Father’s Day, Mother’s Day and every other holiday in a blended family is always a day of negotiations, scheduling coordinations and emotional balancing acts. In our house Father’s Day is kind of like Christmas in terms of the many gifts we have to buy for the number of fathers we have to remember. My girls have one father, two step dads and two grandpas. We’d like to spend the day with all of them, but that is never possible. Grandpa Tom, my ex father-in-law,  lives in New Jersey. Pop Pop, Paul’s dad lives nearby and will be here for our family barbeque. Jared, my (gay)  ex, and his spouse, Keith have in years past spend Father’s Day with us, but this year have decided to do their own thing. They will take the girls, Sophia and Eva, out for brunch and bring them back this afternoon so they can celebrate with Paul, Pop Pop and the rest of the kids for dinner. Right now, Paul and I are off for a bike ride so we can have our own private celebration together. Then an afternoon of sailing followed by a family barbeque.

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads and step dads out there.

Kela Price, a fellow stepmom blogger of Blended Family Soap Opera was gracious enough to repost my articles about my gay ex-husband. To read her interview of me click here. And definitely check out her blog.

The CA State’s Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to uphold Proposition 8 was a big disappointment for me and everyone in support of same sex marriage. I felt the same shock and outrage when I heard the verdict in the OJ Simpson murder trial. That was  not a real surprise either, as that was what was predicted, but it was  still a bitter pill to swallow. As we all know, eventually justice was served in that case when the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown were awarded civil damages against Simpson. It was the Goldman’s relentless pursuit of claiming their award that led Simpson to commit armed robbery to supposedly get back property that he says was stolen from him. Simpson was convicted and sentenced to 33 years in prison, which at his age, is the rest of his life. My point in drawing this analogy is to show that what first appears as defeat, can eventually lead to victory. And if Arnold Schwarzenegger can go on the Tonight Show and say  the upholding of Proposition 8  is bullshit, so can I.

This  is what I predict will happen in the case of same sex marriage. Proponents will offer up another ballot initiative legalizing same sex marriage. It will pass and opponents will not be able to go to the State Supreme Court to overturn it using the argument that a ballot initiative is unfair, since yesterday’s decision stated that it is.

I want my readers  to know that  I do not intend for my blog to become a political forum. (I know, too late.)  I have made a concerted effort to never  discuss religion or politics because I feel that those topics can be very divisive and controversial and I don’t want to alienate people. I am here for everyone.  I  don’t care if you are a religious right conservative or a liberal atheist, (not that all liberals are atheists, mind you) the parenting issues we face together as members of blended families are universal and that, in my opinion extends to same sex couples’ families as well. If you are familiar with my story you know that I have a gay ex-husband. Click here and here to learn more. If you don’t agree with me, all I am asking of you is to listen to my story. Cut me some slack. Open your hearts. Open your minds. And let’s all focus on our families. Amen.

It has been called to my attention that if you Google “gay ex-husband”, my blog comes up first. Number One on the World Wide Web. Isn’t that something? This is my claim to fame — or notoriety, depending on how you look at it.  How many people would kill for that kind of ranking? All kidding aside, I am glad in a way. I wrote a separate page for my blog, My Gay Ex-Husband, because I knew there had to be other women out there who were grappling with the shock of discovering that their husband’s were gay and would have  no idea where to turn for comfort, support, answers and direction.  So in solidarity, I wrote about my experiences so these women everywhere would know they were not alone.

As you might imagine, I have had a lot of emails from women from all over the country. They don’t post comments on my blog, but they do write to me. I would never publish their letters and I never discuss what they tell me, even with my husband (who forgets everything I tell him anyway), but I would like to offer to my reading public the gist of  these letters since there is an uncanny similarity to all of them. Here are some of their frequently asked questions:

#1. How did you get over it? How did you get past the pain, humiliation and anger so that you could move on with your life?

This is a biggie. How does anyone get over anything? A failed marriage is a failed marriage and there is no guarantee that I would not have gotten divorced if I had married a straight guy. Still I was pretty pissed when you figure that if I had married a straight guy I might have had a better shot at staying married. I felt like I had no control over the situation, which was frustrating and, oddly, also liberating. It was not my fault. Given the information that was presented to me at the time of my marriage, I felt like I had made a good decision. I was given a free pass.

#2. How did you forgive?

This is kind of tied into the first question, but let me elaborate a bit. I think one of my best character traits (if I may so so myself) and  traits we as a democratic, civilized society can use a little more of, is my compassion, empathy and the ability to see through someone else’s perspective. Intellectually I knew that we live in a society that demonizes homosexuality. Rick Warren, the pastor who said the opening prayer at Obama’s inauguration, has likened homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia.  It is no wonder gay people feel oppressed, ostracized and the need to closet their sexuality. In that context, I couldn’t blame my gay ex-husband, Jared, for attempting to deny his true sexual identity. It made me more understanding and hence, more forgiving.

#3. What did you tell the kids?

I told them the truth, warts and all. I told them I was sad, but I made it clear to them that even though I was down, I was not out. I firmly believe children take their cues from their parents and if I could recover, they could too.  I explained to them that we had to let Daddy go to be happy, which is the greatest gift anyone can give to anyone. Dad would still be in our lives, he just was not going to live with us anymore. (Although he came over for dinner many times those first few months.) I told them that there is nothing wrong with being gay, but many people do not share our acceptance and openness about it. To this day, the girls are very selective with whom they confide in about their father being gay.

#4. How did you find happiness again?

I found it mostly because I wanted to, but not until I had given myself sufficient time to grieve,which is a very important part of the healing process. When you avoid pain by not processing it, you can not get over it. After an initial scoundrel period in which I rushed into dating in order to fill the void in my life, I eventually realized that I needed time alone in order to come to terms with what I really wanted out of life and to discover what would make me truly happy.

#5. Where did you turn to for support?

My first action, after I poured my heart out to my friends, was to get professional counseling. I made a few inquiries and found a very supportive therapist who had experience in dealing with exactly what I was going through.  In addition, I searched the Internet and found The Straight Spouse Support Network ,founded my Amity Pierce Buxton, whose husband came out in the ’70′s. Amity was sweet enough to email me and I talked on the phone with members from the local chapter. I also read several books that were very helpful and made me realize that I was neither crazy nor alone. Here are a view titles: Pretzel Logic: A Novel , The Other Side of the Closet: The Coming-Out Crisis for Straight Spouses and Families, Revised and Expanded Edition and  My Husband Is Gay: A Woman’s Survival Guide.

It has been more than ten years since Jared, my ex, first confessed to me that he was gay, and quite frankly, I rarely think about it anymore. My days now are filled with loving and enjoying my new husband, our busy lives as a blended family, working on our family business and, now that the kids are older and more independent, fulfilling and pursuing my own dreams.

Remember when the governor of New Jersey announced he was gay?  I sure do. I remember smiling ruefully to myself when I  heard people talking about the scandal and  asking, “How could his wife not know? Can you imagine being married to someone and not knowing he’s gay?” Yep, I can because it happened to me. I don’t mind telling people about this because I somehow feel it gives me a free pass for a failed marriage. There was no “we just grew apart” or ”we wanted different things” excuses. Nope. I married a gay guy. Not my fault. Except when you consider that I was, how should I say this?, STUPID enough to marry a gay guy in the first place. By way of explanation, let me just say this. My ex, whom I will refer to as Jared, was more the Rock Hudson type of gay rather than the Liberace sort. It wasn’t like he was into decorating or Broadway show tunes. He did like ballet, though, maybe that should have been a  clue. These days when he comes over to the house to pick up the girls wearing Bermuda shorts and socks and sandals, I look at him and say to myself, “You are sooo gay. How did I miss that?” Back when he was still in the closet he played the part of the straight, ex-highschool football hero pretty convincingly and I and everyone else was fooled.  And to answer the most often unasked question, yes, we did have sex.  No problems there, so you can see, I really had no  idea.

Jared and I met in 1987 at a Christmas party my roommate and I were throwing at our apartment.  He was her guest. They worked together. He seemed like a nice, genuine guy who wore T-shirts and jeans and watched sports. At the time I had been having a lot of short-term romances with playboy types who strung me along with promises of trips to Jamaica and then dumped me with no notice. My current beau fit the profile, but hadn’t arrived yet, so Jared and I struck up a conversation about just exactly how did the guy who played Latke on Taxi die, (we learned we were both obscure trivia buffs) when my date showed up and whisked me away. Two weeks later the lothario stopped calling and I swore off dating forever. I was 26 and decided that marriage and children were just not going to happen for me. Little did I know. I concentrated on my career as a rising fashion industry star and embraced 80′s VCR technology.

Sometime around spring I decided it was time to venture out into the dating world again. I informed my roommate, who responded excitedly that Jared was still available, had just gotten his own apartment and really liked me. I was making chocolate chip cookies at the time and gave her some to give to him at work. A few days later he called and we went out on date. I liked him a lot, thought he was really nice, but did not get those nervous butterflies in my stomach, which I reasoned at the time was a good thing. It was the butterflies that had gotten me into so much  trouble in the past. I didn’t feel that instant chemistry, but decided to wait it out until I did because I knew Jared was a nice, decent guy. A mensch, not a chump and all my friends liked him. After a month of dating I really fell for him and thought, “This is what love is supposed to feel like — calm. Not insecure or nerve wracking.” After 9 months of dating, we got engaged (at the ballet)  and 9 months after that we were married. The first two years we lived the  ’80′s yuppie, pre-kids lifestyle. We indulged our hobbies of dining out, browsing bookstores and going to movies.

In November of  ’92 Jared got recruited by a high tech company in California and we were moved from the East coast to the West to start a new life. At the same time I got pregnant with Sophia. There were a lot of changes in our lives and the accompanying stress that goes with them. Jared became a work-a-holic  which was kind of typical of the high tech boom in the early ’90′s. Something wasn’t right in my marriage, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I shrugged it off to the hectic life with small children. When Eva was born in ’96 I quit my job to stay home, which only made Jared spend more time at work. Because I was now with the kids full time, I looked to him more to give me breaks with the girls. Instead, he worked 6 days a week and slept ’til noon on Sundays. We never did anything as a family. Forget vacations. I would have settled for help with the laundry. With our family all on the East Coast I spent a lot of time alone. I look back on those years and I don’t know how I survived. As a kid my dad was never an active participant in our family and I regretted that. I began to see the effects Jared’s absence had on the girls and it made me very sad. One year on Jared’s birthday, Sophia sat on the front porch with his gift on her lap and he never came home.

Why did I put up with this for so long? I was afraid of the alternative. Being the eternal optimist that I am, I looked on the bright side. I enjoyed my children and was grateful that I could afford to stay home and spend so much time with them. I looked for diversions and decided I needed a bigger house with a large yard so we could have a dog. We bought a minivan. I don’t know why Jared agreed to it because he told me later the trappings of a middle class lifestyle put him over the edge. A bigger house, a bigger mortgage. He was screaming inside. He felt imprisoned in a marriage he should never have been in and  became more and more distraught and desperate. He coped by working, his only escape.

Shortly after our move to the new house, Jared and I were barely speaking. He left for work before the girls got up for school and came home after they were in bed. He refused the warmed dinners I saved for him saying he had already eaten at the office. I knew something was seriously wrong with him and kept prodding him for explanations and answers. He would push me away and tell me I was imagining things and to leave him alone. Around the same time Sophia was diagnosed with a learning disability and needed a lot of my attention. I was exhausted all the time and did not know what to do about my marriage so I did nothing. I think I went months without even looking in Jared’s direction, until one day I saw him get out of the shower and was shocked to see that he was dangerously thin. Jared was always a slender guy with a small build. Six feet tall he usually weighed around 155 lbs. I could see the bones sticking out of his ribcage. I exclaimed, “Oh my God, you are so thin! What is wrong with you?” and demanded he get on the scale and he did. He weighed 128 lbs. He admitted to me that he thought he was anorexic, but he wouldn’t explain why. I told him he needed to get counseling and he agreed and even ate some breakfast. I was encouraged by his admission, yet very troubled. After he left for work I got on the Internet to research anorexia in men and found an article that offered two explanations. The first one I immediately discounted and scoffed at. Anorexia in men is caused by the suppression of latent homosexual tendencies. Ridiculous. My husband is not gay. I read on. The second reason seemed more likely. Repressed memories and hostilities as a result of an authoritarian father. That had to be it. Of course, growing up in the sixties, who didn’t have an authoritarian father? Armed with my new knowledge, I decided to approach Jared that evening. Instead we had a big fight about something I can’t remember and he went to bed. I stayed up stewing and watching stupid TV shows. My intuition told me I had to confront him. I had to know. I went into the bedroom, sat on his  side of the bed and woke him up. I told him, “Jared, I am your wife. You have to tell me what is bothering you. I don’t care what it is. This is eating us both up. Tell me. I have to know.” At first he said nothing. Tears started to stream down his face and his body was shuddering and rocking slightly. Softly, he started repeating these words over and over again. “I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy.” It was at that moment that it hit me like a ton of bricks. I remembered what I read on the Internet. He’s gay. So I asked him, “Jared, are you gay?” (He told me later he could not believe I had guessed.) As if the words were coming from the bowels of his being, for the first time in his life he admitted to someone, me, his wife,  that he was gay. It was as if he were speaking in slow motion and under water. “Would you hate me if I told you that  I think I am bisexual?” I was so relieved to finally know that I wept too. “No, I don’t hate you, I love you.” I assured him. I promised to help him and to stick by him. I knew that night my marriage was over, but I could not admit it to myself. The girls were little, I hadn’t worked in years and he was a basket case. I threw myself into my plan to get him well. I started the next day stuffing him with high calorie smoothies and calling around for referrals for therapists. Jared told me later that if I had not come in to force the truth out of him he would most likely have killed himself the next day. That was his plan. I know now that he was having a nervous breakdown.

For the next two years we clung to the hope that somehow we could make our marriage work. Jared considered himself bi-sexual, and by marrying me he was simply making a choice. During the first two years of our marriage he was fine with his decision. It was when I got pregnant with Sophia that he started to feel confined and panicked. Once everything was out in the open and we both sought counseling, we explored all of the thoughts, issues, conflicts and struggles he was feeling. I read books, searched the Internet and consulted experts in the field. One of the most significant things I learned, and probably the greatest source of confusion and controversy regarding human sexuality, is that some people, not all, but some,  have varying levels of homosexuality and/or heterosexuality in their makeup. While some people, like myself, have no doubts about their sexual orientation. I have always known that I am straight. Likewise, there are gay people who have similar certainties  of  their homosexual orientation. However, there are those, like Jared, who are not so sure and are unfortunately  therefore so conflicted. This uncertainty coupled with the social construct opposing homosexuality is what closets so many people.

After two years of feeling like I was walking on eggshells, always watching Jared to make sure he was OK, of meeting his needs and not my own, I decided I needed more. I needed to be either with a man who wanted to be with me or to be alone. It was a difficult decision and one that was long overdue. The tipping point  came at one of our final visits to see our marriage counselor. The counselor suggested that we settle on some kind of “arrangement” , in which we would agree to time apart and I would simply look the other way while Jared went off on some gay Club Med trip. This apparently works for some people. Not for me. With tears streaming down my face I made a vow to myself that I deserved better and I would find it.

After twelve years of marriage, two children and a relocation across the country, Jared and I ended  our marriage, but not our family. I was determined to keep my dignity and composure and to have a positive divorce. We told the kids in February of 2002. It was Black history month and the girls were learning about segregation in school. I used that backdrop to make the comparison of discrimination against gay people. I explained to the girls that Daddy was gay. Because we live in a very liberal community where there are lots of gay couples, the girls knew that some people of the same sex are happier being together. However, not everyone is accepting of gay people which is why their father kept his feelings a secret for so long.  I told them that because we love Daddy we want him to be happy and we have to let him find what is going to make him happy. At first they were worried they would not get to see their father very often. They both have friends whose parents were divorced and the dads had moved out of the area. I assured them they could see their father whenever they wanted to and they do. Although the children live primarily with me they see their father every day when he takes them to school.

About six months after Jared moved out, he met Keith, his life partner to whom he is now married. Shortly after, it was Jared’s birthday. I suggested to Jared that he invite Keith to our house for dinner. I did this for the girls to show an act of solidarity and to give my approval. I wanted the girls to know that is was OK to welcome Keith into their lives. I never wanted them to feel like they had to choose sides or feel guilty about liking him. I also didn’t want them to worry about me.

The morning of his birthday, Jared met the girls and me at our country club to go swimming. As I watched Jared rough house with the girls in the pool, tossing them in the air and playing Marco Polo, I realized I had never seen him so happy. During our marriage, when I could get him to come with us to the pool, he often sat on the sidelines reading a book, retreating into himself. When I saw how delighted the girls were with his attention, I knew that I made the right decision. I sacrificed my marriage, so that my children could have a father.

Later, Keith arrived at the house with gifts in hand for me and the girls. While I got dinner started, Keith and Jared played hopscotch and jumprope  outside with the girls. Later, Jared wrote me a lovely thank you email telling me how much he appreciated my generosity and that it was the best birthday he ever had.

Was I always so amicable and giving? No. There were several times I felt such incredible anger and resentment toward Jared that I could have clocked him. I spent many mornings sobbing in the shower. Jared, because of his guilt I guess, put up with a lot of my tirades and sarcastic barbs until one day he asked me point blank, “How long are you going to punish me? I’ll give you twenty years and then after that the statute of limitations runs out and you have to forgive me.” He  sounded like he was joking, but I knew he was serious. I realized at that moment that I was only hurting myself and if the girls sensed my feelings, they would suffer too.  I decided from that point on to take stock in my life and acknowledge what was  good. I had two wonderful daughters, a beautiful home (which I got to keep in the divorce settlement), I lived in a beautiful place and I had the talent, intelligence and perseverance to start over.

Why did Jared  marry me you wonder? I asked him the same question. His answer, besides the fact that he loved me, was that he wanted a family and a conventional lifestyle. When we separated he did right by me and the kids. He gave me the house, paid very generous child and spousal support so I could continue to stay home with  the girls while I figured  out what I wanted to do since I hadn’t worked in a while.   At the time of our divorce, an acquaintance of mine from my kids’ school was also getting a divorce. Her husband left her for another woman and moved to Brazil, but only after he drained their bank accounts. Since he was self-employed he was able to hide his assets and income. She, like me, had been a stay-at-home mom with three kids. Her car was repossessed and her landlord evicted her for non-payment of rent. She was forced to go on public assistance. Now I ask you, which man, my ex-husband or hers, had better family values?

Although I have no regrets about marrying Jared, I know that if he had felt the freedom to live as an openly gay person, who had the rights to marry and have children, we would never have gotten married. This brings me to the topic of same sex marriage and the general acceptance of homosexuality. We, as compassionate and reasonable people have to dispel this notion that it is wrong to be gay, that homosexuality is a disease that has to be cured or prevented. It is not. Nor is it a choice. It just is. Accept it. By doing so you would save others from experiencing the pain and unhappiness we have had to endure as the result of society’s discrimination against homosexuality.