Getty images; Alyssa Powell/BI
- When Karl Dunn began the divorce process, he received support at work from other divorced men.
- As a gay man, Dunn says he was shocked to connect deeply with so many straight male coworkers.
- He credits the experience with helping him learn his biggest lessons about DEI in the workplace.
The Monday morning after proposing to my husband, I found myself the recipient of an impromptu engagement celebration at the office.
It was 2012, and I'd been working as an executive creative director in a huge advertising agency in LA for a year. I'm a gay man, and while my straight colleagues had never intentionally made me feel left out, at that moment — wearing my new ring and drinking Champagne from paper cups with those coworkers, many of whom were married — I suddenly felt like their equal. To organize the big moment, get down on one knee, and pop the question — all of us guys now had that experience in common.
For the first time in my life, I felt "in." It got even better once I tied the knot. I'd mention "my husband" and feel as equal as anyone else mentioning their spouse. I know I'm not supposed to say I needed the straight world's validation, but I loved how it felt — while also hating how much I loved it.
So when I got divorced five years later, I felt somewhat of a crash landing when I had to take my ring off and go back to my unequal normality.
Little did I know I was about to find a new brotherhood among a different group at work: straight men who were also getting divorced.
My lifelong enemies saved my life
I believe this will ring true for a lot of gay men my age: I've had a lifelong mistrust of straight guys.
They were the ones I tried to imitate for years growing up. They beat a lot of us up in high school. They get to write laws that make my whole community suffer. Also, they'd caused me trouble at past jobs. For many of us, they've been the enemy.
I know there are lots of great ones — some of my best friends are straight guys — but even with them, I find myself envious of the ease with which they appear to move through this world.
So imagine my surprise when I found it was straight men at work, the ones divorcing or already divorced, who I relied on to get me through my breakup.
I'd come to realize that the failure of my relationship had made me a pariah in some parts of the gay world. Marriage still was a fairytale for many gay men, and I'd blown up the fantasy. Once, a total stranger in a gay bar, upon hearing I was getting divorced, shocked me by saying, "Thanks for wrecking it for the rest of us."
In a matter of weeks, it was straight men — my coworkers — who became my greatest supporters, advisors, and most unlikely allies. And I was for them too.
We met up at the 'divorce bench'
It started with James. He was a straight guy in my office who'd gone through a terrible divorce. I didn't know him then, but desperate for help, I asked him for some advice. And that's how I was introduced to an unofficial club — the straight guys' divorce club.
We were from all over the company, from the mailroom to the C-suite. Our group had men from every ethnicity, four different religions, multiple generations, and both sides of the political divide. There were American-born men and immigrants like myself.
As a group, we would meet informally at the "divorce bench" just outside the office, which was actually just the smoker's bench, to exchange info, tactics, and divorce updates. After a while of getting to know each other, we began to talk even more openly and fearlessly. I got advice on how to best work with lawyers, how to act at the office, how to handle the feelings of rage and loss — basically, how to get through this alive.
Divorce became the great equalizer, and surviving it was our common goal
As we shared and listened deeply to each other, our diversity of experiences and thinking seemed to power us. In this DEI microcosm of up to eight men depending on the day, we didn't agree on everything. Many of us might have canceled each other in another, still-married life. I certainly had some difficult talks with the more conservatively religious guys about my gayness.
But here's the thing: We were imperfect allies, and that was okay.
We could only talk to each other using the reference points we had from our individual lives, so our questions were often clunky, ill-informed, and sometimes even offensive.
And that's where the gold of DEI lies. In this group, only people who were complete outsiders to each other could see each other so clearly.
The power of being unlikely allies
One divorcing guy, who'd never had a gay friend in his life, wanted to know if he could ask me "about some gay stuff." Nothing was off the table in our group, so I said yes.
He asked how we — my ex-partner and I — had decided who was "the man" and who was "the woman" of the relationship.
This is, in my opinion, one of the most offensive things you can ask a gay man. But instead of reacting, I remembered the trust we'd built, took a deep breath, and asked, did he mean sexually?
He clarified that he meant emotionally and explained that his girlfriend always shared her feelings and wanted him to open up more. He told me he wanted to, but struggled because he wasn't raised that way. He asked me, "When it's two dudes, how does anyone know where they're at?"
With that one question, he'd (unknowingly) helped me uncover why my last five relationships had ended. What could have been easily seen as him being a homophobe and gotten him canceled or fired was him actually asking for help. He'd hoped we gay guys had cracked something that he could learn to become a better partner to his girlfriend — a better man.
His question actually helped me become a better man. As I thought about it more, it began to change how I love. In my new relationship, I make sure my boyfriend always knows where I'm at emotionally, and he does the same for me.
I learned the greatest lesson in DEI
Our differences were a gift, and we never let them trump our unbreakable respect for each other. Ultimately, it was the radical trust I'd had with this coworker and the rest of those divorcing men that helped me lose my lifelong fear and bias against straight guys.
The great irony is that while we had this incredible open culture at this bench outside the office, when we'd go back inside, this same kind of honesty would've probably gotten us all fired. Even though I didn't work directly with any of those men, it was great to know this invisible network was all through the building. I'm grateful that my divorce threw me into the care of the people I'd feared the most my whole life.
Now, I speak and give workshops about how organizations can use the biggest lessons I've learned about DEI: We don't have to agree on everything to still respect each other. Conversations help biases disappear. And it's the diversity of opinions that can help us all understand ourselves in ways we never imagined.
Karl Dunn is the author of "How to Burn a Rainbow" and a keynote speaker who champions the power of diversity of thinking in organizations. He lives between Berlin and Los Angeles.