I still have sex with my gay husband

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

GREAT STORY: Gay Marine’s husband surprised at respect shown by Naval Academy

MARK HOLDING JOHN'S PICTURE

Neil steinberg nsteinberg@suntimes.com

John Fliszar had a heart attack in 2006 and was rushed to Illinois Masonic Medical Center.

“When I was in the emergency room with him, he asked me to promise him, if he died, to make sure his ashes were interred in the Naval Academy,” said Mark Ketterson. “He loved that place. He very much wanted to be there.”

Fliszar, a Marine aviator who served two tours in Vietnam, survived that heart attack. But last July the Albany Park resident suffered another one that killed him at age 61.

Hoping to fulfill Fliszar’s wishes, Ketterson contacted the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and told them that Fliszar, Class of ’71, had wanted to have his ashes interred at the USNA’s Columbarium, a serene white marble waterside crypt next to the school’s cemetery.

The memorial coordinator asked about his relationship to the deceased. Ketterson said that John Fliszar was his husband.

“They were always polite, but there was this moment of hesitation,” Ketterson recalled. “They said they’re going to need something in writing from a blood relative. They asked, ‘Are you listed on the death certificate?’ ‘Do you have a marriage license?’ ”

He was and they did, the couple having been married in Des Moines when gay marriage became legal in Iowa two years ago.

Ketterson sent a copy of the marriage license. That changed everything.

“I was respected,” he said. “From that moment on, I was next of kin. They were amazing.”

The USNA alumni association sent Ketterson a letter expressing condolence for the loss of his husband.

The USNA says Fliszar’s interment followed standard operating procedure.

“His next of kin was treated with the same dignity and respect afforded to the next of kin of all USNA grads who desire interment at the Columbarium,” said Jennifer Erickson, a spokesperson for the academy. “We didn’t do anything differently.”

Shipmate magazine, the publication of the USNA’s alumni association, ran Fliszar’s obituary. It noted his two Purple Hearts for “having been shot down from the sky twice in military missions.” It noted “for the rest of his life he would joke about his ‘government issued ankle.’ ” It noted “his burly but warmly gentle manner.” It noted he was “survived by his husband, Mark Thomas Ketterson.”

“The word ‘husband’ in the obituary has created a bit of a stir,” said Ketterson, a Chicago social worker. “I’ve heard from a number of officers. It’s been amazing. This has not been absolutely confirmed, but I think I’m the first legal same-sex spouse who planned a memorial.”

The memorial service was held in October, in “the beautiful, beautiful Naval Academy chapel,” said Ketterson. A uniformed officer stood in the back and played taps.

“They did the standard military funeral, a wonderful service,” said Ketterson. “Since I was the designated next of kin, they were going to present the flag to me, but I deferred to his mom. She gave it to me.”

One of the groups Ketterson heard from afterward was USNA-Out, the organization for gay graduates of the naval academy.

“From my perspective, attitudes and actions are changing at the Naval Academy and certainly at the alumni association,” said Brian Bender, chair of USNA-Out, observing that while he “can’t speak for the Navy as a whole, we do interact with active-duty Navy folks, and they check in with their chain of command.”

I tried to find someone who could speak for the Navy as a whole, but with whatever era replaces “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’’ still in its infancy, well, let’s say that Navy communications specialists are not jostling each other for the chance to address this subject.

While the public generally approved of the official end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’’ in the U.S. military, the details still need to be worked out. The thorny issue isn’t ending the costly and counterproductive practice of forcing gays out of military services — that cost $40 million a year to enforce and deprived the armed services of thousands of qualified personnel. A bigger challenge is the question of entitlements: Who is a survivor? Who gets military benefits?

A marriage certificate was the key that let the USNA know how to treat Ketterson in relation to his husband’s service. Gays in the military and gay marriage are thought of as separate issues, but without legal gay marriage, or at least civil unions, how can the military know who gets the folded flag?

Such practical concerns were far from Ketterson’s mind when he and Fliszar got married after dating for six years — “because I loved him and he asked me,” Ketterson said, adding that the USNA alumni he’s heard from have made grieving more bearable.

“It’s been some months. I’m still doing mourning,” Ketterson said. “As a gay man who grew up in a military family, getting communications from USNA, having heard from alumni who say, ‘You will always be one of us’ — that’s powerful, and healing.”

“One of the e-mails said that I was a ‘trailblazer,’ ’’ said Ketterson. “I didn’t blaze any trail. I buried my husband.”

That said, he still finds himself marveling at how it all unfolded.

“I am a patriotic American, but I know this is not a perfect world,” he said. “The point is, when the chips are down, when the issue was patriotism and honor for a veteran, they were wonderful. Whatever their private feelings, they made me proud to be an American. We really do get it right sometimes.”

Mark and John

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source: Sun-Times Media, LLC