Hi Samantha,

Do you think that your advice would still apply if my spouse has known about their attractions since they were younger? She has known for a while but never fully understood what her feelings meant until more recently and she suppressed and ignored them after that. With her coming to terms with the reality of her attractions now, while already in a committed relationship, she has a lot of complicated feelings. She feels guilt for not self-reflecting on or mentioning her attractions to me in the past. However, she is also stuck feeling like she’s self-sacrificing by staying in the relationship, getting stuck in something similar to the “tunnel-vision” you have mentioned. Her self-esteem is low because she feels she is sacrificing her needs to be with me, but still loves me and wants to stay in the relationship. I want her to feel free to live happily, whether with or without being in an MOM, but I’m not sure what else I can do to help her escape this tunnel-vision of being stuck in a tug-of-war between the ideas of self-sacrificing her needs and opportunities to stay together, against abandoning our love and life together. She feels like she has to make a choice but is unable to fully commit to staying, despite that being what she wants.

Thank you in advance!

Hi Samantha,

Thank you so much again for the informative responses!
I just wanted a bit more clarification on the differences in the love you experienced for that other woman and Dutchman. Are you saying saying that you never experienced the butterflies feeling towards Dutchman? And is the love you experience with him now more unconditional love instead of romantic love? When you said that you accepted that you were a lesbian, did you feel the need to be part of the lgbt community or participate in the culture? I feel like a lot of lgbt people find this important in accepting who they are. If you found out earlier in your relationship, would anything have been different since there would be no vows to keep to?

Thank you for your response! I do have a couple more questions for you. When you chose to stay with Dutchman, were there times when your missing out feelings were so strong that you weren't sure if you could be happy in the relationship? When you said that if there are still missing feelings, more work needs to be done. How did you go about working on that?

Hi Dutchman,

I read your struggles and can relate to it. My question for you is how did you keep going when times were hard and hopeless? Do you have any recommendations on the type of therapist that would be helpful during the turmoil era of the relationship?