by Joe Mellor, Daily Mirror
To the people in their village, Karl and Janet Lacks seem like the perfect couple. They have been married for almost 30 years, have four gorgeous kids and live in a stunning country cottage.
But things aren’t that simple because for seven years Jan has been sharing her husband – with other men.
She hasn’t left him. She hasn’t punished him for his betrayal. She has accepted the fact that he is attracted to men and done all she can to make him happy. She has allowed him to sleep with other men and continues to sleep with him herself.
“It seems incredible, but I didn’t know what else to do,” admits Jan, 55. “I didn’t want to lose him, and this was the only compromise I could think of.”
Karl’s revelation in 2003 can’t have come as a complete surprise for Jan because, before the couple married in their 20s, he admitted he had slept with someone else before her – a man. “I was shocked,” recalls Jan. “But we were so much in love I was sure I could make it work.”
The couple made a life in the West Midlands, and while Jan brought up their daughters, Karl was the breadwinner as a warehouse worker. Things went unremarkably for more than 20 years, until Karl dropped his bombshell.
“He told me he couldn’t hide his feelings any more,” recalls Jan. “He said he needed men for a physical relationship. I was numb. Why wasn’t I enough for him? I knew our sex life wasn’t quite right, but I never thought it would come to this.
“I was upset, but resigned to make him happy. I accepted what he said. That night we stayed together. He was still my husband. We talked and decided he could seek out someone to help with his feelings.”
The couple agreed Karl should use internet dating sites to find gay men for sex.
After a few weeks he met up with several men on separate occasions, but there was no spark between them. Then he met 17-year-old Joseph. The pair fell for each other and soon were in a fully-blown emotional and physical relationship. Jan’s plan to keep Karl sexually satisfied and emotionally loyal to her had backfired.
“He had fallen for a boy who was younger than our daughters,” recalls Jan. “Karl’s being gay made me question myself and my femininity many times. But for me Karl’s best interests were paramount. I was heartbroken to think that he had fallen in love with someone else.
“It felt as if everything I believed in meant nothing – the home we made, the family we cherished, the dreams we shared, were all a lie. He had been living a lie, but then again, so had I.
“He said their relationship was more than sex. He was physically and emotionally attached.
“I was so hurt,” she says. “I could just about cope with his physical relationship but when he actually fell in love with Joseph it felt like he had betrayed me. I was really sad. Our shared history and family meant nothing.”
Finally, the couple decided to separate, and Karl moved into a small cottage on his own. Jan also found a lover on an internet dating site and they started an intense but sporadic sexual relationship, which left her feeling more lost and disillusioned than she had ever felt.
She was also going through financial difficulties, so when the lease was up on Karl’s cottage, he asked if she and the girls would like to live with him again. At the time he was severely disabled with arthritis and Jan was glad to help him through two hip replacements.
“When I saw how brave he was during those operations, I realised that I cherished the time we spent together, and that I wanted Karl and I to grow old together,” says Jan.
Their relationship certainly wasn’t conventional – the whole family knew it. But somehow it felt right. Jan had been sad, angry and even jealous at times. But she still felt there was something worth saving.
“When we were together we just felt comfortable. I guess love is a strange emotion and one you can’t control.”
Then, in 2005, Joseph dumped Karl. Jan was torn between relief and pity.
“He stood there in floods of tears. I walked over and held him in my arms. I still loved him so much,” she says.
The next day, the couple decided they needed a fresh start and began looking for a new home.
“We found a cosy little cottage just down the lane. It was a symbol that things were going to change,” says Jan.
As difficult as it might be to understand why Jan would choose to stay in a relationship with a gay man, she insists it felt like the most natural solution.
“There has been no blaring Scissor Sisters music, or donning of feather boas and pink cowboys hats,” she says.
“Karl was a regular husband and dad without a camp bone in his body – and still is. Of course I wish Karl was straight, but the fact is he’s not, and I’m still proud to call him my husband.
“When I look at Karl I see the man I married. Just because he is attracted to men doesn’t mean he and I can’t be a couple.”
Jan and Karl still sleep with each other, even though she knows he has sex with men. “It’s hard for me because I know he has been with other partners – male ones at that – during our marriage. But when the bedroom door is closed the only people who matter are me and him.”
Karl, 55, has known he is gay since he was about 11.
“These days, if you come out people as gay hardly bat an eyelid. But everyone I grew up with was homophobic, including my parents,” says Karl.
“My mother couldn’t understand how a man could be in a sexual relationship with another. There was no way I could tell her I was gay and she still doesn’t know.”
Karl says living life as a straight man was a conscious choice he made in his 20s.
“Somewhat immaturely, I made the decision that I wasn’t going to be gay. I wanted a family.”
So did he take advantage of Jan’s love for him to make a cover for himself?
“I didn’t use Jan to start a family,” he insists. “I genuinely loved her and still do, and in the early days we had a healthy sex life. I genuinely tried to put aside the feelings I had towards men, but every now and then they would re-emerge.
“When Joseph came into my life, I tried to fight it with all my heart. He was a teenager and I was a married man. The guilt nearly killed me. He was everything I never was, but wanted to be. He was open about being gay. I envied him. When he left me I was heartbroken.
“My relationship with Jan, like any other, is all about compromise, and this is more than any man could expect his wife to compromise on.
“I’m very lucky indeed to have such a wonderful woman in my life.”
SOURCE: http://www.mirror.co.uk
Posts
