In all the years we’d been married, I’d never had guilt over my attraction towards women. I figured, for the most part, it just added depth and complexity to who I was…to who I had been and still could be. But that chapter had been closed, and I was firmly planted in the “good” zone. I was married…to a man…and really didn’t find myself attracted to anyone else for most of the years we were married. I just didn’t think about it anymore. I thought I was “cured.”
There were times that Anthony brought up the subject of my past sexual encounters with a woman, and I enjoyed the added mystique it gave me in his eyes. He had wanted to know the gritty details but even though time had long since passed, I couldn’t bring myself to bastardize the experiences in that way. They meant something to me. They were rich and beautiful and excruciatingly vulnerable to me, and I did not want to lay my heart out on the street to be raped. Even with Anthony–my husband–I felt that detailing my experience would have broken something in me. Anyway, I only had eyes for him, and that’s what I had wanted him to see and value. Whatever else came in terms of attraction to others, in dreams or in subtle vibrations, faded like cheap perfume.
Until Superbloom. Until Sammy.
No pushing them away or ignoring this now. Now I had to revisit the same uncomfortableness that had tormented me for at least a decade, from middle school until….
Shame. Fear. Confusion.
Growing up in the Bible belt, I might have been saved if I hadn’t been a regular church-goer. Everyone there, then, knew that it was wrong to be attracted to the same sex…wrong to have sex before marriage…wrong to masturbate…wrong to say it’s not wrong. I’d like to say that I rebelled against that mainstream Christian thinking…that I looked to my inner compass for what was sacred and holy…that I went against mass judgement and stood up for myself and those who were like me–who were too terrified to admit it.
But I did not.
I mostly hid in plain sight, too scared to be seen. I’m sure I looked just like the other good Christians from the outside, except that I was not. Not good, I mean. And I knew it. I would worship the same way, and I was as genuine as I could be about anything. But alone, at home, outside of church, in my own skin…I was just desperately trying to catch up to how I believed I was supposed to be. As if my life depended on it. As if my soul depended on it. The fake-it-til-you-make-it strategy.
Shame is highly promoted in Christianity, which was lucky for me, because it was almost like the worse I felt about myself the better I was at being Christian. If you can’t be perfect, then you can be shameful: that’s the loophole. Everyone I knew understood that we are all fallen–we are all sinners–and that grace comes from knowing it and recognizing our own unworthiness. (And that Jesus rescues us, yada yada.)
Sweet salvation.
I had no problem adhering to the “hate the sin, love the sinner” dogma…even when still fully in my shame over being attracted to women, but especially after I was married. Frankly, it was a miracle that I stopped experiencing this temptation, and I took it as a sign that I had reached a certain level of faith and that others should also strive for this. At the same time, I understood that not everyone was there yet.
So, soooo cute.
Ten years before, back when Anthony I were planning our wedding, there was a minor scandal within the family. Anthony had two uncles on his mother’s side; one was gay, and the other was extremely religious. The two did not get along. I had never witnessed them together, but tales were recounted depicting the one uncle preach-yelling and throwing the bible at the other uncle, who just sat there, stunned in disbelief. The two basically had nothing to do with each other anymore. Nevertheless, both uncles were invited: the gay one and his long-term partner, and the religious one and his wife and kids.
I had been close to the religious uncle’s family. They’d had me over many times while Anthony was away finishing up school. Sure, they’d wanted to convert me to Catholicism (I was a sinful Protestant at the time), but I also felt their genuine love and affection for me. When they learned that the other uncle’s partner had been invited to a church event, the religious uncle called Anthony to preach to him the sin of this invitation. The uncle’s wife informed me (in person) that they would regrettably be unable to attend; they could not support the presence of that in the church and around their kids. I said that I understood, and I did. I understood from their perspective that they did not want their kids subjected to something they disapproved of…something that would have been presented as “okay” and “normal.” I could imagine feeling a similar way about it. How scary to have your kids’ morality hijacked…to have them feeling that something that was so terribly wrong was not shameful.
Scary, indeed.
A few years later, there was another wedding opportunity to redeem myself in love, but I did not. One of Anthony’s best friends was getting married to his long-term partner (when it became legal for same-sex couples to marry), and Anthony was interested in going to the wedding. I told him I was happy for them to be happy but could not support the marriage.
Love the sinners, hate the sin.
A few more years later at this point, I now faced crisis, the effects of which, by a sort of natural grace, were largely anesthetized by the intensity of my desire for Sammy. Thankfully, my strength was also fortified by the desire. Now I really had to consider what was sinful and what was not. I didn’t want to consider anything, but also, my soul was at stake. My attraction to Sammy was life-changing enough that I didn’t have a choice but to take a look.
Hadn’t I just been to church? Like, a few hours ago, and my whole life? Hadn’t I just devoured book after book relating to Marian devotion? the Holy Eucharist? the mysteries of the Catholic faith? and said a thousand rosaries? Were there any Christian masters standing up, openly saying that same-sex relations were ok? What about a married woman having sex with another married woman? Maybe by some miracle two wrongs could make a right? Google returned no favorable results. What did turn up in my search was a lot of biblical reinforcement of my guilt and its corresponding sentence: eternal damnation.
I felt slightly more at ease about my fate because Anthony had given my attraction to women, most recently Superbloom and Sammy, his full stamp of approval. He was an unlikely ally, and not an ideal one, but at this point I was desperate. I certainly didn’t consider him any kind of moral or religious authority. I always got the sense that his perfect attendance at mass, and his gestures of adulation had more to do with his performance of religious good standing and making his family proud. For what appearances were worth to me, I have to admit that genuflection looked good on the guy.
The moral dilemma of my situation was something I’d been heavily mulling over for the past couple of weeks…you know, in between the sexting. I was an adult; people did this. Nobody was “getting hurt.” It was ethical in the sense of no one being in the dark about what was going on. Both spouses supported the union, to varying extents. This didn’t have to be talked about in the church; it was my own process. Still, after all the google searching and contemplation, I was left with a puzzle I couldn’t solve. I was on my own.
Either I was going straight to hell, or I had to consider that everything I had believed in and invested in up to this point was wrong. Was homosexuality sinful? And if not, why would polyamory be? And if polyamory wasn’t sinful, then where would the line ever be drawn?
I couldn’t imagine going to church as someone condemned to hell, and I couldn’t imagine going to church (anymore) if it weren’t a mortal sin not to. I had so many ideas of how to worship that were much more fun. And so, after 10 years of rarely missing a Sunday, I stopped going to church.
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