Falling Into Life: A Gay Exmormon’s Journey

Chapter Eight – The Book and the 20/20 Interview

My Ex and I did an interview for 20/20 on ABC that was broadcast during the fall of 2007…

But a year before that my Ex wrote and published a book called My Ex is Having Sex with Rex: The straight story of a woman who picked up her life when her husband left to pick up men. No, I’m not kidding. The book was painful, but the interview was cathartic.

She gave me a copy of the book, which has the image of a woman’s torso facing the viewer with the image of two men walking away arm in arm wearing identical clothing. I think the subtitle of the book was the hardest part. I didn’t leave to pick up men, I left to end the hopeless marriage so that we could both move on and heal. Sure, my future would involve men, but I was done with pick-ups and meaningless, random sex with desperate gay married men in sad, dark places. I knew I could find a long term relationship with a man so that I could finally see what all this “true love” was about. I had pursued everything under the sun *but* a relationship with the right gender. Once and for all I would find out.

The night I left was the saddest, lowest, and bluest night of my life. We had our last fight, and I walked out the door with a packed suitcase, leaving my most precious kids behind me, into a thunderstorm. I had no idea where I would go, I didn’t plan it. I only knew that *that* was the night it had to end. I was completely freaked out, numb and directionless as I walked up the street in the lightning and rain. My car was at the garage about a ten minute walk away, and so that’s where I went.

I dialed a friend who might help me, and he said I could stay the night on their couch. We drove to the closest McDonald’s, got a drink, and as I tried to unravel what was happening, my cell phone rang, then rang again. I was sure she wanted to talk, so I avoided the calls, until finally after more than ten rings, I listened to the message. My oldest son had fallen and cut his head open and needed medical attention. She and I sat there in terrible silence late at night at the clinic, broken and hurt. I barely slept, it was so disorienting.

As she moved forward in the next few weeks she began internet dating, and the stories were terrible. She decided to use those experiences as the anchor for a book, and so she set about chronicling our discussions, large and small. She blended our break up with the travails of modern dating. She also captured our method of parenting post-separation, which was what caught the eye of the 20/20 producers a year after her book came out.

The night she proudly gave me my own copy, I was in shock. I knew it was happening, I had agreed to the title, so had my partner, but I was simply waiting for this chapter to end. It was excruciating hearing about it, and I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I knew once it was finally published, that whole period of our separation could move on. I left the house and drove to the end of the block. I stopped the car and read the first three pages. I was simply horrified at what I was reading, it felt kitschy and flippant at my expense. The title was too much, and I began to sob.

I drove my way to my shared home with my partner fifteen minutes away, and I dialed a dear girlfriend and quickly summed up what was going on as tears streamed down. As I sat stopped at a light in the cold winter night, she said, “Throw it out the window! Right now! Roll down your window and throw it out!” And I did. I rolled down the passenger side window and threw that book as far as I could. I couldn’t believe how liberating it was, all that time having to hear about it, hear her be so bubbly, and excited as I felt sick inside. I never read past page three, and I doubt I ever will. For more than a year after that my friends would call me and ask if I knew what she had written on page blankety-blank, and what did I think about it? I simply said, “I didn’t read it.” Best thing I never did.

Although the book was emotionally awful, the 20/20 interview happened about a year after that, and it was something that helped me heal. She never mentioned in the book that we were Mormon, or that I had told her in year four of our marriage that I was gay. These elements are key to our train wreck of a marriage, but somehow they never figured in to her story. When your religious beliefs are the reason you stayed married to a woman for sixteen years and had three kids when you’re gay, it seems that might make a difference. She initially withheld these points even from her family and friends after we separated. The story sure sounds better if you say you were blind-sided.

The afternoon she called me and told me that ABC News wanted to interview me as part of a story they were doing on her, I said I’d participate on a few conditions: That she *must* say we were Mormon, and that she *must* tell the truth about my confession early in our marriage. I stated that she was going to look terribly foolish if she didn’t as I would clearly discuss these points, especially if the program title was to be The Toughest Choice, her toughest choice being the fact that she stayed with a gay man after he confessed to being gay. She agreed and she flew to New York City for her segment with JuJu Chang.

About a week later I had my interview scheduled in Denver at a hotel where my partner and I had spent our third anniversary together, a strange coincidence to be sure. I ended up wearing a red plaid shirt after he suggested I not wear the blue one I had planned on. Sadly, I blended with the wallpaper and looked like a drape with a severe haircut. Thankfully they used some old photographs as part of the introduction and the viewers could see that, indeed, at one time in my life I did have big eighties hair.

This was the story our marriage deserved: The Mormon Church counseled two confused people into staying married and prolonging terrible pain. That is the story, and it’s what makes our story unique. It’s clear that neither of us regret our kids, we parent them very well as divorced people, better than most married people do, and we adore them and live for their happiness. The interview showed that we did the best we could. And it showed that we exited our marriage maturely and with dignity. And it uncovered some large truths about us.

The featured psychologist had some very interesting insights into homosexuality that included the facts that we don’t know what causes people to be gay, and we don’t know what causes people to be straight. He stated that “conversion therapy” and “reparative therapy” programs are based on untrue theories, and that it’s not just about sex, it’s about affection and so people who are denying themselves the opportunities to have affectionate relationships sometimes suffer tremendously.

This was what I craved so much in my marriage, and that I never received: male affection. I was cheating with men, but the sex was a short fix and that need always returned. The sex was basically faceless, a quick fuck with another confused man, momentary bliss without any enduring happiness. I craved homosexual affection, and I never understood this fact until years later after I began a dedicated relationship with my partner. And this is what my Ex expected to receive to deepen our marriage all those years, and she never received that either. And it was neither of our faults. We put our hearts and souls into it, and it was never going to improve. We just didn’t understand.

Hind site is 20/20, as they say, and we can both discuss this openly now, we understand these things because we were rattled to pieces. We were hurting each other without understanding the reasons why, and the more we put into it, the more disconnected we became. But we would never have understood this had we stayed together. We listened to all the straight counselors in our church telling us what we needed to do, but straight people don’t get it, and neither do non-accepting religions. This is the advice for all the married gay men and women who cling desperately to their disconnected marriages due to their beliefs.

The largest of these truths was this: If you think it’s a sin, you think it’s a choice. I’m not sure that my Ex even understood at the time the power of this statement she made, but it was a thoughtful response and an amazingly enlightened statement. Here’s how the last moments of the interview went:

Chang: Looking back one of Jennifer’s biggest regrets was believing that conversion therapy could change her husband’s sexual orientation.

Ex: Nobody ever said then, “It’s going to be really hard, he’s probably not going to make it.” What they said was, “It’s a sin, you can overcome sin, he will become 100% not gay.

Chang: And you bought into that.

Ex: I did. That’s what religion’s all about.

Chang: Faith.

Ex: Faith! And you can overcome sin, and you can be a better person, every day, every day you can be a better person. And of course now I would say, you know, homosexual people are just fine as they are. There’s no better person when it comes to their sexual orientation.

After repeated viewings of this interview, and of that response, I think that she’s uncovered what is at the heart of all non-accepting Christians towards homosexuals. If you believe that all sin can be overcome with the grace of Christ’s atonement, then you believe homosexuality can be *overcome* like any other sin. And if you believe that homosexuality can be *overcome*, you believe that it is a choice, a behavior that can be modified.

This is a lie. I am here to tell you that if my pain and suffering through all of this means anything it all, it means that you cannot change being gay. You cannot do it. You might believe for a time that you can, you might put your faith in your God, you might pray relentlessly for help, you might beg, and plead, and try or overcome this “sin” of homosexuality, but you will fail.

And the reason you will fail is because it is not a choice, it is not a sin. It is love, and you are wired to love a certain way. You cannot change this truth. If you are a man, and you are wired to love men, you cannot stop this love any more than a canary can stop singing or a zebra can change his stripes. It is futile.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

test Filed under Etienne, Falling Into Life | Tags: Etienne, Falling Into Life | Comments (9)