Thoughts on Remarriage

So, I made a mistake recently.  Not just a small stub-your-toe dammit kind of mistake, but a I-think-I've-ruined-my-life kind of mistake.

I remarried.

I did so too fast, ignoring the red flags (again!) and am now sitting in my own mess (again).

I've read so many wonderful stories about straight wives who finally work up the courage to dump the gay husband and are swept off their feet by a fabulous straight man who teaches them to love again and redeems their shattered self-esteem by finding them sexually desirable ...

Yes, that was a run-on sentence.

And it's also what I THOUGHT or hoped or imagined had happened to me. 

I married the second man I dated seriously after becoming "suddenly single" after more than two decades of marriage. 

So yes, he finds me desirable and attractive.  Which is swell, just swell.  Only now that the infatuation and flattery has waned, I don't want him to touch me.  He irritates me beyond belief.  He has a plethora of incredibly annoying (to me) habits and idiosyncracies such as:

• Combing his hair at the table, raining flakes of dandruff as he goes.
• Spending hours in the bathroom producing sounds that sound like trumpeting elephants in the jungle and not cleaning up the remaining detritus.
• Not cleaning any of his detritus, for that matter.
• Blowing his nose into his hands (he says its more hygienic, for gosh sakes)
• Biting his nails.
• Picking his toenails and leaving the remaining debris.
• Forgetting to flush the toilet, no matter what "number"
• Lecturing on whatever topic he chooses for hours (he has a law degree)
• Trying to solve everyone's problems and oh, by the way, he's the only one with the real solutions.  Everyone else's ideas are just plumb stupid.
• Speaking "down" to my adult children and me.
• Being passive-aggressive.
• Staying out until 10 p.m. or even later every night at work.
• Referring to me and my adult children as "you people". 
• He hoards stuff and keeps insisting that we move into his home which is packed to the ceilings with stuff and has broken windows, broken plumbing and the like.  My condo, on the other hand, is clean, cozy, and well decorated, not to mention has a low monthly mortgage.  And it's entirely in my name.  

Need I go on?  So after waking up one day and realizing I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare and miserably unhappy, I called my friend who recommended a counselor.  The counselor is, by the way, very good.  She helped me unpack a lot of baggage.  But before I even saw the counselor, here is what I'd figured out.

With my fundamentalist Christian background, I taught my children that abstinence was the only way to go -- in other words, zero sex before marriage.  After all, the gay husband and I were able to do this and were proud of it.  I had sex with my current husband well before our marriage and I felt guilty, guilty as sin.  I wanted to be loved.  I wanted to know what it was to be desired by a straight man.  But, instead of understanding that as a very natural desire, all I could struggle with was what I'd done.  And I wanted to legitimize my behavior.  Now isn't that just a fine reason to say "I do" to someone?   I already knew my daughter had struggles with him, but I asked her if she thought I shouldn't marry him and she wasn't able to tell me what she really thought (which was "no!").  Now, she won't even come around if he's going to be there.  It's how she's protecting herself from what she calls "The Bulldozer".

Well, The Bulldozer loves me in his own way, and I'm going to have to break his heart, I guess.  One thing I have learned is that (a) you can't change other people and (b) there is a kind of healthy selfishness one must exercise in order to embrace your own sanity.  So, if I think I sinned by having pre-marital sex, you can only imagine my struggle in considering divorcing a man who is faithful to me and vows that he's committed to our relationship.  (Although I do observe the behaviors and find that statement a bit questionable.) 

What was it my mamma always said: Marry in haste, repent in leisure.  Well, at age 59, I don't have too much leisure time to waste. 

I have so many friends who lament their singleness.  And, ironically, I lament my second marriage.

What About the Kids?

As an adult child of divorce, I was always determined that mine wasn't going to be one of those marriages that ended up a statistic.  Too bad I married a gay man.

Any healthy relationship must be built upon mutual trust and respect.  So, by definition, if your spouse is lying to himself and you about who he is, trust goes right out the window.  Same with infidelity, whether with a man, a woman or an eggplant.

As an adult child of divorce, I also knew firsthand the difficulties children experience when their parents split.  I didn't want my kids to experience that -- I wanted to break the cycle of family dysfunction, the gift that keeps on giving.

My poor children -- both young adults, now -- grew up in a home where verbal and emotional abuse were fairly common.  It's interesting that their grandfather -- my ex's dad -- was a very good and attentive father when his children were infants and toddlers, but as soon as they became school age, the relationship became one of power (his) and control (his) punctuated by verbal outbursts and some violence.  The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

When my kids were born, I was heartened by my then-husband's care of the babies.  He was great with them.  He walked them into the wee hours of the morning when they were colicky.  He had no issue changing them, feeding them, bathing them ... he was extremely nurturing and gentle.  You could tell he loved them and loved being a father.  But as they began to grow older -- by mid-elementary school years -- he seemed to lose that deft touch and began to try to control their behavior, much like his father did with him and his siblings.

To be sure, I didn't model good emotional health, either.  I had anxiety issues galore, for which I was finally medicated.  (Zoloft is a good thing!)  My external boundaries weren't the greatest and my internal boundaries were virtually nonexistent.  I had lost my voice at some point during the marriage -- probably in an effort to keep the peace as it seemed we were always walking on eggshells -- and so tried to be the peacemaker in the entire family.  I only started modeling healthy behavior with good boundaries after the elephant came out of the closet, as it were, and I began working a 12-step program and getting intensive counseling.

Today, I worry about my kids having healthy relationships as they move into full-fledged adulthood.  Both are in their early 20s.  My son -- the oldest -- seems to have the hardest time of it.  He's shy and introverted and has a reasonably bad body image (much like his mother!  He was in denial about his father's sexuality for quite awhile and it took my ex actually coming out to the kids to make it real.  This only happened last year.  I believe my son is somehow worried about any potential impact his father's "gayness" might have on him, although he knows that he is strongly attracted to women.  (As a kid, my son was often called gay as a perjorative, and still wonders if it was because of his dad; shame in these situations, is almost genetic.)  Certainly, his father didn't model for him what a heterosexual man behaves like.  While my son doesn't act effeminate, he is unsure of himself and how he "should" act, which makes him self-conscious.

My daughter was in her mid-teens when it all hit the fan, and it was a crucial time in her development to learn her father was unfaithful, had based his life on a lie, was a gay man and -- most importantly of all -- disowned her two times.  She already struggled with catching him in lies.  She was very aware of the emotional abuse.  But, still -- even as now -- he is her daddy.  And that's the hardest part.  She has lost all respect for her father.  (I reminded her today that her dad loves her and she said: Yeah, but he doesn't count.  I told her that it does count, even though she doesn't believe it now.)  Of all the tragedies, this is probably the biggest.  Yes, my son has lost respect for him, too, but not all respect.  He still has a relationship of sorts with his dad. My daughter, not so much.  I hope that changes in time.

While my ex hasn't been a stellar parent, he has at least been more of a stand-up guy than many men, straight or gay, after a divorce.  He always paid his child support, and he has kept both kids on his health insurance.

So, what about the kids?  For me, they are the absolutely best thing to come out of that failed relationship and marriage.  For them, they've asked me why I stayed so long, a question which I've discussed with them (especially my daughter.)  It may be easier for younger children to accept that their father is gay.  It hasn't been for my children who, while they long suspected a porn problem, did not suspect that their dad was homosexual.  However, it's reality.  The thing with reality is that it is what it is.  And the longer they live with it, the closer they'll come -- hopefully -- not only to acceptance, but to integrating it into their lives.