Chasingshade,

You don't owe him support. You owe yourself and your children support. Please do not be manipulated and guilted by his selfish narc antics. Take care of yourself and your kids. He's only concerning himself with himself. He's already moved on.

I'm so sorry you find yourself here. Keep talking. It helps.

Best to you.

Sean wrote:

​1. Do you believe your gay/straight marriage was an emotionally abusive relationship (abuse but with mental bruises)?
​2. Was your ex-husband a narcissist or did he display narcissistic tendencies?
​3. What made you finally decide to leave?
​4. How long did it take for you to start healing?
5. How are you now?
​6. Had you stayed in the relationship, what would have happened? 

​ 

1. Yes, very much so. The constant gaslighting is insane and makes you feel insane. The constant "you're crazy!" response to piecing together evidence not only enrages you it makes you begin to question your own intelligence, your own gut, your intuition and your ability to know reality from paranoid fabrication.

Mine was physically abusive also. If he couldn't shout me down, he would frequently resort to grabbing my upper arms and shaking me or putting his hands around my throat. I'm not the kind of gal you can do that to. I don't go ragdoll like he wanted. What happened was his head split open by a coffee mug in one instance, his nose busted open in another due to me headbutting him in the face. Not pretty.

2. Most definitely. He still is. Everything was about him. How something made him feel, how something impacted him, what me finding porn evidence and lies was doing to him, how the relationship coming undone was destroying him, how it might affect his relationship with his young son, what people he knew would think if I spilled it, how this was all a result of his problematic life (he was blameless, this was all caused by other people).

He still cannot/will not talk about anything that resulted outside himself to this day. It remains how destroyed he is.

3. I think I just reached a point where I became too weary to carry on. I lost all care about how he felt, I lost the ability to try and help him, I plain lost everything.

My situation is rather unique in that this busted out into the open 2 weeks before I gave birth. I had had enough of the evas

Kel says: "At the same time, what I was left with after reading your initial post was that you seem to feel no anger over the fact that he didn't tell you about his identity before he got into an involved relationship.  You are likely seeing it as "and then, he revealed his authentic truth to me", while I'm seeing it as "and then, he revealed to me that he'd been lying to me all along".

Willow,

I'm going to agree with Kel, I picked up on the same thing reading your post. You might feel open to friendship right now, but don't be surprised if your attitude changes the more shock wears off and your true thoughts and feelings surface.

Because of that, take it slow. Allow yourself the time you need to really assimilate the whole situation without shock dimming your thoughts and feelings. I'm not saying you can't be friends, perhaps you can. What I am saying is give yourself some time beforehand to really make sure. If the situation runs standard course, you're going to potentially feel very different down the line, and extracting yourself from a friendship later will merely complicate and drag things out.

I'm so sorry you find yourself here, but it's a wonderful group at the same time.

Best to you.

Tyurk,

My heart hurts reading this. I understand you, feel you, relate to you SO MUCH!

I too feel like things were crushed so badly, they cannot be mended. Deep things. Things on instinctual levels that are hard to explain. You're right, it's something involving male and female in a very base place. It's beyond lies, trust, and loyalty. I've always had a hard time explaining what it is. I've been calling it Wild Kingdom Female because it seems to be coming from a very primal place that really has no voice, just feelings and impressions. Whatever it is, no matter what he says now, no matter the actions he takes, my inner animal female recoils like he's rotten. Literally rotten. And I pull back just like a dog would recoil from rotten meat.

Take care of you and thank you for posting this. I've always felt a bit crazy feeling this animal response, but it sounds like you have some of it too.

Gary says: "​You have challenged me and given me much to think about."

I truly hope that is the case, for both you and your wife.

I see this issue from two angles. One is the straight spouse for obvious reasons, the other is because my oldest son and my best friend of 23 yrs are both gay men. They are fortunate that they both were surrounded by acceptance and neither dove into a closet. My son came out at 17 to my understanding and approval. He's 30 now and has a wonderful life full of friends, family, coworkers, and a boyfriend with a heart of gold.

My son and best friend of all people would love nothing better than slow torturing in imaginative and creative ways my gex until he resembled roadkill and ceased to exist. They actually understand better, more thoroughly than straight people do, how devastating and ugly a gay/straight relationship is. They live firsthand the thoughts/feelings/actions of gay men, of course, giving them insight without end to what is missing and what is destructive in a gay/straight relationship. I have been the lucky recipient of support and understanding from both of these wonderful men throughout this horrible ordeal.

It would break my heart for either one of them to live a deception. Somehow not live fully within their truth and thereby lacking any happiness or satisfaction that might be theirs.

I hope you've been reading Sean. He's been laying out some hard truth in his posts. It's tough love. I disagree with those posting saying things have gotten off track and now lack constructive content. I don't find hard truth lacking constructive content. Just the opposite. I find softballing, minimizing, and sugar coating damaging. We're a board of adults dealing with traumatic adult issues, feelings are going to come into play for some people. That's natural. However as adults, we can understand that and read between the lines to still find value in posts.

If people didn't care - they wouldn't post at all.

I hope somewhere within th