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February 17, 2018 1:24 am  #1


Afraid to be Alone

It has only been a few weeks since discovering TGT. My husband is in denial, but I know the truth. Last month I was enjoying life, brand new home, living in Paradise.....soon to retire.....and then TGT. 

I am now 63 years old, married 43 years, a professional career woman, what do I do now? The man I love has deceived me, betrayed me, and I am lost. I am trying to hold onto Hope and Strength. Can I live in this marriage , that is a lie? Or do I have the courage to leave?

I want the courage to leave......But afraid I will never find love....I just want to be loved........but at 63 years, I feel my life is over now.....

 

February 17, 2018 1:40 am  #2


Re: Afraid to be Alone

I feel your pain.  But it’s still early for you.  Give it time.  No decisions need to be made immediately.  Gain your strength.  Take care of you.  There is llove at any age if you want it.  Right now focus on you.  A happy healthy you will lead you where you are meant to go.
Hugs and peace.

 

February 17, 2018 5:45 am  #3


Re: Afraid to be Alone

Hi cindys,

I know I promised myself I wouldn't live with his lie any more, he could do what he liked but I wasn't going to, that was what got me through the first night once I knew he was gay in denial.

my circumstances made it possible to leave and that is what I ended up doing but I was frightened too.

I slept better from the first night in my new place.

 

February 17, 2018 7:59 am  #4


Re: Afraid to be Alone

Cindys,
    My situation is somewhat analogous to yours.  I'm 64, a professional woman, with only one more year to work before I begin to phase out of my job (working half time).  My stbx, after an initial enthusiastic embrace of his newfound sexuality (he decided he was a transgendered woman, and therefore wanted to remake our marriage along those lines, with him acting as a lesbian woman), is back in the closet, and as far as I can see intends to stay there.  His disclosure, now three years ago, hit like a bomb and blew up my life, past, present, and future.  
     Although I initially said I wouldn't stay married to him, in my devastation and grief and disbelief and hope I fell prey to his requests for me to help and comfort him.  Trauma boding sex and my own sense of guilt re-secured me.  Only last month did I say I wanted to divorce.  We are now in the early stages of negotiating our uncoupling; luckily he is being fair and reasonable, although as half our assets are in my name, and I have my own retirement and savings that have never been part of marital property, recalcitrance on his part wouldn't gain him much.
    I look back on the last three years I spent in the agony of trying to decide whether to stay or go and wish I had carried through on my early resolve and left the marriage as soon as I could.  I don't think that "I had to go through what I did to ensure I felt that I did all I could and that this was the right thing to do."  I think my earliest impulse was the right, best, and most self-protective one. I lost three years of my life--three years of my 60s and the precious time I have left on earth--to agony when I could have been re-building my life. Yes, it felt terrible then, and I was grieving, but it's not as if I haven't been grieving these past three years while staying with him. Better to have done it while building something else that would have softened and then eventually overshadowed the grief.
    In order to leave, I had to reach the point where I could see and admit to myself that I have lost my husband.  There is a term for women like me whose husbands decide they want to live as women: trans widows.  It's as if our husbands are dead. Perhaps it would help you if you think of your husband that way; your heterosexual husband is dead.  In his place is this new being, one that can no longer be to you what (you thought) he was.  Knowing that my stbx was willing to go behind my back, expose his secret to others while keeping me in the dark, act out his sexuality with others and without me, and be willing to bind me to an inauthentic life in his closet for the rest of my life helped me to get there.  Your feeling of betrayal is real, and when you find your anger over it, that anger can help propel you out of the marriage.  It may not be courage, exactly, but it is your friend, in that it can help accomplish the same task. 
   Here's the thing: you do not have the love you want now.  As long as you stay, you will not have that love; nor will you be free either to look for it or to be in a position that it will find you.
   I don't know why it is that we professional women, competent, independent, capable, and strong in so many other areas of our lives, find ourselves seemingly paralyzed and dependent emotionally, even when we are married to men who don't deserve us, but I know in the depths of my core, and in my heart, and in the actions I am taking every day, that I have the strength and the capacity to get through this, and to come out on the other side better off, free of the weight of his disorder and free to live the life that his disorder has kept from me for a long time--if not the entire 35 years of my marriage. 
   One thing I would say is that a short term separation, getting away from him so you don't have to see him, every day, would be immensely helpful; it gives you the necessary space to allow for a change of perspective, and you don't have always in front of you the confusion being with him sows.  A therapist, too, can help you acquire the mental tools to move forward.
  
 
  
    

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (February 17, 2018 8:03 am)

 

February 17, 2018 9:19 am  #5


Re: Afraid to be Alone

I also worried about being alone for the rest of my life after my husband decided to exit the marriage. What I have discovered since is that there probably are more single men in their 50's and 60's than there would have been if I'd become single in my 40's. "Gray divorce" is growing but there also are more men in this demographic who have become widowers. Just be aware that there are romance scammers too and read every article you can find about how to spot and avoid them because they zoom in on your fear of being alone.

Once you meet a man and his background checks out dating is easier because there are no parents to disapprove and usually are no minor children to blend. There is more time available to spend getting to know each other. Just give yourself time to heal if you do decide to divorce and put yourself in situations where you are doing activities you like with groups of men and women. Have fun and try new things.

The caution I always give anyone approaching or in retirement is to make sure you understand how remarriage would affect your financial stability (if in the U.S. with Social Security benefits and with Medicaid if your spouse were to enter a nursing home) because a pre-nuptual agreement between the two of you does not override obligations the law may impose. You may decide as I have that remarriage is not for me but cohabitation may be.


 


Try Gardening. It'll keep you grounded.
 

February 17, 2018 11:05 am  #6


Re: Afraid to be Alone

This subject really helps me today. I am one year post divorce and have kids with my gay ex. I am in an amicable relationship now with him and co parenting well. Lately though ive been so lonely and find myself missing him more and more. I feel this anxiety and fear of being alone for the rest of my life once the kids are grown and have lives of their own. It terrifies me. Im not dating because im not ready. I know i have to work on myself and fill my life with something else before i start begging him to come back and experience the agony and pain of tgt all ovet again. Thank you for starting this thread.

 

February 17, 2018 11:37 am  #7


Re: Afraid to be Alone

Grace,

Dittome too. But..
We are alone, for now.
We fear the future alone, for now.

I honestly don't know what I will do when my last kid is out and gone.  Im not going to worry about this now though. I know I will not have a cheating disloyal covert gay spouse with me..and that makes all the difference.


"For we walk by faith, not by sight .."  2Corinthians 5:7
 

February 17, 2018 2:08 pm  #8


Re: Afraid to be Alone

Oh boy,
 
That is hard to hear.  I think we all fear being alone.  I feel lonely a lot too.  That someone you talked to everyday is gone, and maybe was never there.  My closet lesbian ex is not the person I married.  She is so long gone.  Nothing you can do.  3 months in here.  It hurts.  It sucks.  Find friends and family.  I am amazed at the support I have.  I am being amicable with mine, but only communicating through texts and emails.  We have 2 kids.   I am not ready to hear or see her.  She deceived and lied to me for 18 years.  I am learning it is very hard to live with a broken heart.  I think it makes us all realize just how human we are.   

 

February 18, 2018 2:54 am  #9


Re: Afraid to be Alone

Out of his closet,  Thank you, you have given me courage and strength.  

     Thread Starter
 

February 18, 2018 6:19 pm  #10


Re: Afraid to be Alone

Cindys,
    You will find your way forward.  When that disclosure or discovery comes, we are all in such shock and pain that it is hard to think our way forward and out, especially as we had without our realizing it been conditioned all those years of our marriage in ways that hinder us when we need to call on our strength.  But when we are able to stop and breathe, to hear from others, to ask for and be given support and validation from friends and family, or learn from others' stories, when we then look around ourselves, we realize who we are, what our values and needs are, how capable we are, and just how much time and life we have left to live without the burden of living with someone who isn't able to love us. 
   The shame is theirs: they stay in a closet because they feel ashamed of themselves for their sexuality. Too often they can't admit or realize that what they have to be ashamed of isn't their sexuality but their treatment of us.  The shame we often feel--because we were duped--was given to us by them and their own feelings of shame.  Neither the shame we feel, nor their own feelings of shame, however, are ours to bear.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (February 18, 2018 6:24 pm)

 

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