Does it get better (as a married gay man?)

I've spent part of my day catching up with blogs and it was interesting to see Abelard, Beck and Philip talk about life getting better for married gay men and their different points of view. Those of you who have read this blog know that this story didn't end up in Happily Ever After...

NOT THAT I DIDN'T TRY!!

I think in addressing the "Does it get better" question, one has to ask: What is better?

For me, better used to be managing (more dealing) with the life I had chosen, marriage, children, work, etc, etc. I wanted my cake and eat it too! I probably spent the first 10 years of marriage doing my darnedest, but as time went on, I realized that I was really doing a lousy job balancing all the plates and since I was not going to get out of anything alive, I might as well do something about accepting myself. In business when something is not going well you redesign; look at your course and make the necessary changes to make sure you get where you want to go, but I didn't see my marriage and life necessarily as a business but still; coming out and start living life in what would seem a better way and making the necessary changes was not going to be an easy project...

"Getting better" suddenly became a completely different goal; here I was a middle aged man who suddenly wanted to live a genuine life, really? Was it realistic? Was it going to be easy? Was it going to be worth it? These were the hard questions I asked myself while I lay awake at 3:00 am wondering how I was going to do this and how I could avoid the less possible impact and pain to all involved.... ugh! I also have to admit that just before I separated from my X I asked if it might be worth it staying together and live our lives the way we had and she was the first one to admit that "better" was not going to happen, but that more than likely we'd find ourselves in the same situation sooner or later so it was mutually decided to move on. 

BUT THAT WAS MY LIFE! Others may be fortunate to have better spouses who in spite of the obvious may still want to pursue a life together, who may be more forgiving and more willing to work on the relationship handling whatever issues may come, for better or worse, after all it takes 2-to-tango and I also wondered how irresponsible it was for me to potentially hold her hostage to my allusion of being a seemingly responsible husband and father when my heart was nowhere in my marriage (physically but more important, emotionally) no matter what I told myself and appeared to be. 

*Has life got better? Well yes! I think so but it has also become a slow process which some days seems like things are moving along nicely and some days I just sit and wonder what's going on?!?!?

*Has it been easy? Well, no, but it would certainly be much, much worse if I didn't have a lot of support from relatives and close friends--that seems to make the biggest difference in the world.

*Was it worth it? Somedays I used to second-guess myself but as time moves on I've concluded that it was very well worth it but I've also concluded that there's no one way to do anything in a relationship that can/be copied for the next one, in the end everyone is their own little world and there are no real guarantees in life.

I'm not entirely sure the point I'm making with this posting, would my life had got better as a married gay man? At this point I believe I have enough knowledge and scars to know that it wouldn't have, no matter how hard I tried, or how much I wanted it.

Sad, but true...