08 – Voices Podcast

Guest: Kristin Orr, Playwright

Kristin’s husband came out as a trans-woman before celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner or Laverne Cox put gender transition in the national spotlight. She forged her own path through grief, anger, and finally healing while their mutual friends expressed enthusiastic support for her spouse. A chorus of “You go girl!” and “You are so brave!” were showered on her transitioning partner. Meanwhile, no one reached out to Kristin in her pain as she grieved the gradual loss of her husband before her eyes, prompting her to ask the question, “Where’s my parade?”

“There were family photos that we had on the wall of our living room of the four of us as a family,” she says, “and any picture that showed John as a man, she wanted to take down. So we were taking down family photos and it felt like my history was vanishing before my very eyes, my life as I knew it was being robbed. Think about it from my perspective: if he was always she, was there ever really an us?”

Guest: Emily Reese, Ted Talk Speaker

Emily Reese discusses how, after several years of marriage, she intuited that her husband was gay, and how they worked through his subsequent revelation to create a modern rainbow family. She also discusses her experience giving a Ted-X talk called The Other Side of the Closet, on the subject of having a spouse come out, an experience she describes as a highlight of her life. Emily’s mission is to be an example of transparency and honesty for others.

In her words: “Lean into those things that happen that we see as faults, like not trusting our own intuition. Lean into those, because that is really the way to grow. No one wants to have tragedies happen, no one wants to have misfortunes, but we are guaranteed those in this life. And so, the more the we practice, and that’s what this experience as a straight spouse did for me, was I learned how to lean into all those things and to face them, and so part of that was learning about my intuition.”

Guest: Devon Reese

Devon discusses his marriage to Emily Reese, his early knowledge of his homosexuality, his fear and shame around his feelings, as well has his religious beliefs at the time that lead him to compartmentalize his feelings of same sex attraction. His coming out journey has been a journey toward self-actualization, and he speaks about how telling the truth, even when it is painful for both the person telling it and the person hearing it, is critical for growth and healing. Devon and Emily are currently amicably co-parenting their three children through Emily’s final stages of terminal colon cancer.

Devon knew from a young age that he was gay. In his own words: “At least for me, it was like a compartmentalized thing. I know it sounds very cliché but in some ways, it was like a box and you put your feelings of gayness away in that box, and you put it away in the proverbial closet, and you close the door, and you focus on all the other aspects of your being. Certainly, I knew from my very first concept of feeling different, and for me there’s a lot of shame and fear because at that time – early 80’s, mid-80’s and even into the early 90’s – it wasn’t a great place in the world to be a gay man. You’re dealing with the AIDS crisis, internalized and externalized homophobia. I knew that in order to be the person that I thought I was and could be, that I had to ignore one aspect of my existence. That’s not to say it wasn’t deceptive, it was. It was deceiving to my parents, my friends, my family, certainly to Emily, but in that dark place where I put that, and put it away, you justify it by saying ‘well I do love my spouse, I am sexually attracted to them, I do want to have children, I want this very picture perfect life,’ and so you make choices, and those choices ultimately have hurtful impacts certainly to our spouse and our family. And for some people they are able to put that item in the box and in the closet and live an entire lifetime without acknowledging their true self. And they can be happy and healthy and well, they just aren’t 100% fully actualized in my opinion.”

Guest: Sarah Schulting Kranz, Life Coach

In today’s episode, I talk to Sara about the discovery of her husband’s 14 years of infidelity with men, her diagnosis of PTSD related to the relationship betrayal in her marriage, which echoed back to her sexual assault as a teen. We talk about how she found her healing and clarity in nature by hiking, running, and paddle boarding. Sara shares how she has used her experience as the fuel for a new career helping others heal from their own trauma.

In her own words on the compound trauma of sexual assault combined with relationship betrayal: “I was so deeply traumatized, I can’t even put words too it. The PTSD that just shakes every cell within your body is mind numbing… What happens is that when you go through another traumatic experience like this, it also brings up the trauma from the past, which I hadn’t really worked through, I now realized… I realized that it was like ‘Wow, I’ve got to address all this stuff,’ which is exactly what I did, through my own trauma healing, and through nature, and through seeking help and getting the right support.”

Guest: Seth Blackman

Today, SSN Board member Seth Blackman goes over a Checklist for Newbies. He provides steps, tips, and advice for how to get through the initial days and months after disclosure/discovery that your spouse is LGBT.  He covers getting professional help for depression, trauma, and shock, and guides us around establishing healthy boundaries for ourselves with our spouses. Finally, he gives us tips for self-care, self-compassion, and finding support within a community of people who understand what you are going through.

In Seth’s words: “I remember extremely vividly how awful the first few days and weeks and months of this experience were. So, we came up with this Checklist; is suggestions, it’s advice, to help people get through the immediate, horrible steps of this process.”

Guest: Aideen Finnola, Life Coach

In today’s episode, Aideen discusses how growing up in an extreme Christian cult primed her for marrying a closeted gay man. The intersection of that religious prohibition against homosexuality and her own lack of education and experience with men (as dictated by the purity standards of the community), understandably resulted in her own mixed orientation marriage, which fell apart after years of abuse, gaslighting and denial.

In Aideen’s own words: “My religious background set me up for the straight spouse experience. I joke that I was so clueless about gay men that I wouldn’t have known a gay man if he stood at the altar with me. There were loads of gay men and women in the cult, and 100% of them were closeted, because it was a sin, and it was supposed to be wrong. And then you add to that all of the heterosexual people are so sexually repressed and have such severe restrictions on their own sexual development and sexual expression, and you take those two things together and you are guaranteed to have mixed orientation marriages.”

Guest: Mark Soltysik

Mark talks to us about the challenges and benefits of remaining in a mixed orientation marriage, and how to make it work if you choose to stay. He discusses the practical and financial considerations that make remaining in a mixed orientation marriage a workable option, but he stresses the importance of having clear boundaries, finding healthy ways to handle triggers, and finding support for yourself.

Guest: Dina Matos, Former First Lady of New Jersey

In August of 2004, the Governor of the State of New Jersey came out to the world in a press conference as a “Gay American,” and resigned his office. His wife Dina was standing behind him at the podium in a blue suit, her world having been shattered just three days before when her husband privately disclosed to her that he “might be gay,” and that he had to resign because he was being blackmailed for $50 million by his former lover. In this episode, Dina what it was like to experience becoming a straight spouse in such a public fashion, how she coped with the media frenzy around her family, and how life has changed for her since her husband’s devastating disclosure.

Guest: Jill Smokler, Founder of Scary Mommy Media

Scary Mommy founder Jill Smokler discusses coming to terms with her husband Jeff’s sexuality, how isolated she felt when she first learned of his same sex attraction, making the difficult decision to get a divorce after 18 years of marriage, and how they focused on honesty and transparency in telling their three children.

She spoke about how painful it was to break the news to the kids that she and her husband would be divorcing. “We tried to focus on how much we loved them and how intact we could be, even when we weren’t living together. It’s so hard when you see your children in any sort of pain, and to feel like you are the cause of it, and that there’s really no way you can comfort them, there are no answers, they are going to be hurt by this…it’s devastating, it’s so hard to see. That said I think this whole experience has really helped them become more sensitive to other people, more empathetic, just understanding of struggles that everybody goes through.”