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1 - MJM017
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I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
...to honor my late GIDXH wants and keep marriage afloat. Very interesting essay about a woman in a similar situation. She dumped her disordered male fiance. I wish I did the same.
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
- OnMyOwnTwoFeet
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
This was a beautiful piece of writing. Thanks for posting it here. I read it the other day because it was posted on Chump Lady. The comments on the CL website are just as valuable as the Crane Wife piece from the Paris Review:
To all friends here on the SSN--whether you log in regularly or you are a lurking reader: Well worth your time to read the ChumpLady/ChumpNation discussion of this piece. It gets at the core of the pain we deal with as straight partners when our spouses come out. At what point do our needs stop mattering? How much can we accommodate? The answers are different for each couple. Reading the CL comments helped me put my own experience in relief against a broader picture. I think it was one of the most helpful things I've read this past year.
- MJM017
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
Thx OMOTF for letting me know about CL. Will make a beeline for that site and read the comments..
I try not to let it get me down but it does. How could it not to anyone once they realize the SO is really not that into you.
The more I visit here, the more the disdain for the late ex whatever he was, not a husband for sure, is coming to the surface. I keep saying that but it's true and it feels good.
Thank you again!!
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
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Thread Starter- Ellexoh_nz
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
MJM017 wrote:
...
Loved this story
KIA KAHA
- MJM017
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
It's instructive. Why were so many of us willing to bury our needs and desires? It makes me think very hard about that (fear, sexism, societal expectations). It's not acceptable to me.
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
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Thread Starter- StrongerThanIKnew
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
I loved it as well and shared it on my FB page.
When I first started counseling, the therapist asked me what I wanted. My attorney asked me the same question, and even my (now) ex did as well. Such a seemingly simple question. What do you want? What excites you? What are your passions, your dreams, your desires?
However, it was impossible to answer. I had long since discarded my dreams and adopted the dreams of my spouse and kids. I have been finding my way back to me, and I like what I'm finding and am determined not to lose myself again. I will no longer accept less than I need. I will not be erased or go extinct.
- OutofHisCloset
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
I also found it apropos.
StrongerThan, I think that the process you describe of "finding my way back to me" is also made more difficult because we are dealing not just with the pattern of behavior of making our needs small and subordinating ourselves to the needs of others, but with all the effects of living in an MOM (often unknowingly). As the website for the Toronto support group that Daryl posted a link for lists them, these are:
- Their partner’s sexual orientation.
- Issues of shock, denial, rollercoaster of emotions, anger, self-blame and sexual rejection.
- Feelings of helplessness, deception, powerlessness, betrayal and loss of control.
- Losses and grief.
- Any STIs, AIDS and other related health issues.
- Challenges in maintaining the relationship
- Effects on children, family and friends
- One’s own identity crisis
- Healing, regaining trust and rebuilding relationships
Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 29, 2019 8:10 am)
- Daryl
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
I think this one - One’s own identity crisis - doesn't get enough consideration.
After many years in a relationship, we lose sight of our individuality and can't initially disentangle it from the larger whole.
“The future is unwritten.”
― Joe Strummer
- StrongerThanIKnew
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
I also found it apropos.
StrongerThan, I think that the process you describe of "finding my way back to me" is also made more difficult because we are dealing not just with the pattern of behavior of making our needs small and subordinating ourselves to the needs of others, but with all the effects of living in an MOM (often unknowingly).
Oh, absolutely. Living in a MOM brings it all to an entirely different level, and the type of MOM makes a difference, too. How many of us with trans-identified spouses have found ourselves in the position of taking on the "roles" of the opposite gender in our relationships. Not only are women being made to feel less feminine by their over the top partners/spouses, but many have actually started questioning their own (gender) identity. And in situations where it isn't an unknown MOM, women are forced into living as someone they are not.
Seriously, on one board I read, there is a woman whose husband has transitioned into her wife, and she has been there to support her spouse in every way. So much so, that she has started to "feel" more and more masculine and is now wearing binders and starting to think about transitioning to male. That is some serious erasure.
- OutofHisCloset
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Re: I Buried My Needs For Someone to Be Madly In Love W/Me
Stronger,
OMG. The wife is now thinking of transitioning so that she can serve her spouse as male?!?! That is some serious Stockholm Syndrome!! The effects of the warping of my own sexuality and gendered behavior while with my then-spouse is something I continue to struggle with now that I'm free (divorced and no contact), and it was only after I left that I began to see how insidious and far-reaching it was. I'm 15 months out from moving out, 8 months from divorce, and I still have not yet plumbed the depths of it. I've only recently realized that I was subject to covert and subtle pressures over the course of my marriage, pressures that amped up when my ex, unbeknownst to me for three years, had decided he was trans. I don't even know if what I'm doing is trying to recover a sense of self, because I'm not sure where I'd draw the line of when I was separated from my gendered and sexual self! I think, in fact, that what I'm doing now is re-making that self.
However, I feel so lucky that somewhere inside I have a self protective mechanism that seems to work apart from my conscious efforts, and kicks in when I absolutely need it. It has saved me from myself more than once. I think it's the reason that when my father was abusing me sexually I was able to "send myself away" so that I was present but not present (disassociate). I think it's the reason that although I was subtly manipulated for years, and after the trans reveal was caught up for a while in my ex's sexual fantasy life, my discomfort with it all finally reached the point that mechanism kicked in and I had to stop.
I know there are some on this board who think I'm too strong, or too negative about the possibilities of MOMs succeeding, or get angry with me when I push them, or think I give advice when I should listen and "support" wherever a poster is in his/her journey at the moment. But this example, of a woman who has convinced herself that to "support" her spouse she now needs to remake herself to this extent, together with an understanding of just how I was able to convince myself it was a rational and desirable and positive thing to twist myself in psychological knots to justify to myself what really was self-destructive behavior in myself, is the reason I do and say what I do. Because to me, "support" comes in a number of guises. I understand the necessity and utility of people simply listening; I understand the necessity and utility of sympathetic gestures of the "I hear what you're saying" variety. But without apology I will say that whoever is "supporting" this woman in this delusion is not giving her support, they are supporting her self-erasure in the name of support.
Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 30, 2019 10:17 am)