While Ireland, as the first country in the world to do so by popular vote, sent an unprecedented message of love and respect to its gay sons and daughters with the passing of the same-sex marriage referendum last May, a surprising number of Irish gay men and women have already been living a married life.
The Gay Switchboard runs a support group for gay men in long-term relationships with women, to offer support to those struggling to come to terms with their sexuality, and to navigate the stress and inevitable pain that coming out to your wife, maybe even the mother of your children, can create.
While it’s easy to assume that these married men are pulled from the ranks of older generations less comfortable with homosexuality, as the support group facilitator John Paul O’Brien says, that isn’t always the case.
“We do have members who are more recently married, we do have members who are in their 20s. But there’s a range of ages and different experiences, situations, and circumstances,” O’Brien says.
‘How am I going to cope given the fact that I am in a relationship with a woman?’
Living under the burden of their secret can be an exhausting experience for these men, and can lead to depression.
“Some people might fall into a depression, and start to become more introspective and question where this is really coming from,” O’Briend says. “That might lead them to questions around their sexuality.
“For others it may be something like the exposure that we’ve had in the media with the referendum, it might serve as a trigger and has caused them again to question. So really it’s the questions that often bring the participants to the group. ‘Am I gay?’, and if so, ‘How am I going to cope given the fact that I am in a relationship with a woman?’.”
These husbands and fathers often live a life filled with emotional turmoil. Guilt and shame are feelings that are constantly brought up in the group meetings, as well as the perspectives of their wives.
'These men love their wives...'
“The men may still be in love with wives, this is the person they are closest to in the world,” O’Brien says. “They are feeling hugely guilty in relation to their wives, and perhaps having lied in some way to their wives.
“But also the wives themselves also report some self blame too, after their husbands come out. ‘I should have known.’ And this can be a very isolating experience for them, because maybe there’s a social stigma as well to say that your husband had met another man,” he adds.
About one third of these relationships will end abruptly when the man reveals his sexuality to his female partner. Another third ends shortly after. But for the final third, the research shows that the couple continues to live a fulfilling and loving relationship, known as a ‘mixed-orientation marriage’.
“I guess it’s important to emphasise that these men love their wives, and they may have found a sole companion in their wives,” O’Brien says. “And, I guess, if they can reconcile that conflict inside of themselves with a sexual orientation that is moving in another way... if they can reconcile that – and their wives can – it can be a functioning relationship.”
The Gay Switchboard, who run the Married Men’s Group, can be contacted at (01) 872 1055 or mmg@gayswitchboard.ie. You can listen back to Sean Moncrieff's full interview with John Paul O'Brien below:
