My Husband Is Gay and All I Got Was This Lousy Writer's Block

Jesus, writing is hard.

“Yes, I’m gay,” he admitted.

And with those words, our ten-year marriage was over. The fairytale died. Our lifelong relationship relegated to a lie. Lies.

I tell the story often, in many different ways. It isn’t that I’m fond of repeating myself, but my relationship with Jason was the most impactful and heartbreaking experience of my life. So I continue to process it and try to understand the woman I am today.

I wasn’t happy. I hadn’t been happy for a long time—something was always wrong, but I couldn’t identify it. The answer was always right in front of me but just beyond reach. I thought it was his control. I thought it was me. I thought it was everything other than what it was. To say I turned a blind eye is an understatement, but we do what we have to do.

I remember the times I cried to friends, flirted with other men, and shut out the world with codeine or alcohol. I also remember the laughter, our adventures, and the passion.

Now I understand his actions throughout our marriage. He was unhappy too and coming to terms with his sexuality even though he had a wife and baby at home. His dissatisfaction with life combined with my depression led to a paralyzing control. I was required to play the part of the trophy wife at all times and play it well. To the outside world, we presented perfection. At least that was the goal. Based on the number of times his co-workers questioned me if he was gay, the illusion of perfection wasn’t fooling anyone. Anyone except for me.

How could I see it?

After all, he was the love of my life, and nobody understood him the way I did. We shared something extraordinary dating back to our youth and when he moved from New York to California at sixteen, it broke my heart. It didn’t take much in my early twenties to be convinced to leave a young marriage to another to go to Los Angeles to be with him and start the life I had always dreamed of.

I gambled everything I had and everything I knew for the fairytale come true.

Well, it came true—but technicolor happily ever after was a fantasyland. A facade. And like all facades, was destined to come crumbling down.

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I’ve been writing about our relationship for decades. Decades. I have hundreds of our notes and letters to one another dating back to 1983. Our story has all the elements of a soap opera in waiting—young love, affairs, heartbreak, adventure, and dreams come true. The story includes running away in the middle of the night to head to Chicago with the director of a play and waking up in post-earthquake Los Angeles in 1994.

All this material. All this raw emotion. All this time I’ve spent telling the story in pieces, yet when I try to string it together into a cohesive narrative, I fall apart. I know the stories by heart, so why am I so hindered? (Maybe knowing them “by heart” is the problem? I’m not clearing my mind and starting fresh?)

Reliving it is difficult. And I made a lot of mistakes that are hard to forgive myself for.

The truth is a frightening ghost to face.

But the story, as I mentioned, isn’t all valleys. There were plenty of highs and today we are close. I don’t want to hurt him or my son with anything I have to say and want to be very careful how I paint the picture, ensuring that the narrative also conveys love and empathy.

It’s a complicated tale I intend to weave, but it shouldn’t be that hard. Not when all the pieces are there. Not when the chapters all live inside me already.

One roadblock I tend to hit each time I try to “write the book,” is when I bring in content I’ve already created and try to add it as a chapter. It feels like I’m jamming in pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite fit together. But then I’m afraid I’ll miss something important if I don’t use all this material that’s already been created, or use materials that are right there for me to use.

I’ve tried outlining. I’ve tried writing a memoir, I’ve tried telling the story in a series of essays, I just can’t seem to find the right way. This frustration is making me sick to my stomach.

What happened to my carefree dream of sitting out on my veranda in a silk robe with a laptop and cup of coffee, writing my little heart out with a big fat smile? Ah, the life!

Jesus, writing is hard.

Related—looking in the mirror is too.

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I want to tell my story in a way that is emotionally honest, takes the reader on a crazy journey, isn’t bitter or sad, and looks back on the past in a thoughtful, entertaining way.

I thought I could completely rewrite the story during the month of November. I don’t want to just keep planning—I want to do. But there’s something missing that I haven’t figured out yet. I’m not sure if it’s style or stitching, but I know that fretting about it is creating a block.

My original intent was to create a one-woman show out of the story. Maybe there’s something to that, I don’t know.

My other thought is that it could be positioning.

I begin the story the way I did above.

But the story isn’t about my husband being gay; it’s barely about that one day. The story is about the life and death of a fairytale and all the amazing adventures that were had along the way.

Another thought—maybe this is part of writing the book. Maybe this is why being a writer is so hard. It could be that part of the process is supposed to be like sitting in front of the pieces of an unformed jigsaw puzzle not knowing where to begin. When you start piecing the edges together, it does not form the picture. But slowly—bit by bit—you begin to fill it in, those edges forming a guide.

I have the edges! Now to be patient with myself and my puzzle with the understanding that once it comes together, it will finally make sense.

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I tell the story often, in many different ways. It isn’t that I’m fond of repeating myself, but my relationship with Jason was the most impactful and heartbreaking experience of my life. So I continue to process it and try to understand the woman I am today.

Trauma did not break this woman. It created her.