continued...
Attitudes were very different when Gareth, a postman's son, started his professional career with Bridgend as a teenager.
He believes that had he been openly gay back then, he would never have reached rugby's highest echelons. 'It is the toughest, most macho of male sports, and with that comes an image,' he says. 'In many ways, it is barbaric, and I could never have come out without first establishing myself and earning respect as a player. 'Rugby was my passion, my whole life, and I wasn't prepared to risk losing everything I loved.'
Not that he was prepared, initially, to accept that he was gay - despite realising, aged 17, that he didn't feel attracted to women in the same way that his mates were. He had girlfriends, experimented sexually, but ultimately avoided intimacy. 'When I was 16 or 17 I knew I was gay, but knowing and accepting are two very different things. 'I could never accept it because I knew I would never be accepted as a gay man and still achieve what I wanted to achieve in the game. 'I would play along with the other lads. I had all the chit-chat. I knew which girls to flirt with, which girls to say were nice, which ones to say weren't. 'I'd make up stories about sexual conquests to fit in.
'I became a master of disguise and could play the straight man down to a tee, sometimes over-compensating by getting into fights or being overly aggressive because I didn't want the real me to be found out. 'So I created this alter ego, knowing full well that I was living in my little fantasy bubble, my shell. 'But when you withdraw into yourself you start to feel lonely, upset, ashamed. You create this inner world which is dark.
'The craziest thing is that I genuinely did love Jemma' 'I was never ever attracted to any of my rugby mates; I was really good at switching off my emotions and I wouldn't have even considered crossing that line.
'My biggest fear was that if my rugby mates knew, they'd all think I fancied them and reject me. 'If anything, rugby was my saviour. On the pitch I could forget who I was, escape all the confusion,' says Gareth, who retired from international rugby in 2007 but plans to continue playing with the Cardiff Blues for as long as he can. Gareth's first gay sexual encounter was with a male, non-rugby-playing friend, when he was 18, a one-off encounter which left him feeling ashamed and frightened. 'At the time it felt right, but afterwards it felt wrong and I promised myself it would never happen again,' he says.
'I just completely denied everything. Everything I wasn't supposed to think or feel went through a trap door in my mind and was forgotten. 'I used to hope that I would wake up one morning, all these feelings would be gone and I'd be like the rest of them, be one of the boys without having to pretend. 'I used to pray constantly and ask God: "You have given me this great talent to play rugby. There must be some kind of answer." But there wasn't one.'
It was at a friend's 18th birthday party that Gareth met his future wife Jemma. 'The craziest thing about Jemma is that I genuinely did love her. She was the nicest, most caring, understanding, prettiest girl I had ever met,' he says. 'It was such a confusing time because I had amazingly strong feelings for her, yet I knew I had taken who I was and put it in a little ball and pushed it in a corner. 'She took all of me, except that little ball, which was waiting to leak out at any time.
'Because I liked and loved Jemma so much, when we got really close, I felt: "Wow, this is really great!" 'I wanted to make love to her because of my feelings for her. It wouldn't have mattered to me if she was a man, a woman or an alien.' The relationship, however, was on-off for a long time before their church wedding in the pretty village of St Brides Major, near Bridgend, in 2002. Gareth says this was not only because international rugby took him away for long stretches of time and required total commitment, but also because he was struggling to contain his sexuality.
He admits that occasionally, during their 'off' periods, he gave into his urges and secretly met men, afterwards hating himself for doing so and repressing his sexuality again - a destructive cycle which would repeat itself throughout his career. 'It's so difficult to be so close to someone, and every day tell them that you love them and hear them say they love you, knowing the words were true, but also knowing that the real me wanted to take over,' he says. Knowing he might be gay, and having had secret sexual encounters with other men during their on-off courtship, was it fair to ask Jemma to marry him? Now that he has finally accepted who he is, Gareth is consumed with guilt over the upset he caused her.
They separated in late 2006 and their divorce is soon to be finalised. Jemma now lives in Spain where she works as an accountant. But they remain friends and he says they still love each other. 'I don't regret the marriage. I hope I have good years to come, but I had some of the most fantastic years of my life with Jemma. 'Our wedding day was brilliant. I loved it. Jemma was stunning and I was so very happy.
'I took those vows seriously and I wouldn't have married her if I hadn't thought I could make a go of being the perfect husband.' Did he not have cold feet at all, though?
Gareth says: 'I wanted to get married. We went to church together every week and I used to pray as hard as I could. 'I would say to God: "I have Jemma, I love her. Please take away these feelings that I have." 'I really wanted this marriage to be for the rest of my life, and I felt confident I could keep this other part of me locked away indefinitely.
'I still felt attracted to other men, but I squashed those feelings. I decided I could accept the attraction, provided I never did anything about it.'
This, however, would prove to be impossible for Gareth.
His love for Jemma did not rid him of these urges, and when he was playing away fixtures near London, he would more often than not be drawn to gay bars and clubs after the games. 'I became a master of disguise, playing a straight man' 'I loved Jemma to bits, she was my wife, I would have died for her, but keeping this secret was driving me crazy,' he says. 'It felt as if I had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.
'One would be saying to me, as I stood outside a gay bar: "Go on in and have a look," while the good one would be saying: "No, don't do it!" 'If I walked in, there would always be an element of fear. I would wonder who I was going to bump into, who was going to see me?' says Gareth, who insists he always practised safe sex. 'Cheating on Jemma made me feel horrible and guilty. Every time it happened, I promised myself "never again", but it was something I felt I needed to do to survive.
'I felt that if I didn't give in, it would be more destructive to me and Jemma. 'Sometimes I felt so alone and depressed. I've stood on so many cliff edges. 'I used to go to the cliffs overlooking the beach near our cottage in St Brides Major and just think about jumping off and ending it all. 'It's a lot easier to think: "If I haven't got to open my eyes, then I don't have to worry. If I don't have to think about it, then I don't have any pain."
'But I could never have done it. It was like a cry for help. I didn't have the guts and I loved my life, my rugby and my family too much.
'But just thinking about it helped, got it out of my system. 'Sometimes I'd think: "I don't want to be like this. I want to kill myself." Then the reality hits home. 'It wasn't that I really wanted to die, I just wanted everything to be different, for it all to go away. 'Despite believing his father Barry, 60, mother Yvonne, 61, and older brothers Steven, 40, and Richard, 37, would love and accept him no matter what, he found it impossible to confide in them.
'To tell them I was gay would have been to accept the reality,' says Gareth, 'and I wasn't ready for that.
'Sometimes it's hardest to speak to those closest to you. 'It was in 2006, however, that Gareth's life completely unravelled. Having moved in 2004 from Bridgend to Celtic Warriors and then to the French Club Toulouse, Gareth should have been on a high after 2005's stunning sporting triumphs, which included winning the Heineken Cup. Instead, he became caught up in the controversy surrounding the sudden departure of the Wales national coach, and stood accused of leading a player revolt.
Hours after appearing in a heated television discussion to defend his team against charges of ' player-power', Gareth - having been previously injured in a match with his French club - collapsed from a ruptured artery and suffered a ministroke. A few weeks later, his wife Jemma suffered her third miscarriage. Not long after this, he realised he could no longer carry the burden of his secret and confessed to his wife at their home in France. 'I was changing, getting more and more pent-up. I loved Jemma, but not 100 per cent, and I just felt she deserved better. It wasn't fair on her,' he says.
'One night, on impulse, I just said: "I can't lie to you any more, and I've got to tell you that I'm gay." 'She is the nicest person in the world and tried to be understanding, but of course she was angry and upset. We were both in tears. 'I suffer every day now knowing how much I hurt her saying it, but I think it was best in the long run: I'm gay and she had to know. 'I told her I was sorry and I still apologise now. 'I still love her to the depth of my bones. She's an amazing woman.
'We had some of the best years together, but I feel guilty that if I had never married Jemma, she might have met someone else who might still be with her. 'At first, we both felt we couldn't just walk away from each other, and there was a part of us which wondered if we could carry on as man and wife. 'But over a three-month period we gradually drifted apart and Jemma went back to Wales. 'I think she would have felt a lot more pain if it had been another woman. She could have thought: "What's wrong with me? What could I not give you?"
'But because I was gay and was attracted to men, she knew it was nothing she'd ever be able to change.'So now Gareth is single and free to date whomever he pleases without fear of being 'outed'. He says he feels like a teenager again, re-living his youth, discovering who he really is. He hopes, now that he has gone public, he can still go out with male friends without people assuming he's with a lover.
'Just because you are gay, doesn't mean you fancy every man who walks the planet,' he says. 'I don't want to be known as a gay rugby player. I am a rugby player first and foremost. I am a man. 'I just happen to be gay. It's irrelevant. What I choose to do when I close the door at home has nothing to do with what I have achieved in rugby. 'It's pretty tough for me being the only international rugby player prepared to break the taboo. 'Statistically I can't be the only one, but I'm not aware of any other gay player still in the game. 'I'd love for it, in ten years' time, not to even be an issue in sport, and for people to say: "So what?" '
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Congrats to him for being honest and realizing what made him truly happy and that his content in his life and heart also to top it off his such a nice guy and living his dream not everyone can have that... the best of luck to you Gareth.