Thank you for sharing a little about your experience here. I am so sorry that you went through such abuse and such pain…and that the Christian community was not supportive in the aftermath of that.

Though I’ve long known that many ex-gay marriages don’t work out, only in the past couple of years or so have I read about nightmarish stories like your own–where the gay spouse brutally takes out their issues on the straight spouse. It was (and is) a hard thing for me to fathom–how could someone mistreat and abuse someone who was out of love taking significant risks and possibly making big sacrifices for them?

This post was written five years ago, and some things just weren’t on my radar back then. When I revise/update my thoughts on the subject, I’ll be taking a more cautionary tone, and paying more attention to the potential for disaster and abuse, as well as the experience of the straight spouse more generally. Thank you again for adding your voice to this conversation–I realize it may have been awkward or difficult to do so.

Thank you for posting this. It really helps me. I’m a guy struggling with unwanted SSA and reading an ex-gay story that’s not “I found God who cured me, now I’m happily married and everything’s going my way!” is very comforting. It’s also nice to hear that you’ve told your husband about your attractions and yet you’re both still together. I read somewhere that you don’t become of one flesh unless you tell your spouse about your SSA (whether it’s gone or not).

I, like so many others, want to get married and have a family but these attractions set me back. I guess I’m just afraid that if I tell my spouse the truth, she might leave me. Society today orders us all to take on these one-dimensional labels that don’t really mean much. But reading your story gives me hope that I can find someone who would be willing to stay with me “till death do us part.” I want to give myself to someone unconditionally while they give themselves to me. And I want that someone to be a woman. I envision what it would be like with a man and for awhile I started to believe that it could work. But then I realized what Christ said in Matthew 19:5 “For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” When I really analyzed that verse, I knew that being with a woman wasn’t just about satisfying whatever my hopes and dreams were, but about serving God. Sometimes, that is more important than serving yourself, no matter how difficult it might be.

So, thank you. Thank you for your honesty, courage, and devotion to your husband, family, and God.

With Christ,
COLEMAN

You genuinely seem to believe that being gay is a sin, and I respect you for trying to do what you think is right, but this blog honestly just contributes to the masses of anti-gay poison already out there and makes people think that “ex-gay” is a legitimate (and possible) thing, which it is not, and that people should try to “overcome” homosexuality, which they should not.

I hope one day you can realize that it is people, and not your “God”, who believe homosexuality is a sin, and that the only reason they believe this is out of fear of people who are different.