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March 10, 2019 9:54 am  #1


Upside Down

Hello.

This is probably the most miserable hello I've ever written. I literally found out that my partner of 6 years is "possibly" a lesbian a few hours ago, she just came out to me last night. It was the hardest night of my life, and I don't think it will get any better. I am profoundly confused and devastated, and I will try to get all these storms and hurricanes out of my chest. I feel like I have to.

As a general picture of my personality; I am a 31 year old Turkishman who is living in Turkey (and I apologize about my writing mistakes since English is not my native tongue). I'm coming from a lower-middle class family with university graduate parents who are “cultural” Muslims. Them and the rest of my family are as secular and modern as it gets in this mostly religious, nationalist and highly conservative part of the world. I am an atheist and a liberal social democrat, a man of science and reason. I am a self-made Westerner or a European, brought himself up with the culture, values and morals of the international modern world, in a country which many people around the world would consider middle-eastern. I write these down to make anybody who reads this understands that there are not a lot of (almost any) people like me around. Even though most of my close friends, my “homies” and my social circle are much more liberal than the rest of my country, I still feel like I could never open up and discuss any of this with them.
 
I’m in a relationship with my partner since June 2013. We flirted for a couple of months before and started to date at that time. She was 21 and I was 25. We had so much (even too much) in common, we were getting along together like two peas in a pod. Three years ago, we had to stay apart for eight months because of her studies and we missed each other like crazy. We Skyped for hours whenever possible. We wrote love letters to each other. When she got back to me, she directly moved in with me and we were the happiest couple on Earth. We had tons of private, intimate, consensual moments individually lasted for hours every day and night. I got used to this and I wasn’t getting enough of it. She and our relationship became an essential part of me and my private personality. I don’t really believe in soul mates, but she was as close as possible. She was my “significant other” for good. The only person I let inside my private life. The only person I showed my true self. The only person I let all my guards down, open myself completely, became vulnerable and sometimes childish with her around. She was the first and the only woman I’ve ever loved and she is the only woman that I’ll ever love.
 
Our relationship was like a model relationship among our friends and families. We were a sort of “perfect couple” for a long time. I was the guy who was listening many of my close friends struggle with their relationships, break ups and divorces and giving advices to them as much as I could, because my "foundation" was strong. I was in a solid, supportive, loving and caring relationship. That’s why I couldn’t open up about whatever was happening with me and her to anyone. I had to live everything through just by myself. That only made things worse for me.
 
I know six years is not that long compared to many other stories in this community. Besides not having any kids, we’re not even married. But it worth a lifetime to me. I truly loved her and trusted her with all my life. She truly loved me and trusted me with all her life. Or not. I still trust her as an individual and a friend, but I am in a deep dark doubt about trusting her as a partner, actually and retrospectively.
 
Our sex life wasn’t any marvel even in our best times. I am her first sexual partner in every aspect including kissing. I thought it was normal for her age since things are a bit different in this part of the world. We were having a decent amount of sex for a few years, but it never really caught up with my expectations. I suppose it applies to her as well. Our intercourses were somewhat colorless with only one or two positions. She wasn’t able to climax just with the actual intercourse, so I was finishing her off with my hands before or after. I didn’t consider this as a big problem because I knew many women couldn’t reach climax only by vaginal stimulation as well. She wasn’t interested with oral plays and she didn’t have any kinks, so we weren’t doing any. I thought not being really lustful and desiring was a part of her personality, and I accepted her that way. We were doing it, she was literally jumping on me sometimes and it was real fun every once in a while, so I was totally OK with it, since there were many other aspects of her that I loved and cared.
 
In the last one and a half year, she and the things between us started to change. The amount of our private and intimate moments, our endless “octopus” hugs, the hours and days we spent together in bed, laughing, making love, kissing, touching, –which are bringing tears to my eyes when I think about them even now- started to decline and eventually ended for real. She gradually and fundamentally changed, and she didn’t let me be with her in that process. She joined to a different friend group, she started to hang out more with them instead of me and my entourage. She started to use more recreational soft drugs. She started to listen electronic music (which I kind of despise but don’t really make a fuss about it), going to parties, night clubs and concerts which I have no interest in, but she didn’t really invite me to those anyway. We stopped having sex three or four months ago and it was a rare occasion in the last year or so. She took a few trips without me, even though I wanted otherwise. She kept me out of all of this. I began to feel more and more alone, abandoned and neglected.
 
I tried to get myself out of this. I tried hard. Even though she stopped responding, I continued to show my love and affection. I hugged, caressed and kissed her every time when I got back home from work, every time we went to bed. I felt like I was hugging a corpse, a wall, but I kept trying. I thought whatever happening was just a phase in her life and things would get better over time. I knew that she was a free spirit, a person that you cannot really “clinch” to from the moment I met her, so I thought she was bored and depressed with her monotonous work life and maybe she had a feeling like she stuck in a mundane “husband and wife” life with me. I wanted to change for her. I started to question myself, looking for my faults and wrongdoings in our relationship. I wanted to understand what the fuck was happening. I expressed these feelings and concerns of mine to her for a dozen times. I spoke with her, I wrote to her. I couldn’t get any real response for a long time. She just mumbled things like “I’ve had some suppressed feelings and I decided to stop suppressing them.”, “I’m changing and I don’t want to upset you.”, “I cannot really express my feelings.” She kept me out in the dark. I became broken, lost my “famous” reason, consistency and integrity on my thoughts and feelings about her.
 
Last week, we had another of these discussions. Actually I cannot really call them “discussions”, because I was the only one who was desperately trying to express what I was feeling and waiting for a response which would “make everything better”. It ended up with more questions for me than answers. Just after a day, after some hours of me trying to find a way to talk to her, she told me that she was going camping for a week with the friends that I’m never allowed to meet. The amount of neglect that I felt became immense. I stopped talking to her. She left two days later for camping. After all the things that I stated clearly, I couldn’t believe that she really did it. I couldn’t believe her leaving me like this. I didn’t call or texted her except one night I wrote a long text message explaining the intense heartache that caused by her leaving me without any answers. Again.
 
She texted me that she wanted to talk when she comes back. She came back last Friday. She slept for almost 24 hours, and last night, she finally spoke. Here it goes:
 
She starts by saying “I cannot see you as a lover since almost two years.” I die inside. The rush of questions turns my brain upside down into a mush. I think of everything and cannot think of anything. I ask “Is there anybody else, or do you want to see someone else?” She says a brief “No!” while crying. I ask “Are you bored of me? What are you trying to say? What is the reason of all this?” She responds with “You’re the only man I’ve ever been with, one and only man I’ve ever had any relationship.” It leaves me with only two options. Whether she wants to explore other man, or she is a lesbian. I die a little bit more in the moment of hesitation. Then I ask “Are you attracted to women?” She says “I guess so.
 
The bomb explodes.
 
Everything we shared, every moment of joy and happiness ever occurred to us flashes before my eyes, I start to question and doubt literally every fucking aspect of our relationship in the blink of an eye, I feel like someone is trying to carve my heart out of my chest alive, I burst into tears and I hardly articulate “How?

Really, how the fuck could it be?
 
The dearest person of my life, the other half of me, tells to me that she wasn’t attracted to me for a long time, maybe ever. She brings me presumably the only problem that I couldn’t solve. I hardly ask if any of what we had was real. She swears it truly was. But I can’t be sure. I lose my control and cry for a very long time. She cries with me.
 
She holds and hugs me, she kisses my hands and cheeks. Like the way she used to do. Like real. But how the fuck could I know after that moment? I ask her that can she ever be attracted to me again. She responds “I don’t know.” I feel the worst feelings that I’ve ever had in my life. She stays in between my hands and arms. I look at her beautiful face. The most beautiful face I’ve ever known. The face that I kissed for a billion times with all the love and affection that I have. I look at the only thing I truly wanted in my life. And maybe the only thing I could never have. I cry more. She cries more.
 
She says it’s terribly difficult for her to speak about this and I’m the only person she came out. I try to put myself in her shoes, I feel sorry for her, but maybe out of selfishness I feel sorrier for myself.
 
After we calm down a bit. I ask about the future. I tell “I don’t want to be a distant memory of your past. I want to be in your life, as a lover and a friend, I want to be your future.” And I ask what she’s thinking. She asks "Do you say it's all or nothing?" I don't respond. Says she’s not sure about what she wants but she wants to keep things in a slow pace. She maybe moves back to her parents’ house for a while and thinks about all of this. I feel devastated and broken again, seeing the possibility of the things between us could end for good. I start crying uncontrollably again. She joins me with her tears. We go back to our bed, we hold each other and cry ourselves into sleep.
 
This is the Day Zero. Now what?
 
As I explained, I’m a quite liberal person on almost anything, including the discussions and debates of the LGBTQ rights. Even though I don’t really have any LGBTQ friends around me (except as a dark joke of the chaotic universe, my partners younger brother who came out as gay a few years ago), I’m in total support of their struggles and challenges. I genuinely believe that they should be treated as equals and their lifestyles shouldn’t be oppressed and restricted in anyway. The hell, if any of this shit happening to me is real, I totally comprehend that I became a literal victim of this oppression in this situation after all! But I don’t really know how any of this works.
 
If she truly loved me as the way I did, even for a few years, and what we had, our private moments, our kissing, touching, laughing and making love together, was genuine like she claims it was, how could it end with her saying she’s attracted to women but not men, including me? Pardon my ignorance, but doesn’t that make her a bisexual or something? Isn’t there and can’t be a way of her “real” feelings for me to come back?
 
I know her. Or I think I do. After all she kept the most profound thing about her personality a secret for all this time. However, I still tend to trust and believe her when she says that she loved me and she still loves me. But what if not? Does that make her a liar and a manipulator? Does that make every fucking memory of mine about her a lie? Does that make me a person who were living a lie for all these years? How could she done this, to me?
 
I don’t even want to consider the second option. But whatever happens after this, I know that this doubt will consume me from the inside forever.
 
Writing these is making me feel a bit better, but if I go back to think about her, it kills me inside again and again. I’m very afraid of the uncertain future. Questions like “How do we break up?”, “How does she moves out?”, “How do I survive emotionally and financially?”, “How do I explain myself and the unexplainable context of what really happened to my friends and family when literally nobody has any clue about any of this?”, and “How do I move on even if I don’t want to?”, hurts and tortures me like damnation.
 
Because I’m in love with her since the day I met her. I want and desire her the same since the beginning. I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to be “just friends” with her. I want her as the way she was, as the woman that I was going to spend my entire life with. Side by side. Shoulder to shoulder. Cheek to cheek. Lips to lips.
 
What the hell?

 

March 10, 2019 4:25 pm  #2


Re: Upside Down

Hi TKU,

that was a very long post - we can all relate, it is hell.  It's like, you know it happened a very long time ago but I still remember how I felt when I realised Santa Claus was an act, not for real.  As I was the youngest, it was my whole family conspiring to trick me.  

and people say don't be ridiculous, it's all part of the fun but every year round christmastime there are lots of little hearts feeling the sting - don't tell them it's fun they know it isn't, they need consoling.

it's a shock for sure, but there are lots of gay people who are in the closet all round the world and grown up hearts waking up to it and feeling the sting every day.  

It's an act.  The whole intimacy thing.  It's an act.  

That's what we do, we imitate, we playact - it's just the way we are, how we learn and we learn all sorts of things like that that don't come naturally or instinctively, like eating with a knife and fork instead of our fingers.  Goodness.  Don't tell me that's natural.  What is natural is to copy what your parents do.

So you get together and for you the intimacy with her comes naturally, an instinctive behaviour that is as old as the hills.  But it is not the same for her.  For her it never comes to feel like more than playacting.

Unfortunate.  Painful.  Nothing you can do to change it, it's not you, it's her.

While she is coming to the conclusion that it isn't working it has worked for you.  You are now well and truly in love with her but it hasn't happened for her.  She is still gay.  She needs a woman to feel like that.  It's awful.  And she has left you swinging in the breeze while she explores her feelings and so it ends up feeling like you are being told your feelings don't count at all.  It hurts like hell.

It doesn't last.  It does get better.  Thank goodness the truth is out now and you can let her go.  Turn your attention to nursing your broken heart.  That's the good news.  It will get better.  You will feel better, it takes a bit of time.  And then there's some more good news to come -  now you know.  You know the signs.  You know there really needs to be a big spark.  Your chances of finding the right girl have improved dramatically.  

Eventually I hope you can come to recognise that what you have truly learnt from this whole experience is you really do have what it takes to lead a good life and make a woman happy.  

Just promise your aching heart no more lesbians and go get a hug from your family and friends - you don't have to talk about it, just get a hug.   

wishing you all the best, Lily

Last edited by lily (March 10, 2019 4:40 pm)

 

March 11, 2019 1:05 pm  #3


Re: Upside Down

TKU, my heart goes out to you.  It took extraordinary courage for you to come here and share your story.

I can't speak for her -- but when you say "After all she kept the most profound thing about her personality a secret for all this time. " I do wonder whether she was keeping it a secret from you -- or really maybe it was a secret from her, too.  She was only 21 when you met, and she had no experience with anyone else.

That's not intended to diminish your experience -- I read your post, and I wish I'd had a husband as devoted as you seem to be.

 

March 11, 2019 1:11 pm  #4


Re: Upside Down

TKU, take care of yourself my friend. I do not have much advice other than you should make a priority of taking care of yourself, and I hope you are able to find someone you can speak with face to face about things. It helps very much to have a friend or family member to listen to you and offer feedback.

 

March 13, 2019 2:30 pm  #5


Re: Upside Down

TKU wrote:

 
If she truly loved me as the way I did, even for a few years, and what we had, our private moments, our kissing, touching, laughing and making love together, was genuine like she claims it was, how could it end with her saying she’s attracted to women but not men, including me? Pardon my ignorance, but doesn’t that make her a bisexual or something? Isn’t there and can’t be a way of her “real” feelings for me to come back?
 

Bisexuality is about physical sexual attraction.  She may be attracted to you mentally and she might think that is love, but her sexual desires can be fulfilled only by a female body.  There have been stories of people changing sexual attraction later in life.  Most often from straight to turning gay/lesbian later in life.  Don't expect this to happen as it's extremely unlikely.  

TKU wrote:

  
I know her. Or I think I do. After all she kept the most profound thing about her personality a secret for all this time. However, I still tend to trust and believe her when she says that she loved me and she still loves me. But what if not? Does that make her a liar and a manipulator? Does that make every fucking memory of mine about her a lie? Does that make me a person who were living a lie for all these years? How could she done this, to me?
 

My ex-wife thought she could be straight.  She felt she loved me in every way except sexually and she thought that she could learn to be fulfilled by me sexually.  Perhaps she felt she could just learn to give up her sexual desires in order to live the life she wanted.  We grew up in a religious background that said homosexuality was a sin and in a culture that made fun of and persecuted gay and lesbians so she wanted very much to be straight.  However, this doesn't make what she did ok.  
The woman you love is probably in a similar situation.  She doesn't want to be a lesbian in a culture that looks down on her.  It might even lead to physical harm.  Even though we understand her motivation it doesn't make what she is doing right.  She has lied to you and manipulated you.  I know it hurts to think this, but it's true.  She should have told you about her sexual attractions at the start and saved you from falling deeply in love and hurting you so much.  It does make your memories of her a lie, but not your memories of yourself.  You lived those experiences authentically - you enjoyed those moments of life and they were real to you.  Don't let this new truth about her ruin your memories - they were real and they are special. 


TKU wrote:

  
Writing these is making me feel a bit better, but if I go back to think about her, it kills me inside again and again. I’m very afraid of the uncertain future. Questions like “How do we break up?”, “How does she moves out?”, “How do I survive emotionally and financially?”, “How do I explain myself and the unexplainable context of what really happened to my friends and family when literally nobody has any clue about any of this?”, and “How do I move on even if I don’t want to?”, hurts and tortures me like damnation.
 

One Step At A Time
You are trying to answer all the questions of your future at once.  You can't do this in a time of emotional crisis.  These things will work themselves out and you will be just fine.  There is no timeline, this doesn't have to happen tomorrow.  Start by talking with her.  Step 1 is an agreement about your future.  If she is a lesbian and can only be fulfilled by another woman, then you know the answer.  Next start talking about how to move forward.  You will figure out handle each step in the process.  Just don't stress today about all of these things that will happen later.

TKU wrote:

  
Because I’m in love with her since the day I met her. I want and desire her the same since the beginning. I don’t want to lose her. I don’t want to be “just friends” with her. I want her as the way she was, as the woman that I was going to spend my entire life with. Side by side. Shoulder to shoulder. Cheek to cheek. Lips to lips.
 
What the hell?

Love is the strongest of emotions.  It takes time to build and takes a very long time to subside.  Right now your love for her is making you want to fight for her and try to keep her.  That is admirable.  Love is in the heart and the heart doesn't use logic and consider facts.  The fact is that you need to start moving past her and thinking of your future.  You will find a straight woman who you will fall in love with and when you do it will be amazing!!!


-Formerly "Lostdad" - I now embrace the username "phoenix" because my former life ended in flames, but my new life will be spectacular. 

 
 

March 17, 2019 4:08 am  #6


Re: Upside Down

I'm so thankful about all of your kind comments which you've spent time and effort for a guy from thousands of kilometers away that you don't even know. I'm extremely grateful to be able to read what you've wrote and see the wisdom and understanding of people like you who lived through almost exactly what happened/happening to me.

I'm sorry I couldn't come back and login to respond because she's still around, we share the same pc and I can't find the time and the environment for this at work.

For a quick update: We talked a few days later. I expressed many of the thoughts and feelings caused by this situation. Again, the one who was talking was mostly me and she's still very confused. I tried to show her a way of thinking instead of she losing her mind and she blamed me for "being too reasonable".

All this emotional burden comes to me very often, especially when I'm alone at home or work. We continue to live together, share the house and the expenses. But I feel like our relationship just ended, or it already ended when she started to keep herself away from me and I just realized it. I don't see any love and care from her. And I can't really react to it. Our future is still uncertain for now. And I don't want to be the side who makes it certain, yet.

Again, thank you a thousand times for your interest.

     Thread Starter
 

March 17, 2019 1:09 pm  #7


Re: Upside Down

TKU wrote:

.....'.   I'm sorry I couldn't come back and login to respond because she's still around, we share the same pc and I can't find the time and the environment for this at work.'........

 
Your world has been turned upside down. Even though you share a computer...she should know you're attempting to get through this by talking to others in a similar situation. Don't be apprehensive. Show her you need to understand what's happening, tell her you're talking with people who know what you're going through.

It will make you stronger


KIA KAHA                       
 

April 2, 2019 4:16 pm  #8


Re: Upside Down

I don’t know how to put an end to this.
 
She wrote to me the other day. About her journey of discovering herself and the change in her personality. She says she’s deeply sorry it all has come to this but it’s not her or my fault. She thinks that I wouldn’t understand but she hopes that I would someday.
 
Actually, I do understand. As much as I can. And I’m sorry too. Sorry for her and for myself for this tremendous misfortune. I find myself in public places like the subway, the workplace or a street full of people, alone, thinking, feeling devastated, trying to keep my tears inside because of what happened.
 
But I feel anger as well. The type of anger that I’ve never felt before. Anger towards her, for keeping me in the dark for so long, for not being in control not even in the slightest after trying so hard to keep it nice and easy for all my adult life. After all, for more than a year, I was just thinking that she was somehow changing and she was keeping me outside of it. And her “answer” at the end doesn’t cover my wounds of dereliction and neglect. She mistreated me. A lot. The only person I truly loved and trusted. The only person I literally built my life over. The only person I showed my “soft spot”. And I’m furious because she just stabbed me from there, and I’m bleeding fast.
 
Every once in a while, for some moments, I just think to be done with it. We just break up, we move to other directions and finish this chapter. But then the reality hits me very hard. I think about talking to everybody in my life.
 
My father is writing a book about his profession on speech therapy for physically or mentally disabled children. He regularly asks for some drawings and graphics for his book from her. (She’s an industrial designer and a 3D artist). Last week, he called me again for some more work to be done. I talked to him for a while and said that she’s pretty busy these days. He said he and my mom are considering to come to our city (he's physically disabled himself) for my aunts 50th birthday later this month because all of our family will be there and he could meet with me and her to discuss more about the work of his book. I couldn't really say anything. We hung up. I cried while she was in the other room.
 
Last Friday was the birthday of my very close friend. There was a party in our favorite pub. She was invited as well, of course. She didn’t come. All my friends asked about her over and over. I couldn’t say shit. I said she was working late and very busy. Everybody asked where and how she was. I lied and smiled, and died some more on the inside. They don’t have the slightest clue. Besides her coming out as a lesbian, they don’t even know that the things between us were already quite bad for so long even before that.
 
This is the feeling of neglect and being trapped that I’m suffering for too long. This is why I’m very angry with her. I expected just a little bit of confrontation and reconciliation from her for months, and she came up with the unsolvable at the very end. This is not an answer to anything. It only made things worse. Much worse.
 
Maybe she expects me to be the wholehearted man who just accepts her and the situation, be the guy who becomes the great ex-boyfriend that supports her new life as a dear friend. Maybe it is the right thing to do. Maybe I want to do the right thing and be there for her. I’m still madly in love with her after all. But I don’t think I can do what she wants. After all the damage she caused, I don’t think I can move all the wreck and debris aside and raise like a shining knight. The hell. The real destruction didn’t even begin.
 
I’m not even close to being ready to relive this immense trauma again and again for who knows how long.
 
The thought of being the one who will face with everybody after all this is making me mentally unstable. The idea of telling our break up to my 77 years old grandmother who is naively expecting us to get married soon is freaking me out like hell.
 
Hell. Hell. Hell.
 
I don’t even know if there is a way out of this anymore.

Last edited by TKU (April 2, 2019 4:40 pm)

     Thread Starter
 

April 2, 2019 5:02 pm  #9


Re: Upside Down

     There is absolutely no reason for you to carry this secret around by yourself.  At the very least you can let people know--friends and family both--that your wife has recently revealed to you a relationship changing secret that she was keeping, that you are struggling, and you fear the relationship is over.
     It is not reasonable to expect yourself to simply shrug off this deep hurt, smile, and say "Good luck."  It is also not reasonable for her to expect you to be the person who lends her an ear while she describes what happened to her.  
   The fact is you are hurt very deeply, and whether or not she "intended" to hurt you does not change that fact.  
   
  

 

April 2, 2019 9:08 pm  #10


Re: Upside Down

I once read that often your feelings are a truer indicator of what you are experiencing than your thoughts.  Really struck a chord with me.  You feel hurt because yes you have been hurt and outrageous sting - it is by the one you loved, the one you trusted.  

Someone said he was collateral damage and the phrase has stuck - was the hurt intentional or accidental, it changes the way you feel, and the level of anger you feel is an indicator - you can't say it's accidental, at best you can only say it's negligent.  

The way I see it, in that negligence shown to me by my ex there was a lack of care, a lack of love and well he was a thwarted drama queen, a petty malice in him that I had no idea about while I was busy trusting him til I ended up having nightmares and finally worked it out.

Look after yourself, if it is hell then it is also sometimes heaven and a pretty nice place to be a lot of the time, particularly when you can be in touch with nature.  It will get better with a bit of time and distance, promise.

It's your family and friends, listen to your gut and say what you do but I second what OOHC says about not keeping her secret.  It is very common to find we are having trouble telling anyone but then when we do it is so much better out than in.



 

Last edited by lily (April 2, 2019 9:10 pm)

 

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