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September 10, 2018 7:33 pm  #11


Re: Confused

Added weight to the "time to say goodbye" side of the equation:  a liar and cheater who does not have your best interests at heart is not a good bet for fatherhood.  And please don't think that he's the only "father" candidate on the horizon--or that you need one at all.  You can have a baby on your own; my sister, who lost her fertility to cancer treatment, adopted two children, and is a single mother (her son just graduated from high school this year), and a friend of mine has a daughter, a teacher, who wanted children but had no partner, so went the artificial insemination route with donor sperm, and has a lovely son (now five years old).  
   You have options beyond a gay man in denial!

 

September 10, 2018 8:29 pm  #12


Re: Confused

i so much want to just leave he keeps feeding me this lies how he is in love with me and doesn’t see himself without me. So I asked why cheat and have relationship and why not a one night stand his response was that he was not trying to get any STDs so one partner was better then having different ones. He knows exactly what to say he is so good at responding. It’s crazy. At times I start believing again. I know he is def gay and that’s not gonna change but yes I was about 22 yrs old when I got with him and he was my everything till now. His family is not much in the picture my family is practically his only family. So it makes it so hard because I will be taking that away somehow. How do you let go when someone is depressed, he suffers from depression anxiety all because he does not see himself living as a gay man and wants children and to wake up to a loving wife....,Thank you all for responding to me I appreciate all the advice given and will be thinking about me and my future. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to let go completely but I will be working on it.

     Thread Starter
 

September 10, 2018 10:06 pm  #13


Re: Confused

  What helped me immensely was getting a little distance between the two of us.  I visited my family, and realized when away from the situation how being in it had conditioned me to believe what I could clearly see when away was not normal.  
  If you can visit your family, if only for a few days, I think it will help.  
  He may not want to be a gay man, and he may want children and to wake up to a loving wife, but he is not able at this time to be either the man who has a male lover or a man with a wife.  He needs time, too.  
  

 

September 11, 2018 2:07 am  #14


Re: Confused

You have to stop fighting his war for him, he may be depressed at being gay but that is not your fault and nothing you can do will change that. The best thing you can do to help him accept himself is leave and let him swim for himself. Have a read of Sean’s thread, he believes that splitting with his wife was the only way he could face up to his reality. You really can’t help him to find peace by continuing to be his cover.

Instead of thinking of him as a depressed, sad man remember he is a cheat and a liar and make no mistake he was still risking STDs with one partner - that partner could have had a 100 other lovers. Plus I would bet my house there wasn’t only one.

Confusing you is a tactic, they all use it - most of us were purposely confused and gaslighted by our “partners”. Don’t let him do it to you.

 

September 11, 2018 10:13 am  #15


Re: Confused

Ohh  honey,

I too was going to suggest reading Sean’s thread.  Asking yourself all the why’s.  I wasted so MANY years, once I started WAY too slowly coming out of denial (at about 18 years of marriage).   I spent another four years going through a slow living hell.  Then the last three years recovering. 

When I divorced my husband I thought I would spend the rest of my life crying over my lost marriage.  But I knew that I had to save myself.  I didn’t find this board until after I left him and even then I didn’t post.  I don’t ask myself why about him anymore.  Now it’s about me and why did I stay?  When it was a life of lies.  I do know the answer to that now.  I lived on the “fake beginning”. I loved a person who wasn’t real. I loved who he wanted me to believe he was.  I lived in hope of that person coming back.  I lived on hope that I could fix him.  That he loved me enough to get it together and put our marriage and the life we built first.

Then when I lost that hope, I lived in fear.  A lot of fear and in the end , justifiable fear (read my story sometime, it’s true).

Big hugs

 

September 11, 2018 10:43 am  #16


Re: Confused

This:
"I lived on the “fake beginning”. I loved a person who wasn’t real. I loved who he wanted me to believe he was.  I lived in hope of that person coming back.  I lived on hope that I could fix him.  That he loved me enough to get it together and put our marriage and the life we built first."

   This describes me, too.  But of course I didn't know the beginning was fake.  And so I loved the person he wanted me to believe he was, and I kept thinking, when he wasn't like that, that it must have been something I did that made him "lose himself" or "unlike himself", never knowing that he wasn't ever "like" what he had led me to believe he was.  And if I wasn't thinking it was me who had messed things up for him/us/me, I thought that I could/should do something to help, to enable him to re-become that person that I thought he so valued (but who was never real).  I remember telling him once that I just wanted him to be himself so he could begin to be a real partner.  I didn't realize he wasn't the person he'd told me he was, and given who he really was could never be a real partner. 
    In the last year, I brought up something he'd told me about himself very early on, when I was just getting to know him, and how the story he'd told me--about how he'd stopped his racist uncle from committing a racist act--had been instrumental in my taking a chance on him, on falling in love with him.  You know what he said?  "Oh, that never happened.  I was lying a lot in those days."   He just brushed it off, didn't seem to even understand, let alone care, that my love for him rested on my belief in his inherent sense of justice--and his willingness to put himself on the line for it.  To him it was "just another lie" among many, from long ago, and had no bearing on the present. Of course that early lie wasn't the only or the most important lie he was tellling--to himself and me--but when I put it together with his declaration of transness and his disavowal of his male body, I realized that I'd fallen in love with a mirage, and I'd agonized over a mirage.  A fake.  And he'd been happy to let me agonize over my belief I was responsible both for his unhappiness and for fixing it--in fact he wanted me to agonize, because it kept him from having to face himself and it kept me from seeing the truth about him.  Instead, he could blame me and displace onto me his unhappiness with himself.   
    What an irony, that that early lie was at base about ethical and fair treatment, because after his disclosure that he believed he was trans that's what I kept hoping for from him--that he'd see how hurtful he was being, and his core sense of what is right would lead him to be fair and do right.   That early lie was a misrepresentation of who he was--unbelievably entitled, selfish, self-pitying, and still willing to displace onto me blame for his unhappiness and the responsibility for making him happy.
    I fell in love with a male man, one I thought was committed to fairness and equality, and to discover, decades later, that neither was true, was a huge blow.  I don't blame myself, because I acted on what I thought was true, and what was represented to me as true.  I do still sometimes blame myself for staying after I knew the truth about his so-called "alternative sexuality"/so-called transness, but when I realize how for decades I'd been conditioned and deceived and manipulated, I ease up on myself.  

Those "in the closet"/"in denial"  are disordered people who don't know themselves and have no core self, just the cover they sell to everyone in their lives, including themselves, by whatever means necessary. Their only loyalty is to keeping their secret--from us and even from themselves.  And they'll sacrifice every one of us to it.  



 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (September 11, 2018 12:09 pm)

 

September 11, 2018 12:04 pm  #17


Re: Confused

Why do they always think that honesty clears away all the wrongdoing?  We can't really realistically proceed without honesty, but it doesn't erase years of lying, cheating and betrayal.  They are so unreasonable to think that as long as they tell us the truth and apologize, it makes all the pain and hurt go away.  It doesn't. It needs to be worked through.

And what's with them thinking that we'll forgive all their indescretions just because they've told us that it's US they want to be with? First of all, gee, thanks - I thought you'd already committed that to me years ago, at the alter.  And second of all, what..... am I supposed to feel SO flattered that I'm the chosen one?  As if there's nothing better in the world than being chosen by YOU? What about ME - I chose YOU, and it didn't seem to matter one bit. Didn't mean that you wanted ME back.

There is no future in this.  You need to get some space and time away from him so you can think.  Otherwise you're forced to act normal each and every day around him.

Best to you -

Kel


You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
 

September 11, 2018 12:11 pm  #18


Re: Confused

Yes, Kel, and the dishonesty is compounded by their further mistreatment of us after they are finally honest (if they are--so many never are).  Blame-shifting, gaslighting, minimizing, etc. 

 

September 11, 2018 1:20 pm  #19


Re: Confused

I totally get you , out of his closet .  My XH, projected himself to be a good law abiding citizen, with good morals, a love of God, loved country music, family travel.  Blah blah blah.  Basically my “perfect man”.  Toward the end (when he did whatever he wanted and thought he had total control, that I would never leave him) - he started complaining and expressing his hatred for just about everything.  I ever loved or stood for.  One of the big things that comes back to me, I heard over and over again from him.  Was just how much he hated my honesty ( I know now, he couldn’t come out to me, he knew I would not be able to accept it and that I would not keep his secret, his secret he’s still trying to keep hidden.

Dolce, you said yours called you crazy.  Mine did make me crazy for awhile and did his best to convince everyone else that I was.  It’s all control control control. I ditto everyone else’s comments

 

September 12, 2018 4:25 pm  #20


Re: Confused

Dolcevida, so much support here! So glad that you have found us.

I only recently (August 18th), I was told by my DH of 27 years that he is gay and he is leaving me. He too cheated. He says it was a fling and wasn't in love. Honestly while the gay part was shocking, the fact that he cheated truly broke my heart. When asked how long he has known or thought he might be gay, the dates keep changing ... 9 months, 2 years, 15 years, 10 years ... so God only knows. Yes, I still love him. I believe he cares for me deeply ... but clearly only as a friend. This does not really make a marriage or parenting work. Looking back, I've come to realize how very badly he has been treating me for years! The lack of physical contact has made me feel asexual. The feelings of loneliness for over a decade is profound.

I fortunately have a trusted therapist whom I've seen. The support group in my area is on the 24th, I'm looking forward to sitting face to face with other Straight Spouses. You need to do this for yourself.

Do NOT hide HIS secret. He will not leave you as he needs you to keep up his heterosexual persona (it probably is easier for his job and his family). Anyone who asks you to lie is not someone you want to be married to ... its just not fair.

I read the book, "My Husband Is Gay: A Woman's Guide to Surviving the Crisis." This book helped give me some perspective as to how different couples survive having a LGBT spouse.

We have adult children all now out of the house. We had been planning on selling our home of 25 years in the spring. My DH timed everything perfectly for himself and continues to do so. There is so much premeditation on his part, yet he denies it every time I confront or ask him about it. I thought about trying to "save" my "marriage" was strong in my mind initially. Now thinking about staying with him and watching him carry on without me in different relationships is something I just can not do.

Time for you to take back YOUR life. Put yourself in the driver's seat. Go where you need to go to make a happy life for you. 


 

 

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