By Bart David
Almost two years into this journey, I’ve come to the conclusion that the decision to forgive or not to forgive can be one of the most personal and powerful a straight spouse can make. While it is a completely reversible decision, it can be a turning point for personal health and development and for the relationship with the gay spouse or ex-spouse. Although every straight spouse is faced with that decision at some level, forgiving or not forgiving shouldn’t be seen as a necessary step, an ultimate goal, or a guarantee of continued peace of mind or amicable relations with the gay other.
My first experience of forgiveness in the context of TGT (Editor’s note: TGT is straight spouse online abbreviation for The Gay Thing, meaning the whole experience of a spouse’s disclosure or discovery) took place a little more than a year ago, three months after my STBX (Soon To Be Ex) and I had separated. In the months after separation, I felt growing anger and resentment directed at her, and deeper pain within myself. I wasn’t able to even look at her without feeling a little queasy. This culminated when an image of my wife’s face, overcome with boredom (to put the nicest term to it) during physical intimacy, arose in my mind. For two weeks I struggled with that image pretty much by myself and sank deeper and deeper into the resentment, dredging up painful things and chewing on them mentally. Talk about giving up space in your brain! Finally, I arranged for a session with my therapist (a hero of mine for twenty years now. He’s kind enough to return the opinion). Towards the end of the session, he asked how I would present myself to another woman, how would I describe myself and I rambled on for a little bit, but reached a stopping point fairly quickly. He asked if I’d meant to say it all that way. “What way?” I asked.
“The first words out of your mouth were ‘I’m not boring.’” I wasn’t even aware that I’d said that. And though I started to tear up a bit at the point he was making, that I am not, nor do I believe that I am boring, I felt a freeing, physical shift in my gut at the realization.
A few days later, I realized that I was ready to accept the apology that my GW (Gay Wife) had been offering since very soon after disclosure. We met at a local coffee shop, and I told her what I had come to. She allowed me to name the things she had done that had caused me particular pain, accepted ownership and responsibility for every one of them, and gratefully accepted my forgiveness. The conversation rounded out to cover territory I was very pleased to cover, and allowed me to get to a place I wanted to be, but had felt a long way away until that point.
Its no coincidence that being able to forgive my GW was preceded by neutralizing an image of one of the most powerfully negative aspects of our marriage; the image of her bored face during intimacy and the feelings of humiliation that I experienced in association with that. Neutralizing a memory (or an image) means that we can remember the incident, even remember the pain it caused, without reliving or re-experiencing the pain. Forgiveness can coexist with with the memory of the pain of TGT, but cannot reach authentic expression when the actions of our spouses, no matter how long ago in the past, continue to inflict pain upon us.
The pain we endure from the actions of our spouses may legitimately be with us long after they are no longer part of our lives. The long tail of our pain is a natural, perhaps even proper, consequence of THEIR action. Indeed, many of us suffer pain caused more by the memory of past actions of our spouses than by their current actions. No one should be expected to forgive someone whose behavior is causing them pain, even if that behavior ended much earlier. For the victim, the pain is a current reality, an immediate occurrence. Furthermore, if the reality of our pain is in some way minimized or ignored, ie: to just get on with our lives, there is little reason for us to foster forgiveness.
This is not to say that victims and straight spouses can’t “move forward” toward healed lives without forgiveness. Forgiveness and moving forward are not the same thing, nor are they mutually dependent, though I have a hard time imagining how one could forgive without having moved forward and put some distance between oneself and TGT. I’m not a great ethicist, but I suspect that a good case could be made that in fact it would be unethical to forgive someone at whose hands we continue to suffer, even if the actions that cause our suffering are well in the past. To do so would be to enable our own suffering and possibly the suffering of others.
This is why the decision to not forgive can be as empowering as the decision to forgive. Much of our suffering comes from being denied (actively or passively) basic information about the shape of our lives. The decision to forgive or not is a claiming of previously un-realized authority over our own lives, and allows us to set our own course for moving ahead.
Many things can reduce the pain we feel from the memories of our spouses actions, and neutralize those memories so that we don’t re-experience or relive the pain. While I’m not sure that the simple passage of time can, I have no doubt that some folks are able to do that simply by self-reflection. Therapeutic counseling can, particularly if the painful memory or image can be sharply defined. Personally, I’ve used accupressure related techniques with considerable success.
Forgiveness need not be equated with forgetting the pain. I think the power of our story might well be lost if we were to forget what we have lost and suffered. It is good to remember the trials we have come through. But for those who choose to foster or pursue forgiveness, those efforts can be helped by whatever means we choose to actively neutralize the memories of the trials we have come through.
Even though I could express forgiveness to my STBX a year ago, I have revisited the issue several times since then. Once for specific and insensitive things she did, and, on a deeper level, as I approached the time of filing for our divorce. While I was disappointed that I had to consider forgiving my stbx again, in both cases, I benefitted from expressing my expectations of how I was to be treated and my stbx’s acknowledgement of where she had failed to meet those expectations.
I’ll close with two caveats. First, I have a particularly cooperative ex-spouse who has not been dating, or exploring her sexuality and has been honest, if not always open, with me. Others have spouses whose behavior is so wantonly destructive that forgiveness would be a much harder path. Second, though I have made progress in forgiveness, it did not keep me from having to endure profound and extended spiritual suffering. A little more than a month after being able to forgive my stbx, I entered a period of intense and painful spiritual isolation that did not lift for almost seven months. Different aspects of our healing may well occur on separate paths and independent timing.
The Straight Spouse Network invites the perspectives of various individuals who wish to share their unique experiences. We thank Bart for being our Guest Blogger today and permitting us to print this article.
