In my opinion your feelings stem more from feeling hurt by a non-reciprocal partner more than angry or sad. Passion and desire are what makes living - 'living' instead of existing. Your partner doesn't seem to get this or thinks the more 'showy' demonstrations should be enough. Meanwhile, I would venture to say that you are looking for intimacy, not just sex.

Asking him if he's gay probably won't help much. It's an easy - no, how can you say that - kind of answer that turns it back onto you. Sometimes even asking "Bi?" is crossing that line of denial. He can't deny your feelings or say you don't have them. Have you ever done any marriage therapy? If he's invested in you he should want to be the best that he can. If he absolutely turns down the idea or treats it as a chore that may be a sign you don't want to ignore.

You mentioned he has no problems 'getting the job done himself'. Our brains don't shut down during this. Any idea what he is using for 'fuel'?

Last edited by Daryl (August 18, 2017 5:58 pm)

Hi Marie,

I'm sorry you're experiencing this.  I was in your exact situation.  In the end - after 16 years - I still didn't know if he was gay.  But I figured out somewhere along the way that it didn't matter what the problem was.  It just wasn't enough for me to never feel desired by my partner.  I didn't want to choose to accept that, and there seemed to be no changing it.  I - like you - had warned him plenty of times that I couldn't go on the way we were.  That it would mean the end of the marriage.  He seemed not to understand or believe that, too.

In the end, I got out.  THEN I found out that he was gay.  That he'd known all along.  I won't say my ex was homophobic, but overall, I knew there were tendencies there.  Just never anything truly concrete.

I wish I'd left so much earlier.  I was accepting non happiness as a state of my marriage.  And he didn't seem to care that I was unhappy - he was happy despite the fact that I was unhappy.

Now he happily lives with a boyfriend, and I'm over joyed at how happily remarried I am.  I can't believe I hung on for so long in that dead marriage.  I had no idea just how far from happy I was until I actually got happy.  Turns out I was miserable and just damping it all down.  That's not my situation anymore.  My life is now full of passion, desire, laughter, and all the things we all want.  What I had could not have been fixed, despite my years of thinking so.  I see now that it wasn't a good relationship with a few flaws - it was a severely flawed relationship with a few happy areas.

I wish you all the best -

Kel

These are such hard decisions Marie.  So many of us had to make the very same decisions.  Kel is a great example of this..  She made the decision to leave without 100% proof that he was gay, but she knew it in her heart and she knew she wasn't happy.  Now she seems to be very happy and fulfilled.  

I didn't make the decision.  I pretended I was happy for years and did my best to lie to myself and ignore what I felt to be true.  "Your head believes what your heart wants" applied to me perfectly.  In the end it was my ex who had an affair and left me.  I had all the proof I needed of that affair in the month leading up to divorce, but I refused to believe it.  I would have kept on for years despite the fact that I was spiralling into depression and becoming very unhealthy.  

You've tried to save the marriage for 5 years right?  You've done everything you know to do.  More time isn't going to fix it.  In fact, based on most of the stories we have heard here, more time simply makes things worse.  The GID man typically has greater and greater urges and becomes more and more comfortable with the idea of acting on those urges as time goes by.   Don't harm yourself by ignoring things and pretending it's not true.  

Marriage isn't supposed to be great all the time.  This is very true, but that's description of a normal marriage with two heterosexual people who have strong marital foundation.  It's talking about having a fight once in a while or going through a rough patch..  not 5 years.  Having a gay spouse means you don't have a real true marriage.  It was founded on a lie. 
The biggest difference is this:  You have no reasonable expectation of returning your marriage to a level that is fulfilling and happy for both parties.  The gay thing won't go away.. it will get worse. 

"Stop being selfish" doesn't apply to you.  If you were selfish you would have left him 5 years ago.  5 years!   The selfishness lies completely with him.  If you were to really analyze the personality traits of the marriages of those of us on this forum you would find an interesting trend.  We are less selfish than most people.  We are too giving, too selfless, too patient, so we get taken advantage of.  Our spouses are selfish.  Sure they might be other things as well.. but at the core, the greatest flaw of their personality is that they are selfish.   They are in it for themselves.  They want to be straight or they want to appear straight so they marry us, and in doing so, they are horribly selfish.  A selfless and truly loving person wouldn't never trick or hide a secret about who they are from their spouse, especially one that will make divorce a likely end.  They took advantage of us because they are selfish.   Marie.. your husband is the selfish one.. not you.  Don't ever believe you are selfish and don't ever let anyone say that you are.