory…
But we have to begin with forgiving.
I’m clearing out some paperwork this weekend, a quiet activity in this 100-degree heat, and I have come across some old journal pages dating back to the time DH and I decided to separate. I had to sit down and read them – probably a mistake; it’s painful in the extreme to see how emotionally fragile I was by that point. I had two friends I clung to as to life preservers, both of whom have now gone on and I don’t even know how to contact them to thank them for keeping me from being utterly sucked under.
The wonder of it is, as I read these notes, there were two men who were very … shall we say, attentive? during this time, and somehow by the grace of God I didn’t fall into an affair. I was terribly vulnerable for one – I was warned by a counselor working with James Dobson (Focus on the Family) that I was extremely high risk for one. But somehow it never happened.
Part of it was because I had a belief that God would give me a miracle and save my marriage if I were just a good gal and followed the rules. Part of it was because these two men – very human men and not particularly “principled” in that regard – apparently felt very protective of me and never pushed their advantage.
If they had, I’m not at all sure I could have held out. I was starving for affection and affirmation – even more than I remember, according to what I’m seeing on those old journal pages. And both men found me attractive because I’m smart, as well as being … well, whatever they saw in me that they found attractive. (Modesty forbids me to look too closely at those possibilities).
Grace of God, to be sure.
I have said, we are vulnerable. That observation cannot be overstated: We are vulnerable. VULNERABLE.
And right this minute, after being alone for a decade and fighting out some tough stuff and becoming stronger than ever, and opinionated and stubborn and really pretty doggone comfortable (and even smug about) being single… if He Whom My Soul Loves (or, maybe, Richard Armitage) were to walk in the door right now and offer to carry me away to… I don’t know, it would have to be somewhere COOL! – I’m not at all sure I could smile at him and say, “Aw, how sweet, but no, thank you.”
They say forewarned is forearmed. I sure hope it’s true.
I’ve been perusing some of the websites to see what’s out for us, these days. I keep seeing things to the effect of “I’m still very close to my ex-husband,” and “Our gay ex-husbands deserve to be happy…”
Then there’s the highly creative fictional world where gay men and their straight ex-wives are just all buddy-buddy, like Caro in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. I always thought that characterization was false, and I do more now than I did when I first read the book.
We look at these fictional women – and I’m sorry, but the overly-cheerful “let’s be supportive of our ex-husbands” focus of too many ex-wives’ websites borders on either fictional or delusional or just batshit crazy, I’m not sure which – and we think, what is wrong with this scenario?
And this timid little voice comes up, sqeaking softly, “But… but… what about me?”
We need to listen to that teensy little voice, timid as it is, afraid of being misunderstood, or “judgmental” or “ugly” though it may be.
That voice is the only thing standing up for our own dignity, our self-respect, our worth.
The fact is, when we buy into this “let’s be supportive of our gay loved one” crap, we also yield to the very idea that we weren’t good enough, that our values ideals and needs are not important, that the whole flippin’ universe centers around HIM…
No, thank you. Maybe he can’t help where his attractions lie – maybe he was robbed of that when he got his initiation at the age of 14. But he can sure as heck help what he does with his life, and how he treats other people, and especially how he treats ME – whom he promised to love and cherish and honor.
No. I’m not going to “support” DH in his path of self-destruction, and I’m not going to support the stupid idea that I have no worth except as his personal and private cheerleading section immolating myself on a pyre of political correct sentimentality.
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