Straight Talk

When your past haunts you, should you tell your spouse? Dennis Jernigan tried it both ways and knows what works best

Ingrid Ramos

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Dennis Jernigan was a man with a past. He knew it. A few Christian counselors knew it. A couple of old friends knew it. Trouble was, Melinda, his wife-to-be, didn't know it. And she wouldn't until five years and three kids into their marriage.

Though there was a part of him that wanted to come clean with his fiancee, Dennis didn't share his secret for two important reasons. First, he was convinced by well-intentioned friends that since God had forgiven and forgotten his sin, he should do the same. They suggested he never bring up his past to anyone—not even his wife. And second, Dennis and Melinda had agreed not to talk about the past, acknowledging they both had done regrettable things.

But Dennis's secret wasn't a run-of-the-mill "past indiscretion" that a wife might expect. His past was one that would haunt him for years. Even though he had turned his back on his former homosexual lifestyle, he still was bombarded by fear. What would Melinda, their children and his church do if they ever found out?

Growing Up 'Different'

Today, Dennis is a well-known singer and composer of praise and worship music. His songs are used in Sunday-morning services across the country. But he says that from the time he was four or five, he felt different from other boys. He was a sensitive, gifted pianist—not a very manly trait in the rough-and-tumble world of rural Oklahoma where he grew up. Real men went fishing and hunting; they didn't tickle the ivories for Auntie Beth in the parlor, as Dennis was regularly asked to do.

"I never got to do boy stuff," he says now of his frustrating childhood.

The other boys noticed that Dennis was different. They routinely called him "sissy" and other demeaning names. All the while, Dennis says, "this just confirmed to me that I didn't belong with other little boys."

Throughout childhood, Dennis struggled in two areas that he now says led to his sexual-identity confusion: feeling like a "freak" and his inability to gain his dad's approval. Through out school, he excelled at many things. In addition to his obvious musical gifts, he was a star basketball player and valedictorian of his high school class. But none of his accomplishments won his father's respect, which he desperately sought.

"So," Dennis says, "I became even more convinced that who I was was a mistake somehow."

Leaving Home

Having been raised in a strict Baptist family, Dennis tried to stifle the growing intensity of his homosexual feelings. After graduating high school, he headed off to Oklahoma Baptist University to study music. It was there, in sophomore music theory class, where he met Melinda Hewitt.

"I thought she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen," Dennis says. "I asked her out because I thought, maybe I'm not doing what I need to do to [be straight]."

For the next two years, Dennis and Melinda dated off and on. Though she noticed that something was "off" about Dennis, she never suspected he was gay.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 2000, Summer

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