Lori and Richard Sand were married in 1989, had two beautiful children, and for 12 years of built-in ups and downs, lived a picture-perfect traditional life in Alpharetta.
Lori worked as an occupational therapist and Richard was the all-American businessman, keeping active at home as a founding member of his family’s synagogue and upstanding member of his community.
Both partners recognized the day-to-day difficulties of managing a marriage, but neither anticipated the life-altering plot twist that changed everything they knew about traditional family life.
After years of personal exploration and emotional suppression, Richard told his wife that he bisexual. Just months later, he came out as gay.
His curiosity piqued, Richard already experimented mildly during business travels, but he still struggled with knowing that happiness meant changing the life he was raised to live.
“It’s like giving someone the worst kind of news,” Richard says. “For all intents and purposes, everything she knew about our relationship crumbled to an end.”
Lori says even though “the gay thing” came as a shock, she found herself struggling with the divorce as any wife would, regardless of her husband’s sexual orientation.
“I never got married to be divorced,” she says. “There was anger and confusion, but the anger wasn’t that he was gay, it was the issues of any divorce that happen anywhere in the country.
“I feel like society had a role to play that he couldn’t decide,” Lori continues. “He did what he was expected to do, all in the order that society expected him to. I was not angry that he was gay, but rather at the other things that come along with being divorced.”
Things weren’t so great for Richard either. The immediate emotional aftermath of his coming out left him guilt-ridden. He could
n’t find peace in his mild relief due to the wreckage left in its wake, and he still had two very important people to tell: his 4-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.
The two decided to tell their children together about a year after Richard first told Lori.
“They looked at Mommy, and when she said that everything was going to be OK, the kids said it was OK,” Richard says. “They’ve both been really good about it. We watched the Rosie O’Donnell cruise ship video together, and it was great because it had other kids talking about how their parents were gay, how they deal with that, and how to handle kids who are critical about it.”
Richard and Lori’s daughter Rachel, now 13, says she has no issue with her father’s sexual orientation and subsequent relationship with his partner, Lee Spaulding, who began playing step-dad more than three years ago.
“Children are children, and you can learn a lot from them,” Spaulding says, adding that he thought for sure his sexual orientation would preclude him from fatherhood.
“They’re special and unique and give me the opportunity to see things through a child’s eyes,” he says of the Sand children. “I think a lot of gay men have forgotten some of life’s priorities. Life isn’t necessarily about going out every weekend.”
Lori also found love after her first marriage, ironically through the local chapter of the Straight Spouse Network, a support group founded in the mid-1980s for heterosexuals from former relationships with gay men and lesbians.
Lori’s fiancé, Dave Grover, joined the group when he divorced his ex-wife of more than 22 years, long after he found out she was a lesbian. In denial after she first told him of her orientation, Grover attempted to maintain the marriage even after his wife came out the second time.
The story of Grovers’ marriage differs greatly from the Sands. He and his wife tried an open marriage for a time. When that no longer worked, Grover says he tried to “bargain the gay away,” spending thousands of dollars on a new car, a family RV for vacations, and even going as far as adopting a daughter, all to appease his wife.
While Lori and Grover found the Straight Spouse Network, Richard also sought support after coming out through Gay Fathers of Atlanta, which shares a booth with the Straight Spouse Network at the 2006 Atlanta Pride festival, placing the former couple side-by-side again.
“We’ve always been active in the community,” Richard says. “This is another chance to show and demonstrate a positive example of how gay parents can be good parents. I’d love to show some of these people how normal my life is and that my kids are well adjusted.”
Spaulding and Grover are both a part of the Sands children’s life, along with both parents. The four adults get along well and spend time with each other and the kids in family activities.
What originally began as a traditional family blossomed to a new unit, compete with three dads and a mom, all working together toward the betterment of the two children they all adore.
“My kids are fortunate to have four adults in their lives who love them,” Richard says. “We love each other, we’re there for each other, and in a crazy world, family is very important.”
