A Married Womans Struggle with Lesbianism
I am 38 years old, have been married for 10 years and have two children. My journey has presented many challenges, and looking back I can see that the difficulties started quite early on in life.
I always knew I was 'different'. I had trouble fitting in at school, in fact in life in general. I was a tomboy, daddy's helper and some of my closest friends were boys. I didn't think it abnormal at first that I developed crushes on many of my female teachers. I studied hard and was an achiever. As time went by I developed lots of interests and made many friends, male and female, but inside I was very lonely and uncomfortable with myself. I desperately wanted people to like and accept me.
I became a Christian when I was very young, before I was 10, and grew up in a Christian home. I had always known that God loved me though I believed Him to have high standards, which I had to live up to. Of course I couldn't attain these so I lived under guilt constantly. I always felt I could do better.
I did have some 'boyfriends' through my teenage years though it was more because I wanted to be liked, and enjoyed the attention, than any deep feelings I had. I developed a close friendship with a girl, Ella, in youth orchestra. I just wanted to be with her constantly and I would look forward to Friday nights (Youth Orchestra nights) just to see her. I remember we went on tour to Vienna. I had a migraine one evening and Ella offered for me to rest my head in her lap. I remember clearly thinking this was what I wanted so much.
When I went into 6th form I then made friends with Olivia. This relationship was different as I had known her more as an acquaintance for a while but admired her greatly. I liked her confidence and sense of humour and I decided I would get closer to her. We became inseparable friends for the next couple of years. I quickly became infatuated by her and if for any reason she had to cancel coming round I couldn't cope. I would collapse in tears feeling bereft. I certainly had it bad. I never told her how I felt but I soon realised I had a problem when I started fantasising about us kissing. One day in the 6th form common room someone was being teased about possibly being a lesbian and it hit me like a bullet, 'Oh, please God don't let me be a lesbian'. The impact of the realisation had deep consequences for my mental well-being.
I did well in my exams and gained a place on a highly sought after course at Bristol University. Momentarily I thought everything was going to be all right. I'd achieved what I'd wanted and God was on my side. My friend Olivia had also been offered a place at Bristol but hadn't got the grades so I would be going without her. Maybe this, the realisation I was gay, and all the stress and hard work of the last year caught up and I went spiralling into a huge clinical depression. I cried out to God and my only source of comfort through this time was in pouring out my heart to God, crying and sometimes even screaming. I read the bible for hours. I was obsessed by my faith, examining whether I really believed. Was God really with me? I ended up leaving university and seeing a psychiatrist and Christian counsellor. My parents were supportive (they didn't at this point know I had same sex issues) but I knew it hit them very badly. I came home and spent 6 months recovering.
By the next summer I was feeling better and we went on a family holiday to France. There was a girl there called Emily and I became instantly attracted to her. She, like Olivia, had an air of confidence about her and I was drawn to her. We spent lots of time together and when her family were due to leave 5 days before us I felt terrible. All I remember about the rest of the holiday was how devastated I felt inside and how I couldn't tell anyone. I knew I had a big problem and I felt desperate.
Shortly after this time I met a guy who was working temporarily at our church. He asked me out and we went out together for about 18 months. However, I soon questioned why I was doing this. I didn't find him attractive and I think I was just lonely. I was recovering well from my depression and went back to university the following academic year. I still wanted to complete my university course and it helped me focus away from the inner turmoil I was feeling. I had counselling back at Bristol. I couldn't tell anyone about the thing I feared most inside - that I was gay - but my counsellor soon guessed and helped me immensely over the next 6 years to start unravelling who I was and how to deal with it. Meanwhile Olivia and I were becoming more distant from each other and when I returned to restart my course, Olivia also started at Bristol but made a different set of friends to me and we soon drifted further apart.
My mental state of mind continued to improve and I enjoyed my studies. My boyfriend Mark came to visit me on occasional weekends but I didn't look forward to him coming. I tried to end it with him several times but he just persuaded me to carry on. I fell head over heels for my next door neighbour in halls (Jemma) and spent the best part of the next 4 years trying to deal with how I felt about her. This time I really was smitten and I wrote about her in my journal. Mark found my journal and read it. I felt so ashamed I actually burnt my diary. No one was going to read about my private thoughts again. This had a devastating effect on me. Mark and I tried to work things out but by this time it was hopeless and the relationship ended.
During my 3rd year at University I attended a weekend away organised by the Proclamation Trust and this was to have a profound effect on my Christian walk. We were allocated to small groups and my group leader asked us all for one prayer topic that she promised she would take away and pray for us. I asked that I would have a deeper understanding of God's grace. Well, I know she prayed because over the next few weeks and months I grew to understand God's love and acceptance of me in a way I'd never previously known. For the first time I was really astounded and blown away that God sent Jesus to die for ME, He loved me that much, and it didn't matter what I had DONE or what I FELT, these were unchangeable truths. I also developed a real love for God's word and a desire to read it instead of it feeling like a chore. These things became two of the foundation stones on which the whole structure of my life, and the way I deal with my homosexuality are built. I came to realise that God had given me the means and the desire to cope. Jesus became the one person I wanted more than anything. Meanwhile, I told Jemma how I felt and it was the beginning of our drifting apart. She took it well but I knew things would never be the same again. I felt then, and often do so now, that I end up sacrificing friendships because I feel the wrong things for many of the women in my life. This is either because I find things too hot to handle so run away from the relationship, or I tell them how I feel and the relationship becomes strained.
My life nearly derailed in 1991 when I was 23. I met a gay Christian woman called Cath and very soon became attracted to her and the feelings were mutual. This really tested me. Did I believe all the things I'd heard God saying about how He could fulfil my desires and be everything to me? I'd always known God didn't want me to live a homosexual lifestyle but here was the temptation to turn my back on all I had believed previously. Cath believed the same as me, so we both wanted God to be honoured in our friendship and didn't want to get in too deep. However the temptation was very strong. We went out one evening with another friend and I drove Cath back to her house. She invited me in and we spent the rest of the evening talking into the small hours. I'd spent a long time praying before I'd gone out this particular evening and I knew it was a bad move going into her flat and spending time alone with her. When she kissed me I didn't resist but it didn't go further than that. I had such a mixture of emotions. I felt I'd come home, that I was right about my original attraction, and that this was what I had longed for. However I also knew this wasn’t what the Lord wanted for me. I’d saddened Him and I knew I could never enter a physical gay relationship, or an emotionally dependent one without offending Him. In the immediate aftermath I knew God to be there; He hadn't left me, but He did want me to repent.
Cath felt God wanted her to leave her homosexual lifestyle. We spent the next 2 years trying and succeeding in maintaining a platonic relationship. This was achieved however only through strict boundaries and avoiding each other. Occasionally when we met the temptation was too strong and we ended up kissing. In the end I had to break contact completely because it became too much for me to deal with and by this time I'd met my future husband and I had his feelings to consider.
Somewhere in all the turmoil of my relationship with Cath I felt the need to tell my parents of my same sex feelings. My parents are Christians and we had a family philosophy of sharing things. I felt there was a growing brick wall between us, and that the way I felt was a barrier. I felt false and unreal and not telling them became an increasingly unmanageable burden. They were stunned and shocked and didn't really know what to say. I told them I felt God could heal me and change me into someone heterosexual, and that I felt sure this was God's plan for me. This is indeed what I felt at the time. As time went by the subject became one we didn't really talk about and I think my parents were under the impression my homosexuality had indeed gone away, especially when I met my future husband.
I wasn't looking to get married and I thought I would never have children. However, I believed that with God anything could happen and knew His plans to be much bigger than mine. I met James at the church I worshipped at where I'd taken up my first job after graduating. I felt something totally new. I was attracted to him in a way I'd never been attracted to a man before. It was entirely different and exciting and I fell in love with him. As we spent time together over the next few months we knew fairly quickly that we wanted to get married. It was hard to describe how I knew this to be right and what I wanted, and some people perhaps thought it happened too quickly. Yet I wanted to be with this guy forever. I also realised I had to be upfront with him about my same sex issues as soon as possible. I wrestled with this - would he reject me? I agonised and lay prostrate in tears on the floor of my flat. I didn't know how I was going to tell him. Eventually I wrote a letter and waited. James wrote straight back and was so loving and accepting. I couldn't believe he still wanted to be with me.
At this point I really believed that God would remove my same sex desires, but over time it was a shock to discover that this was not the case. The past few years have therefore been spent coming to terms with this and developing, with the Lord's help, strategies for coping. There have been difficult times. I have continued to find women attractive and occasionally they have been my close friends. In particular, after being married for 18 months I became friends with a woman in my church called Sonia. We spent a lot of time together and she was a tremendous support to both James and me, especially when our first child was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome, 8 weeks after she was born. It was through this period after my daughter's birth that my emotional dependency on Sonia reached a new level and I couldn't cope with it any more. I wanted to explain that I couldn't see her so much as I was finding it hard. I told her how I felt. She was very understanding and said that although she didn't feel the same (which I knew anyway) she would still be friends with me. That evening, after I'd told her, I felt ashamed that I'd confided my feelings in her. I wrote a note saying I was sorry for what I’d said, and I intended to drop it through her letterbox the next day. However, the following morning I thought it best just to let the whole thing drop and say nothing more. I left the note in the jacket pocket and forgot about it. Over 6 months later James found the note and understandably was very upset that I hadn't shared my feelings with him. It was a very difficult time and I felt terrible. I saw Sonia infrequently after that and I haven't heard from her in several years. I lost a good friend and it was all because of my inappropriate feelings.
Despite these pressures we've come through. I've been married for 10 years now and have two children. Over the last 2 years in particular God has helped me to be more honest with James about my feelings and it has deepened our relationship. However, I believe that it is still easy in a marriage, even a Christian one, for two people to live parallel lives if they don't share the whole of their lives with each other. God intends the two to be 'one flesh'. The two parties have to be sharing and open with each other in order to grow and become the people that God wants them to be. I'm applying this not just to sexuality now but a whole range of things - hopes, fears, work, money and especially issues of faith. James sometimes asks me if 'I'm OK' with my female friends and I try to tell him if they're 'safe' or not. God has blessed me with a circle of 'safe' friends but I do worry what will happen if I meet someone I become attracted to. Some people may feel uncomfortable with any 'monitoring' or 'censorship' of their friends by their husband and that's why it needs to be a mutually agreed arrangement. James and I are still finding ways to make this work for us and I don't profess to have all the answers.
I am still often scared of the way I feel and I have a long way to go. But I am more able to own my feelings and address them and above all be real with God, my husband and myself. When I look back I sometimes can't believe how I've got here in one piece but I thank God that I have no regrets over the choice I have made. I do still tend to set impossibly high standards for myself, and one thing God has taught me is that I also set the bar high for others, including my husband. My expectations are unrealistic at times and the Lord is helping soften me. Through the weaknesses I have He is making me see others through His eyes, with love and acceptance. The grace He has touched me with is gradually reaching others through me, to His glory.
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in EVERY WAY, just as we are — yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of GRACE with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find GRACE to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16 (my emphasis)
“What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life.” Romans 6:21-22
“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.” James 1:12
October 2006
Note: For the sake of confidentiality, the names in this story may have been changed.