Everyone has a story: This is the second in a three part series written by “Michael Odom,” one of the readers of this blog. If you would like to have your story on this blog, please send it to me.

“Mike, You’re running from something.” Part II
By “Michael Odom”

I told the man in the Cadillac who’d picked me up — and I really believed it — that the first time I would have sex with a woman I would change; I would no longer want to be with a man. So I got married and have two wonderful children, Michael, Jr. and Elizabeth.

During my married life I played around, mostly with other married men. I did not change.

In 1990, my mother sent me a letter telling me that I was the reason for my dad’s alcoholism. She also said that I had thrown my success up in the faces of my brothers. I never had done that. I refused to take the blame for my dad who had been in treatment for alcoholism four times. I never spoke with my mother much after that.

My dad was the first of my parents to die. He had smoked three packs a day and died with lung cancer. He had named me executor of his will. My mom said it was because he trusted me. Wow! That blew me away. My Mom died of breast cancer about a year or two after that.

After their deaths of my parents, my wife told me she felt like I needed to talk to someone because I had a lot of hate built up in my heart. My wife and I got along really well and were considered by others as the couple most likely to succeed. We were living in Dallas at the time.

At first, I told her I had never needed anyone’s help, but later on she convinced me. I was at this time very involved in the Baptist church and serving as a deacon. She set me up with a Christian psychologist.

On my first visit with the psychologist I told him about my dad. He told me that under the circumstances, I had turned out pretty well. I then told him he would hear the rest of the story on my next visit.

On the next visit I told him I was gay and had been living a lie all my life. He told me I had a sexual addiction and that he could cure me. I told him just to concentrate on my. After about three or four months of weekly visits we finished up with my dad.

We then turned to talking about my being gay. He told me that it was an addiction and that he could cure me with this 12-step plan. I told him I knew all about the 12 step plan because of having put my dad in the alcohol dry out center.

Finally, I told him while we were talking about my dad he had been listening to me, but once we started talking about my being gay, he had focused on his Christian agenda. I felt like I was wasting his time and my money, so I quit going.

Not long after that someone told me about a church that allowed a group of men to meet on Tuesday’s at lunch. The men in the group were gay, but married. Some of them were thinking about telling their wives, were in the midst of telling their wives or were dealing with the aftermath.

I started attending regularly when I was in town. I sat amazed as different men told their story. Some of their wives had been very cruel to these men. You could share or you could just sit and listen. It was very eye opening.
My wife and I had always been very close and fought very little. I just wasn’t sure how she would respond. Her dad, on the other hand, had helped build a private school in north Louisiana so his kids did not have to go to school with the “niggers,” [Michael’s father’s word, not Michael’s] I thought my wife’s father might come after me with a gun.

On November 18, 2001, I left the house driving to Austin, Texas, from Dallas. It was a Sunday night, and I had meetings for three days in Austin. Not soon after I left home, my wife called. We got into a rare argument.

Finally, she said, “Michael, your running from something. I just wish you would tell me what you’re running from.” We had not had sex for two years and I kept blaming it on my relationship with my dad.

“You’re running away from something” were the words I needed to hear. I said, “God, be with me,” and I started talking. We talked and cried until I reached Austin, a three hour drive.

I did not get much accomplished while I was in Austin. I talked and cried on the phone with my wife every night. On the drive home I wondered if I would find all my stuff in the yard, but it was not!

We talked after I arrived home, and she wanted me to go to a “Christian” counselor with her. I agreed. We went and this young therapist must have just graduated from college. She had never dealt with anything like this.

Like the first psychologist before, she told me there was a 12-step plan. I told her, “I know all about the 12-step plan, and I am not sick. Until you have sat where I sit and have worn my shoes, you will never know how I feel. Just like I will never know how it feels to be heterosexual.”

She responded, “You don’t want to save your marriage, do you?” I got up and walked out. My wife and I agreed I would stay at home for six months, until the summer. My daughter, Elizabeth, at the time was a junior in high school and my son was in college.

In those months, I met Fred, who was to become my partner. He was from the Midwest, very liberal and had gone through a divorce and coming out to his kids. He quickly became my hero and advisor.

Loren’s comments: Like Michael, one of the most important experiences I had during my coming out process was a support group for gay fathers. The coming out experience for gay fathers is much different than it is for men who’ve never been married. Twenty five years later, many of those men remain my friends.

Gay father’s have much more in common with each other than they do with gay men who have never been married.

From my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, a Psychiatrist’s Own Story:

The group provided a life-line for several of us who’d been in heterosexual relationships, some of us still married, and all of us with children. Confused, questioning and working our way through the questions about our sexuality, we were mentored by others who were further along in the process.

Had it not been for this small group of men, I would have felt entirely alone after I left my family.

Part III of Michael’s story will continue in a few days.

If you would like to have your story on this blog, please send it to me. If you don’t think you could write it, just tell me the story, and I’ll write it with you.