ABSTRACT
Effective therapeutic self-help techniques for a straight mate’s recovery
One of the most traumatic events that can happen in a marriage is discovering your mate is gay. When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual is a comprehensive exploration of the trauma that provides practical steps that successful individuals have taken to keep this event from ruining their future. This guide offers solid therapeutic techniques for self-help and presents poignant true stories that illustrate that the damage is not irreparable. The book examines the various reactions to the coming-out event, the personal challenges and obstacles often experienced, and shares lessons learned and some of the secrets of transformation.
When this crisis hits home, isolation, depression, anger, grief, and self-recrimination take root. When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual presents role models, analysis, practices, and activities promoting long-term emotional recovery for heterosexual men and women whose intimate partners are gay. The text includes integrated exercises helpful for class work and student discussion and case studies of people who recount their stories and explain their recovery.
Topics in When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual include:
- different straight spouse responses to the coming out event
- diverse ways gay mates approach coming out
- typical stages of coping by straight spouses
- health risks
- how to tell the children
- helping children with the resulting challenges
- paths toward healing
- recreating family
- and more
When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual offers a self-directed path to recovery which can be used individually or in the context of a support group. This guide is invaluable for straight spouses working alone or in groups, therapists, counselors, group facilitators, librarians, families of gays/lesbians, and their mates.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |31 pages
Ground—Understanding Contrasting Patterns
chapter |14 pages
Three Straight Spouse Stories
chapter |9 pages
Coming Out Three Ways
chapter |7 pages
Steps Toward Resolution: A Typical Example
part |85 pages
Path—Self-Healing Guide for Straight Spouses
chapter |16 pages
Underlying Psychological Forces
chapter |17 pages
Immediate Personal Challenges
chapter |14 pages
Lingering Risks, Anger, and Grief
chapter |20 pages
Family and Social Challenges
chapter |15 pages
Long-Term Personal Obstacles
part |6 pages
Fruition—Thriving After Crisis