Meeting My Wife, Part II

After I sent the message, I took a nap only to get a call a few minutes later.  She was calling back because she had seen my missed call, but she hadn’t read my message yet.  I told her I sent a message, and if I remember correctly she began reading it while I waited on the phone (kind of awkward!).  I asked her excitedly if she would go out to eat with me, and she said yes!

This began a very happy, excited, and new experience of being in a relationship.  I had never dated anyone seriously and never kissed a girl (besides my mom and grandma :) ).  You can imagine how nervous I was as I chartered into the unknown.  Things progressed slowly—it took me a month to even start holding hands.  As time passed, I was more and more excited about romantic things like hugging, holding hands, kissing, and “making out.”  I was falling in love with this girl—romantically, spiritually, and emotionally—something that I thought would not be possible!  We began to spend every day together, and I loved it.

After several months things progressed and we were talking about marriage!  We both felt right about it and were soon talking about dates that summer.  Around this time, my younger brother sent a message to most of my family about how he struggled with same-sex attraction.  This was a shock to me!  How could I have not even known that someone in my own family was dealing with the same thing I had been for so long.  I felt somewhat guilty and didn’t know exactly how to respond.  It also brought up how I would handle this in my new relationship.  I was scared to death about bringing this up with her and feared that I would scare her away.  Conversations came up where I had admitted that I had problems with pornography off and on in the past, but I was still too ashamed to tell her about my same-sex attractions.

I finally wrote back my brother expressing my love to him and gratitude that he had the courage to open up to us—something I had done only to our parents because I had been caught.  I explained my past and how I was currently in love in my new relationship.  He wrote back and encouraged me to talk with my soon to be fiancée about my struggles, but like I had mentioned above, I was too embarrassed and felt I had overcome enough to set it aside.

Our engagement and marriage were surreal.  It was the best summer of my life, but I had never opened up that part of my history to her.  Several months later, the whole Proposition 8 thing began to surface emotions as I watched my brother become bitter and confused around the issue and the results of the election.  I had never really been involved or read about gay rights’ issues previous to this point.  My opinions differ from my brother and it was hard not to be enwrapped and worried about him.  During this time, I finally opened up to my wife and broke down and told her everything about my past.  Working through our emotions that night and that week were a struggle, to say the least.  Things have been rocky and old addictions recurred, but as I’ve been completely open with my wife and gotten appropriate help with couples counseling and addiction groups, I’ve finally felt healing at a level I’ve never had before.

I love my wife.  Meeting her and being married to her has been the best thing to happen in my life!  I still wonder why so many people, even in my own family, must go through this struggle (both pornography and/or homosexuality), and how is it that I’ve ended up on one side of this issue, while many others turn to the other end of the spectrum.  I am sometimes grateful that I didn’t know much about homosexuality and gay rights’ groups growing up because I may have been more entrenched with an idea that I was born to be gay and that I couldn’t marry a woman and be happy.  If that were the case I don’t think I would have ever found true happiness for myself.  On the other hand, I’ve learned a lot recently about others going through the same struggle… and have used the experiences to help me and my wife.  The path is sometimes hard, but I am truly happy and thank the Lord each day for my life and for my wife and pray that we can reach out to learn from others and offer hope too.