On men and marriage
We started dating and everything. In fact, we became engaged. But I also, during that time, started going to softball games.… They were having the women's fast pitch softball tournament at Memorial Field and I wanted to go. So about a week before I was supposed to be married, I broke my engagement. I told him I just felt like I was making a mistake.… I guess that's when I probably came out to myself. I realized that if I got married to him, I would be making a mistake.
"In the 50s I married, because you were supposed to marry."
He was tall and good-looking and since I thought I had to get married 'cause that was what all good girls did, I married him the summer after I dropped out of school. I was 20 years old, by four days, and a virgin, as he was also. He was in the Navy and we lived together for three months and then, when he went to Korea, I returned to Cleveland to live with my parents and work. It didn't take long before I was again involved with a woman, so I filed for divorce.
I did get married one time to a gay man who was about eleven years older. It was after the first friend had left. I was really down. I met him one night at a bowling alley. We were drinking.… I agreed to marry him. We were going to be straight. He didn't want to be gay. I don't think he wanted the stigma attached to being gay. We had been friends for maybe ten years, so we thought we could be straight. I wasn't doing it for cover and I don't think he was either. I was tired of being gay.… I just figured I could graduate from school, be a lesbian, and have a nice, normal life, and things would be okay. I got a divorce after about 2 1/2 years.
I tried to engage in traditional things. One was in high school and one at the beginning of college. When I finally came to terms with who I was, the breakup was real, real difficult. I was trying to acknowledge my true self and what I had been trying to do, marry a man, was wrong. It was more than I didn't want to marry the guy. I was always uneasy. I could never stand for a boy to put his hands on me. I never wanted to sit in the backseat of a car and neck. I always got pissed if the boy thought I owed him something because I went on a date with him. That really upset me. Now, I just knew why.
I was really working on the marriage. And I looked around. I never saw another lesbian. I swear. In 26 years [of marriage].
By the time Nancy came along, he was toast, because all of a sudden, I knew what had been "wrong with me" for 20 years.
It didn't take long for me to recognize that I was falling in love with her. I didn't fall out of love with my husband; I just fell in love with her.
He came back from the War and we decided to get married, which we did very quickly. And, very quickly after it happened, I had the suspicion that it had been a mistake.
Met a nice young man and we later discovered we were both gay. But we wanted children and a home and careers. So we married.
I met this man that was very much attracted to me. He was in the Signal Corp, Fort Thomas, and he was from Wisconsin. I just figured he was the man I wanted to marry, 'cause everybody got married. Even though I was very much attracted to this one gal who was the best maid at my wedding when I got married.
I should have never married, period. Of course, at that age, you don't know that.
When I married him, he was nice. I already knew I was a lesbian, but relationships hadn't worked out.