A mid-life rediscovered

I’d been married for 20 years when I told my wife I was gay and it wasn’t going away. We had three kids, and the youngest one was six at the time.
It was a long journey to that point that began as a young man when someone asked me if I was homosexual. I chucked a tantrum – I was so angry that he would think just because I was gentle that therefore I was gay.
I had normal heterosexual sex. I was quite satisfied with that. But at the age of 27, I first began to wonder about my sexual orientation.
My wife had a series of miscarriages and the doctor said no more sex while she’s pregnant, so I started jacking off and I realised I was only thinking about guys.
One day I stopped at a public toilet and found a gay magazine tucked down the back of the toilet. The images became a lot more real after that. It was the most valuable thing I’d ever come across.
Later I met a guy, a business associate, and we were both really attracted to each other. We’d meet every six months and there would be some sexual contact between us, then nothing in between.
Still I thought I was bisexual. I belonged to a conservative church, had no idea there was a gay lifestyle, no knowledge of Oxford St. I managed to get through the next eight or nine years without knowing.
I couldn’t stand the secrecy and decided to tell my wife. Her reaction to even the beginning of my revelations was catastrophic and ended with me stammering out a suggestion that I might be bisexual.
Initially I sought counselling from within the church. The first couple of counsellors tried to have sex with me. Then I found someone in the country. I drove a couple of hours every week for five years.
At the end of that I was convinced that I was a gay man. I was totally unhappy being married and I couldn’t live with who I was. I needed to know where I fitted.
During a trip to Sydney I went to Oxford St and found a gay rag and saw an advertisement for GAMMA – gay married men. It was the first indication that there could be other men struggling with the same issue as I was.
This was 15 years ago, so the Oxford St scene was very gay. I felt incredibly comfortable, and incredibly different. It was quite contradictory, wanting to stay there forever and wanting to flee.
There was nobody criticising me for who I was or how I behaved.
Finding Oxford St, finding GAMMA, making that phone call, that was the turning point for me, finding out there were other guys like me, and there was a journey that you could do.
But I still hadn’t resolved the issues with my wife. It became a no-talk zone.
Once I found out about HIV and STIs I was panic-stricken about my wife. We were having less and less sex, but occasionally it happened. I was worried sick about what I was doing there.
You put a condom on but you worry: what if it breaks, what if I’ve done the wrong thing? And then what happens to my kids if I die, or the marriage breaks up, or I lose my job? I had a nervous breakdown at the end of the journey.
That was the end of the marriage. I told my wife it was over and it was because I was gay. But before I could move out, I had a health breakdown, Ross River fever and swelling of fluid that led to minor brain damage.
At the end of three months recovering, my wife came back and said we had to stay together for another two years because of finances and managing the kids’ school. A day later I had tried to suicide.
I took drugs, cut my wrists up and down. She found me four hours later and I was hospitalised. Shortly after I was outed to the wider community by a member of my wife’s family.
I had some close friends in Sydney who were supportive but they weren’t gay. The only people I could talk to about being gay were GAMMA and that was by phone.
I had depression, minor brain damage, living with my mother and father in Sydney at the age of 42. But I kept contact with my daughters right through.
By this stage they were old enough to understand. When the marriage ended I assumed I would not be able to see them again, but all three were very fast adjusting.
They liked coming up to Oxford St – we’d go man-watching together. I had always wanted to tell them from the moment I realised.
There was an excitement in being free, but coming out in mid-life is kind of like starting again.
I’m a stubborn person. In the end I decided I had to get a job and that meant having to retrain. I started working in counselling, which I had some training in. While doing that, I completed my masters.
To be a single gay man with a disability at the age of 40 with three kids was not an attractive thing to be marketing on the gay scene.
It’s also a hard slog for me personally, but I re-partnered two years ago. I’ve got a full life, a huge circle of gay and straight friends. I’ve got quite a good job, and lecture part-time at university. And I’ve been president of GAMMA for the past two and half years. So I’ve developed a whole new life.
As told to HARLEY DENNETT
GAMMA meets every first and third Wednesday of the month at ACON headquarters. The hotline is 1800 804 617 or 9267 4000. www.gamma.org.au.