Lily, thanks for responding to my post.  I think we are getting at the same thing really.  I absolutely agree with you that no one really can choose everything.  I honestly do not think someone can choose their orientation.  We cannot choose our parents or the place or situation of our birth.  I also see how, in politics, focusing too much on free choice gets distorted--what I mean is that when we assume that everyone is free to choose, and therefore they get what they deserve--that is not true.  People's circumstances mean that things are inherently unequal, and that is the constant push and pull of public policy: Where does one person's freedom to choose butt into someone elses?  And, can we--and should we--make efforts to help people whose circumstances make it difficult for them, to "even out the playing field."

Regarding religion, I always feel a little anxious posting about religion because when I do, I really dive in.  It has been such a part of my life and just a huge part of my family traditions, and I choose to believe in God, and I choose to pratice that through my particular religion, although sometimes it drives me crazy.  However, I also find that exploring any ideas, any religions, any philosophies helps me clarify what I really believe, and I am never afraid to think about something.  So then my actual religion is a place for me to have community and continue to learn and grow and be challenged.  I try to teach my kids that God is bigger than any religion, and that we are just humans, and we cannot understand God at all, and it is a lifelong pursuit to try to access the divine.  I also accept that religion itself springs from the psychological need for creating order and meaning.  And the fact that there are similarities between religions--whether Christian or other--speaks to me of the commonality of the human experience, and I try like you do--with the book you mentioned--to see "what is that common human experience?"  What is the common yearning, what is the common conception of life, of a greater being, etc. 

I like the work of Sophie Burnham, and tend to be like her, where I finally decided that I believed in something beyond myself, and I needed to choose a way to access that.  She talks about spokes on a wagon wheel, and how you can continue to stay on the outer rim, or venture a little down one spoke, then another.  She would, I believe, include any construct of finding meaning in life as a spoke on this wheel.  A spoke could be an organized religion or not a religion at all.  She said that after spending her career researching belief, she finally returned to practicing the religion of her childhood because it was familiar, and she wanted to choose one spoke hoping to get closer to the center of the greater meaning.

Back to how this intersects with your ex and the questionnaire/book you read and morality, and connecting this together with my post before yours:  I agree with you--my husband if taking a test on morality--would respond in the same ways probably.  He knows the answers, and he seems to apply them to other people.  He is very moved by television dramas!  However, emotionally when it comes to his actions toward me, and when it comes to having any empathy for me, not only does not feel any personal responsibility, he just does not even recognize it.  In fact, it is even more destructive, because he seems set on believing that I am the one who trapped him, that I am the one hurting him because he told me he loved me and I believed him.  Which is all very mixed up and dumb and makes me mad. 

I also get really mad at his assertion that he is incredibly moral, because I think he is holding onto "having actual skin to skin sex with another person" as his definition of morality--saying "I have never acted on it!"  Well, I don't know that I can actually believe that skin to skin denial in his case, because he has lied to me about other things.  However, if I take him at face value, I still think he just has a warped view of reality and a warped view of morality.  Because withholding affection is an act.  Searching gay porn and hookup sites for decades is an act.  And these are also sexual acts.  Not touching genitals with someone besides me does not mean he has not betrayed me sexually, and it does not mean he has not betrayed me emotionally and spiritually and morally.  And the biggest way he has betrayed me is by keeping me imprisoned in a false reality, and then punishing me for it, and twisting it like I am the person responsible for his imprisonment. 

It is one thing to say "people cannot choose their circumstances, so everyone is constrained."  It is quite another thing to actually constrain someone else--to actually take away someone's ability to make informed choices about their own lives.  To do that knowingly or because of shame and fear--the result is the same for the person imprisoned.  Doing that is the height of immorality, at the most foundational level, and that is what our GID spouses do not seem to be willing to face--that they are using us and imprisoning us and taking away our ability to direct our own lives.  I think we agree on that?

Now that I know though--and the confusion and fog the GID spouse creates is immoral too, I think--now that I know, I can act.  I can get out of the prison I did not know what there before.
 

Last edited by OnMyOwnTwoFeet (July 22, 2019 12:23 pm)

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Last edited by MJM017 (August 14, 2021 10:37 pm)

 Hugs to you OMOTF.

cmrboe, you have a good case if you have evidence that he had no intention of fidelity and also he kept his orientation secret so you could not give full consent. I wouldn't hesitate to go forward with an annulment when your divorce is final.

Cmrboe/mjm i am in the process of doing my statement for the tribunal in my country.  It is a long process and requires honesty and detail so can be challenging at times,  but the priest I spoke to initially was wonderful - kind and sensible and informative.  In my country once you have opened a case there is no time limit on filing the paperwork so they can start assessing the evidence.  They have to establish that there was a circumstance that made the marriage null in the eyes of the Church - so not a divorce but a declaration that a valid sacramental marriage never took place. It doesn't affect the legal status of the civil marriage or the legitamacy of children. There's a number of reasons it happens.