Married to a Man, in Love With a Woman

By Celina R. De Leon, WireTap. Posted May 24, 2006.

"I looked online for support groups just to get information, and to sort through my own confusion on where the heck I stand in all of this," said Maggie. "But there isn't a lot out there for [women] like us. You can post on a lesbian site but they're out there dissing women who are married … The support groups are for the men, and the media's talking about the men."

"Maggie," 41, recently left her conservative Christian community and moved with her family to northwest Indiana. She's a mother of four and will be married for 20 years this summer. Last year, she fell in love with a woman.

Maggie found a support group for her questioning sexuality through Joanne Fleisher's "Ask Joanne" message board on her website LavenderVisions.com. But Maggie wishes there were more resources for women like her.

"I look at Joanne's website, and I see how some of the women are still platonic with their husbands. They have this sort of partnership where they both have separate interests," said Maggie. "I don't know if I can do that -- my husband and I have been best friends for 23 years. I can't picture it because it's been miserable."

Maggie met her girlfriend, "Ginny," who is also married, last summer while doing research for a book that she was working on. They formed an instant friendship and began to exchange frequent emails. It wasn't until Ginny came down for a visit in December that Maggie realized her sexual attraction for her.

Their emails became more personal as they became closer friends, and on New Year's Eve, Maggie confessed to Ginny that she was attracted to her. Maggie wanted to prepare her, just in case Maggie acted strange when Ginny and her husband came over to Maggie and her husband's house for a visit soon after New Year's.

"I told her I'm straight. I don't know what's going on," said Maggie. "And she said don't worry about it, it'll be OK. Then two weeks later, before she came down by herself for a visit, she said, 'I have to tell you before I come down, I'm bi (bisexual).' And I was like suddenly that just changed all the rules.

"I told my husband about it. And he said, 'I think you should go for it -- as a writer you need to experience these things' … He says he's OK, but I think he very much wants to be OK. I think he might feel that if I tell him no, that I'll eventually leave him … So she showed up, and the chemistry just happened. It was just such a huge shock because I think I was expecting to be freaked out, but I wasn't," said Maggie.

Denise Garrow-Pruitt, right, was married for 25 years to her husband before she married her current partner in 2003.

Rick, Maggie's husband, said over email that he feels secure enough in their love for each other to support her exploration of these new feelings.

"I felt that this was an 'identity' issue for [Maggie] and that even though we are married (and under vows), I did not feel that it was my place to disallow her to find out more about herself," said Rick. "I suppose that some of the decision came from the 'sex with two women' fantasy that is always resident in my head. That thought was secondary to the first, though."

"[Ginny's] husband knew about it, [too], but then two weeks later he said he couldn't take it anymore," said Maggie, "that there were too many emotions involved, and that she couldn't see me anymore or talk to me anymore. And after about two weeks, she emailed me from an email account she had set up, and we've been emailing ever since. We talk on the phone three or four times a week."

Ginny's husband later gave them an offer: The only way Ginny could see Maggie was if Maggie came to their house for a threesome.

"That was his compromise," said Maggie. "And I was like, 'No, this isn't about sex. That's what you want to turn it into because you don't like the emotions. I'm sorry, that's not going to work for me.'"

***

Fleisher decided to leave her husband to resolve the questions about her sexuality. Stay tuned for her story and work with women married to men in our interview "Ask Joanne: 'Brokeback Women' (Part II)" tomorrow on WireTap.

Celina R. De Leon is a contributing writer for WireTap Magazine, based in Brooklyn, NY.

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