It Takes Courage to Analyze Yourself
and to acknowledge what drives your actions
Also, the heterosexual partner should not be forced to rigidly adapt his/her preference.
Sexuality, the experience and expression of sexual preference, and the feeling of intimacy are obviously not the complete picture of yourself. You are so much more. There are so many more building blocks that truly complete you. All building blocks that are either intellectually reasoned and determined by will or emotionally experienced and felt.
You are not merely composed of an emotion that wants needs fulfilled and seeks satisfaction. That is to say, blindly following emotions would not be a good thing. Yet, it wouldn't be pleasant either if only willpower were strictly prioritized.
Emotional matters such as enthusiasm and love would never develop...because they are challenging and sometimes even dare to plunge into the deep without reason.
Variation between these stems from the totality of yourself. How you want to live your life, personality, and loyalty to it, conscience, character, etc. They show: this is who I am, this is what I stand for, and this is what I believe in. Depending on the situation, circumstances, and conviction. All criteria in which will, feeling, emotion, and experience converge.
Choice
A choice, but a voluntary independent choice. Otherwise, it would not truly answer the total 'being'. Even deny it. If you consciously opt for a MOM, the logical consequence is to choose to let the marriage continue.
Compromising yourself (both the heterosexual and the gay partner), going against the totality of who you are, diminishes who you are. In that case, the alternative consequence might be better. Going separate ways.
This gives both the freedom to take a different path.
Love does not come at the expense of the other. Also, the heterosexual partner should not be forced to in any way rigidly change, diminish, or even give up his/her heterosexual preference or the normal awareness of and for sexuality. Seriously and respectfully acknowledging (whether in another/next relationship or not) everyone's sexual experience is an essential factor in all of this: full acceptance of yourself, that of the other, and the consequences it has for both. This results in a individual and decisive choice.
That is not a rule that the church or culture can impose on you. That wouldn't be good either because it essentially implies shifting personal responsibility onto 'someone else.' For example: Culture demands to follow sexual preferences and act on that, otherwise I'll be denying myself. So... let's follow that trope and I'm approved by the culture arround me. Thus I can skip the responsibility of deciding what is morrally right thing to do.
Or, the church says I cannot divorce and I must bear my feelings as a burden. By abiding to a rule I shield my own possibility of choice. It's never from the heart.
It's allowing your personality to be guided by external voices and wrong motives.
If divorce is the only right path through which both can attain a loving life where faithfulness, joy, being known, and security can be found, then that would be the right path!
Your marriage is not a prison. Not a prison wall of church commandments and rules holding you captive. But it is also not the wall behind which you should hide to bypass taking personal responsibility by actually avoiding making choices. And God should not be a stick to hammer to limit your own choice.
This applies not only to MOMs but to every marriage. Where there is no longer love, fidelity, and communication, but only the own 'self' matters. Where promise and love and the other cannot be found anymore.
Divorce indicates that the purpose is missed in the existing marriage and in itself is a huge misery.
However, it is indeed sinful if your marriage becomes a rut, a burden, eyeing each other with contempt, or even involves adultery.
That is not love, that is not marriage as God intended it. That is hurting each other, that is hurting yourself. That is not what God intends or asks.
Whether it concerns MOMs or heterosexual marriages, the meaning of love is to seek the bridge that builds up and advances in mutual sincerity and love.
Faith
Our loving God does not want to be a prison wall. Certainly not of a marriage, where love and acceptance are key ingredients of His image. No bullying force to stay nor dening who you are. Neither one nor the other. The determining factor of God's active and healing love has no price tag. Especially when it is considered and discussed with Him in prayer. He knows someone inside out, fully. He never rejects you. God wants you to involve Him in everything.
But He does not want to be the stick with which you can strike. 'Striking' here means refusing to make real choices and simply staying in the marriage with the mentality of "I must bear my cross," thereby humbly denying yourself. After all, you do not want to enter into an SSA relationship. Yet, these same SSA feelings are still claimed as the most important and highest good in your thinking, then you're in a split, harming yourself as well as your spouse.
Now the partner is actually being "put in the closet" where you just came out, because suddenly straight sexuality has to be subordinate.
But:
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I MUST stay in my marriage
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I AM NOT allowed to divorce.
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I MUST deny myself, and I AM NOT allowed to feel what I feel. I AM NOT allowed to be who I am. And so on.
This works remarkably undermining as a driving positive force and building bridges towards building your relationship.
Here, faith is also used as an excuse. Responsibility not only shifts away from yourself but is placed on religion. Or, worse still, on God. This is hiding behind the wrong motive.
Actually, an egocentric starting point that is not found in the Bible.
Marriage is something beautiful. The relationship between man and woman has a promise in it where both may grow and become one, from day one. They may fully grow and become their own. Completely and accepted in mutual love. A marriage that equals the image that Christ sets in His love for the church. It's a paramount biblical truth. When this purpose is not achieved, is there really a marriage that reflects this image?
Is there anything in the Bible that obliges one to stay married if the heart and passion go out to someone else, as if love could be like some hypocritical acting performance?
Faithfulness obliges, certainly, but then only from the right dynamic force that thrives and blossoms into beautiful freedom.
Now, feelings can confuse and passions can be misdirected. So I'm certainly not saying to follow these. But you shouldn't hide behind rules to avoid confrontation with your feelings.
So how about following feelings and passions? Western culture is certainly approving and acknowledging that. So let's hide behind that, to avoid confrontation with moral questions....?
Culture
Almost a hype: follow the script culture offers you, otherwise you deny yourself.
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Find yourself, BECAUSE only then do you do justice to the 'self'...
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The partner must applaud the "coming out of the closet." and being supportive.
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Be supportive meaning: exploring sexuality outside marriage.
In other words: Do not deny who you "truly" are and go!! Do not devalue that identity.
But... reality and identity are much more than just sexuality, aren't they? Can you deny yourself that 'much more' of that truth?
Well, Yes! For equally important parts of identity are: Am I trustworthy?... Am I faithful? E.g. to my partner or to the word I gave on our wedding day. That is more than just 'staying with' someone because it falls back on the promise you once made to each other. What is a promise worth?
Yes... maybe things and circumstances have changed... but surely, not that promise, right?
Far from cheers... when the heterosexual partner is faced with these facts. He saw that promise for the long term, and rightly so... so it is far from just biting the bullet for a moment.
...then it's as if trying to make something that isn't really real
Up to be goaded into facilitating a kind of (almost) boundless self-examination... Because well... It is important that the gay partner finds his or her true feelings!
While there are essential reasons not to passively watch as a straight partner but instead to clearly and firmly set adequate boundaries. Because the partner is not only important in the relationship for no reason...You (SSA-partner) were the promise to him or her...
In short...
A MOM is a choice for: taking personal responsibility.
It's not a new commandment of "I don't want to give those feelings space." It goes much deeper than that. It's also not about trying to control feelings to fit into the perfect picture. That's simply not sustainable. It doesn't work at all.
Why?
Because it's not genuine and complete. It's like trying to make something that's not real, real.
It requires the entire heart. The desire, the conviction, the whole feeling of "this is the right choice I'm making, this is what I want if I'm going to handle this matter well." Not based on what the church or culture says. But a choice with determination and conviction that stands firm and began with a promise to each other and corresponds to your own, total, being.
Not lingering in religious babble or the egocentric rose-colored glasses and tunnel vision of the 'gay script'.
Love demands taking and bearing responsibility and keeping promises or responding to them with value.