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June 4, 2019 5:26 pm  #1


Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

I’ve been noticing the frequency of new members and posts lately. Makes me SO sad, to see all this destruction and theft of a lifetime because of denial and absence of self-discipline and restraint.  Was all this going on before the internet, before the LGBT movement, before the sexual revolution?

How can people destroy their relationships and families like this and live with themselves?

I still can’t comprehend the absurdity of it all, of all of these narratives. It’s been exhausting at times.

My father was not a man of many words, but he could sum up wisdom in brevity. One time while watching the absurdity on the Jerry Springer show, he said. “I don’t get it...family life is pretty simple..go to work and provide for your family, be faithful to your spouse, and love your kids”.   

Why is their unabashed exercise of libido more important than the commitment they made to family? I will never fully comprehend it.

ADSJ

 

June 4, 2019 7:39 pm  #2


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

your father is right of course but it is a recipe for a good life that is predicated on a good marriage.

what if it's a bad marriage?

What about when you find out Mr Nice Guy is a serial killer - or peg it back a notch or two - you find out Mr Family Man is a paedophile.  or what about the one who's stolen the savings of little old ladies in an 'investment' scheme and no remorse.

The one who is your best friend but is emotionally abusive.  

Wanting children is not the same as wanting a husband.  It's such a hard choice to make.  It's all very messy.

Experience shows you can't walk over the top of it.  

The people in the closet who volunteer themselves out of the marriage are pretty much always doing so because they want to, just for their own reasons and no I don't think I can ever fully comprehend that either, but it still tends to be better all round than when they decide to stay in the marriage, again just for their own purposes.

 

June 4, 2019 7:52 pm  #3


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

Yes, this really boggles my mind, as well. I, too, thought it was as simple, straightforward, and cut-and-dry as your dad. (Love that quote!) No special extra things needed in life: you committed, and then you honored that commitment. End of story. (Actually, beginning of a really great story, if commitments were honored...) I sometimes wonder if I will ever understand it, and if not understanding it means I don't have "acceptance" of what happened to me. 

I was thinking of this type of thing when I attended a Memorial Day ceremony recently that our son was a part of--there wasn't anywhere else in the world I'd want to be than at our small town ceremony watching him and his friends and our community honor veterans, and yet this person that I thought I knew (my X) felt completely fine being AWOL -- he's moved away to another town and in with another woman (!), and leaves 90-95% of the parenting and daily life up to me. I couldn't imagine doing the same thing, ever, it literally doesn't compute in my brain...

Have you read Alison Bechdel's Fun Home? That's one description of what happened in the 1960s and 1970s, pre-LGBT movement. Yes, it was definitely going on. The Straight Spouse Network podcasts also have a couple of guests who are older and speak to the world of clandestine cruising that existed before apps, websites, Craigslist, Tinder, Grinder, etc.

Bechdel suggests in FH that things should be different now, or at least they were for her coming out in the 1980s (in that she didn't feel pressured into a heterosexual relationship). But I think our experience here shows that it really isn't all that different, as much as we wish it would be. Her book about her mom ("Are you my mother?") suggests that her mom essentially felt (once she did know about her husband's sexcapades) that the secret was now hers, too, and she lived for years in fear of being exposed, even though it was an abusive relationship in other ways, and it was obviously not her secret to keep. She did eventually ask for a divorce, and of course, the story did come out through Bechdel's pen. (And Bechdel suggests her mom made her peace with that.) Both books are great--I highly recommend them.

So, yep, I have no explanation for it. I'm just trying to leave it where it fell and move on through to the other side.

Last edited by Estella Oculus (June 4, 2019 8:05 pm)

 

June 4, 2019 8:03 pm  #4


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

ADSJ, I just wanted to thank you for your post in the stories section. I gained a lot of hope from it. I am so happy you have a new family that you are building. Take good care of yourself and shine on!

Last edited by Estella Oculus (June 4, 2019 8:05 pm)

 

June 5, 2019 2:11 pm  #5


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

I get exhausted trying to fit my husband's behavior into the realm of "rational".  But, I look at that quote from 
ADSJ's father ... I know that my husband's own father (WWII vet, recently passed away in his 90's) would have said the exact same thing.  I never said this to my husband, but sometimes I want to ask him "What on earth would your father say, about the way you treated your own wife and your own daughter?"  A few days ago, in fact, my husband told me he'd had a dream where he got into an awful argument with his father, and I remember thinking "Yeah, I'll bet you did."  But again, I didn't say it, since it wouldn't do any good.

 

June 5, 2019 2:49 pm  #6


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

WBM, one day, when the situation feels right, I plan to ask my ex how she would feel if our son’s  (future) wife did to him what she did to me?  I bet she’d be livid and it would finally be an aha moment for her.

You may pose that question to your husband about your daughter.

     Thread Starter
 

June 7, 2019 12:36 pm  #7


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

a_dads_straight_journey wrote:

WBM, one day, when the situation feels right, I plan to ask my ex how she would feel if our son’s (future) wife did to him what she did to me? I bet she’d be livid and it would finally be an aha moment for her.

You may pose that question to your husband about your daughter.

The reason I haven't asked that question, is because I'm running the risk he would answer truthfully that he doesn't care what kind of behavior he's patterned for our daughter.  He might just shrug it off and dismiss it like "she'd be lucky to have him" or something.

I say this because any time I've tried to get him to explain what on earth he was thinking, he makes me even madder by telling me the truth.  
 

 

June 30, 2019 8:04 pm  #8


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

a_dads_straight_journey wrote:

... One day, when the situation feels right, I plan to ask my ex how she would feel if our son’s (future) wife did to him what she did to me? I bet she’d be livid and it would finally be an aha moment for her.

I have had this thread in mind for several weeks!

I keep wondering about posing such questions to my husband.  I do think he might be more concerned for the kids than for me. But I have had abysmal experiences asking him to switch the tables and see how it might feel to be me:  "Hey, husband!  How would you feel if I did to YOU what YOU did to ME!!??  I also come up with wild things, like "What if you discovered I had secretly robbed a bank!"

Every time I ask, he just evades.  Like: "But you wouldn't DO that.  HAHA."  Or, "Then I would know it was a dream because you wouldn't do that." 

At first I thought, yeah, see, he has no empathy!  But lately, I think he just does not want to face  himself.  It is just a little game to him.  And, I realized, he does not care if I did something like that to him, because he doesn't have the same feelings for me that I do for him--he really does not care about me as his "beloved" anyway.  He cannot really feel I have betrayed him because you can't feel betrayed by someone you do not feel attached to in the first place.

My favorite one, though:  in a burst of frustration one night, after posing a few different "how would YOU feel if I . . ."--I came up with this dumb one:  "How would you feel if you discovered I WAS A LESBIAN?"  He laughed and laughed and laughed.  Said, "then I would think we have a lot in common!"

Ugh.

 

June 30, 2019 9:51 pm  #9


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

.

 

Last edited by MJM017 (July 12, 2021 5:48 am)


No - It's not too late. It's not hopeless. Even there, there's something I can do. I just have to find the will. Ikiru (1952), film directed by Akira Kurosawa 
 

June 30, 2019 9:55 pm  #10


Re: Thoughts on Incoming, Thievery, and Restraint

This is why I can’t bring myself to ask certain questions. I’m afraid he’ll tell me what he really thinks. Like I wanna scream at him about what he thought I must have felt being sexually rejected for twenty years ... I’m afraid he’d say women don’t need sex, or some such bs and I would lose it completely.

He’s never sees women’s sexuality as anything but the punchline to a dirty joke. I’m afraid I would completely lose it if he told me what he was really thinking all that time.

 

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