Couples Must Negotiate Terms of 'Brokeback' Marriages

[julialnyc]

by KATY BUTLER, The New York Times


(March 7) -- One hour into "Brokeback Mountain," Amy Jo Remmele began to cry, and not just for the woman on-screen, standing in a doorway in Riverton, Wyo., watching her husband embrace a man.

"When I saw that look in her eyes, I thought, 'Oh, yeah.' Even though I never saw my husband with another man, I knew exactly how that woman would have felt," said Mrs. Remmele, a respiratory therapist in rural Minnesota.

On June 1, 2000, Mrs. Remmele, then 31, discovered her husband's profile on the Web site gay.com. The couple stayed up all that night weeping and talking. Soon afterward, 10 days before she gave birth to her second child, Mrs. Remmele's husband went off to spend a couple of nights with his new boyfriend. "I tried to talk him out of it, and he left anyway," Mrs. Remmele said. "I was devastated." Three months later the couple divorced.

Mrs. Remmele — now married to a farmer who raises cattle, corn and soybeans — is one of an estimated 1.7 million to 3.4 million American women who once were or are now married to men who have sex with men.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060307093709990001&ncid=NWS00010000000001

[FreedomAngel82]

1. I'm glad there is a story someone can relate to out there

I believe every person should have a story they can relate to.

[MadMaddie]

2. I am surprised the article didn't cover lesbian women

who marry straight men..

It's a common occurrance......

The article is interesting.

[Warpy]

3. Hell, the number is a whole lot higher than THAT

I had a friend some years back who used to hang out at highway rest areas leading from the city to the burbs at rush hour every night picking up workadaddies for anonymous sex. He was not a prostitute, just a horny gay male who was a little phobic about emotional involvement. He changed his ways when the HIV epidemic started to hit hard.

However, what he brought home to me is how many nice, married, straight suburban husbands and fathers are keeping at least a bisexual secret, if not a gay one. I would dearly love to know honest numbers on this phenomenon, but I'm sure these men are lying to themselves about it and would lie on the most anonymous of surveys.

I've often thought that the deep seated phobia against gays among "nice" people is due to the fact that they recognize this in themselves or their partner and feel desperately alone and in need of official protection.

[FreedomAngel82]

4. Or maybe to protect families and things like that

:shrug: But it would be interesting stats.

[MountainLaurel]

17. About 8 or 9 years ago

Information came out about an extortion operation within the DC Police Department, led by some fairly high-level people. Beat officers would go down into the neighborhood with all of the hard-core gay clubs late at night on weeknights and photograph the license plate numbers of all of the Volvos and sedans with car seats and such and Maryland or Virginia tags. The officers would then use their police powers to look up the addresses of the owners in DMV databases. The male owners of the cars would then get a letter with a photo of their license plate, a thinly veiled threat, and a request for money to make the photo go away. This group made tens of thousands of dollars this way.

[endarkenment]

5. I'm just wondering why this is any different

than the millions of marriages that break up every year because somebody is having heterosexual relations outside the marriage?

[julialnyc]

7. it's more complicated than that

I have a great friend who dated a woman for 3.5 years before leaving her for a man. Is it different than if he left her for a woman....I think so. He truly loved this woman, but he was never going to love her the way that she loved him. He was scared of accepting who he really was. Because he was afraid of a life where he would always be labeled (and the fact that he thought in accepting the fact that he was gay it would be much harder for him to have a family) he held out on his own happiness (maybe not recognizing that being who you are is the only way to truly be happy). He is now happy and out of the closet, but still fears that it will be harder for him to be around members of his family let alone start a family of his own one day.


The unequal treatment of gays and lesbians hurts many many people.

[Misunderestimator]

11. In many cases, the gay partner in the marriage doesn't know they are gay

until many years later... sometimes, many decades later. We can thank our society's non-acceptance and unequal treatment of gays for that. I didn't know I was gay until I moved away from the small backwards town in Texas where I grew up. And I was lucky enough to be around progressive people in college, or I might not have figured it out until after I married the man I was with at 18. If you never see gay people, if you never hear about gay people, if all you learn is that you are supposed to marry someone someday... this is what happens.

[mondo joe]

20. The principle difference would be the revelation that the marriage was

essentially made under false pretenses and can never be made "right".

A hetero husband who has an affair can at least be believed to have started the marriage honestly. The couple may even be able to continue and heal after the affair.

But for a woman to learn her husband was never genuinely attracted to her and never will be has to be a special challenge.

[endarkenment]

21. A lot of assumptions there that I think are questionable.

"A hetero husband who has an affair can at least be believed to have started the marriage honestly"

Or not. Do you really think that is categorically true? No heterosexual partners marry dishonestly? Consider for example Anna Nicole Smith. Certainly there are male equivalents, although the male stereotype is more of the Alpha Male with mistress type. They might delude themselves that they are going to be enternally faithful, but I suspect many know full well that they are going to have multiple sexual partners.

"But for a woman to learn her husband was never genuinely attracted to her and never will be has to be a special challenge."

That would assume that a gay man could not be "genuinely attracted to a woman" which assumption I think is wrong. "and never will" also assumes that there is no such thing as a marriage between a man and woman where one or both partners are gay and that the marriage cannot function. In fact I think these sorts of marriages are rather common. What is shattered here is not the potential for a working functional domestic partnership, but the illusion of enternal romantic love.

Just my opinion of course.

[mondo joe]

22. Then we've miscommunicated. Please allow me to clarify.

When I write "A hetero husband who has an affair can at least be believed to have started the marriage honestly" I don't mean in every case that is necessarily so. That's why I say the husband CAN be BELIEVED to have done so. It's a matter of possibility and a matter of belief.

In a mixed orientation couple a woman might choose to believe her gay husband was attracted to her, but I think it's a much harder sell.

And that's why I say "But for a woman to learn her husband was never genuinely attracted to her and never will be has to be a special challenge."

You may disagree, but I do think that's the case - if he is actually gay he was never sexually attracted to her.

Can such a marriage work as an arrangement? Certainly. But he will never be sexually attracted to her - that's the "never will" to which I refer.

[Democrats_win]

6. Very sad, not surprising in a society that demands one way: one man one

woman.

The greatest harm is being done by those who insist on their right to control our personal lives. Remember freedom?

[MuseRider]

8. This happened to a couple who I was pretty good

friends with. It was ugly ugly ugly. She went all fundie, took the kids away, changed their names, put them in a fundie school where they have been taught that gays are going to hell and I don't think they have even seen their father these last 3 years.

Last I heard he was doing very poorly, depressed and solitary.

I tried but was unable to help, it was very painful for all of them.

[julialnyc]

9. it's extremely sad

I've seen it several times before..... luckily in the situations that i know of there was more understanding (coupled with the hurt). But man, it would be such a nicer world if people recognized the beauty of love in all people in love (and people wouldn't be forced into secret lives).

[MuseRider]

10. I could not agree more.

This is the issue I was hoping that BBMountain would get out into the public conscience. To all those women who made this all about another guy running out on his wife I would say this is something that would be avoidable if only people would open themselves up to acceptance of all forms of love and partnership.

[northzax]

12. you know, I had a really good friend growing up

this was the mid-80s in the heartland, who's father lived in New York with his 'roommate' his parents had gotten divorced in the late seventies, and he has moved to the City. They shared visitation, he had the kids for a month in the summer and alternate holidays. he came to visit often (I even went on vacation with them once) didn't even think about it.

[BiggJawn]

13. That's why I didn't see the flick.

I was all for it until I read that the plot got into the "They went their seperate ways, marrying and raising families..." thing.

Hit too close to home for me.
My wife of almost 10 years threw me out in the street and moved in her much-younger girlfriend, then tried to tell me she "wasn't Gay, I just love to fuck women" until SHE was good and ready to come all the way out.

The fact that it was a pretty abusive marriage and I didn't have any friends left and an alienated family who didn't want to reconcile to fall back on for support made (makes) it especially difficult.

At least Amy Jo got re-married, and evidently is doing OK. I'm not, nor do I ever think I'll take a "relationship" much deeper than "Just Friends" ever again.

[julialnyc]

14. I'm so sorry.... such a difficult situation

Taking a chance on love is frightening for everyone, but it is hard to bounce back from a situation that has broken more than just a marriage.


I'm sorry for your loss.

[BiggJawn]

15. Hey, thanks.

I'm "getting help", and maybe in time I can get through this. Been barking up the wrong tree for the last decade though, what I thought were break-up issues are turning out to be related to the abuse, so that's where we're going to be going.

I wanted to see the movie, because it's past time for this kind of relationship to be brought closer to the "mainstream", but I dunno, maybe it's "safer" somehow to be in a sham STR8 "marriage" than to be honest and Out. I can only speak to what it's like from the STR8 side of things.

[julialnyc]

16. You'll get through it

I'm glad you are getting help. There is a huge mourning period to any broken relationship, but when you have the ramifications from abuse paired with the complexities of why you broke up I'm sure there are lots of thoughts and feelings to digest. You will get better and the future could look very different to you in some time than it does now.

Best wishes

[VelmaD]

18. Am I the only one who thinks...

the guy was a selfish bastard. Not for coming out and eventually ending the marriage...but for going off with another man 10 DAYS BEFORE his wife gave birth. You have to be a special kind of asshole to run off and cheat on your spouse when they are 9 months pregnant.

[mondo joe]

19. This is what the "ex gay" advocates condemn people to.

Those men can say they'ree ex gay all they like.

But would you want your sister to marry one?