Coming Out Gay
January 21, 2019
A year ago I realized I had to make substantial changes in my life. I realized I couldn’t stay in my marriage any longer. And I realized that it was time for me to affirm myself as gay.
I enjoyed a happy and fulfilling marriage with my wife for many years. Overall, it was a beautiful relationship and being “straight” became a core part of my identity. But I also experienced attractions to men. Much of the time these were in the background. But sometimes they were very intense and led to pain and struggle in my marriage.
Still, the marriage truly did work for us both and I don’t regret it. But things started to change a few years ago. Our personality differences became very pronounced. The relationship dynamic became strained and difficult. Things gradually turned painful.
Toward the end of this decline, I also realized that being in an intimate relationship with a man was no longer something I wanted to avoid. It had become a non-negotiable need.
These have not been easy decisions. I literally had to practice saying the word “divorce” in the shower for days to get past the shame and to build up my courage. And I went back and forth for months on whether I actually could let myself be in a relationship with a man. I knew I had to remain true to the indisputable anchors of my faith even as I lost faith in some painful peripherals—most notably that same-sex partnerships are sinful. An article by Bryce Cook was extremely helpful.
As this has become public over the past few days I’ve noticed with interest how my coming out has been co-opted by people and groups with agendas on both ends of the ideological spectrum. They’re spinning my story to either protect or to advance their causes. To groups on the “Right” I’m an existential threat to be mitigated. To groups on the “Left” I’m an opportunity to exploit—a bomb to drop on the “ex-gay homophobes.” Their feud started long before me and it will go on long after they’ve consumed me for this news cycle. But it’s sad to think about how impoverished these adamantly ideological groups remain because they don’t know how to dialogue.
I used to be caught in an ideological prison of my own. I know my work helped many, many people because they’ve told me so. But I’m sure I’ve hurt some people too. Not that I would excuse myself, but any shortcomings I had as a therapist came from too narrow a view of what “emotionally healthy” can look like. They came from my own internalized homophobia and narrow mindedness. I am truly sorry for those flaws and the harm they have surely caused some people. And I’m sorry for the confusion and pain my choice may be causing others.
Even today, in my difficulty coming out, I still find too much homophobia in myself. But I’m a much more accepting person now than I was 6 years ago before I started dialoging in a mixed-ideology group that included several gay-affirming therapists. We spent literally hundreds of hours learning about each other and solving problems together. I love them, and their gracious acceptance of me—arrogant as I was—more than I can describe.
So, what can you take from my coming out gay? Not that I was faking it all those years or that the choice I’m making now was inevitable. Not that I’m renouncing my faith or my past work—even if I wish I could go back and change some things. Not that I condemn marriages between same-sex attracted and a straight person. And not that I’m giving up or jumping ship.
What you can take from this is that my time in a straight marriage and in the “ex-gay” world was genuine and sincere and a rich blessing to me. I remember most of it with fondness and gratitude for the joy and growth it caused in me and many others. But I had stopped growing and I had to change. So I’ve embarked on a new life-giving path that has already started a whole new growth process.
If my coming out could change one thing, other than my own life, it would be to encourage people to really own and feel confident about their life path and to pursue it without fear or shame—regardless of what others might think.