Makes me sad and very, very uncomfortable. I've seen examples of this on youtube with "that Mormon Boy" and others. Painful? I don't know, these guys want to be in the church and their only choice is celibacy, marriage to opposite sex without sexual desires or to leave the church.
https://tv.yahoo.com/news/tlc-air-husband-not-gay-special-january-video-003953735.html

Personal experience, it is a very unhealthy relationship to be in...and it really took a toll on both my gay ex and on me. Sad.

I'm going to have to see this, although these things make me angry. You'd think after all these years, they'd have figured it out, but, no, they have to keep perpetuating the insanity.

You can say you don't identify as gay all you want. It doesn't change things.

They do not figure it out because the people are raised to have faith and not to think. How can one figure something out when faith tells them not to think, but to believe?

Right, that proves something.

I can give lists of people that tried to claim there were not homosexual but they really were:

http://gayhomophobe.com/

Lot's of religious people on that list.

There is also a lot more than 4

I produced and directed a documentary on gay mormons and their struggles with living an authentic life, given the obstacles presented by mormonism.

I hope this accurate portrayal of the costs the subjects I followed sheds some light on the subject.

http://youtu.be/fzkrXfCgHEg

I loved your piece MO. To lurkers here I highly recommend taking a look.

...and neither is this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFtMVY-uD-0

Family secrets

I think the hardest part for my gay ex and me was that we DID love each other, we WERE best friends and successful life partners, and we were able to find just enough physical enjoyment (at least for a while) to continue deluding ourselves and expecting a different outcome.

When I hear these men and women talking about how happy they are, and how they think things are working, I really believe that they believe it. I just breaks my heart to think about how much they are probably missing, in my experience.

There is no perfect relationship, and even if they finally embrace reality, they may not find the partner of their dreams. I just hope they can find a way to accept themselves.

Things worked out well enough for us, but had we been just a little different, everything could have gone so badly. And even though it worked out in the end, there was a LOT of pain for both of us along the way that could have been avoided.

I, of course, wanted that. I would have stayed until either of us died just for safety and security. I had told him he could pretty much do what he wanted, just help me raise the kids. Live as co-parents. We did finish the downstairs for him, but he left anyway. He just couldn't do it. Now he lives downstairs.

I assume these couples--the husband doesn't cheat or the wife doesn't know he cheats. Most of the ones I'm familiar with who are still with their wives do cheat. I worked with a man who has to be in his 80s now and he stayed married, but he did cheat. He didn't know I knew and he didn't know I was about to marry someone gay, but he often talked about how much he had hurt his wife and he had a lot of self hatred. Yep, that is the life I'd want my ex to live.

No, we split up after six years. (We've been divorced for about 8 years now). We remained friends, but only see each other a few times a year now. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Despite a lot of heartbreaking efforts, we never had children. I imagine that would have changed everything. I don't know how long we'd have stayed together, but probably longer than we did. I am confident we would have been good co-parents.

I know that he never had sex with anyone else while we were married, but he did have other kinds of contact. By the last year or two, I had basically told him that I would understand if he did and only asked that he not bring home any STDs. I was always very liberal by Mormon standards.

We were always open and honest with each other, so in our case the pain did not come from lies or betrayal. It was just a matter of neither of us being ourselves or being what the other really needed.

He has been in a committed relationship with a great man for a few years now and they are quite happy. I got to travel the world, date several different people, and generally enjoy the freedom and experiences I had always dreamed of growing up in SE Idaho. I sometimes wonder if my wanderlust and his homebody nature would have ultimately been a bigger problem than the mixed orientation.

"asked that he not bring home any STDs".

^ Eh, have you seen the STI rates among MSMs?

What is MSM?

And please don't read into this that I was making some assumption about STIs in the homosexual population. I would (and have) express the same concern about any non-monogamous relationship.

MSM means Men who have Sex with Men. It is a medical term. As to the massive disease rate among said population, it is not a matter of conjecture, but documented fact. It is well beyond the simply non-monogamous.

My ex was, and is, a very cautious and responsible man. I was not throwing him out the door to start trolling back alleys for rent boys and just hoping for the best. As our marriage was struggling, I wanted him to feel that if he came to a point where he wanted to act on the nature he had been suppressing for so long, safety should be more important than keeping a secret from me.

I don't know who the church harms more, the gay men who marry straight women or the straight women who were taught it could work out well.

I sometimes wonder now many of the old boys in SLC "bat for the other team."

Any guesses? If I had to guess I would say Packer the Pecker".

Yes, the problem seems to be that there is a huge amount of denial going on.

Bisexual people denying half of themselves. In the past, I have read that the only close-to-successful members of those groups that claimed to change Gay men to Straight men were bisexuals, who hated their Gay inclinations, and were able to act as Straight men because they were also adequately attracted to women.

Couples denying that one partner is really Gay.

Couples denying that they are missing out on things that are important to them. Saying that they are so happy, because they can't admit to the gnawing sadness within.

Gay people denying that they are secretly cheating. (I have known a large number of married Gay men. Every single one that I knew had some sort of secret Gay outlet.)

And their spouses denying that the partner is secretly cheating.

Not to mention a religion and a large social group of members who all deny that their beliefs do much more harm than good.

Mormons are absolutely obsessed with the idea that no one is "actually" gay, just that there are people who sometimes "suffer from feelings of same sex attraction"

They think Gay people need to be cured, either now or in the next life.

No matter how they try to spin their shit, they dont think gays are actual people, just a "cross to bear"

My father always equated being gay with smoking. "It's a difficult habit to give up" he would say, "but it can be done." I didn't even know how to answer him at the time I was so young and so traumatized by coming out to him--the eternal bishop and then Stake Patriarch. All I could manage was, "It's not like that Dad." But of course he never got it. How could he when the prophets he idolized told him differently?

This presentation is full of half lives being peddled to young confused and hurting gay Mormon youth as an ideal. I tried to watch some of it but I just couldn't do it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2015 05:27PM by blueorchid.

blueorchid Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My father always equated being gay with smoking.
> "It's a difficult habit to give up" he would say,
> "but it can be done." I didn't even know how to
> answer him at the time ...

How about: "Gee dad you sound so sure, are you speaking from personal experience?"

So utterly tragic. Had a beautiful young man my daughter's age in my ward that was gay, he went to that special camp in Utah. Ended up marrying a gay girl - also beautiful. And now they both work for that same conversion camp where they met.

Like I've always said, "What father wants his daughter to marry a man who is/was gay?"