| Author |
Message |
    
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3343
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 05, 2006 - 07:46 pm: | 
|
October 5, 2006
Other man faces pain of adultery, too
Secret gay affairs also put strain on the third party as married men rarely leave their wives.
Kimberly Hayes Taylor / The Detroit News
Over the last couple of years, Americans have discovered men on the down low through talk shows, television specials and even on the big screen in "Brokeback Mountain."
Two years ago, New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey made headlines with his resignation from office, admitting he was "a gay American" who had an adulterous affair with a former aide. Released last month, McGreevey's tell-all book, "The Confession" (Regan, $26.95), details his struggle with his sexual identity and his gay love affair.
Author J.L. King shared with Oprah Winfrey's audience how he destroyed an eight-year marriage to his high school sweetheart by having sex with other men until she caught him.
We've read the stories of women who were betrayed, even some who contracted HIV from their cheating mates. But we've never heard from the other man, the third party in the love triangle.
"A lot of gay men -- the other men -- are turned on by men who are married," says King, author of "On The Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep With Other Men" (Broadway Books, $21.95).
"A married man becomes a challenge to them. I have a lot of gay friends who say, 'I can have any man I want. I don't care if he's married or not.' "
Dennis Schleicher stumbled upon an ad on a gay dating Web site from a married man seeking a friend. He responded to the ad, and the two met for coffee and began an almost instant love affair.
"In the beginning, I was so torn," he explains. "I was like, 'What am I doing here? I should commit myself.' But then I saw a hurting soul when he admitted he was 100 percent gay but needed someone to help him and coach him to get to the other side."
Schleicher is the first "other man" to pen his story in the newly released book, "Forbidden Love With a Married Man: E-mail Diaries" (1st Books, $19.95). His tale ends with the two locked in each other's arm, and his lover saying he would leave his wife. But after the story in the book ends, Schleicher's lover made excuses and refused to end his marriage, which still continues today with his unsuspecting wife. Schleicher became distraught.
"I lost 30 pounds," he says. "I couldn't keep food down. I was waking up gasping and hyperventilating at 3 a.m. and wanting to commit myself. All this occurred after we admitted we were in love. I realized I was still only worth a cup of latte and had to break it off because I set a time limit for him."
But there was something else that drove his decision to end the relationship.
"There's a woman out there who has been married for 14 years and hasn't had relations with him for five (years)," he says. "What if she confronted me? That's something I couldn't face."
He now runs a support group in the Hartford, Conn., area to help secretly gay married men gather the courage to come out to their wives because he says 98 percent of these men do not practice safe sex during these forbidden liaisons.
Gary Ramos, of Woodhaven never imagined himself deeply involved with a married man. But for 32 years, he pretended to be a happily married father of 10 children.
The Ford Motor Co. maintenance employee says he occasionally had anonymous liaisons with gay men and with three "straight" male co-workers. Once his marriage ended following his wife's discovery of his relationship with an Ann Arbor man, he began living as a gay man.
Eventually, Ramos met a married man and fell in love. About once a week, he and his lover would meet at his house for lunch.
"Like I told him, 'This thing isn't going to last,' " Ramos says. "He kept reminding me, 'I'm not going to leave my wife.' "
Just as Ramos expected, the salesman broke off the relationship, and he was heartbroken.
"He just dropped me," says Ramos, who is still emotional after the breakup. "And that's the part that hurts the most. I haven't heard from him at all."
No one wins in these relationships, says Joe Kort, a Royal Oak psychotherapist who specializes in counseling men who are conflicted about issues surrounding sex with other men. But he says these men need understanding.
"Gay men are taught they are never going to have a full relationship, so they take what they can get," Kort says. "He meets this married guy, and he's thinking I should take it, I'm never going to get anything better."
Often, King says, married men take care of their lovers.
In McGreevey's case, he created a position for his lover, Golen Cipel, making him an aide on his gubernatorial staff. Shortly after the lid blew off the affair, Cipel filed a lawsuit against McGreevey, claiming sexual harassment.
If the husband gets caught and the affair has to end, typically the other man is expected to quietly go away, King says.
"If McGreevey were black, the lover would have gone away and run back to his gay friends and used them as a support mechanism. We wouldn't have put it out in public and sued him."
Kort, who penned the book "10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Find Real Love" (Alyson Books, $15.95), says even if the married man comes out of the closet, he usually doesn't stay with the guy who helped him.
Like his counterpart, who has an affair with a woman, the married man feels free after his divorce and wants to play the field. The only difference is the gay man has struggled with his sexual identity.
And like the other woman, Kort says the other man will always get hurt.
"It could be years before the guy can get out of his marriage," he says. "The reality is to never stop pushing him to make a decision. So there's got to be constant pressure on the married guy."
That's why Keith Boykin, a former aide to President Clinton who wrote the New York Times bestseller "Beyond The Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America" (Carroll & Graf, $14.95), says the nation should have sympathy for everybody in the situation, the husband, the wife -- and the other man.
"Everybody is a victim," Boykin says. "The person who is cheated on is a victim; the person who felt the need to hide it is a victim; and the third guy is a victim, too. If people didn't feel the need to hide, there wouldn't be as many sham relationships in the first place."
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061005/LIFESTYLE/610050402/1005
You can reach Kimberly Hayes Taylor at (313) 222-2058 or kta ylor@detnews.com. For a discussion on the topic, visit her blog at info.detnews.com/recblog. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 1762
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 05, 2006 - 08:05 pm: |
|
Thx for posting this Tonya - I feel such sorrow and sympathy for all those poor confused faggots who end up getting dumped  |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3344
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 05, 2006 - 08:48 pm: |
|
Am I supposed to feel sorrier for them than I would a female “home-wrecker?” I don't know. Not sure if Hayes even gave this an ounce of consideration; but the article was deep nonetheless.
|
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6567
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 06, 2006 - 10:23 am: |
|
And article written to cite the laments of gay men who've been abandoned by switchitting DL'ers?
Man. It truly IS a Brave New World. |
Nolanfane
Regular Poster
Username: Nolanfane
Post Number: 190
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 06, 2006 - 12:53 pm: |
|
A sick ass world.
|
|
Email This Page