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1 of 1- StraightSpouse1979
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Marriage on Paper
I dont know if this is considered something for the MOM board or this one because it kind of falls in between. Has anyone stayed married, in the marital home but your spouse has said that he understands you are not attracted to the feminine version of me so I am ok if you seek outside relations to fulfill that aspect. He would rather my stay here married living together and do whatever I need to be happy BUT it is anything but happy.
I have already felt like a failure in relationships because i had no real guide to follow due to my family dynamic (no dad, mother is mentally disabled, raised by grandparents who were not affectionate) so i had my own insecurities about what i bring to a relationship anyway and to have my husband decide he wishes to take estrogen (which in itself confuses me because he does not want to be called she, does not want gender reassignment surgery says he has no issue having a penis he just feels normal on estrogen and dressing in only women underwear, socks, feminine piercings and jeans/t shirts) i am not only not confident in myself but just completely lonely and isolated from basic human contact that i have become just in this constant state of what people must feel who are kept in isolation. I have my daughter thank god to have a relationship with but i dont have any adult intimate relations. I dont even mean sex, i miss cuddling, holding hands, kissing, I just feel so alone.
Back to the I dont care if you find someone. It is like I have guy friends, I have an active charity for veterans and I partake in politics so i meet people. There is someone who interests me but i feel so jaded by life that even if i didnt have the horrible cloud of guilt over my head and was single i wouldnt even know how to do this anymore. I have only been with my spouse in a relationship for almost 20 years. I was 19 when we started dating. I almost at times feel stuck in that age. That is another topic and another page but i feel like incompetent and just a handicap to someone else like they have to just tolerate or deal with me.
thanks for letting me vent
- OutofHisCloset
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Re: Marriage on Paper
My ex didn't suggest I find a sexual partner outside of the marriage, which I guess is what is meant by "outside relations," but he did wish to stay married to me while engaging in his feminizing activities at home (outside the home he was the same man he had been for the previous 58 years). My experience was that living in that situation dealt an excruciatingly painful blow to my psyche and self-esteem. Every insecurity I'd ever had was heightened, and new ones were introduced by the tension and cognitive dissonance his decisions and his feminizing gave rise to. None of it got better over time, either; it got worse.
You may indeed already feel like a failure in relationships, but this situation your spouse wants you to continue to subject yourself to is only going to exacerbate your sense of failure. How could it not? You'd be married to a man who makes it clear he's disavowed being a man, a man who so doesn't want to be a man that he wants you to satisfy your own sexuality outside the marriage. This might look like a caing response, but it's selfishness masquerading as caring. Real caring would be for him to recognize that what he wants is incompatible with what you want, and he would initiate the divorce that would free you to find a partner who shares your desires. Doing what he proposes, and staying in your marriage, will also add to your sense of failure because it will further isolate you from other, normal, people. You will never solve the puzzle of how to have a successful relationship while coupled to a man whose own version of a relationship is so far from normal that the word "abnormal" doesn't even come close to describing it!
Your doubts about what he wants and what he's doing indicate that you know it is not normal either to have a sexless marriage or to tell your spouse to seek sexual satisfaction outside the marriage. But it will not be possible for you ever to achieve normalcy--real intimacy--while living in a hopelessly alienating and abnormal situation with a disordered man who seeks to enlist you in his quest to normalize what is profoundly abnormal.
If it's any reassurance to you, the fact that you are quesitoning his idea, and that what you long for is real intimacy and not the mere satisfaction of bodily urges, says that despite all the challenges your life has thrown up, you have a healthy understanding of intimacy and love. In the most satisfying marriage, sex, love, and intimacy are interdependent. So ask yourself: if you did go outside the marriage and actually found someone you could love and be intimate with (by which I do not mean merely "have sex"), then why would you then want to stay in a sexless marriage devoid of intimacy? And since staying in the marriage will doom you to neither intimacy nor sexual satisfaction, while preventing you from finding them, why stay in it? What's in it FOR YOU? Not for him, but YOU?
If a marriage founded on intimacy and mutual love, including sexual love, is what you want, you're never going to get it, or be able to seek it, in your present circumstances. If I did the math correctly, you're not even 40. 40! 40 is nothing! 40 is young (says the 65 year old woman), and you would have, as a single woman, plenty of time to work on your issues and find another, real mate who shares YOUR vision of marriage and intimacy.
Last edited by OutofHisCloset (May 15, 2019 6:19 am)
- a_dads_straight_journey
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Re: Marriage on Paper
OOHC,
You articulated my entire thought process in deciding to leave my marriage.
SS1979 My ex proposed an open marriage which would have worked very well for her. There were plenty of potential lesbian partners in her gay community that would have been happy with that kind of arrangement. She kept proposing it saying it would be easier for the kids and finances. No, it would be easier for her ..,maintain the status quo at my emotional expense.
I had no interest in any partner that would be ok with that kind of arrangement and I sure as hell wasnt going to let her steer me into my final years with some sort of Bohemian arrangement. I wanted and needed intimacy on traditional terms. Leaving meant giving up half of my assets, supporting her, and figuring out how to sustain my livelihood and single parent a 6 year old daughter and 11 year old son. But I left and am glad I did. It took me four weeks to make that decision and 18 months to mediate a settlement. I seriously considered staying for at least to five years until my son was out of high school but that would have meant leaving as my daughter entered her teens. If waited until she was out if high school I would have been 65 and I wasn’t going to wait until I was 65 to leave. I was 55 when everything was finalized. I also decided my children would benefit from seeing integrity ( in the decision to live the truth) and that it isn’t always easy to do the right thing.
I did find a partner, now my wife, who does provide all the reciprocity that leads to intimacy, My daughter is blossoming with my new wife. My daughter sees and feels the love my wife and I share. My son is still conflicted in his loyalties to me vs his mother, but we are working through it, and as he matures I am confident he will understand.
OOHC, you are correct, 40 is still young with respect to finding love. If you consider adult life to be 20-80 or 90, 40 isn’t even a third of your adult life. ( I do recognize that starting a biological family at 40 is a different discussion for a woman).
SS1979 you do not have to compromise on your values and your wants.
Lastly, the fact that you are asking yourself and us these pointed and well thought out questions is a testament to your competence at a relationship, not to incompetence. But you are with someone who is not competent at empathy and reciprocity. And the one single thread that resonates on this website in the stories of those that choose to leave, is that they have decided it is better to risk being alone and search for reciprocity than it is to stay - they can not live without the reciprocity they need in a relationship. I imagine those that stay in MOMs find the reciprocity they need or some compromise of needs they can live with. Whatever terms they define, I will never judge anyone that stays. I had to finally define my terms and my ex could not provide what I needed and I could not live the rest of my life in that state.
I wish you the best...
Last edited by a_dads_straight_journey (May 15, 2019 3:37 pm)
- Rob
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Re: Marriage on Paper
striaighspouse1979,
I wonder how much of the feeling "incompetent and just a handicap to someone else " was impressed on you slowly and subtly by your husband.
I would argue that there is nothing wrong with you and many men would love to be with a kind and empathetic person.
I am divorced now but spent 2 years with my GX actively cheating and raging at me. If you paid me 5 trillion dollars or put a gun to my head I would not go back to her. And this was someone that I loved more than life itself.
You can maintain roommate status as I did with him but realize they make really bad roommates.
"For we walk by faith, not by sight .." 2Corinthians 5:7
- walkbymyself
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Re: Marriage on Paper
SS1979, please remember that your daughter will grow up and come of age in this environment. She will seek out a life partner based on the model you and your husband have demonstrated all her life.
I think your husband is projecting his own desires on to you. He would be perfectly happy with seeking sexual gratification outside of the marriage, and can't imagine why you wouldn't want the exact same thing. My husband tried the same dodge on me, and I kept trying to imagine what kind of losers I'd end up sleeping with under that arrangement. I'd end up with the exact same kind of guy I used to avoid like the plague back when I was single.
My idea of a great sex partner (I'm trying to remember that far back) would have been not only someone who performed between the sheets -- it would be someone I could go on vacations with, talk to, cook meals with, and all that. I can't even imagine what kind of person I would have ended up sleeping with, under my husband's proposed scenario.
He was also completely oblivious to the pain his activities caused me. The very notion that I would have been happy being "just roommates" would have been preposterous. Even now, as we are mediating our divorce, it's hard for me to be in the same house with him, knowing what a fraud and liar he is.