Between Two Worlds

Another reason not to use a spouse as a experiment....

Even in the best divorces, kids live divided lives in which they struggle to understand their parents' behavior, negotiate tangled family systems, and develop values and beliefs.
Children of the divorce Olympics stay married
London Times
September 16, 2007
A victim of the break-up boom of the 1960s, our correspondent says her generation will fight to avoid inflicting such pain again....BY: Daisy Goodwin
From the age of six I have lived a double life. Not because I was intrinsically deceitful but because, like 20m other people in this country(according to a survey last week), my life has been profoundly altered by divorce. My parents split up in the late 1960s and they both remarried and had more children. Like Diana, Princess of Wales, my childhood was spent rattling across the country with my younger brother from one parental home to another.

In one house we drank coffee, went to bed at eight sharp and always had clean socks; at the other we drank tea, put ourselves to bed when we felt like it and had bare feet. In one house the bed was always made, in the other it was a mass of rumpled sheets with sand at the bottom. Capital radio was forbidden in one house, Elvis was compulsory in the other. Every holiday, Christmas, birthday was bisected by the iron curtain of the two incompatible ideological universes in which I lived. I became an expert at an early age in 'reading the room'.

My mother thought it was funny that I was trying to read Lady Chatterley at the age of 11, my stepmother confiscated the book. I started learning Russian at school because back in the cold war 1970s I thought my upbringing made me uniquely qualified for a life of espionage. I was one of the lucky ones. I saw both my parents regularly, materially I had everything I needed ­ perhaps more: double Christmas presents for a start.

As a child I used to say to sympathetic questioners that I was fine, lucky even, after all it was the only life I knew. But now that I am grown up, married and have children of my own I have stopped being stoical. I can admit that things were not fine. They were strange and bewildering and their mark on me is indelible. The circumstances of my childhood have made me adaptable, resourceful and emotionally intelligent, true, but I am also needy, insecure and unable to set boundaries. I have been clinically depressed. However, the one thing I am not is divorced, because I know what divorce means. And the latest statistics suggest that I am not alone in this awareness.

Divorce rates have fallen slightly in England and Wales for the third year in succession. There are several explanations for this: people aren't getting married as much as they used to, the property boom means people can't afford to leave home, people are getting married later and therefore have less time to repent at leisure. But I wonder if there is another underlying trend ­ that my generation who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s when the divorce Olympics were in full swing have decided that marriages are not as disposable as their parents thought.

The statistics appear to bear this out. The biggest drop in divorce rates is among the under-forties, ­ in other words, the children born during the divorce boom that started in the late 1960s. Having been through one divorce, the children of broken homes have no desire to go through another. They realise, because their parents didn't, that in Margaret Atwood's words,"a divorce is like an amputation, you survive but there's less of you".

My mother and her three siblings have all been married at least twice. But the same is not true of my generation: my brother, half-sister and I have now all been married longer than our parents were. Never say never, of course, but so far we seem to be making a better job of staying together than our parents did. I don't think this phenomenon is confined to my family. When I was a child at least a third of my friends came from 'broken' homes, but there are few divorced parents standing at the gates of my daughter's school. And while there have been divorces among my cohort of metropolitan thirty and forty-somethings, they are the exception rather than the norm. Significantly, the people who have got divorced have been the ones who grew up in 'unbroken' homes.

Even though divorce is not the legal blame-fest that it was when my parents split up, no one ­ children, parents, grandparents ­ comes out of it unscathed. There is always a loss. That loss can reverberate well into adult life. I have just written a book that goes back four generations to find a narrative that makes sense of the failure of my parents' marriage. Readers from similar backgrounds to mine have told me how their adult lives have been blighted by their past, of their longing for a different future.

Outward success is no substitute for that early loss. Alex Mahon, 33, managing director of Shine media, has been married for four years and has a four-month-old baby. Her parents divorced when she was six and she boasts no fewer than 10 stepbrothers and sisters. Despite having a PhD in astrophysics she says that "to have four children and to keep my marriage together would be the biggest achievement of my life". My mother had married in a crochet mini-dress in the 1960s; at my wedding in the 1980s I wore a full-on meringue complete with veil, as if wearing the outfit would somehow make the whole thing binding. My parents were rather surprised that I wanted such a 'conventional' wedding, but to me a white wedding complete with cake was a talisman against what I knew to be the fragility of marriage.

Paul's Interview - Chapter 2

Here is Part 2 of that Gay, Mormon couple from a few days ago.

Anthony Perkins

Another gay husband? I wonder if his wife knew? or if she cared? We will never know.

Anthony Perkins (born April 4th, 1932 in New York, died September 12th, 1992 in Hollywood) was a US actor best known for his role as the maniacal murderer, Norman Bates, in Psycho.
His first movie was The Actress (1953), then came Friendly Persuasion (1956), for which he received an Academy Award nomination.
After a few other much-acclaimed performances both in film and on Broadway, he starred in Psycho in 1960, which lead to him being typecast as the crazy killer, severely limiting the range of roles he was offered later in life.
He went on to star in (and even direct) the sequels and prequel to Psycho and also played a few memorable characters, such as the chaplain in Catch-22 (1970), but most of his later work were made-for-TV movies.
His private life was something of a mystery, while he had plenty of homosexual affairs, such as with Tab Hunter, Grover Helms, and Alan Dale, he was also married for 19 years to Berry Berenson.
It is a matter of speculation, whether Perkins was bisexual or gay, just using his marriage as a cover-up. His 1992 death of AIDS complications made many people think that the second explanation might be correct.
His son, Osgood Perkins, credited as Oz Perkins, is also an actor.
His widow, Berry Berenson, died on an airplane that crashed into the World Trade Center during the September 2001 Terrorist Attacks, the day before the nine-year anniversary of Perkins' death.

The Clergy and Marriage with One Gay Partner

What part does the clergy or counselors play in the deception of a gay marrying a straight spouse with no revealing of that side of themselves? When I was married, my ex told me that during our marriage a priest told him in the confessional NOT to tell me about his homosexuality doings as it would break up the marriage. I understand what they they think they are trying to do...save a marriage and protect the children. But what they MAY not be thinking about is the possible STD's (even more important now that we have HIV and AIDS) and the overall impact that deception and cheating and trying to maintain a whole other life separate from the families has on each member of the family.
There is an undercurrent running through each family that affects each person either in same ways or in different ways. Only a healthy undercurrent can produce healthy children.
My advice to counselors and clergy would be to be truthful, even if it hurts, but the MOST important thing is to be truthful BEFORE you get into a committed relationship or marriage.
Watch this interesting video and notice how at the end he says that his wife has never been the same emotionally since their breakup....I know how she feels.

gay boyfriend

Gay men as 'friends' are great, gay men as real boyfriends or husbands (lying to you) are NOT!

Craig is Fighting to Keep Senate Seat

An article out of Washington this morning states that Senator Larry Craig is launching a campaign to save his seat after all. He is also seeking dismissal of an ethics committee complaint and says he will stay in office if he can get his ' guilty' plea withdrawn from the men's sex room sting.
His campaign to stay in the Senate was setback when the the ethics committee refused to set aside the complaint against him. Although, Craig stated that he would resign by September 30th, it now looks like he will be putting up a fight.
A lot of other Republicans think he made the right decision by resigning and probably won't consider letting him stay in the Senate.
Again, it is not the fact that he IS gay...it is the fact that he cannot tell the truth and obviously has poor judgement. Do we really want someone with those qualities representing us in the Senate?

More from Dina McGreevey

Former NJ governor's wife recalls ordeal

By ANGELA DELLI SANTI, Associated Press WriterSat Sep 1, 7:09 AM ET

Jane: It's like belonging to a club you don't want to be a member of!

Perhaps no one knows better than Dina Matos McGreevey how Suzanne Craig — the wife of Idaho Sen. Larry Craig — felt as her husband insisted he is not gay despite his guilty plea in a police sex sting.
Matos McGreevey once stood shellshocked next to her ex-husband, then-New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey, as he announced before TV cameras that he was "a gay American" and would resign.
"I was watching his wife the other day standing next to him, and I thought, 'Oh my gosh, that was me three years ago. Now here we go again,'" Matos McGreevey said in an interview at her home Friday evening. "She's a victim of the choices he's made."
James McGreevey, the nation's first openly gay governor, later said he stepped down rather than succumb to a $50 million blackmail threat from a male former lover.
When it was Suzanne Craig's turn to stand stoically beside her husband this week, 40-year-old Matos McGreevey said she felt her pain. Matos McGreevey said she stood by her man in 2004 because she still loved him and she felt she had done nothing wrong.
"For me, I decided I was going to stand by my husband's side. I was in shock, I had not had an opportunity to absorb what was happening," she said. "I had 48 hours, 72 hours to try to make sense of what he was telling me."
Asked if Suzanne Craig should follow her lead, Matos McGreevey said: "Only she can answer that question," she said.
Republican officials said Friday that Craig will resign from the Senate on Saturday. The announcement comes amid a furor over Craig's arrest and guilty plea in a police sex sting in an airport men's room.
The 62-year-old grandfather denied he used foot and hand gestures to signal interest in a sexual encounter with an undercover officer and said his guilty plea to a reduced charge was a mistake.
Matos McGreevey predicted tough times ahead for the Craigs, and offered this advice to the beleaguered political wife: "Do what's right for you and your family, not what's politically expedient or what your husband wants you to do. That's certainly something that I learned from my experience."
Matos McGreevey said in the midst of her personal turmoil she called Hillary Rodham Clinton for advice. The former first lady also had been publicly humiliated by her philandering husband, though his indiscretions were with a female intern and did not involve gay sex.
"She said the best piece of advice I can give you is to get your own counsel and do what you think you need to do protect you and your daughter," Matos McGreevey recalled. "And don't let your husband's advisers make decisions for you."
These days, Matos McGreevey said she counsels others in similar situations who contact her by letter, e-mail, phone and in person, sometimes at unlikely places like the grocery store.
"I've had many conversations with people in my shoes," she said.
Although she did not ask to become a symbol for spouses weathering the gay infidelities of their mates, Matos McGreevey said helping others means "the pain I have gone through has not been in vain."
Jim McGreevey, 50, will begin full-time studies at General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in Manhattan, seminary spokesman Bruce Parker said Friday.
Matos McGreevey, who is now locked in a contentious divorce proceeding with her estranged husband, said the relationship was over once he came out. She said she is moving on, even dating, but has lasting issues trusting others.
"It's very painful to know that you've been betrayed by the person you love, the person you trust," she said. "And it's equally painful when you have the rest of the world, who doesn't know what you're feeling, what your relationship is like, criticizing you for taking certain actions."

Senator Larry Craig

So now that Larry Craig has resigned with his tight-lipped wife standing behind him at the press conference, let's see how long it is before he jumps out of the closet. He has been compared in the news recently to Nixon, "I never authorized a robbery!" Does Watergate mean anything to you. Jim McGreevey came out when he got caught. Let's see how long, not if, it will take him to be truthful to his wife, family, constituents, etc.

Lies impact everyone around you whether you think they do or not!