I fell into a suicidal depression over this situation. I talked to the bishop over and over again. I did typing for the bishop and we were already good friends beforehand, and my boyfriend was the financial clerk, so I spent a lot of time sorting through things with the bishop. I didn't feel like I could tell anyone else. I felt completely and totally alone.
It was a huge burden. I was suicidal for a year thinking about how God could put something like this on the Earth and not have a solution for it. How could this person be damned if there were no answers? I saw God as an authority figure sitting at His judgment bench with his gavel. But as time went by, my feelings changed. My belief system completely changed. I had to deal with all the things that had happened in his past and learn to forgive him for it. I had to either let him go or stick it out. He asked me over and over to wait for him to work through his problems and that he'd always dreamed I'd come into his life to share his burden.
The bishop and other church leaders were supportive of this relationship. For one thing, I was told that if he didn't change, he would be damned. I was also told that not even 1 in 10 "make it." So, basically, he was damned. At that time, the LDS church considered even claiming gay attraction was a sin.
The bishop felt that we could see if he could be attracted to a female. I got the idea that the attitude was (in 1983) that if a gay could just have sex with a woman, he'd never go back -- that they had just had sex with the wrong gender first (my ex had had sex with men since a young age, many mormon gays have not had sex with anyone in their 20s).
So the bishop asked me to experiment with him: just give him "free rein," and he would work with my boyfriend and me. He assigned my boyfriend to take me out and then French kiss me, but not to tell me, that it should appear spontaneous. My boyfriend knew I had never French kissed anyone before because I was afraid I'd have to repent to my bishop. I lived in absolute fear of bishop interviews all my life. Suffice it to say, my boyfriend had the sense to tell me the bishop's plan. Well, I wanted to save him, so I went along.
After that, the bishop gave us more "assignments," and I was very uneasy about it, but I was also suicidally depressed. Nobody knew my boyfriend was gay but the leaders, my boyfriend and me, and I had no one to talk to. I can still see the bishop shaking his head and saying, "But we have to do it this way," when I would voice my concerns about "chastity." I was never comfortable with doing much, so I didn't. At one point, the bishop even told us we could do anything up to intercourse and he would make sure we were able to go through the temple.
I dated more the year after my boyfriend told me he was gay than in my entire life (probably because I was so distracted that I really didn't care), when lo and behold, I met someone new. This person scared my gay boyfriend and, after I moved to get away from the situation, he asked me OVER THE PHONE while I was at work to marry him.
I spent the next day in bed. A very good friend--who was another bishop that I worked with--gave me a blessing. He promised me that my husband would never leave me. He said to me, "How would you feel if God gave you this and you turned your back on it." I know he said this only because he truly believed it and still does. I was already STUCK.
The bishop of our ward told me that it would be okay -- that if I had any doubts in my mind, to put them aside. The LDS Social Services therapist told me that it would be okay if we got married, to just not worry about it. I just realized this past summer that once I was in the situation -- there was no other choice -- I had to go forward. I had to take the chance. I had to give this person more in his life than I saw the gay world as offering him. I said yes. When I finally said yes, I had joy that I had never felt before. I had my doubts -- many, many, many, many doubts as the three months passed to our wedding day, but the day I went to the temple for the first time, those doubts flew out the window. My suicidal depression went away while in the temple. The day I married him was one of the happiest days of my life. Everyone told me that I couldn't have this—and here it was MINE.
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