'I married a gay man'

The beginning
I was a 19-year-old college freshman in Kentucky when I met Chris. He was 22, a senior and a talented musician who could sing and play brass, keyboards and woodwinds. I'd never had a boyfriend before, and I felt incredibly flattered when this popular, good-looking guy asked me out. I was also pleased that we had a similar religious upbringing. I grew up going to a Methodist church, and I've always had a strong Christian faith. Chris's father was a Southern Baptist minister who preached fire and brimstone, and Chris was taught that being gay was the ultimate sin — an absolute sentence to hell.

Two unusual things happened on our first date. After we watched the movie "Romancing the Stone," Chris said, "I think I could marry you." I was speechless, wondering if I was living in a romance novel. Then, after he kissed me good-night, he shocked me again, saying, "No matter what you hear, I'm not gay." In fact, I had heard other students say that everyone in his fraternity was gay. But in the world we lived in, people often claimed a guy was gay if he wasn't a jock or really macho, so I didn't want to judge someone because of who his friends were and what he did. I decided to take Chris at his word. Besides, he'd taken a girl — me — out on a date, so how could he be gay?

We immediately started seeing each other exclusively. I thought it was a storybook romance for nine months — until Chris abruptly said, "I can't do this anymore." He refused to explain why; I was distraught and confused. A few weeks later, over the holidays, we met to talk. We obviously still had feelings for each other, and without explaining why he'd split up with me, Chris declared, "If we're going to be together, let's make it official: Will you marry me?" I accepted on the spot. It was a dream come true.

Of course, I could have asked more questions, but I convinced myself that Chris had gotten cold feet because we had become serious so quickly. I also had a stubborn streak, which I practiced as a child and maintained throughout our marriage. I was determined to make our relationship work. I wanted to show Chris that I would stick with him through everything.

I didn't believe in premarital sex, but once we were engaged I went on the Pill and told Chris I thought we should make love. He refused, explaining that he respected me too much and that sex had ruined his previous relationships. Frustrated, I kept reminding myself that, as he said, "We will have the rest of our life together." In premarital counseling, we told the minister that divorce didn't fit with our values. This pronouncement made me feel more secure, but I shouldn't have ignored my nagging intuition that something was seriously wrong. After all, what man wouldn't jump into bed with his fiancé.

I was a 20-year-old virgin on our wedding day and a disappointed bride when Chris couldn't get an erection that night. I retreated to my side of the bed and cried myself to sleep, wondering, Is this what our life together will be like? The next morning, we decided to start our marriage on the right foot — by going to church. We had sex that afternoon. It wasn't as passionate as I'd hoped, but I convinced myself yet again it would all be fine. Chris had won a prestigious position in a military band, and we moved to the Washington, D.C., area to begin his career.

A lonely wife
After Chris's boot camp, we settled in as newlyweds, but we never achieved the "happy couple" life I had envisioned. We rarely spent time alone together because Chris preferred to have dinner parties, go to parties or play cards with friends. I returned to school, and he had rehearsals, and we were with other band members and their wives on most of our weekends. I missed the intimacy I was certain other married couples had.

I also expended a lot of energy trying to keep Chris interested in sex. After we got married, I wanted to have sex every day, but he told me I was a nymphomaniac. I learned to do whatever I had to do to make it happen, because sex reassured me that I was loved and wanted. We probably had sex three or four times a week, and I felt as if I was constantly pressing for it.

In "Brokeback Mountain," there's a scene when Ennis flips his wife over on her stomach when they have sex. I got very emotional when I watched that because it was the position Chris and I often used for intercourse. Even though it wasn't as physically or emotionally satisfying to me, it was as intimate as we were going to get — and I wanted children.

Questions about Chris's sexual preference didn't disappear. At a party with his work friends, I got into an argument with a woman who'd been drinking, and she said, out of the blue, "Well, at least my husband's not gay." I was stunned, and I can't remember what I said in reply. Later that evening, when I told Chris what happened, he reminded me that he'd always been teased about being gay, but he assured me, "It's not true."

I defended him to others, but our marriage was often tense. He toured with the band, and when he came home, he'd sometimes stay out all night without telling me where he'd gone. Assuming he was having an affair with a woman, and feeling insecure and unattractive in the middle of my third pregnancy, I became hyperinterrogatory and angry. It didn't help: Chris became even more distant, and he started drinking heavily.

It's easy to say I should have left him, but the choice wasn't so simple. We had virtually no savings, and I couldn't afford to take the children and raise them on my own. I also still believed that the marriage could weather such trials, in part because he was such a good father. He took us camping, played with the children, planned holiday celebrations and even baked the kids' birthday cakes. Chris was 100 percent better at parenting than my own father, and I got used to the idea that my fulfillment could come from the family rather than the marriage.

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