I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself.
Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like a death sentence. AIDS panic was everywhere. Gay men in movies were comedy sidekicks or dying wrecks (“Philadelphia”). There was a real threat of violence from other kids. If you could pass as straight, why wouldn’t you give it your best shot? The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you. (This is literally how I imagined gay life at age 13.)
I still feel like I’m barely getting started on the therapy journey to recover from those decades. Seems like the man in the story never had the chance for professional help (or didn’t seek it). The compartmentalization can be extremely taxing. He disappointed many people, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
There's judging people, and there's judging actions.
- Getting married under societal pressure even when you're pretty sure you're gay: I'm willing to cut him some slack on this.
- Having gay affairs while you're married: It puts your wife at risk of disease, but OK, you've been placed in a messed up, lose-lose situation.
- Telling a lover you want to be exclusive, and getting him to move to a completely new country, stringing him along with the idea that someday you'll leave your wife and live with him, when in fact you intend neither to leave your wife nor to be exclusive: Uuh, OK, that's actually pretty bad.
- You know your wife wants to start a new life with someone else. But that would make it harder to hide your current life. So you use the societal pressure that forced you into your situation to keep her from leaving, stealing decades of her life that she could have potentially had with someone who would have made her happier: There is simply no excuse for this.
> my parents were not a love match. at 27 and 26, they were embarrassingly old by the standards of their small chinese port town. all four of my grandparents exerted enormous pressure to force them together.
You have an entire community that exerted enough social pressure to force two people together by fiat who clearly did not want to be together. Reading between the lines: a closeted gay male and a woman being excessively pressured to produce a child NOW before getting too old.
At that point, you've created such a highly aberrant social situation that you're guaranteed to get pathological behaviors.
After the community generated such a screwed up situation, it is difficult for me to assign much fault to the couple involved rather than see them both as unfortunate victims.
I may not approve, but I find it difficult to blame.
> So you use the societal pressure that forced you into your situation to keep her from leaving, stealing decades of her life that she could have potentially had with someone who would have made her happier: There is simply no excuse for this.
Why are you assuming that the social pressure that forced them together magically went away and assigning both agency and blame solely to the husband? Why is the community pressure somehow easier to deal with 10 years/15 years/20 years later? The fact that the wife could be browbeaten back into line shows that the community social pressure very much did not decrease or become easier to deal with over time.
Once i realized he was gay and chinese it just read how i expected it would go for most in that situation and time period. I am not gay, traditional, chinese or quite as old (probably i am 15 years younger than the gay dad) but i hope i would pull it off as well as he appears to in that situation. He raised only minorly messed up kids, managed to find a little of what his heart felt was love. Biggest fail was not finding a lesbian in the same situation to pull this off together and avoid the lieing and resentment and pain caused to the other partner from a marriage only known to be a sham to one party.
I wasn't in any way judging the father harshly when I read it. I also read between the lines that there was additionally "traditional Asian culture" as another factor.
I only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union", but I can easily imagine that it was his wife's desire.
A very sad story in general. I lost my mom a few years ago and I suspect I'll go to my grave still very sad about the could-have-beens.
> I only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union",
They might be lead to believe "if only we got married ... if only we had kids ... that will 'fix' it." Even straight couples who aren't in love fall into this trap.
I don't know how well real life imitates art, but a lot of films involving gay historical characters have a similar enough narrative I assume it has some grain of truth: The gay person would rather not be gay (it would be easier for them), and is told by society that it's a choice. Maybe they even have some small amount of feelings for the spouse or think they can "learn to love them." See Rustin 2023 as an example of the psychology in action.
> I'll go to my grave still very sad about the could-have-beens.
Sorry for that. Loss is one of the hardest, most confusing emotions. That lack of closure and the unknown is a truly awful feeling.
Having kids is half the reason (or more) for such marriages, nothing completes the nuclear family picture quite like it. And not like it's easy for gay couples in accepting environments to have kids either, surrogacy is banned in most countries ("liberal" ones too, US is kind of an exception here) and adoption is nigh impossible. Some countries like Italy go as far as selectively making both illegal, but only for gay couples.
I would say many asian parents care very little about the partner, as long as they get their grandkids. A mix of that and "what would society think".
It is a sad story. But I will say that events in my life have really made me regret questioning the decisions of others.
I did things “right” I met my wife right after college, and I loved her dearly. We lived a happy life and have a wonderful son. We lost her a couple of years ago to cancer, followed by my parents and my mother and father in law, all of whom i was incredibly close with.
Yet life carries on. I come from a very traditional ethnic-focused catholic background. I’m not going to be following the standard script. I’m in my 40s, any partner will likely be divorced with their own child(ren). I’m not having more children. Will that partner be compared to my wife? Will I judged if she is too old/young/in a higher/lower status profession?
Reality: everyone has been incredibly supportive of my family and I. But the anxiety is there.
I would just say in looking at the lives of others, try to walk in their shoes. By all accounts the father in the story was not a perfect man. Few of us are. But consider that he was facing certain and complete rejection by his entire world, and he most likely made the choice that he felt was the least bad.
> only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union"
For a lot of people, building a family is a duty you embrace with your household partner. It's why you exist in the first place. It's why you get married and share a home with somebody at all.
Perhaps, if you're lucky, your children are a fruit of love, or perhaps, if you're horny, they're a fruit of passion.
But for a lot for such people, having and raising kids is the entirety of why you get married, and is the rationale for you might not marry for love or passion in the first place.
Marrying the person you're most attracted to or have the most fun with or whose pants you're most eager to get into is a very culturally specific practice and frankly, even where it is an aspiration, its one that a lot of people just don't luck into. But they nonetheless feel an obligation, and even desire, to form and raise a family anyway, and so they march ahead and get it done, hopefully with somebody that they respect as a partner and who reciprocates the same.
At 57, that means he entered university during the early to mid 1980s.
That was peak AIDS phobia (for good reason), and the anti-gay rhetoric was also at its peak.
There was a lot more to lose coming out during those days, beyond just marriage and family cold-shoulders.
By good reason, I mean people were panicked because people didn’t know which activities could spread the virus. Anyone else remember toilet seat fears?
For anyone reading that wasn't around it was very much an irrational hysteria. The bigots latched on to it to spread fear and justify their dehumanization of gay people. There were people that tried to bring reason and science to the conversation but they were drowned out by the panic/bigotry.
There was no good reason for the AIDS phobia in the 80s.
I rarely judge people in these situations (sexuality or whatever the reason, there's a million different way to get stuck in a false life due to social pressure, "weakness" [aren't we all at times?]...)
I'm just floored by the misery most people go through, the misery we inflict on each others... it's not easy to bold, to be free, to be you.
My father had an affair, with a woman. It came to light but remained contained within the family. My parents are still married. The whole situation taught me that life is complicated and sometimes situations that seem morally obvious on the surface can actually be very difficult and have lots of nuance.
When I was a teenager I dated a married man. On paper it's easier to explain "gay dude in a homophobic society" but in reality, he was an asshole and a coward. No empathy for him.
I see his actions as immoral (not as much as most violence) but could seem justified to a person in his circumstances with reasonable moral judgement.
He grew up in a social environment where coming out as gay would make everyone around him sad and angry/ashamed at him. But he was gay, intrinsically. Eventually (possibly because of societal acceptance, possibly because he decided total suppression wasn’t worth it), he secretly broke his traditional relatives and friends’ trust by acting gay. Something most people today see as justified. But he also broke his lovers’ trust by having multiple affairs, something most people today see as unjustified.
A caveat is that he didn’t even confide in his daughter, who is gay; he didn’t file for or allow divorce, to make things easier for his wife; and perhaps he should’ve noticed that, in the changing times, being gay became acceptable but not cheating. Again, I don’t think he was right, and I can imagine a different person in his position handling the moral disconnect better for his family, who I believe he still cared about. But my understanding is that being gay is really taboo in some cultures, and has been in many more even a couple decades ago, so I can understand him being really suspicious and assuming those taboos held more strongly for more people.
In which case to him, doing anything gay was setting up emotional damage to many people, and every affair was just setting up damage to one more person.
He did the best he could with the information he had at the time. Yes, it is sad, and it may even feel more a "selfish" life in many ways in a "modern" society. (I would say "Western" but that would include the retrograde, homophobic dictatorship the US is currently).
"Before you judge the man in this story too harshly"
I will judge him harshly. Instead of getting a divorce, he emotionally abused his wide and child, which probably means therapy for the child for life. He's a selfish asshole, that doesn't think about anyone but himself.
He also could have brought diseases back home to his wife (Just hearing the stories of his selfishness, he would have kept this hidden or not even gotten tested at all).
"The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you."
This is the worst case scenario. He could have gotten a divorce, and lived the life he wanted.
Not to mention the partner who he made move to another country and then still wouldn’t tell anyone about. The more I think about this post the more insanely controlling the guy seems!
Her wife was the first person she told about it, and they are still together, with a daughter.
It was a little weird for me when I found out, but if her wife is OK with it, and they're providing a stable home for their daughter, I don't see an issue with it; not really my business.
The issue is being dishonest, for decades. That's the primary issue. There are always excuses, but living your life with integrity is of the utmost importance.
You can extrapolate this on to anyones life, not just someone with such a huge and dramatic secret they were hiding for the stability of their family life.
If your parents get old/sick or you have kids or a bad relationship or you get stuck in a job or any other myriad life events occur, the weight of your own days can suddenly drain so much time and energy that years fly by. Suddenly you wake up in an aging body and your ideal life seems far away. As I get older I kind of understand the people who just flee their lives. Being saddled with responsibilities you never wanted you are forced into choosing to either strangle your own desires or be perceived as a terrible person for not fulfilling your societal obligations.
And this is why society is going to shit. “Live free, no regrets” has to be one of the most narcissistic memes I’ve ever heard of. If a person commits to a partner and/or a family, they shouldn’t just hit the reset button because they’re bored or upset with how life turned out. Talk to your partner. Tell them the truth. It’s wild that this has to even be said. Obvious caveats for abuse or depression, but come on. Have some grit.
Most recently here, a college junior's wife revealed four months after marriage that she is actually a lesbian (she didn't share it – he caught her in their bedroom with a colleague of hers when he returned home early from the office), and he would be free to do what he wants; she should be too. Hit him hard, but he said they should go for an annulment— out of question; a divorce— out of question. Her point was if she had to do all this, why would she have agreed to a marriage in the first place! It was to get society off her back and her parents.
Well, he filed for divorce, and it resulted in false dowry cases (yes, it's that part of the world), cruelty.. a long list. He was in lock-up for almost a month and a half, his almost 80 father and 70 mother was in a case of beating her up - (they met her exactly once – two days after marriage for a day when they went to his native village and after that they barely even talked to her on phone when they came back to they city they worked in), he lost almost everything he had, and finally, he just broke down in court and, against his lawyer's advice, just told the judge to give her whatever the judge wanted and just grant him a divorce. This was after almost three or four years of struggle. This guy is damaged now. We were in two sports team together in the college. One of the gentlest people I know. He had a minor stroke recently. He has sleeping issues. He is still fighting to just stay alive. It's difficult for him to get jobs because there's police record against him. He worked for a major MNC bank and he was fired summarily.
No, this is not an isolated cruel example of extreme and from the hinterland of the world - this is an example of people fucking others over, mercilessly. No, this is not fighting to stay afloat in the water. It's like kicking someone off the boat because they were closer to the life jacket on the boat by few feet of another available lifeboat that the person could have taken instead. No, it's actually worse!
I am sorry for how the world treated you and him, but no, fuck no! Life fucked him – or could have fucked him, so he gets to fuck others, right? Awesome!
There is another, third perspective one can have on this.
One can both find good reasons and explanations for his behaviour, and at the same time his choices can be judged harshly.
I feel we have to heed the complexity of life and the situations people end in.
Each of us has different tendencies. Some are by nature straight shooters. Others again, overthink a situation and lack the cognitive or emotional intelligence to always arrive at the perfect answer for a situation we are in.
Both things can be true:
Him making a choice that seems inevitable for the situation he is in.
Also can be true, him wasting the life of another person (his wife) and him not seeing it this way. This is a bad deed from her perspective and can remain so.
But consider, for example, that he probably resented her and she was proxy for society’s pressure to confirm. Or, he thought that he gave her what she wanted (kids) and provided for them. In his eyes he paid his dues and got nothing out of it.
He might have realised that if he doesn’t get those small escapes (the affairs), he might not make it. You won’t know the make up of his reward system and his emotional make up.
When she wanted the divorce, his coping behaviours became habit. And he might not have been able to see a way out, or not have had the strength to change his reward seeking habits.
We also don’t exactly hear how he died in detail.
Im am not excusing him, but I am trying to be devil’s advocate to your absolutist stance, to provide a counterweight.
why was the divorce so hard for him? In that society, they just don't let you get divorced unless both parties agree to it? And with the evidence he had of her being a lesbian, does that mean nothing? What is even the point of divorce in that society?
That is quite the judgement of a person you've never known, based solely on the view of one person's brief writing processing a deeply emotional experience.
From reading both posts, there's a few things that come to my mind:
- It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post.
- I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a violation. Even though they have passed, the people around them are very much alive.
- We can't makes guesses at what a person truly values, neither positively nor negatively. What can be seen as promiscuity can also be seen as seeking validation, human motives and emotions exist in the grey area.
- This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age. They lived as a type of outsider in school, work, and their daily norms. The integrity of their actions shouldn't be evaluated against our own values which were likely built from a different life experience.
- It's ok not knowing or judging. One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
I agree with all of what you say, and while I thought the author was very good, I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness. For the same reason that no one can ever know what's inside another person's mind, much less a child understand their parents.
> I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
In the process of grieving, when the emotions are at their rawest, it is difficult to not have knee-jerk reactions to the emotions that are piling-up fast and strong.
Except for that very slip, I actually found the piece impressively objective, level-headed, compassionate and open-minded.
I think she absolutely has a right to her judgment. She clearly has empathy for her father, but the rest of her family also suffered--greatly, it seems--from how he went about his life.
She wrote most of it centered on his perspective (as she understands it). And if you take that line as such, then you're right. I took that line as bringing another perspective to show the damage he caused. She has a lot to unpack and showing those conflicts demonstrated it.
> I think calling him a coward was an unnecessary stroke of vanity and bitterness.
I think given that the writer, who lived in the same culture with the same dangers and expectations, decided to accept the risks by coming out, I don't think it's vanity. They did what their father was too afraid to do.
It is absolutely bitterness, but I don't think you're in any position to judge the appropriate level of bitterness for a child to have towards their deadbeat parent.
He was so afraid of coming out that he FORCED his wife to never divorce him and kept a lover on the side while cheating on him as well with multiple partners at the heights of the AIDS epidemic while lying to him that they had a future that he was too scared to ever make a reality. If that's not a coward, then I don't think you and I can agree on very simple definitions of words like "coward".
For those reasons, I won't even look for such letters when my parents die. I will take a photo or two. There are of course reasons to dig in the past, but that should be done cautiously, not for sensation, and even then under the condition that we only know a little and may not understand. The past is past. Nothing you learn can change it, but it can seriously fuck up your future.
> One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance"
Here's a funny thing, what I got from that story was that it must have been a hard and sad life for the dad, probably the mom, and especially a horrifying discovery for the mom. These are not judgments, but tidbits of empathy and sadness for all the parties involved. I didn't have to force myself into that, probably because it didn't clash with my personality or values.
If something made you tick and you want to condemn one of the people in the story, I'm wondering if forcing your brain into "accepting" would make any difference. The real question is what you feel for the other person. I think it might come out as a judgment if it clashes with your actual values and personality. If you don't recognize yourself and would have had a different approach, you might have a negative outlook on the people in the story.
I'm extremely lucky to be a straight dude in the progressive society of today's. Had I been a gay guy in the traditional Chinese culture of the 80s, I'd probably have had the same life as that dad, and employ some of the same strategies. So it's easy for me not to judge. But some people are more upfront, active, liberated, and for them it might be harder not to judge ; and I think that's fine.
Your comment about not judging their integrity because they had different life experiences... that doesnt make sense to me. Integrity is absolute, you dont get slack on your integrity because you were dealt a bad hand.
That being said, we ought not to judge anyway
> I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a violation. Even though they have passed, the people around them are very much alive.
Absolutely. A person's right to privacy doesn't die with them.
I'm a dad too, and I'm in a somewhat similar situation. My son is under five, and it feels like I'm still at the very beginning of his story. I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path. It felt easier to stay closeted. Easier to date a woman. Easier to move in together, propose, get married, and even have a child than to face my truth.
I love my wife and my son, and I feel loved by them in return, but I'm also painfully aware that the version of me they love is someone I constructed. I lie constantly: about why I don't want sex, about my affairs, about my feelings, about my motivations. No one really knows me, and I don't get to be myself, not even in the relationships where I should feel safest.
I've read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and other similar books, and I'm trying to build the courage to finally do something about all of this. It's incredibly difficult. But I refuse to use my son as an excuse to keep postponing coming out. This blog has pushed me even further in that direction.
They'll be angry (well at least my wife). Their lives will be upended. But at least they'll have the chance to ask questions, to understand. They'll see me taking responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and maybe just maybe, in some way, that clarity will be a relief for all of us.
I'm straight and love my wife of 44 years. But I long ago made the thought experiment of what would happen if she were in the same kind of situation you were in: what if she decided I was a mistake, or that being in a relation with a man was a mistake, and that she needed to do something else. I decided that would require I support her in that. How can you love someone and not want what is best for them, even if that has a cost?
I don't know your wife, and I don't know if she would feel the same way. Maybe she would?
I can relate to this probably the most out of everything I've seen on HN so far. My fiancee is pansexual and overall seems to prefer women, so I surely am quite a bit of a surprise in her life (to the point where her family laughed at the fact that I 'fixed her' the first time I met them...) as a straight man. I know she loves me, I love her with all my heart but I am aware that at some point she may want to change me for someone of the opposite sex. I have therefore decided that as long as this does not happen behind my back I will support her, even if that means I have to endure a lot of pain.
Lots of judgment all over this thread. I vote more of us listen to anecdotes like this one here, from someone whose long and successful relationship is based on wanting the best for someone else--who they recognize as human and fallible--even when that means change.
If you want marriage to mean that your partner will never change, or that the 100% match on the inside what you think they are looking from the outside, you're gonna have a hard time. This discussion is just further down the continuum than most.
(Exceptions made for arranged marriages and the like; the primary purpose there isn't romantic love-based companionship, so there isn't a pretense to shatter.)
I think this is a good example of how lying can affect one's autonomy (though I don't remotely hold that as an absolute principle). In the ideal exercise of love, I agree with your claim. I don't think it's dismantled in practice, but I think it is weaker. The spouse fell in love with "someone", but it turns out it's just a dummy of the other spouse. To some extent, probably everyone only loves or even perceives imperfect images of others, but this takes it a step further. I think this is somewhat different from supporting a disabled/ill spouse, because that condition arose through no fault of anyone (presumably). I think this is also different from a spouse, sometime into the marriage, realizing a different romantic/sexual orientation, because no one could've known at the time of marriage (presumably).
I'll add another scenario like this would be if ones partner had an egg-breaking epiphany and decided they needed to transition. And my personal conclusion would be the same.
I know it may seem like the hardest thing ever - but you are doing the right thing. Come out, end the sham, start to heal. Otherwise you are in for a life of pain. I'm not gay but I'm divorced and whatever the reason for the divorce, it is always hard. But it's so much better afterwards, rather than living in a lie of a relationship.
Do what’s best for your son. There’s nothing that will overcome that guilt. Not saying what’s best for your son is for you to reveal the truth now or later. That’s entirely situational and only you know.
I don't think it's fair to consider only the son in this. I'd say do what's best for both your son and your wife. And to me that's pretty clearly telling his wife the truth here.
I think this is right. Many parents could think of choosing to opt out because raising a family can be difficult sometimes, but it’s a responsibility people have taken. Take it seriously. It’s a bit chicken to say “I’m out” whatever the reason. See them through their formative years then do your thing.
The kid will be fine. Couples separate or get divorced all the time for all kinds of reasons. “I have two loving parents who are now separated” doesn’t appear on the shortlist of bad things that can happen to kids.
> I've known I was gay since high school, probably even earlier, but I kept choosing whatever seemed like the easiest path.
Just so you know, you're not alone here. Mine was a bit different (gender related) but the causes are essentially the same: I just kept choosing whatever path was easiest instead of facing what I was actually feeling. It made me fabulously "successful" at life and I had everything that you would expect to come along: wife, kid, big house, fancy job. It's a hard feeling to reconcile - being so successful in what most of society would say you should be ... and yet still so miserable.
> the version of me they love is someone I constructed
It's also possible they love you because you are someone who can love them, even though it doesn't feel quite right. You're there for them.
I don't have the full picture, but thinking they don't love the real you seems simplistic. You're the sum of all parts and layers, not just what you consider core feelings. We're all putting on facades.
Try to do it peacefully, and keep good relations. That may require a lot of preparation, time, and emotional dealing, but you're weighing your struggle with your history against two lives. It may also be in your interest, because a fighting divorce may end with you not seeing your son. That's a price I consider too high.
Since you took this path, I'd suggest you not have affairs while married. Either divorce now or consider waiting 10 years while your son really needs you.
Yeah if you wanna be closeted, fine - live like it then. Otherwise it proves getting your dick wet is actually more important to you than the wife and child you claim to love.
I'm pretty certain that children are quite perceptive, and will sense an unease that something is not quite right at home. It would be a service to them to put something concrete to that unease.
If it’s any comfort, no one ever truly knows who you are, even if you wanted to be totally honest.
Everyone has a version of you they’ve constructed, no one has your entire perspective on your life and access to your inner thoughts, and even if they did they would forget or misinterpret details.
Don’t chase a desire to have people know the real you, they never will. Even if you had a new gay lover just because they know you’re gay doesn’t mean they know the real you.
And sometimes people don’t even know their own real self.
I would say moat pekple dont know their own selves well. People like to pretend that Identity is self determined, but I think identity is likely more accurately observed by 3rd parties
Have you considered that it doesn't have to mean the end of your family? It's possible that there's no arrangement that meets everybody's needs. But, maybe there is.
Consider finding a therapist and quality couples counselor to help you navigate the necessary rupture as you take steps towards honesty and clarity in your relationships
"If you're going to pretend to be someone, why not pretend to be someone who doesn't hit on the cocktail waitress when he's away from his family?"
Edit: found the exact quote:
> "I feel like I am playing a part, that I'm in a role. It doesn't feel real."
> Instead of trying to stop playing a role-- again, a move whose aim is your happiness-- try playing a different role whose aim is someone else's happiness. Why not play the part of the happy husband of three kids? Why not pretend to be devoted to your family to the exclusion of other things? Why not play the part of the man who isn't tempted to sleep with the woman at the airport bar?
> "But that's dishonest, I'd be lying to myself." Your kids will not know to ask: so?
> The narcissist demands absolutism in all things-- relative to himself.
Even if your wife never manages to forgive you for what happened, I think there might be a much stronger chance than you might realize that you eventually have a much more meaningful relationship with your son by being your true self with him. He's young enough that in a lot of ways, the version of you he loves might not really be based that much on the construction you describe as much as the fact that he knows you love him and the experiences you share (and will hopefully continue to share) together. I think it's more likely that continuing to repress how you feel for years to come will take an emotional toll on you that makes it harder to be able to truly emotionally connect with him at the level you'd like than the fallout of revealing the truth sooner.
For what it's worth, you also may be surprised about how willing even your wife is to accept this. I obviously don't know anything about your situation, and there's any number of things that can influence how loved ones react to something like this, but I have direct knowledge of a situation fairly similar to yours that turned out quite well; my aunt on my father's side has only one child, a daughter from her first husband, who ended up coming out as gay at some point when my cousin was fairly young. They divorced, and from what I'm aware of, continued to co-parent civilly, and my cousin would spent time with each of them during holidays (e.g. she's always spent Christmas Eve with my aunt and our grandparents and Christmas Day with her father). Almost thirty years later, both my aunt and uncle have been remarried happily for years, and nobody cares that my uncle happens to be gay. If anything, I have to assume that literally everyone is much happier in the current situation than they would be if things had gone differently and he had never come out. I don't pretend that any of us can know how things will turn out for you and your family whichever path you choose, but I truly think that if you decide to tell the truth, you'll be giving all three of you the best chance at happiness in the long run.
Do you plan to find a new relationship after you break up with your wife? Is the desire to come out because of that or because you just want to stop lying to them and be honest about who you are? I will just say that if you have a good relationship with your wife and child, perhaps it’s worth it keeping things to yourself until your son is out of the house. If you leave them, you might find yourself in terrible relationships for a long time, or you may strike luck. But as someone who never managed to have a good relationship and family I wish I had a wife who actually wants sex and children and if I had that I would never leave even if I had to sacrifice a lot. But I do want that, maybe you never really did!?
Writing, journaling, is such a good way to process thoughts and emotions and this is a great example. I'm grateful for this person sharing her very personal journal entries with us even though it is not required at all. It sets a great example of what to write about and how. It also reveals that people and the lives they live are incredibly complicated and messy. The longer I live and the more people I get to know the more I believe that nobody is as simple and "good" as they seem on the surface. If your life has been simple and relatively pain free up to this point, just wait, and try not to judge others in situations more difficult and complicated than yours too harshly. There is much you do not yet know.
I love all the unexpected twists in this. And it’s very beautifully written and sobering.
> the most important thing was to find xin fu in life, not to live your life in accordance to the expectations of anyone else
That is why I write all of my code in uncommented C. Your expectation of a maintainable program that doesn’t segfault all the time is just your expectation.
> he wasted his entire life, my mom said
In some ways, she did too by listening to her mother and not just getting divorced as she had wanted to. But I recognize that going against your family’s core beliefs is easier said than done.
The author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life. He didn't have to live with his wife much. He liked the idea of having a daughter.
Given the hand he was dealt it's a pretty good outcome for himself. Grossly selfish, but not a waste for himself.
Some don’t fully understand that the universe does not owe you any camaraderie in your affairs. Not even a small mouse to talk to. Many live the same paths we live entirely alone. While life took from her a real romance, it did not take from her partnership. Friends along your travels is not guaranteed, neither are best friends, or the bestest of best friends. Make do, seriously.
This, I do think parents have a right to secrecy. Kids don't have to know everything.
Even the idea that our partners/spouses/SO should know everything about us is waaaay too extreme. I think that as long as we love and don't hurt each others and we respect the rules we set between each others it is ok to keep some things secrets.
From what I understand from the author's post, the whole marriage was a big lie to begin with so it is not like authors parents really loved each others. While we can criticize his father for not accepting divorce and thus allowing his mother to rebuild a life, we can hardly call him cheating. And I don't think kids have a right to know everything. I know my parents have had at least one major crisis when I was a kid without knowing the specifics but I have no right nor need to know why. It was between them.
A lot of couples only stay married because it is easier from an organisationnal, social and economic point of view than divorcing anyway.
> The author may be unduly harsh on her father. He got to be publicly married and have a private gay life.
If his wife had been content in a low-intimacy marriage, then that would be one thing. Some people are -- they have security, they have children, they have approval of their family, they're fine.
But his wife wasn't -- she wanted to end the marriage, to try to find romantic, sexual, and relational intimacy elsewhere. And he actively guilt-tripped her into staying with him, multiple times.
He got to experience romantic and sexual intimacy the way he wanted, while preventing his wife from doing the same. He stole decades of the prime of her life from her. There is simply no justification for that.
Sometimes people use "waste" in the sense of "spent selfishly/frivolously." I enjoy evenings spent with prestige television and a tub of ice cream but, past a certain point, it's definitely a waste of time, especially if I have commitments to other people.
Is the capitalization of the quote your own doing or was it displayed like it for you?
There isn't a single uppercase letter when I open the article, it's impossible to me to read it because it feel like a single sentence and I can't breathe
The author obviously has this as an acquired habit or affectation, possibly for stylistic reasons. It's interesting that some people can read this just as well as normal prose, but to others it feels as if someone is pouring sand all over their well-oiled gears. I gave up after a paragraph as well.
I fully support people writing in whatever way pleases them, but for broadly accessible article length text capitalisation is a must in English. Not because it is 'correct', but because many readers rely on capitalisation.
It doesn't improve readability for sure but for me it comes across way worse as "I don't have time for this, deal with it" because all of the people I know doing that are self-important executives.
English is a second language for me and I feel really bad when I impose a grammar mistake or a badly put together sentence to my readers!
So for me pushing that on purpose is borderline insulting to the reader ie. suffer so I don't have to press the shift key, this extra effort is below me.
The lower case "I" stands out very much in reading it as a self-annihilating affectation.
However, the sentences are well formed. If you really want to lose your breath, try "The Autumn of the Patriarch" by Marquez. You really won't be able to put it down.
It's interesting to me that you had such difficulty, and it makes me wonder how old you are. Growing up using instant messengers on the internet in the '90s and early '00s, it was normal to type without ever using capital letters, except for emphasis. The only thing that changes that style is when someone is typing on a phone that capitalizes for them (though one friend manually undoes those "corrections").
Wow, driven to a lifetime of harmful decisions by an extremely regressive society. Would he have settled down and been faithful if he could have started off right in his teens, open and truthful and honest? Lies become a habit and I’ve known others who couldn’t break themselves of the cheating/lying habit and lost whole friend groups for it.
Readit News
I’ve been this dad who sits frozen at the TV every evening. I had the affairs with the emotionally unavailable men, and became one myself.
Before you judge the man in this story too harshly — and there’s certainly much to judge, especially given the follow-up post — consider the environment he and I grew up in. Being gay as a young teenager in the early 1990s could feel literally like a death sentence. AIDS panic was everywhere. Gay men in movies were comedy sidekicks or dying wrecks (“Philadelphia”). There was a real threat of violence from other kids. If you could pass as straight, why wouldn’t you give it your best shot? The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you. (This is literally how I imagined gay life at age 13.)
I still feel like I’m barely getting started on the therapy journey to recover from those decades. Seems like the man in the story never had the chance for professional help (or didn’t seek it). The compartmentalization can be extremely taxing. He disappointed many people, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
- Getting married under societal pressure even when you're pretty sure you're gay: I'm willing to cut him some slack on this.
- Having gay affairs while you're married: It puts your wife at risk of disease, but OK, you've been placed in a messed up, lose-lose situation.
- Telling a lover you want to be exclusive, and getting him to move to a completely new country, stringing him along with the idea that someday you'll leave your wife and live with him, when in fact you intend neither to leave your wife nor to be exclusive: Uuh, OK, that's actually pretty bad.
- You know your wife wants to start a new life with someone else. But that would make it harder to hide your current life. So you use the societal pressure that forced you into your situation to keep her from leaving, stealing decades of her life that she could have potentially had with someone who would have made her happier: There is simply no excuse for this.
The fault is here:
> my parents were not a love match. at 27 and 26, they were embarrassingly old by the standards of their small chinese port town. all four of my grandparents exerted enormous pressure to force them together.
You have an entire community that exerted enough social pressure to force two people together by fiat who clearly did not want to be together. Reading between the lines: a closeted gay male and a woman being excessively pressured to produce a child NOW before getting too old.
At that point, you've created such a highly aberrant social situation that you're guaranteed to get pathological behaviors.
After the community generated such a screwed up situation, it is difficult for me to assign much fault to the couple involved rather than see them both as unfortunate victims.
I may not approve, but I find it difficult to blame.
> So you use the societal pressure that forced you into your situation to keep her from leaving, stealing decades of her life that she could have potentially had with someone who would have made her happier: There is simply no excuse for this.
Why are you assuming that the social pressure that forced them together magically went away and assigning both agency and blame solely to the husband? Why is the community pressure somehow easier to deal with 10 years/15 years/20 years later? The fact that the wife could be browbeaten back into line shows that the community social pressure very much did not decrease or become easier to deal with over time.
In what world is this ever "OK"?
I only questioned why he would have brought kids into the "union", but I can easily imagine that it was his wife's desire.
A very sad story in general. I lost my mom a few years ago and I suspect I'll go to my grave still very sad about the could-have-beens.
They might be lead to believe "if only we got married ... if only we had kids ... that will 'fix' it." Even straight couples who aren't in love fall into this trap.
I don't know how well real life imitates art, but a lot of films involving gay historical characters have a similar enough narrative I assume it has some grain of truth: The gay person would rather not be gay (it would be easier for them), and is told by society that it's a choice. Maybe they even have some small amount of feelings for the spouse or think they can "learn to love them." See Rustin 2023 as an example of the psychology in action.
> I'll go to my grave still very sad about the could-have-beens.
Sorry for that. Loss is one of the hardest, most confusing emotions. That lack of closure and the unknown is a truly awful feeling.
I would say many asian parents care very little about the partner, as long as they get their grandkids. A mix of that and "what would society think".
I did things “right” I met my wife right after college, and I loved her dearly. We lived a happy life and have a wonderful son. We lost her a couple of years ago to cancer, followed by my parents and my mother and father in law, all of whom i was incredibly close with.
Yet life carries on. I come from a very traditional ethnic-focused catholic background. I’m not going to be following the standard script. I’m in my 40s, any partner will likely be divorced with their own child(ren). I’m not having more children. Will that partner be compared to my wife? Will I judged if she is too old/young/in a higher/lower status profession?
Reality: everyone has been incredibly supportive of my family and I. But the anxiety is there.
I would just say in looking at the lives of others, try to walk in their shoes. By all accounts the father in the story was not a perfect man. Few of us are. But consider that he was facing certain and complete rejection by his entire world, and he most likely made the choice that he felt was the least bad.
For a lot of people, building a family is a duty you embrace with your household partner. It's why you exist in the first place. It's why you get married and share a home with somebody at all.
Perhaps, if you're lucky, your children are a fruit of love, or perhaps, if you're horny, they're a fruit of passion.
But for a lot for such people, having and raising kids is the entirety of why you get married, and is the rationale for you might not marry for love or passion in the first place.
Marrying the person you're most attracted to or have the most fun with or whose pants you're most eager to get into is a very culturally specific practice and frankly, even where it is an aspiration, its one that a lot of people just don't luck into. But they nonetheless feel an obligation, and even desire, to form and raise a family anyway, and so they march ahead and get it done, hopefully with somebody that they respect as a partner and who reciprocates the same.
That was peak AIDS phobia (for good reason), and the anti-gay rhetoric was also at its peak.
There was a lot more to lose coming out during those days, beyond just marriage and family cold-shoulders.
By good reason, I mean people were panicked because people didn’t know which activities could spread the virus. Anyone else remember toilet seat fears?
But I don't think you meant it that way.
For anyone reading that wasn't around it was very much an irrational hysteria. The bigots latched on to it to spread fear and justify their dehumanization of gay people. There were people that tried to bring reason and science to the conversation but they were drowned out by the panic/bigotry.
There was no good reason for the AIDS phobia in the 80s.
I'm just floored by the misery most people go through, the misery we inflict on each others... it's not easy to bold, to be free, to be you.
When I was a teenager I dated a married man. On paper it's easier to explain "gay dude in a homophobic society" but in reality, he was an asshole and a coward. No empathy for him.
People will try to explain away all kinds of behaviors that violate trust a la "they'll never find out..."
He grew up in a social environment where coming out as gay would make everyone around him sad and angry/ashamed at him. But he was gay, intrinsically. Eventually (possibly because of societal acceptance, possibly because he decided total suppression wasn’t worth it), he secretly broke his traditional relatives and friends’ trust by acting gay. Something most people today see as justified. But he also broke his lovers’ trust by having multiple affairs, something most people today see as unjustified.
A caveat is that he didn’t even confide in his daughter, who is gay; he didn’t file for or allow divorce, to make things easier for his wife; and perhaps he should’ve noticed that, in the changing times, being gay became acceptable but not cheating. Again, I don’t think he was right, and I can imagine a different person in his position handling the moral disconnect better for his family, who I believe he still cared about. But my understanding is that being gay is really taboo in some cultures, and has been in many more even a couple decades ago, so I can understand him being really suspicious and assuming those taboos held more strongly for more people.
In which case to him, doing anything gay was setting up emotional damage to many people, and every affair was just setting up damage to one more person.
That's the good case. The bad case would be he would lose his job, and be forced into poverty.
I can’t really get into his fiction, but the diaries are astounding.
He gave them to his son to read and publish posthumously.
I will judge him harshly. Instead of getting a divorce, he emotionally abused his wide and child, which probably means therapy for the child for life. He's a selfish asshole, that doesn't think about anyone but himself.
He also could have brought diseases back home to his wife (Just hearing the stories of his selfishness, he would have kept this hidden or not even gotten tested at all).
"The alternative was to be a laughing stock and die alone in a hospital where nurses don’t dare touch you."
This is the worst case scenario. He could have gotten a divorce, and lived the life he wanted.
This guy deserves zero sympathy.
One of my relatives is an MtF transwoman now.
Her wife was the first person she told about it, and they are still together, with a daughter.
It was a little weird for me when I found out, but if her wife is OK with it, and they're providing a stable home for their daughter, I don't see an issue with it; not really my business.
The issue is being dishonest, for decades. That's the primary issue. There are always excuses, but living your life with integrity is of the utmost importance.
If your parents get old/sick or you have kids or a bad relationship or you get stuck in a job or any other myriad life events occur, the weight of your own days can suddenly drain so much time and energy that years fly by. Suddenly you wake up in an aging body and your ideal life seems far away. As I get older I kind of understand the people who just flee their lives. Being saddled with responsibilities you never wanted you are forced into choosing to either strangle your own desires or be perceived as a terrible person for not fulfilling your societal obligations.
Most recently here, a college junior's wife revealed four months after marriage that she is actually a lesbian (she didn't share it – he caught her in their bedroom with a colleague of hers when he returned home early from the office), and he would be free to do what he wants; she should be too. Hit him hard, but he said they should go for an annulment— out of question; a divorce— out of question. Her point was if she had to do all this, why would she have agreed to a marriage in the first place! It was to get society off her back and her parents.
Well, he filed for divorce, and it resulted in false dowry cases (yes, it's that part of the world), cruelty.. a long list. He was in lock-up for almost a month and a half, his almost 80 father and 70 mother was in a case of beating her up - (they met her exactly once – two days after marriage for a day when they went to his native village and after that they barely even talked to her on phone when they came back to they city they worked in), he lost almost everything he had, and finally, he just broke down in court and, against his lawyer's advice, just told the judge to give her whatever the judge wanted and just grant him a divorce. This was after almost three or four years of struggle. This guy is damaged now. We were in two sports team together in the college. One of the gentlest people I know. He had a minor stroke recently. He has sleeping issues. He is still fighting to just stay alive. It's difficult for him to get jobs because there's police record against him. He worked for a major MNC bank and he was fired summarily.
No, this is not an isolated cruel example of extreme and from the hinterland of the world - this is an example of people fucking others over, mercilessly. No, this is not fighting to stay afloat in the water. It's like kicking someone off the boat because they were closer to the life jacket on the boat by few feet of another available lifeboat that the person could have taken instead. No, it's actually worse!
I am sorry for how the world treated you and him, but no, fuck no! Life fucked him – or could have fucked him, so he gets to fuck others, right? Awesome!
> but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person.
No, he is a bad person! Ffs.
One can both find good reasons and explanations for his behaviour, and at the same time his choices can be judged harshly.
I feel we have to heed the complexity of life and the situations people end in.
Each of us has different tendencies. Some are by nature straight shooters. Others again, overthink a situation and lack the cognitive or emotional intelligence to always arrive at the perfect answer for a situation we are in.
Both things can be true:
Him making a choice that seems inevitable for the situation he is in.
Also can be true, him wasting the life of another person (his wife) and him not seeing it this way. This is a bad deed from her perspective and can remain so.
But consider, for example, that he probably resented her and she was proxy for society’s pressure to confirm. Or, he thought that he gave her what she wanted (kids) and provided for them. In his eyes he paid his dues and got nothing out of it.
He might have realised that if he doesn’t get those small escapes (the affairs), he might not make it. You won’t know the make up of his reward system and his emotional make up.
When she wanted the divorce, his coping behaviours became habit. And he might not have been able to see a way out, or not have had the strength to change his reward seeking habits.
We also don’t exactly hear how he died in detail.
Im am not excusing him, but I am trying to be devil’s advocate to your absolutist stance, to provide a counterweight.
why was the divorce so hard for him? In that society, they just don't let you get divorced unless both parties agree to it? And with the evidence he had of her being a lesbian, does that mean nothing? What is even the point of divorce in that society?
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So I vote for bad system, not bad people.
That is quite the judgement of a person you've never known, based solely on the view of one person's brief writing processing a deeply emotional experience.
Your judgement reflects poorly on you.
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times change, people can too and should take responsibility for themselves
- It seems this is how the author is processing her father's passing, and it's not really up to us to make moral calls on the content of the posts. They are thoughts with gaps of missing context against a real life of highs and lows which is not readily condensed into a blog post.
- I'm peering into the life of a private person, that feels like a violation. Even though they have passed, the people around them are very much alive.
- We can't makes guesses at what a person truly values, neither positively nor negatively. What can be seen as promiscuity can also be seen as seeking validation, human motives and emotions exist in the grey area.
- This is a person who was deprived of the sort of genuine sexual and emotional attention that we take for granted from puberty age. They lived as a type of outsider in school, work, and their daily norms. The integrity of their actions shouldn't be evaluated against our own values which were likely built from a different life experience.
- It's ok not knowing or judging. One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance" when reviewing these sorts of life matters.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
In the process of grieving, when the emotions are at their rawest, it is difficult to not have knee-jerk reactions to the emotions that are piling-up fast and strong.
Except for that very slip, I actually found the piece impressively objective, level-headed, compassionate and open-minded.
I think given that the writer, who lived in the same culture with the same dangers and expectations, decided to accept the risks by coming out, I don't think it's vanity. They did what their father was too afraid to do.
It is absolutely bitterness, but I don't think you're in any position to judge the appropriate level of bitterness for a child to have towards their deadbeat parent.
> One has to practice a type of "radical acceptance"
Here's a funny thing, what I got from that story was that it must have been a hard and sad life for the dad, probably the mom, and especially a horrifying discovery for the mom. These are not judgments, but tidbits of empathy and sadness for all the parties involved. I didn't have to force myself into that, probably because it didn't clash with my personality or values.
If something made you tick and you want to condemn one of the people in the story, I'm wondering if forcing your brain into "accepting" would make any difference. The real question is what you feel for the other person. I think it might come out as a judgment if it clashes with your actual values and personality. If you don't recognize yourself and would have had a different approach, you might have a negative outlook on the people in the story.
I'm extremely lucky to be a straight dude in the progressive society of today's. Had I been a gay guy in the traditional Chinese culture of the 80s, I'd probably have had the same life as that dad, and employ some of the same strategies. So it's easy for me not to judge. But some people are more upfront, active, liberated, and for them it might be harder not to judge ; and I think that's fine.
Absolutely. A person's right to privacy doesn't die with them.
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I love my wife and my son, and I feel loved by them in return, but I'm also painfully aware that the version of me they love is someone I constructed. I lie constantly: about why I don't want sex, about my affairs, about my feelings, about my motivations. No one really knows me, and I don't get to be myself, not even in the relationships where I should feel safest.
I've read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and other similar books, and I'm trying to build the courage to finally do something about all of this. It's incredibly difficult. But I refuse to use my son as an excuse to keep postponing coming out. This blog has pushed me even further in that direction.
They'll be angry (well at least my wife). Their lives will be upended. But at least they'll have the chance to ask questions, to understand. They'll see me taking responsibility for the consequences of my choices, and maybe just maybe, in some way, that clarity will be a relief for all of us.
I don't know your wife, and I don't know if she would feel the same way. Maybe she would?
If you want marriage to mean that your partner will never change, or that the 100% match on the inside what you think they are looking from the outside, you're gonna have a hard time. This discussion is just further down the continuum than most.
(Exceptions made for arranged marriages and the like; the primary purpose there isn't romantic love-based companionship, so there isn't a pretense to shatter.)
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Just so you know, you're not alone here. Mine was a bit different (gender related) but the causes are essentially the same: I just kept choosing whatever path was easiest instead of facing what I was actually feeling. It made me fabulously "successful" at life and I had everything that you would expect to come along: wife, kid, big house, fancy job. It's a hard feeling to reconcile - being so successful in what most of society would say you should be ... and yet still so miserable.
So, I see you. <3
It's also possible they love you because you are someone who can love them, even though it doesn't feel quite right. You're there for them.
I don't have the full picture, but thinking they don't love the real you seems simplistic. You're the sum of all parts and layers, not just what you consider core feelings. We're all putting on facades.
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I feel like the author of this post would have benefited from those letters. Maybe your kids would too.
Everyone has a version of you they’ve constructed, no one has your entire perspective on your life and access to your inner thoughts, and even if they did they would forget or misinterpret details.
Don’t chase a desire to have people know the real you, they never will. Even if you had a new gay lover just because they know you’re gay doesn’t mean they know the real you.
And sometimes people don’t even know their own real self.
Good on you for recognizing it and taking steps, there is lots of support around if you need it
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"If you're going to pretend to be someone, why not pretend to be someone who doesn't hit on the cocktail waitress when he's away from his family?"
Edit: found the exact quote:
> "I feel like I am playing a part, that I'm in a role. It doesn't feel real."
> Instead of trying to stop playing a role-- again, a move whose aim is your happiness-- try playing a different role whose aim is someone else's happiness. Why not play the part of the happy husband of three kids? Why not pretend to be devoted to your family to the exclusion of other things? Why not play the part of the man who isn't tempted to sleep with the woman at the airport bar?
> "But that's dishonest, I'd be lying to myself." Your kids will not know to ask: so?
> The narcissist demands absolutism in all things-- relative to himself.
From this article:
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/01/can_narcissism_be_cu...
Note that I am not accusing you of being a narcissist, merely saying that you may find this blog very interesting.
For what it's worth, you also may be surprised about how willing even your wife is to accept this. I obviously don't know anything about your situation, and there's any number of things that can influence how loved ones react to something like this, but I have direct knowledge of a situation fairly similar to yours that turned out quite well; my aunt on my father's side has only one child, a daughter from her first husband, who ended up coming out as gay at some point when my cousin was fairly young. They divorced, and from what I'm aware of, continued to co-parent civilly, and my cousin would spent time with each of them during holidays (e.g. she's always spent Christmas Eve with my aunt and our grandparents and Christmas Day with her father). Almost thirty years later, both my aunt and uncle have been remarried happily for years, and nobody cares that my uncle happens to be gay. If anything, I have to assume that literally everyone is much happier in the current situation than they would be if things had gone differently and he had never come out. I don't pretend that any of us can know how things will turn out for you and your family whichever path you choose, but I truly think that if you decide to tell the truth, you'll be giving all three of you the best chance at happiness in the long run.
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https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
Edit: Oh my goodness didn’t realize this was the same Dad from: https://jenn.site/my-dad-could-still-be-alive-but-hes-not/
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This is writing about a real person. I certainly hope you don't see yourself as so one dimensional, why should others be?
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> the most important thing was to find xin fu in life, not to live your life in accordance to the expectations of anyone else
That is why I write all of my code in uncommented C. Your expectation of a maintainable program that doesn’t segfault all the time is just your expectation.
> he wasted his entire life, my mom said
In some ways, she did too by listening to her mother and not just getting divorced as she had wanted to. But I recognize that going against your family’s core beliefs is easier said than done.
That it is any other way is just something we tell ourselves to try to provide more foresight or potential meaning than is really available.
What a burden of expectations to lay on both yourself & your own family.
I’m glad the author was able to put those aside & live her own life more authentically than her father did.
Given the hand he was dealt it's a pretty good outcome for himself. Grossly selfish, but not a waste for himself.
Even the idea that our partners/spouses/SO should know everything about us is waaaay too extreme. I think that as long as we love and don't hurt each others and we respect the rules we set between each others it is ok to keep some things secrets.
From what I understand from the author's post, the whole marriage was a big lie to begin with so it is not like authors parents really loved each others. While we can criticize his father for not accepting divorce and thus allowing his mother to rebuild a life, we can hardly call him cheating. And I don't think kids have a right to know everything. I know my parents have had at least one major crisis when I was a kid without knowing the specifics but I have no right nor need to know why. It was between them.
A lot of couples only stay married because it is easier from an organisationnal, social and economic point of view than divorcing anyway.
If his wife had been content in a low-intimacy marriage, then that would be one thing. Some people are -- they have security, they have children, they have approval of their family, they're fine.
But his wife wasn't -- she wanted to end the marriage, to try to find romantic, sexual, and relational intimacy elsewhere. And he actively guilt-tripped her into staying with him, multiple times.
He got to experience romantic and sexual intimacy the way he wanted, while preventing his wife from doing the same. He stole decades of the prime of her life from her. There is simply no justification for that.
There isn't a single uppercase letter when I open the article, it's impossible to me to read it because it feel like a single sentence and I can't breathe
I fully support people writing in whatever way pleases them, but for broadly accessible article length text capitalisation is a must in English. Not because it is 'correct', but because many readers rely on capitalisation.
English is a second language for me and I feel really bad when I impose a grammar mistake or a badly put together sentence to my readers!
So for me pushing that on purpose is borderline insulting to the reader ie. suffer so I don't have to press the shift key, this extra effort is below me.
However, the sentences are well formed. If you really want to lose your breath, try "The Autumn of the Patriarch" by Marquez. You really won't be able to put it down.
https://www.jenn.site/my-dead-deadbeat-gay-dad/
https://www.jenn.site/dissolution/