Didn't you see how much Bobby Fine loved Lady Bitsy von Muffling???
It can happen. Maybe she's his Bitsy.

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If you see him, you smile and say "Congratulations."

If you don't see him, you say nothing.

It's like someone telling you "I'm pregnant." And you want to say "By WHOM! or Was it planned?!?" But that would be rude. So you say "Congratulations."

If you find that he's spouting "ex-gay" nonsense, I'd say you don't owe him any congratulations or any sort of communication at all.

But, you have to bear in mind that people are not as consistent/linear as our social and political constructs would have you believe.

One of the hardest things about coming out in the first place is changing your identity, to go from being seen as a straight person to a gay person. That's because you have to react to social constructs, built up around you by yourself and others. It's very freeing to come out, but the fact is, you are really just moving from one set of societal expectations to another.

Some people are going to fit well into that new set of costructs, others not so much.

It's very possible that your friend was always more bisexual than gay, but found it difficult to let anyone know that.

tl;dr version: give him the benefit of the doubt, unless you find he's acting in bad faith by demonizing other gay people. Wish him happiness in his new life and realize that every single person is a mystery at their core.

It sounds like you feel betrayed, and I think you have to deal with that before you can be sincere in your congratulations. Intellectually, you know it's none of your business what gender he sleeps with or marries, just like it's none of straight people's business who YOU share your life with. I can understand your feeling of "he's not who I thought he was!" but apparently this is who he is. Even if he IS lying to himself now, although that is unfortunate for him and his wife, you have to take it at face value because there is no way you can know. Wish for his happiness no matter what form that takes for him, and don't take this as a personal affront to you or your homosexuality.

tl;dr version: give him the benefit of the doubt, unless you find he's acting in bad faith by demonizing other gay people. Wish him happiness in his new life and realize that every single person is a mystery at their core.

BoPo said this much better than the thing I had typed out. Wish him happiness in his life. You do wish people happiness in their lives, don't you? Of course you do. That's where you find the sincerity to congratulate him.

I agree with what other people are saying about how you can just wish him happiness. I'd be curious about this and, without asking questions, would be open to some sort of catching up session and alert to any clues that he drops about what's going on here. You know, it could be okay. I can think of a several different plausible rationales for this turn of events.

BoPo's got it. And yea if he's going all "convert" or OMGJESUS!!! or otherwise just being a selfimportant douchebag about the affair, then, well, people can sometimes be that way, and I'm sympathetic to your plight.

Also, again to echo BP, it could maybe help to remember that sexuality is and can be a fluid thing, and sometimes people can fall for that one person out of their normal "gender ID". I know I've done it - I ID as about 90%-95% hetero, but I've definitely had, and acted on, girl crushes. Yea, ok, so this is much more typical / cliched "gender roleplaying" with women, but why shouldn't guys be this way sometimes too? I have had personal experience with this - a few years back when I was a cruising single out on the Boulder Cruise, one of the "well-known-to-be-openly-gay" guys approached me to say he'd always been het curious and he'd been crushing on me. We hooked up a few times, were FWB for several months, and drifted apart for other reasons (core incompatiblity) but it definitely wasn't because we weren't enjoying the, um... "benefits" part. sorry if that's TMI

*shrug*

realize that every single person is a mystery at their core.

I'm putting this on my wall.

Why would you have to offer congratulations, if you've drifted apart? I would just say and do nothing.

Is it possible he married for insurance purposes? I'm completely serious.

I mention this because I know a gay guy who married a lesbian so that she could have his awesome health insurance. This is obviously not something that they advertise outside of people that they know.

If you are friends, talk to him. If he is happy now, congratulate him. If something else is going on, be a friend and listen.

One of my gayest of gay friends 'turned' about four years ago and is now living with a woman and they have a son. We always had one of those "God, if you weren't/I wasn't gay, we'd be perfect for each other" friendships, so now, of course, I'm thinking he just pretended to be gay all those years because he didn't fancy me. (Because, you know, it's all about ME!)

I have a female acquaintance who came out as lesbian, aged about 17. She had a girlfriend at the time, the relationship had been secret, and she was very relieved to be able to make it public. Five years later (I didn't see her much in the interim) she began a relationship with a man, and said it was much more embarrassing to have to tell people this than to come out in the first place. She'd put herself into the "gay" category, but later realised that things were less clear-cut than that, for her.

So maybe it's something like that? If he starts spouting ex-gay stuff, though, all bets are off. I would have a hard time respecting someone who did that. But either way, there's no harm in just saying "congratulations" and being there to hear whatever he has to say.

fluffy battle kitten has a good point. I also know a gay guy who married a lesbian to make it easier to adopt.

I know a number of (all) women who came to this town lesbian, or came out here, and are now married to men.

It is fluid.

Agreed with BP, crush on a stick, desjardins et al

A tangent follows. One of the ideas I picked up on by listening to David Bender (he only mentioned this on his show a couple times but) how lacking our classifications of gay/straight/bi or spectrum of bisexuality are. There are social affections that aren't necessarily sexual despite how neatly we want to pack them in, and (this is how this conversation reminded me) he was once talking to a gay caller about this and the dude interjected "even at different parts of our lives" and that was like a lightbulb for me (even though I knew of the whole 'youthful gay experimentation that fades out' thing LFR was kinda hitting on from earlier.)

I never try to understand why people make the marriage decisions they do. I just know too many folks who seem to be very happy together and yet from the outside I have no idea what it is that keeps them that way.

I can imagine how surprising this news would be coming from a close friend, even though you say you've drifted apart. Being close means you know stuff about each other, doesn't it? But what can you do? Maybe your friend is surprised at his own actions, maybe he's doing it for health insurance, who knows. Sometimes as a friend you just have to put on that poker face, give your friend the benefit of the doubt, and hope for the best.

Yeah, thinking about this all day, I think I must be feeling like a straight person would when a close friend comes out as gay to them. I certainly know a lot of my friends, upon my coming out to them, felt hurt--not because they were homophobic or anything but, as halonine says you know stuff about each other. So they felt hurt that, for whatever reason, I didn't trust them sooner with the information. This sort of reaction always flustered me because (as I'd try to explain to the friend in question) telling people I was gay was still new to me as well. I've been out of the closet a long time now, and I don't have any problem telling people, but back then, well I felt bummed that I was hurting or upsetting people by coming out, in a way I'd never anticipated.

I guess this fits what I'm feeling with my newly-married friend. We were pretty close for nearly 10 years. Less so recently, but still we keep in touch about things. This was so out of left field for me that I'm just gobsmacked.

But ... whatever makes him happy. My feelings really aren't the point here, ultimately. If he's happy, then I'm happy for him. I just hope if I have occasion to offer my congratulations in person, I can summon my inner Miss Manners to do so in a way that doesn't reveal my gobsmacked state. :-)

Well, why should you hide how you feel from him? I doubt he'd be surprised that you are gobsmacked and may even resent that you refuse to engage with him on something that he would know has bothered you.

But yeah, worst case scenario is that you can wish him happiness and leave it at that. Honest, but not too honest, you know?

My sister has identified lesbian all her life. She had a commitment ceremony attended by hundreds of people. She and her partner raised a child she carried, using a gay sperm donor. She has a doctorate related to gender politics, and teaches gay-themed courses at the graduate level.

It was always what she's been all about. Then, a year ago she split from her partner and is talking about marrying a man she met, and is really excited about.

As she says: "go figure."

If you find that he's spouting "ex-gay" nonsense, I'd say you don't owe him any congratulations or any sort of communication at all.

But, you have to bear in mind that people are not as consistent/linear as our social and political constructs would have you believe.

That seems like really sensible advice: intelligent and sane and understanding of the crazy way life turns on a dime... and with the provision that anyone blabbing out intolerant nonsense can go to blazes.

At the same time, if you're like me, WolfDaddy, you might find it useful to distinguish between how you feel and how you react.

It's perfectly natural to feel hurt by this: even without the political and social implications that it may carry, this is a big change in your friend's life that was apparently presented to you as a fait accompli.

What I'm saying is that I have no actual advice, just commiseration: it's hard to learn that a once-close friend could go through such a big change --- a change in orientation, an important partnership, and a wedding --- without you knowing anything about it.

Even without the possibility (and it sounds like it's just a possibility, not a certainty, right?) that your friend is also rejecting the choices that you and he once had in common, it sounds very painful indeed. It's important to acknowledge that pain, if only to yourself.