Jules,

I'm sorry you have to keep going through the pain of re-telling your story.  But know that it's a cleansing, of types.  The going over and over it again does something magical - it purges it out of your system eventually.  You will learn that if you tell it enough times, it becomes less powerful as you now own the story rather than it owning you.  It's what I've learned, anyway.  Consider it a bit of counseling every time you tell it.  It will eventually get to where it's like any other life event you have lived through and conquered.  You'll eventually be able to say it in the same way that you tell someone that one of your loved ones died, knowing that at one point, that was an extraordinarily painful thing to say, but that you've healed enough for it not to be a story charged with emotion for you.

Kel

Where am I?

I'm just as lost as I have been from day one.  

​I've told bits and pieces of my story on different threads, so sorry if I repeat myself, but I told our daughter what was going on, about a month ago now.  She's amazing -- if my husband has a brain at all, he'd wake up every morning of his life thinking how lucky he is to have such an amazing daughter in his life, and he'd be dedicating his every living breathing moment going forward, to making sure she has all of the tools she needs to thrive and prosper in her life.

​Hey, a girl can dream ... obviously, that's not what he's doing.

My daughter is deeply hurt and angry, and yet at the same time she acknowledges that for her own good she's going to have to find a way to forgive ... but she says right now she needs to be able to be angry before she can move past it.  He flew out to spend the weekend with her (she's staying in NYC; we live on the west coast) and managed to act like nothing was wrong ... until finally she tried to bring it up with him, at which point he shut down the discussion and basically threatened suicide.

​Let's be clear about this: I don't want to see my daughter suffer, which is the only reason I don't want him to kill himself.  But this reaction infuriated me, and it infuriated her too.  She kept asking me "Why do I have to be the adult in this relationship?  Why am I expected to be the grown-up?"  and I have to say I don't have a good answer.  I want a divorce.  I just don't want him to kill himself.  

​He's always held people in contempt for seeing therapists, counselors, etc.  I think that's the one thing that, more than anything, prevents him from getting any help: he's afraid he'd be judged by the same narrow-minded standards he's always judged everyone else on earth.  On the other hand, I've never heard even a word of criticism about people who opt to end their own lives.  Somehow, I think he imagines them to be strong, masculine and stoic.

​So I'm going to have to overcome all that and convince him he has to get into therapy or counseling of some sort.  This is going to get ugly before it gets any better, and I don't want to have to negotiate the terms of my own future with him holding his own life hostage.  It leaves me without a level playing field.

​My daughter, fortunately, has found a good therapist.  I'm going to seek someone out for myself.  It's just becoming really obvious to me that the marriage doesn't have the fundamental element of trust any more, and there's no point drawing it out.  But I can't have him threatening suicide.

Last edited by walkbymyself (July 3, 2018 2:24 pm)

Walkby:
   Re, the suicide threats.  My father killed himself.  He was bipolar, and paranoid.  He threatened suicide at least once a year, usually at Christmas (which is when he finally did kill himself, at age 72), and three times in his life before that he made attempts to end his life. My first husband also once threatened to kill himself, and sat in the entry porch to our cabin with a gun, while I, first, walked in circles in the living room in panic, saying I don't remember what aloud, until I finally decided I couldn't stay in that state and went out into the entry porch and demanded he give me the gun.  Which he did. 
      So I am no stranger to being held hostage by a man threatening suicide, and here's what I have to say to you:  Do not let him hold you and your daughter hostage.  Do not let him transfer to you the responsibility for his life.  If you leave him, divorce him, or tell people why you are divorcing him and he decides to end his life that act will be on him and on him alone.  Not on you.  You are not the one picking up the gun or fashioning the noose or taking the pills.  You are not the one pulling the trigger or kicking away the chair or emptying pills into his mouth.  The agency there is his and his alone.   You cannot "make" someone kill himself by walking out the door. 
      Nor is it your responsibility to convince him to see a therapist.  In fact, if you think that you can't leave him because he'll kill himself, and therefore he needs to get help, you will take on yourself the responsibility for his life, which is not your responsibility, even though that is what he wants, that you should feel the obligation, so he can manipulate you.  You cannot "make" him go to therapy or, if he were to go, speak honestly to a therapist.  You cannot make him face his in-denial gayness.  You do not have that power.  You cannot save him.  
     To repeat:  He is using the threat of suicide to protect his closet and himself from having to admit the truth about himself.  Closeted men will do ANYTHING to stay in the closet, and that includes holding you hostage in this way, by making you feel as if you are responsible for his life.  He is using the threat of psychological harm to your daughter to get you to do what he wants.  Do not let him do this to you.  The fact is that if you stay "until he sees a therapist or is no longer suicidal," you play right into his hands, because he can and will continue to use suicide as a threat against you to get you to stay and provide him cover.  
    Listen: he might very well kill himself.  There has been one person on this forum whose husband did indeed kill himself.  But suicide is NEVER the fault of those left behind, although everyone left behind will feel guilty, as if they could or should have prevented it.  It takes a very long time to learn and incorporate that truth.  Suicide is the act of either the desperate or the mentally ill, but neither the desperate nor the mentally ill can be saved by others if they are determined to kill themselves.  My father refused to believe he was mentally ill; we tried to get him help, but he fought us at every turn.  My mother left him to protect my sister from a threat to her life that he made but said came from those persecuting him; even that loss of his wife and his daughter was not enough to convince him he needed to get help.  He was willing to disown us rather than to admit that his paranoid fantasies were fantasies born of a mental imbalance.  
       Your spouse is desperately trying to protect his closet, and he is willing to blackmail you and hold you hostage, and to threaten to inflict a great wound on your daughter in order to do it.  Do you really think that if you stay you will be able to convince him to get help and to come out to a therapist?  How amenable has he been to admitting the truth even to you?  My stbx lives in a closet, too, and I have seen that he will sacrifice pretty much everything in his life to staying in it.  Don't give in to blackmail.  
  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 3, 2018 8:24 pm)

Deleted.

Last edited by Lynne (October 3, 2020 6:14 pm)

Thanks, Lynne.  That gives me a lot to think about.

​OOHC, I know.  I don't know the answer, but I think I have leverage to get him to go to therapy.  The rest is up to him.

 

Last edited by walkbymyself (July 3, 2018 6:50 pm)