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Growing Old Together as a Gay Woman and Straight Man
I came out decades ago but didn’t leave my husband. Now in our 80s, we navigate illness, memory and companionship on our own terms
Monica Garwood
Welcome to Ethels Tell All, where the writers behind The Ethel newsletter share their personal stories related to the joys and challenges of aging. Come back Wednesday each week for the latest piece, exclusively on AARP Members Edition.
It seemed to happen overnight. One morning, my husband and I woke up and realized we had crossed some invisible line. We weren’t “getting older” anymore. We were old (82 and 84). It just happened while we were busy living our lives.
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There was a time, early in our marriage, when we didn’t need plans, we didn’t need preparation. We could grab our toothbrushes and clean underwear and head out for destinations unknown.
Now our lives have become a bit more complicated. We need time to pack our clothes and extras — just in case. And we need time to gather our medicines and vitamins from the pill organizers on the kitchen counter. And sleeping in the car or in some old barn won’t work anymore. We need to be certain that we have a destination and a room so that we can plug in our CPAP machines, and the odds are still good that one of us will forget to charge the hearing aids before we leave our house.
We laugh now as we take on the daily challenges of growing old together. And we appreciate each other so much more for what it took to come to this point.
It hadn’t always been like this. Twenty-five years into our marriage, I realized I was gay. That was in the early 1990s, when the word “lesbian” was only spoken in whispers. I didn’t know any gay people. I had no one to talk to. So I sought out a therapist.
“You have to leave your marriage,” she said.
I was horrified. My husband and I had built a life together. We had a shared history, two great kids and a home in the suburbs. I thought it was idyllic. There had to be another way I could deal with my new revelation. I’d met my husband when I was 16. I married him when I turned 19. I didn’t want to leave him simply because I had discovered another dimension to myself. Although we’d always been affectionate with each other, and still are, sexual intimacy had never been the most important part of our marriage.
Believing that I’d never come out, and that no one would ever see what I wrote, I filled page after page of my journals with the strong emotions I was dealing with. I searched for any information about lesbians that might help me to understand what I was going through but found almost nothing. So I began to seek out other women like me, women who were dealing with their own discoveries. Many of them were terrified. One had been in therapy for years and never told her therapist that she was gay.
I realized that what had begun as my written catharsis might become a way to let these other women know they weren’t alone. But to get it published, I would have to come out. Making that decision was one of the most difficult things I’d ever done. Would I lose my husband? My children? It was a different era then.
I needn’t have worried. While Noel and I went through some pretty hard times, ultimately we chose to remain together. While ours is a redefined relationship, affection has remained. And the book stemming from my journals, Married Women Who Love Women, has become a classic, three editions and 28 years later.
Still, feeling the need to be with kindred spirits, I sought out other gay women for friendships. My friends became friends with my husband too. They joined us at family functions and turned to him for tech questions and help with taxes.
The pandemic found us cooped up together, my husband and me. We played board games and card games, and we binge-watched a million TV series. When the world opened up again, I no longer felt the need to run to meetings or dinners with my women friends. I found myself turning down invitations in favor of kicking off my shoes and spending the evenings at home with Noel. Somehow, it feels like a small miracle that Noel and I are here together.
We’ve learned that companionship doesn’t require identical tastes. Sometimes he watches his movies in his room while I watch mine in my bedroom. Other times, we watch together side by side on the couch. We don’t try to impress each other anymore. We just try to understand each other.
The years continue to bring challenges, different ones for each of us. Two knee replacements for me, followed by a triple bypass for him — scars and scars. He used to remember everything — dates, directions, the names of people we met once at a barbecue 15 years ago. Now, slowly, we’ve become each other’s memory. I am the one who reminds him where he left his glasses or what the doctor said last Tuesday. He reminds me to take an Aleve before I head out for physical therapy.
We used to compare travel itineraries; now we compare lab results. The good part is that we are once again walking arm in arm, although it’s as much for balance as for friendship.
Being a gay woman is a part of who I am, and growing old with a very special man is another. I have learned that one doesn’t negate the other and that somehow we are now in perfect sync.
AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.
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