On October 9, 1966, our high school marching band was invited to perform the halftime show at the Oakland Raiders/Miami Dolphins football game in the new Oakland Coliseum. Our band practiced for many weeks to put on a great show. My squad would always barely miss a collision with another squad of similar instruments. I was playing a baritone horn. I wasn’t very good because my primary instrument was the violin.
There was this cute guy also playing baritone in the other squad. I didn’t know him, but he always smiled. After the show, where the squads did almost have a collision on national television, we all got together to watch the rest of the game. I was sitting with another guy who was just a friend when that cute guy came over to talk with us and he and I just never stopped talking. A week later, he called and asked me if I would like to come and watch him ride his motorcycle! Wow, I didn’t know anyone who rode a motorcycle. It turns out he was quite the competitive dirt bike rider. As we started dating my friends teased me that I was dating a biker, not a good connotation in 1966. So I reminded them that he was also going to major in Mechanical Engineering in college and that he was a band geek.
We dated all through college and married four years later on September 19, 1970. My husband had a very interesting career as a mechanical engineer contributing to many specialty support equipment projects, everything from space shuttles and desalination plants to an unusual project that used high-pressure shock waves to tenderize beef. After a long and interesting career, he retired in 2009.
I worked in everything from teaching Kindergym to Human Resources. I wrote health insurance contracts and did income tax preparation until finally, I began running my own tax prep/notary public small business, which I ran until I retired and closed my business.
Our first daughter was born on my 23rd birthday in 1973—my best present ever. Our second daughter was my husband’s late birthday present, born just one day after his 30th birthday.
We truly enjoyed each other’s company and were very much in love. Troubles came and went for both of us but we have always climbed out of them and remained solid. In 2013 everything in our lives began to change and not for the better. Our entire family was heartbroken when our second daughter lost her newborn child in a tragic medical incident. Later that same year, our older daughter was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer, the only genetic variety without a viable treatment or cure. She fought bravely, following all of the medical advice and offered treatments but sadly she lost the battle in 2018, leaving her heartbroken husband and teen daughters behind. We miss her every day.
The troubles continued later that same year when my husband was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer. The aftereffects of surgery left him basically nonfunctional and deeply depressed. The cancer had returned one year later, requiring radiation and hormone deprivation treatment.
All of that led him into deep introspection and to the decision that he could not bury his bisexuality any longer. I had no idea he felt this way. Twice he tried to tell me but my reactions were awful. I basically lashed out and refused to listen to any discussion of it. So he put it away for a while.
In September 2021, two weeks before our 51st anniversary, he told me about his activities with a gay friend and other men. He presented me with clean std test results and while that was certainly a relief because we have always been sexually active, I was furious. With a pre-planned anniversary trip to Hawaii just two weeks away, I was totally in shock, angry over the cheating, and distressed about our future together but we took the trip and worked at having a nice time. Interspliced with jags of crying and arguing, we did end up having a wonderful time.
From October through January, my husband had 7 surgeries and required my help in recovery, and of course, I was there ready and willing. It was throughout all of these recoveries, that we talked, we argued, we talked, and then we talked some more. We went to couples counseling, I went to individual counseling, and slowly by the end of February, we were beginning to actually hear what we were saying to each other.
I still wanted to stay together and be monogamous. He half-heartedly agreed, but it never felt completely right to me. When I discovered a sample contract for opening one side of a mixed marriage in a MOR group for straight spouses, I shared it with him. As we each read through it, we began discussing it in earnest to see if we could make this work.
So far, it has been possible. My husband goes to a private club for gay men once or twice a month for the day. He’s home by dinner time, and we have all evening to reconnect, talk, and be together.
We are very connected and happy now and though we are not open about his sexuality to many, we have shared it with our daughter, a friend, and a granddaughter who has come out as bi herself. We will eventually share with our other granddaughters when we feel the time is right and age-appropriate. We still truly enjoy each other’s company and are very much in love. As they do for many, troubles came and went, but finally, hearing what we were saying to one another helped us rise up and find the path that worked best for us.
- D&W
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