Duped wrote:

I think many of us wish we’d replaced “I love him” with “I love who I thought he was”

Or even “I am trauma bonded with him”

Yes.. this!

I still think sometimes about how much I loved the person I thought she was.  The persona presented to me when i was 22 years old was a great partner..   Sadly it was a fake.    So yeah..   I loved the person I married, but I sure don't love the person she turned out to be.  

   Sorry, Lisa, I just saw your reply to me.
   What I meant was that it was not my impression that the SSN was meant to be a site for information sharing about where to find partners to open a marriage, although I suppose someone could argee that that kind of information could be construed as support. (e.g., "can you share with me some sites where I can find a partner for my husband?")  I suspect there are a lot of such sites out there where you can find those willing to engage in that kind of thing.  My apologies if I assumed that's what you were looking to do and you aren't.
   You certainly are a straight spouse, and you therefore belong here and have a right to say what you do as much as any of the rest of us.  It's also the case that types of support vary.  It can be empathetic ("I'm sorry for what you're going through"), uncritical/affirmative ("Tell us what you need from us"), advice ("Get a lawyer; get tested for STDs, etc"), or challenging or questioning ("Are you comfortable with that?" "Think about what you would say if this were your spouse asking to sample other women/men."). 
    You are on a section of the SSN in this thread in which you can encounter, and we are free to give, all of those kinds of responses.  You are saying you want to work with him.  What I am saying, the point I wanted to make, is that a lot of us started out wanting the same thing, and that in order to "work with" them we ended up doing a lot of things that made us uncomfortable, and for which we were later sorry, as what we did compromised our values, and our boundaries were non-existent (we made what they want what we wanted), and the reason we did the things we did, even though we didn't really want to, and told ourselves that this was "helping" our spouses, is that we were in shock and casting wildly around for ways to control the damage.   Moreover, what some of us, at least, discovered is that "working with" our spouses in this way didn't do what we'd hoped it would; they continued to push the boundaries, they continued to keep secrets or to lie or to engage in hidden and hurtful actions, and they made it clear that the satisfaction of their homosexuality could not be repressed (and they didn't really want to repress it) and came before us and our children.  And some of us, me included, have concluded that the reason what we did didn't achieve what we'd hoped is that ultimately it couldn't: because a newly gay person can't learn to be a gay person while married to a straight, and two people whose sexuality is fundamentally misaligned are not going to be able to maintain the kind of bond marriage needs to succeed. 
    The fact is, as you may come to see and to understand, that there is a pattern to our responses/behavior, just as there is a pattern to our spouses' behavior/positions, one that in the early stages of discovery/disclosure/shock we often don't see or haven't yet gotten the perspective or time and experience to perceive.  I found it useful for people to let me know what those patterns are (this is a lot of what Sean does on his thread--lay out the patterns), though I often believed that my marriage was going to have a different outcome (that's part of the pattern, too); I also found it useful for people to challenge me in my thinking.  I wish now that I'd been able to take advantage of what other people were telling me, based on their experience and the time they'd spent here and after disclosure.  If I had been it would have saved me both years and anguish, as well as the additional healing I now have to undergo because of that 'supportive" behavior I engaged in. 
    Many of us are not yet ready to hear what is being said at the time it's being said.  I often wasn't.  Too often we have to come to it on our own (I did more than I now wish I had had to do), and can't take the benefit of other people's hindsight (this is true in many areas of life, yes?).  Some of us don't like to be challenged or to hear anything we believe smacks of negativity, which is why the MOM section was created.  So those of us who feel that way don't have to.  
   That I describe a pattern of response and behavior doesn't mean that all situations are the same, or all outcomes the same.  Maybe your situation will indeed deviate from the usual pattern.  But I think it's useful information to have.  And I wouldn't post it on the section of the site that is limited only to support of a different kind.  
  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (August 4, 2018 4:51 pm)