OurPath Open Forum

This Open Forum is funded and administered by OurPath, Inc., (formerly the Straight Spouse Network). OurPath is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides support to Straight Partners and Partners of Trans People who have discovered that their partner is LGBT+. Your contribution, no matter how small, helps us provide our community with this space for discussion and connection.


BE A DONOR >>>


You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



December 21, 2018 11:02 am  #1


TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

I am interested to hear everyone's thoughts on how prevalent personality disorders, mental disorders, or maybe just plain old "bad moral compasses" contribute to the situations where a spouse realizes they are gay and begins cheating on their spouse of many years.
I'm not trying to lump every single person comes out to their spouse into this discussion, only the ones who put their spouse through the betrayal of infidelity.

Although I cannot accurately claim to know all of the thoughts and feelings of a person who is gay, especially if they honestly didn't realize it until later in life, I cannot think of any urge or feeling that would cause me to betray my wife and risk destroying my family and letting my children down.
I have heard people give hypothetical examples similar to if they woke up today and were only attracted to tall Asian women they would not take it as a sign that they needed to leave their marriage and family of 15 years. I agree that whatever sexual attraction or compulsion I felt, I cannot imagine anything that would cause me to be unfaithful to my wife.

I'm not saying that anyone should have to hide who they are, or live a inauthentic life for the remainder of their life. It just seems very selfish for someone to have a realization about themselves and feel compelled to act on it so quickly (many times it seems the reasoning is "I wanted to see if I really was gay, so I had to try it.").
 

 

December 21, 2018 4:21 pm  #2


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

yes there is often a sense that our spouse has acted with monumental selfishness.  Mine didn't want to get divorced but I still feel the same.  I think the selfishness was there at the beginning.

When you were a boy you were straight.  You did not know it would entail wanting to kiss a girl but you were straight.  When you were a young teenager you knew it involved wanting to do a hell of a lot more than kiss a girl but you don't know the whole of it do you.  You know more of what it means to be a straight by the time you are a young man and you know even more by the time you are middle aged, and more again by the time you are 60.  And so on.  

Nobody knows the whole picture when young, it's a bit fuzzy round the edges, but it seems to me to be overwhelmingly likely your wife knew she was attracted to her own sex.  Just like you knew you were attracted to the opposite sex.

My point is this - if she were being honest then how could she hide that from you, whatever else she thought  -  can you imagine hiding such a thing from her?  there you are in love with her, honesty is required isn't it.  It's not just compulsory it's compulsive - you feel a need to be honest with the one you love.  You want the openness, that feeling of intimate connection.

Now she is still not being honest with you in that romantic sense but she is being more honest about herself  -  she's fallen in love with someone I'd guess.

She might not have understood, she might've mistaken her affection for you as romantic love and she would certainly have been loving your attention but it was a woman she needed to fall in love with.

The straight spouse ends up tied up in knots like a pretzel trying to make sense of their non-straight partner.  The way you feel about her, where you can't imagine anything would cause you to be unfaithful to your wife, she needs it to be a woman to feel like that.  You can't imagine feeling like that about a man, can you.  well nor can she.

while you have had no problem to be faithful to her, it's different for her - to be faithful to you is to be unfaithful to herself and she is finally admitting that.  we really are collateral damage all along.


 

 

December 21, 2018 7:56 pm  #3


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

"to be faithful to you is to be unfaithful to herself"....boy is that f***ing smart!  

 

December 22, 2018 10:05 am  #4


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

lily wrote:

The straight spouse ends up tied up in knots like a pretzel trying to make sense of their non-straight partner.  The way you feel about her, where you can't imagine anything would cause you to be unfaithful to your wife, she needs it to be a woman to feel like that.  You can't imagine feeling like that about a man, can you.  well nor can she.

while you have had no problem to be faithful to her, it's different for her - to be faithful to you is to be unfaithful to herself and she is finally admitting that.  we really are collateral damage all along.

 

Wow, great post Lily. Very insightful.

     Thread Starter
 

December 22, 2018 2:43 pm  #5


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

lily wrote:

The straight spouse ends up tied up in knots like a pretzel trying to make sense of their non-straight partner.  The way you feel about her, where you can't imagine anything would cause you to be unfaithful to your wife, she needs it to be a woman to feel like that.  You can't imagine feeling like that about a man, can you.  well nor can she.

while you have had no problem to be faithful to her, it's different for her - to be faithful to you is to be unfaithful to herself and she is finally admitting that.  we really are collateral damage all along.
 

What a fantastic post Lily. This speaks to me and my situation in such a deep way. I am, in this very moment, sitting in a parking lot away from the house, struggling with my feelings about her infidelity. It is hard to put yourself in the others shoes, and there is no easy answer to what we face in the losing of someone we love. It feels so cruel and unfair, but I don’t have anyone to be angry with.

 

December 22, 2018 3:47 pm  #6


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

"while you have had no problem to be faithful to her, it's different for her - to be faithful to you is to be unfaithful to herself and she is finally admitting that.  we really are collateral damage all along."
Wow, Lily, thank-you for putting into words what I have been struggling with for so many (18) years.
It was only when,a few months ago, my now adult children, told me their father is living with a man (in Nice, France), that I have been able to accept that he will not be trying to return to me, (not that I would try to be his wife again).
When I said, "I do", I did to the promise/vow in "sickness & in health until death do us part".
I still struggle with accepting that we were meant to be together only for a few years, because I genuinely intended to be committed to him for life.
I struggle being "true to myself" without him in my life.  When I look at the photographs of the years together, I am reminded that I felt my strongest &  best with him. I honestly felt the safest ever, when with him....
And, Jaybird, I too, don't have anyone to be angry with/at. God, for making him "that way"?

 

December 22, 2018 5:30 pm  #7


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

well we do have things to be angry about.  Clearly we do or we wouldn't be feeling it.  

and you know, even if you get all philosophical about it and say it's not their fault, I am just collateral damage, they are what they are - it's still something to be angry about.

After we'd been together for a while, my ex would sometimes say "I never asked to be born".  And I would just nod my head but now I realise that was his excuse for holding onto me.  he knew he was giving me a lifetime of misery just so he could be a little bit happier.  But what kind of happy is it?

I admit, I still feel a bit sick when I remember what it felt like to love him.  To feel safe with him.  He did not want to divorce but I made it happen and now he actually is a bit happier.  Tho again, largely at my expense.  My ex, the gift that keeps giving.

thanks for the encouragement everyone, and best wishes for your survival of the coming days,

all the best, Lily

 

January 4, 2019 10:46 am  #8


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

Lily, yes it is being collateral damage makes me feel angry.  My rage is monumental at times.  I think of all the times we had deep meaningful conversations and he lied.  And how it served him for me to allow my needs to go unmet.  How I sacrificed for his happiness and comfort raising our family and trying to please the unappeasable man who never expressed any gratitude for my presence in his life.  And yes my ex too is happier, he has married a rich lawyer with no kids and is laughing all the way to the bank.  Funny enough he is now jobless, so we will see how she finds supporting him while he is free to do WHATEVER he wants as she 'knows' and 'understands'  Maybe MOM is okay for her because she went in knowing.  I did not.  And yes.  committed types are just all the better to marry for these people who do 'know' something.  

 

January 9, 2019 2:04 pm  #9


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

It seems that with many cases of cheating, there are a lot of narcissistic traits and tendencies that the cheater possesses. Many gay cheating spouses do seem to care infinitely about themselves and their own needs, wants, desires, happiness, than they do about their spouses and even their own children. It's very sad but perhaps it is better to truly know someone's character while there is still time to restart your life in search of someone who is more compatible, compassionate, and caring.

     Thread Starter
 

January 15, 2019 4:49 pm  #10


Re: TGT, Cheating, and Personality Disorders

This Season: Thanks for starting this thread, because it's a topic that I feel like I've been stuck on for a while.

I gradually came to understand my husband's situation as being a hybrid of his gay urges ... but I think there was also a second aspect to it: the compulsive behavior; the thrill of having a secret second life, the thrill of breaking the rules and cheating.  

I came to this because I'd spent a lot of time snooping, quite honestly.  I wanted to find out how bad the damage was.  I wanted to know who he really was all along.  Ultimately, I became desensitized to the shock of what I was seeing, and I started to understand more what was really going on.  I saw he had a double life in a completely amoral universe; I saw that he and his fuck-buddies had simply abdicated any participation in the social contract.

I'm not sure this is true for everyone here.  I think a lot of people here have spouses who came forward to disclose longtime secrets -- mine is not one of those.  He didn't want a new life.  He wanted everything to stay exactly the way it was.  But I digress...

I went to visit my daughter over Thanksgiving, and when I came back ... I checked to see what my husband had been up to while I was gone.  I learned that he'd taken his boyfriend on a weekend trip, and at the same time he was with this guy ... he was trying to arrange a hookup with another guy.  He told the second guy he was going to be in town with his boyfriend, and the guy responded "I see.  So are you with someone who would be upset if he knew we got together?" and my husband responded "yes".  Then they tried to work out a time when he'd be able to sneak off -- to cheat on the guy he's cheating on me with.

Well, it's nice to know irony isn't dead.

But getting back to your original question -- how do mental illnesses and personality disorders play into this situation -- I came to believe that for my husband, the "gay" excuse for cheating (or as he would call it, "bisexual") doesn't withstand scrutiny.  He went off with his gay boyfriend and right off the bat was trying to figure out how to cheat on him, too.  There's obviously another issue here, of compulsive behavior.

 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum