Dennis Milam Bensie needed a straight marriage and inspiration from a controversial film to come out.
Last night, I watched the movie Making Love for the umpteenth time.
The 1982 film starred Kate Jackson, Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean and came out (excuse the pun) when I was in high school. It was the first mainstream Hollywood movie to center around a husband coming out of the closet to his wife, and the end of their marriage.
I was more than a little curious when I saw Kate Jackson on The Tonight Show plugging the film. She mentioned that the movie was about homosexuality and my heart stopped for a moment: there were laughs and gasps from The Tonight Show studio audience. I didn’t want to appear too interested in the movie because my mom was sitting ten feet away from me. She said nothing. The jeers had more of an effect on me than the clip they showed from the movie.
We became obsessed with our wedding so we could prove to the world that we mattered.
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At that time in rural Illinois, the nearest cinema to me that would have played such a controversial movie was hours away. No way in hell would I have been brave enough to buy a ticket and walk in to see a GAY movie when I was seventeen years old. The threat of being humiliated, even attacked, would have been too great.
I Needed To Be Married
I knew I was gay when I proposed to “Jessica”. So did she. There were plenty of clues, especially in the bedroom. My wife once claimed that I said to her before our wedding that, “…if I was going to cheat on you it would be with a man.” I don’t remember saying that to her, but I don’t deny saying it either.
Jessica was a heavy-set woman eight years older than me. Before we met, neither of us ever felt like we would ever have the honor of getting married. It seemed like a great idea to take our two painfully low self-esteems and weld them together into one (flawed) relationship. We became obsessed with our wedding so we could prove to the world that we mattered. I couldn’t wait to see my wedding picture in our small town newspaper.
On our wedding day in 1984, I had no idea what my future held for me. There were no great options for gay people living in rural Illinois and I was too scared to go to the big city. I naively figured I would just deal with my homosexuality later…if and when there was a reason to.
I didn’t see Making Love until after I came out of the closet to Jessica in 1986. There was still some shame in renting the VHS tape at the video store, but I had to see if my relationship fell apart like the one in the movie. I couldn’t believe was I was seeing on my television. The details of my marriage and divorce were a little different, but the theme was identical.
This was years before Amazon.com. I wanted to own a copy of the film but there was no way to purchase it in rural Illinois. I used my portable tape recorder to record the audio of the intense coming out scene. Kate Jackson screamed at her movie husband. I felt like I needed to hear what she was saying over and over. I was punishing myself until I was ready to cleanse myself.
I wondered if I had seen the movie four years earlier, when I was still in high school, if I would have still married a woman.
The truth was I just needed to be married, and Making Love wouldn’t have stopped me.
Entitled To My Own Divorce
I really did love Jessica, but I knew I would not be married to her for life. It hurts me now to admit that. I was so mad at the world for having to live a lie that I didn’t feel too guilty for indulging in marriage until I could figure a few things out. Divorce—heterosexual divorce—was everywhere. I had aunts, uncles and cousins who had all gotten divorced. I was entitled to my own divorce, too, when I was ready.
I can’t speak for what was going on in Jessica’s head during our marriage. It would be presumptuous to say that she was using me as much as I was using her. But why would a woman marry a man she knew was gay?
“If I ever cheat on you it would be with a man.”
Like the characters in Making Love, I enjoyed spending time with my wife. We were best friends. Jessica still is a good person. We had fun times being coupled and getting all the perks of being in a marriage. It was validating for me to be able to say, “my wife.” I was proud of the gold ring on my finger.
It took just one irresistible dark-haired guy named Stephen for me to face the truth. The young man with pretty blue eyes freed me, then pushed me aside. There are scenes in Making Love where the dialog between Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean is almost the same, word for word, as scenes from my life.
I was divorced by 1988.
Bittersweet
I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. No regrets. In 1990, I asked my ex-wife if she regretted marrying me and she said no. She and I ran out of things to say to each other by the early 2000s, but I will always wish her the best.
Thank goodness we didn’t have any kids.
About once a year, I watch my DVD copy of Making Love. It’s still a cathartic experience. The happy ending in the film is actually about a bittersweet divorce. I understand that. The movie pays homage to an important time in my life. It also has a place in American gay history.
Image Credit: PhotKing ♛/Flickr
Read more on Marriage at The Good Life.
All men have to deal with something in our marriage where we force ourselves to rise above our desires. I may not understand homosexual impulses, but I do know that I’ve had to on many occasions reject my rather intense desires for other women and redirect my strong sex drive towards my wife. And there were long streches where my mind wondered to sexual fantasies even during sex of which we had almost daily for decades. But I forced my focus on whom I promised myself for life. After 32 years of marriage and nine children, I can truly say… Read more »
Thank you for your story. There are a lot of women/people who think sexuality is a choice, with enough prayer and divine interaction. They will be cured, and they go on to marry the wrong person. This wasn’t your situation but its a belief I see in my religious friends even today. They know but the excitement of being someone’s wife and the belief they can be cured, leads them to a hopeless marriage.
You are very welcome. Thank you for your comment.
which reminds me of the funniest thing the mother of my children ever said— One day BK casually states that JG left AG for a woman. JG is some kind of Lebanese/Italian stunner, AG is a manly motorcycle riding, deer hunting 1st generation Italian American concrete and masonry contractor. I come home and ask the bride if she know about this- I know she & JG have offices in the same building. She tells me this is yesterdays news- but she didn’t tell me because my imagination of JG with another woman…… I stew on this for a bit and… Read more »
That is funny. Thanks for sharing.
I should just kill myself.
Note from a moderator: As Dennis explains below, this comment was made in jest. However, if you are feeling suicidal there are resources that can help:
Need help? You don’t need to ask Siri. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached toll-free at 1-800-273-8255, TTY at 1-800-799-4889. The Samaritans offer similar services in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
BTW- my last comment was in jest.
I’m here, I’m queer, and I used to be married to a woman.
I offer no apologies.
But you should apologise to your ex wife, if you haven’t already done so.
Apparently the majority of men in your situations NEVER apologise to their spouses for the pain they have caused them. You just consider your own pain for the years you were secretly gay.
You’re gay and proud and also childish by your ‘jest’ remark about killing yourself.
I am not YOUR ex-husband. I apologized to my ex-wife. Many, many times. After some initial weirdness, She and I were actually good friends for at least ten years after we were married. We don’t live near each other any more and we grew apart. I have not seen her since 2004 and have not spoken to her since 2006. Here’s the deal: you would like to think that every gay person who married a straight person is like your gay ex-husband. That is not true. I am sorry you married a gay man. You sound like you are stuck… Read more »
Thank heavens you are not my ex husband. Am glad you apologised to your ex wife. Most gay husbands dont. Bitter is not a word in my vocabulary and what anger I do feel is not so much against my ex but against all gay men who knowingly marry straight women under false pretences just as you did many years ago. FYI I have moved on thanks to support from family; friends and the love of a man, thank you; my life is good but the effects on my children are ever lasting. This is not something you can understand… Read more »
This is why I write about my life.
There was no Will and Grace yet when I was growing up. Gay people were invisible and had no guide. There is value to me and other gay people telling our stories so that young gay people don’t make the same mistakes we did.
I don’t advocate gay people marrying straight people today. If i knew then what I knew now, I would have never married a woman. But I have to forgive myself or I can’t be a productive member of society.
Unless you personally know me or my ex-wife, you have no way to know our situation from a 900 word essay. You’ve stated you opinion about my choices almost 30 years ago and that is fine. It takes two to tango.and I have nothing more to say to you.
It takes two to tango? What did your wife do wrong in the marriage that you can say that!
Guess I hit a nerve there, Dennis.
You can judge me, but you weren’t there. I don’t need your affirmation.
You were also not there when my wife told me she wanted to say married to me despite my homosexuality.
I judge you right back for your tone.
Affirmation? Who’s talking about affirmation. You’re gay. End of. But you also lied to everyone, including yourself. And I see nothing anywhere in your post that considers your ex wife’s true feelings cos she probably didn’t tell you. But don’t kid yourself that you haven’t; damaged her more than she already was. It is pretty usual with wives married to secret gay men that initially they also don’t want the secret to come to and want to stay married. It can be a knee jerk reaction to the shock of the discovery that the man they thought they married turned… Read more »
But it’s all about YOU, isn’t it? How does your ex-wife feel? Especially as she had already married a gay man. And don’t give us the pathetic excuse that she must have known because you said if you cheated on her it would only be with a man.. You should NEVER have married her. It was selfish when you knew deep down than you were gay even then. And I agree with Kristie’s comment. All I can say is thankfully you had no children who would have suffered when they learnt of your lies and deceit as many children of… Read more »
Do you have any idea what it’s like to want so desperately to be someone other than who you are? This is just one of thousands of reasons a person might enter into a marriage that is not going to work. All kinds of people make mistakes in getting married. It certainly isn’t just gay men, or lesbian women, who marry for all the wrong reasons. Are you willing to condemn every person who makes a mistake in marriage, or do you just reserve your obvious contempt for gay men? And do you see the value in initiating this conversation,… Read more »
I speak from experience. My husband confessed to being gay after 30 years of marriage. Not only that but he’d been in a sexual relationship with anther man for the previous seven years. Please don’t preach to me about ‘wanting desperately to be someone other than who you are’. He was two people in the same skin and was only to happy to hide behind our marriage for as long as it suited him. I know a large number of other women (and men) in this situation…we are the ones left to pick up the pieces that gay husbands and… Read more »
I believe that this happens more than people realise. A friend of mine got married, had a child and then got a divorce when both of them admitted to each other that they were gay. Their little girl now lives a pretty typical life of a child of divorce the only difference really is the fact that one house has two mum and the other house two dads.
You are very welcome.
Well said, Dennis. So many gay men and women of our generation, and earlier, went through the ritual of marriage, knowing in our deepest, secret place that it could never work. I remember standing at the back of the room as my soon to be wife walked down the aisle as our two gay male friends sang Morning Glow from Pippin (we met in musical theater -go figure) thinking, “well, we can always get a divorce.” My ex-wife also knew, on some level, that I was gay, at the time we got married. We both were in such denial, and… Read more »
“My ex-wife also knew, on some level, that I was gay, at the time we got married.” How do you know? I have to wonder if this is something you need to believe in order to avoid feeling as guilty for deceiving and hurting her. My ex-husband’s new boyfriend said that to me early in their relationship and I wish I had corrected him. I forgave my ex-husband for deceiving me and I understand the reasons he did it, but no one should get to minimize my feelings either.
I’m confused. Are you Robert’s ex-wife?
How do I know? Because we’ve talked about it. Remember the part where I said that we are friends? Also, I told her early into our relationship that I “thought” I might be gay, but we both quickly backed away from that possibility. I was quite young when I met my ex-wife – I was 19 and she was 30 (we married when I was 21 and she was 32) She already had one marriage to a gay man in her past, so she was naturally sensitive to the issue. Sensitive, but not realistic. It should also be noted that… Read more »