Married!

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.