Throwing your life away

An acquaintenance of mine, on a listserv for married men who are coming to grips with their homosexuality, wrote:

"I feel like I am throwing my life away"

I wrote back:

I know how disorienting and frightening it is to abandon your married life and start over. All those images and ideas about the idyllic married life: 2.3 kids, house with picket fence, loving wife and housekeeper, stable job, all run aground on the reality that you're really a lot happier--a lot happier--with a guy. I had that same feeling last year, I also walked away from certain financial security in retirement. My parents were adults during the Depression, so I inherited a lot of frugality, and "throwing that away" takes either a lot of guts or no brains!

But, y'know, some things you have to throw away. They don't work anymore, and can't be repaired, or start to smell bad, or clutter up the place so you can't do other things of greater value to you. You may have discovered, as many of us [on this listserv] have, that you bought it for the wrong reasons. Your "married life" may fall into one or more of those categories. With deepest respect and great care for your wife and kids, throw away the marriage. Go with what works best for you.