I've given this a lot of thought, too, in trying to find meaning in this situation.

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that for most it's simple selfishness. Whatever they are getting/could get from the straight relationship, whether that is children, respectability, emotional support, comfort, love, financial safety, whatever it is, they are unwilling to give it up and think they can have it all.

I have a great deal more compassion for those who genuinely just don't want to be gay and are desperately trying to make it work but sadly the selfishness is the same. It's still about making it work 'for them' and they don't care much about whether or not it works for the other person.

I also imagine there are the rare few where this doesn't apply but that seems to be the exception and not the rule.

Selfishness is a simple, common reason for someone to break your heart. Healing the pain that results from that reason is anything but.

lily, when I first made my discovery, some of the most supportive people in my social circle were gay men.  These are guys who are the same age as my husband, and theoretically they confronted all the same issues when it came to being candid and honest with their parents and communities, but unlike my husband they did the brave thing.  These were the first people to call out his BS; the people who fell into the narrative about my husband being some kind of victim of homophobia were all straight people who were projecting a narrative onto an incomplete set of facts.

My husband is not a victim of homophobia, or a victim of anything else.  He's the predator.  

To be absolutely clear: he was raised Catholic, and his parents may have shared a number of biases that the WWII generation shared.  I have no doubt that they made the same wisecracks as their peers did about gays, for example, but I also know that my mother-in-law's youngest brother was one of the founders of the gay rights movement -- he was an early author and activist, and founded a VFW chapter for gays who had served in the military in WWII.  My inlaws were very, very proud of his accomplishments and after his death they remained close to his partner.  

I point this out because it's pretty damn insensitive for people to give my husband a free pass for everything he did to me, when people presume that his parents must have driven him to be closeted.  My husband was closeted because he wanted to be; because having a wife conferred status in this sick little sub-culture of pay-to-play illicit sex participants.  I can't stand when people suggest that he must have been the product of a homophobic childhood.

If anything, this is how that subculture continues to thrive: people see what they want to see, and overlook what makes them uncomfortable.  Nobody wants to admit that this subculture exists, so that allows the participants to hide in plain sight.

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Last edited by Lynne (October 3, 2020 5:51 pm)

yeah that's a good word - core selfishness.  I am still trying to wrap my head round it.  

Everyone apart from me thinks of my ex as a kind and caring man.  I have a completely different view.  But I used to think the same.  tbh I find the thought of him increasingly unpleasant nowadays and spend very little time thinking about him but I managed a little look back just now, I wanted to see if I could remember instances of him being kind to other people and I can see it.  The little groups of people clustered around him and all of us liking his nice vibes and is he being kind to anyone?  Hard to answer.

I know there were nicer times too but I have a whole raft of memories from when we were alone at home that form a picture of a lack of affection and distancing til I felt alone and isolated and left sitting in the wings.

And it looks like I was being used as nothing but planks of wood to build a closet with.
 

Last edited by lily (April 30, 2019 6:50 am)