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- lily
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Re: I Don't Know What to Think
Hi Bob,
Glad you are feeling the support, it is internet but it is real.
I was thinking earlier today how often I will think things to minimise the pain - down play it in some way or distract myself or whatever and this is a simple coping mechanism which is good in it's place but the flip side is that while you are minimising it you are not looking at it.
Somewhere in the consideration of your wife, and the therapy for your past, it is very good to make room for the pain sorrow and anger we experience as you take on board the knowledge that your much loved wife has, however accidentally, cheated you out of your chance to have a young family with a woman you can intimately grow old with.
Pain minimisation is good. Take it on in dribs and drabs, just remember you are still seeing your wife through rose coloured glasses and she is not in that boat with you at all.
She is not in the same emotional shock you are - she's known all along. Is she just telling you what she wants to now, is she still just putting on her make up and going about the business of getting what she wants - that's what I'm wondering.
These are such very tough yards, the stronger you are the more you have shouldered.
Look after yourself, wishing you and IAB the best of luck, Lily
Last edited by lily (July 7, 2019 7:56 pm)
- silentbob
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Re: I Don't Know What to Think
Thanks again for posting. Yesterday I was pretty down in the dumps and angry. I tried talking to my wife about it and she got upset, saying that instead of going over all the negatives, we should be looking at the positives of what lay ahead. I can't think of much on the positive, other than not having her criticize me (which she doesn't do all the time) and eventually dating again (maybe), and getting another dog at some point (our current dog is all about her). Other than that I just feel robbed of the future we had been planning together as recently as a month ago (planning on buying a camper and touring the state during my summers off as I'm a teacher). She says she still wants to do those things with us and wants to stay friends with me. She really does want her cake and to eat it too.
- •
Thread Starter- lily
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Re: I Don't Know What to Think
yeah really. Go campervanning as if nothing has changed - that is just goo isn't it. I think she is 'managing' you.
And I think this is why it helps so much to talk to other people about it instead of talking to your spouse, it's just more of the same disacknowledgement - she says ohh btw I am gay and you're supposed to say no problem let's have fun double dating?
not right is it.
the positives you listed are good though, and worth looking forward to.
- OutofHisCloset
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Re: I Don't Know What to Think
What she says she wants today may not be what she wants six months or a year down the line. Please take what she says not as gospel truth but with a grain of salt the size of Gibraltar. My now-ex declared, after I'd turned myself inside out to support his newly disclosed sexuality, "I want to live with you for the rest of my life!" Nine months later he characterized my expression of my doubts and my pain as an attack on him, and thereafter referred to it as "what you did to me."
I posted a link to an article on attachment injury for the wives of men who declare themselves transgender, but I think many of the points are applicable to the spouses of those who declare they are bi, gay, or lesbian, especially the part about how our ideas of our sexuality and selfhood take a huge hit. Here's the link:
Donna Chapman and Benjamin Caldwell: “Attachment Injury Resolution in Couples When One Partner is Transgender”
Journal of Systemic Therapies, Vol 31, No. 2, 2012, pp36-53
(full text of article available online)