It is far too common to see two types of mixed-orientation marriages: those who work as a team and those who have slowly deconstructed their relationships with self-protective assaults, unbridled demands, and infidelity.
What distinguishes these two types of relationships? Safety.
Safety allows spouses to be honest and to spontaneously express who they are and what they desire. In mixed-orientation marriages, those who are safe communicate openly. They are shielded from repeating arguments, protect from the build up of resentment, and are prone to respect one another’s physical and emotional boundaries. A safe spouse can easily empathize with the other persons’s emotional experience without feeling threatened by the bigness of those emotions. Essentially, safety says, “We are in this together, no matter what.”
Although not every step is pain-free, the couples who nurture a sense safety often reach decisions together. The safety they employee makes communication more easy and effective over time.
Safety allows spouses to be vulnerable. Sharing desires, preference, needs, and embarrassing information in a safe environment allows honesty to feel like unconditional belonging and being known more than it does like fear and shame. In this way, safety is liberation.
Couples lacking safety, however, find it hard to trust one another because mini relational fractures have created and unstable relational structure. What they want and who they are is not completely, fully welcome in the unsafe relationship, or so it seems.
A spouse who feels unsafe will either: 1) stop expressing their desires and/or 2) demand, with a fiery rage, that their needs be fulfilled. Unfortunately, anger cannot accurately describe what a partner craves, thus creating confusion and a blame-battle in the wake. Without safety we don’t feel important. And if we do not feel important we stop sharing pieces of our inner world. Connection, vulnerability, and passion turn into hiding, withholding, and fantasy-based cravings.
If I know anything as a well-seasoned queer therapist, it is this: not expressing or being dishonest about your desires will lead to a deep, commingled sense of loneliness and invisibility. In such a state, even the most steadfast spouse will become so emotionally hangry—to a desperate point—that they seek relational nutrients from people they meet at work or through online DMs. Almost like they are on autopilot, these spouses create, with a morally questionable and emotionally powerful force, connections that lead them to feel desired, seen, and belonging outside of the marriage.
Maybe cheating is the result of responding to a bad situation with a bad resolution? And if this is correct, than stabilizing safety—for yourself, for spouse, and your relationship—is the way to stabilize your relationship. Once the relationship is stable, camaraderie and the partnership are stabilized, as well. Wise and joint decisions can be made because a safe spouse no longer needs to protect themselves from injuries and criticisms of the past.
Safety is respecting the humanity of your spouse, which in turn means considering their needs, their emotional reactions, and seeing beyond their actions- knowing that behaviors are attempts to fulfill some unspoken, or possibly even subconscious, desire.
Creating safety means listening with the sole purpose to understand your spouse’s emotional terrain. Empathy allows a safe partner to feel seen, known, understood, and cherished, thus making teamwork a lot more easy and a lot more dynamic.
Partners in a mixed orientation marriage, especially those in the throws of the coming-out process, are undoubtedly consumed by the insurmountable challenge. Before you try to work through the differences in gender or sexual orientation, create safety. Safety will provide the stability and peace where wise decisions can be made.
Curious about navigating open relationships? Check out our in-depth guide on LGBTQIA+ couples therapy and open relationships.
The coming out process is no easy feat as an individual, let alone as a married couple. If you need help working through the resentments that build up, resolving the repeating debates, and finding the ease and joy you once had, we are here to help. Mixed-orientation marriages provide so many unique challenges and we want you, as a team, to reach what is right for you.
