After 16 years of marriage to a woman who had eventually come out as lesbian, Tom Teague made a promise to himself on a balmy October night in 2003: He would dance with every straight woman at the bar. Given the particularities of that evening, the odds were in his favor.

Teague, a reserved software development manager, was one of 100 attendees at the annual beachside gathering in Florida for members of the Straight Spouse Network. He had arrived fresh from the memorial service for his mother, who had died of pancreatic cancer days earlier. But he sought solace from more than just her death. SSN had been his lifeline since his wife came out as a lesbian that January. More than ever, he needed to be with people who could understand him.

Teague spotted Lynn Cloud across the dance floor. "I swear, it might have been the lighting, but Lynn just kind of had this glow," he says with almost boyish excitement. The way he tells the story, it's clear that he's back in the moment instead of in a condo in Arlington, Va.

Cloud, who was married to a gay man for 17 years before she met Teague, jumps in. "He was on one corner of the dance floor, and I was on the other, by the band," she says from her seat next to Teague.

"We pointed at each other and said, 'I haven't danced with you yet!' And we both said that—"

"—at the same [time]. I mean, it was so synchronous."

It was a welcome change. For a long time, life had been filled with more misery than magic. But that's what the closet — a place as real for straight spouses as it is for the gay men and women they marry — will do to you.

Straight spouses are largely absent from the national conversation about gay marriage and the modern family. Certainly, it's easier to talk about two moms or two dads who have been together from the start than to talk about why Mom left Dad for another woman, or why Dad left Mom for another man. As tolerance for LGBT people spreads, more closeted spouses will come out. While for them, the light beyond those doors can be liberating, for the straight partners stumbling out behind them, it can be quite harsh.

The Straight Spouse Network and other groups are attempting to kick-start the discussion by creating a safe place for straight spouses to share their stories. Founded in 1991, the SSN connects straight spouses through online forums and listservs, face-to-face meetings, and social gatherings.

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Coming out is never easy, but the gay spouse has one advantage: By the time he or she is ready to tell the other, "I'm gay," a huge amount of emotional adjusting has already taken place. The straight partner is starting from scratch.

"In terms of the healing journey, [gay spouses] are way ahead of the game," says psychotherapist Kimberly Brooks Mazella, who works with as many as 15 straight spouses, mostly women, at a time in her practice in McLean, Va. "The gay partner has done their grieving, and now they want to live their life. But that's an additional hurt, a slap in the face for the straight spouse."

Mazella has been treating straight spouses since 1987 — the year she became one herself. At the time, she confronted many of the same questions that her patients do now. "Was I ever really loveable? Was he faking it the whole time? It just cuts to the core," she says. "For me, it was just a couple of years. Had I been married for 30 or 40 years, I think those questions would cut even more deeply."

In her professional experience, many straight spouses tend to share certain core traits, such as a lack of sexual experience and self-confidence. In her personal experience, straight spouses tend to ignore their gut, just as she did when she met her ex-husband for the first time. "He's gay," her gut said. "Gay guys don't date women," she reassured herself.

When Mazella helps her patients move through the stages of grief, she acknowledges that it can be an emotional balancing act. "Straight spouses are often struggling with competing emotional experiences — their own feelings of grief and loss, anger at the gay spouse's betrayal, and compassion for their partner's own painful journey," she says.

Ask a straight spouse what awaits him or her on the other side of the closet door. The most common answer is a deep sense of isolation. "Most [straight] spouses endure their pain in silence on their side of the closet, while their gay, lesbian and bisexual partners find support from their respective communities," SSN founder Amity Pierce Buxton writes in her book The Other Side of the Closet.

From her years treating straight spouses, Mazella adds a few more factors to the mix. The straight spouse can be blamed as complicit in the closet. A gay spouse's infidelity can be viewed as an expression of his or her true self instead of an act of unfaithfulness. "How did you not know?" is a common question. There are those who are dismissive of the entire marriage, as Mazella encountered. "People said to me, 'Oh, it wasn't really a marriage anyway,' " she says.

Such reactions share a common theme: They are indicative of the bad rap that straight spouses get. "A lot of times, I think people perceive straight spouses as a bunch of angry, middle-aged women," Mazella says.

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The straight spouses I met at an Arlington SSN meeting gave the lie to that misconception. Seven women ranging in age from their 30s to 60s had gathered in a cozy living room, helping themselves to wine, homemade coffeecake, and other snacks. Each woman offers a different example of how a straight spouse can respond to her partner's revelation.

There's the thirtysomething who felt "morally obligated to get a divorce" because she wants to teach her daughters that sex is a valid part of a marriage. For the most part, she amicably co-parents with her ex. There's also the sixtysomething who remains angry with her ex-husband, who trivialized his infidelity and their marriage. "I've had to reinvent myself, and that pisses me off, frankly," she says.

Perhaps the most disparate experiences are those of Christine, who has just separated from her husband, and Marilyn, who has made the choice to stay in what is called a mixed-orientation marriage.

Christine, 32, has left her young children at home for the night with her husband, who came out to her two months ago. He's been living in the basement as they prepare to sell their house and separate.

"I can't really fault him," Christine says. She lays out the circumstances, including his upbringing in a conservative church that shunned homosexuality. Encountering people who have encouraged her to turn bitter against her husband only compounds an already difficult situation, she says. She may be angry, but she does not want to be bitter.

Marilyn agrees. "You feel bitter, you feel angry, you feel things," she says. "But that can't become your life."

Marilyn's husband came out to her in December 2005 — the day after they saw Brokeback Mountain, the Oscar-winning film about two cowboys who become lovers. "We were up to our knees in tears," she says of the aftermath.

Marilyn remains married to her husband, in part because they had "untraditional wedding vows" that pledged love over fidelity, but they are no longer physically intimate. His sexuality is one factor in that decision. His preference not to use protection during sexual intercourse is another. She can trust her husband of 37 years to be as safe as possible, but she can't be as certain about any potential new sexual partners.

However, she's come to accept and even care about her husband's boyfriend while regarding her marriage as authentic, perhaps more so than all the years in the closet. The whole family knows, and nothing is more important to Marilyn than family — her husband, their elderly mothers, their kids.

If Marilyn decides that she needs a different partner to be happy, the marriage will be over. The key is that she decides now. "My mantra is, what's going to make me happy?" she says.