Posted at 5:00 p.m.
He spent 40 years of his life with a woman. Had several children. Then ended up connecting, and daring to be who he is: a gay man. And he regrets nothing.
“Today, I have at least the certainty of living as I am,” Vincent wrote to us recently, reacting to the testimony of a certain Mickaël*, at the coming out just as late, but on the contrary “bitter”.
Remember: the latter, in his late fifties, on the contrary advised men of his generation to “close [leurs] gules [et de] stay in the closet.
“I find his journey sad. […] I wish him serenity, a very precious feeling that I have acquired since coming out of the closet. »
Met in a St-Hubert in the Eastern Townships, Vincent, a smiling sixty-year-old with a white beard and laughing eyes, never had the slightest doubt. Without daring to reveal themselves. Not until recently, in fact. Much to his relief.
“I always knew that I had an attraction for men. Since I was young, he says, sitting at the table all smiles over a beer. But I never wanted to believe it. »
“Do like everyone else”
For almost 60 years, therefore, Vincent tried to “fit into the mould”. So he had a first girlfriend. Then a second. Then he met the mother of his children, at 20 years old. “And we spent 40 years together. We had a good life. We never argued! »
In bed ? “We were both virgins, so we consumed after the wedding, like any good Christian couple, believer and practitioner. »
In his head, he tells himself that this will “solve the problem”. “I’m going to make love with a woman, have children, a family, a good job, and I won’t have that fear anymore, I’ll move on…”
And it worked for a time: 10 years. If he took his foot? “Yes,” he said smiling. Oh well yes! It was very good! But, because there is always a but, all the time, a man’s desire came back to me. »
So much so that he ended up consulting. “Not so that people change me, he specifies, but so that people understand me. » Verdict? “You will never cheat on your wife, the shrink tells her, you love her too much…”
But just talking about it took a lot of pressure off me…
Vincent, mid-sixties
Around the same time, he finally “confessed” everything, he said, even if he did not like the word, to his wife. Many tears later (“it was terrible”), she accepted it. And above all “decided to continue to choose it again”, he summarizes. “And that allowed us to make a cr… part of the way. My secret, I no longer wore it alone. Just the fact that she knows and accepts me, it freed me! »
If they still slept together? Better: they regularly took naughty baths, and he was even the type to surprise her on Valentine’s Day. “We had a great sex life! “, he assures. “I was fine with her, but despite everything, I had a void. A void that is not sexual, but sentimental. […] But I didn’t want her to be unhappy because she had married a gay man. »
As the years go by and depressions follow one another, Vincent ends up coming to terms with the facts: “It doesn’t make sense,” he says. I’m suffocating…” He is approaching his sixties and he knows it: “I have a decision to make. »
But before, he wants to have the heart net. And to do this, for the first time in his life, at the age of 60, he knocks on the door of a gay friend. “He was a good teacher,” he says, smiling enigmatically. One evening is enough to confirm what he has always known.
Dare to be honest
Since ? Vincent separated, divorced (“and it was difficult, very difficult”), then took a little three and a half. With his “wife” (as he always says, even if she now has a new lover, “she’s become a cougar!”, he says smiling, not a little proud), they get along “very well “. “She always understood,” he said. Never found me disgusting. Ditto for their children.
For his part, the first times, Vincent found himself as a teenager. “Like 17 years old. I regain my freedom. Concretely, he registered on a few sites, had several adventures. Essentially “one-shot” stories. “I discover what I like. I am well. […] It’s in the DNA, it’s hard to explain! he says, recounting his newfound thrills at the mere touch of a man. “Today, I would have difficulty making love to a woman,” he says.
The first morning he woke up with a man by his side, he still remembers. “It was a revelation: wow! »
“I always hoped that the fire would go out within. Except that’s not how it works, he continues. It was too much in my genes to miss. To ignore that. »
And even if he lost his wife, accumulate the one night, still dreaming of great love (“I still believe in it, but I have fewer and fewer illusions”), Vincent has no regrets. “Because I feel honest. True. True with myself. ” Finally.
* Fictitious first names to protect their anonymity