Spouses Try to Cope With Pain of Sexual Shock : Homosexuals and their heterosexual partners try different approaches to their problems.

Just before they married in 1930, her husband-to-be told her he was gay and asked: “Do you think it will make a difference?”

They were both innocents at a time when gays didn’t dare come out of the closet, and they truly didn’t know how to answer that question.

They decided their love for each other was all that mattered, and they raised three children together during a marriage that lasted until his death in 1958. In all those years, the subject of his homosexuality never came up again, his widow said Saturday during the international convention of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays at the Hyatt Regency Alicante in Garden Grove.

But today, she can finally answer the question that was so mystifying to her at 19: “I’ve spent my life since he died trying to come to terms with this. My husband and I had a deeply profound relationship, but it stopped at the bedroom door. Such marriages would be better off not happening.”

The fact that she was talking so openly in a roomful of strangers--during a session at the PFLAG convention called “Understanding and Supporting Spouses of Gays and Lesbians”--shows how much things have changed since her youth. But it’s still traumatic for married women--and men--who have learned their partners are gay to come out of the closet themselves, said Sue Christensen, who led the session for spouses.

Christensen, a nurse who lives in Salt Lake City, founded a national support group called Wives of Gay Men after she learned her husband was gay. She shared the platform Saturday with Susan Rodgers, a Walnut Creek therapist who helped her through her divorce and has counseled a number of other spouses of gays.

They addressed about 45 people, mostly wives of gays who seemed relieved to be in the company of others who know first-hand how devastating it is to find out that the man you love is not the person you thought he was.

“You are loving someone who can’t seem to love you back in the same way, dealing with what seems like a lifetime of deception,” Christensen told them. “You feel if you were more of a woman, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Rodgers said learning that your spouse is gay is like coming home after a brief absence and finding all your furniture has been rearranged and strangers have moved in. “It’s like the world has been turned upside-down. Nothing is in the place it was before.”

Although many couples divorce soon after the gay spouse comes out, Rodgers said she has worked with a number of people who want to stay together and are trying to find a way to make it work.

“There are many good reasons to stay together other than sexuality--love, security, children, shared history,” she said. “Sometimes people give up a lot to stay in a relationship in which sex is not the most important thing.”

To stay together, some couples are redefining their commitment in ways that they once would have found shocking. Unfortunately, Christensen said, their difficulties are magnified by the fact that “there’s an appalling lack of support from the straight and homosexual communities for those who decide to stay together.”

Ann, 48, and Frank, 46, are among those who are still together but can tell only trusted friends about the way their marriage has changed. Both come from strong Catholic upbringings that taught them their current lifestyle is sinful. But their idea of sin was dramatically altered when the unthinkable happened about five years ago.

They had been married 17 years and had three children when Frank told Ann he was gay.

“I was shocked. I didn’t have a clue,” recalled Ann in an interview over lunch with Frank at her side a few days before she attended the PFLAG seminar.

Both talked openly about their marriage, but they asked to remain anonymous because their youngest daughter, a high school freshman, has suffered from cruel teasing by classmates.

When Frank told Ann he was gay after they returned home from church on an Easter morning, she said in a rage, “I’m leaving, and I’m taking the kids.”

But the next day, she told him: “I love you too much to leave. We’re going to see this through together.”

Frank can now see that he has had homosexual feelings since he was a boy, but he tried to push them aside because he had been taught they were wrong. He thought those feelings would go away after he married Ann, whom he met when they were both working for an East Coast firm that provides vocational training for the disabled.

For many years, he seemed to be content in his marriage. But he felt a restlessness that led him to change jobs frequently and move his family around the country. Then, seven years ago, he and Ann both found jobs working with disabled people in Orange County, and for the first time in his life, he began to meet men who were openly gay.

He had a brief relationship with a man that confirmed his growing sense of his own homosexuality. “When that happened, all the guilt disappeared because I knew this was right,” he said.

Then he told Ann. They both say it would have been easier if they could have hated each other and gone their separate ways. But it wasn’t that simple. They still loved each other. And they wanted to keep their family together, even though the children--now ages 14, 19 and 21--would have a tough time accepting this new image of their father. (“They’ve been angry and hurt,” Ann said. “At times they’d do anything they could to keep us from separating and sometimes they wish we would.”)

Ann and Frank had always been able to talk through the problems in their marriage, and this ability to communicate made it possible for them to stay together. For the first six months after Frank told Ann he was gay, they had intense conversations every day about their feelings and the information they were both collecting. While Ann, who had never known anyone who was gay, read literature provided by PFLAG on topics including AIDS and safe sex, Frank formed friendships with gays who were comfortable with their lifestyle. He even brought home a book for Ann called “The Joy of Gay Sex.”

He took her to services at a church whose members are mostly gays and lesbians, and they both felt so warmly accepted there that they’ve begun training for the ministry.

After months of talking and sharing journals and letters in which they had written about their feelings, they decided to stay together in an open marriage that would allow Frank to explore relationships with men and Ann to seek the intimacy he couldn’t provide. They agreed to be completely honest with each other, even to the point of leaving a phone number where they could be reached if they were gone overnight.

Frank has since had one long-term relationship that ended at least partly because he wasn’t willing to leave his wife. He has also dated other men, though he isn’t seeing anyone now. Ann has tried seeing others, but, she said, “It was too uncomfortable for me. I couldn’t form two relationships at one time. I couldn’t handle it emotionally, so I gave it up.”

She said she and Frank still share affection but have gradually given up their own sexual relationship, becoming friends rather than lovers.

Ann, who still grieves over the loss of the husband she had before, was able to handle the idea of Frank dating at first: “It didn’t seem like a threat because he was seeing men. You can’t compete with a man, so why try?”

But now it bothers her. “You begin to want someone who’s just yours,” she explained.

Both agree that they eventually will separate, though they expect to always remain friends. First, however, they are supporting each other financially and emotionally as they study for the ministry, working toward a career change that will help them both start a new life on their own.

Meanwhile, Ann is also drawing emotional support from a group she started called Spouses of Gays and Lesbians, which includes about seven other wives of gays who share her anger, jealousy, fear of AIDS and myriad other feelings. (The group meets the first and third Tuesdays of the month at 14101 Yorba St., Suite 100, Tustin.)

Ann said the feeling she struggles with most today is sadness that her “fairy-tale marriage” is over. Frank is grieving too. But, he said firmly, “Once you open the box, you can’t close it again.”