Hi Samantha, tbh, I had the polar opposite response to your post - it seemed to me to be a lot of waffle!  I think that might be because I am not religious and Susanne is.  So in a sense that answers part of the question - maybe things changed because you like your husband notched up the love between you to spiritual levels?

Both of you, however, have alluded to this bringing about a change in your sexual relations.  And it was this that I was wondering if you were prepared to be more specific about.

My concern is that people following your advice to - and excuse me for paraphrasing - open up their hearts to the universe of love and let the lord come shining in might find themselves in even more hot water.

Wishing you both all the best, Lily

” Lily” wrote:

“it seemed to me to be a lot of waffle! I think that might be because I am not religious and Susanne is.  So in a sense that answers part of the question - maybe things changed because you like your husband notched up the love between you to spiritual levels?”

I mentioned my faith once in my previous post, without elaborating about it much. So it’s odd to me your “rephrasing” nevertheless assumes it’s the main point.
Your rephrasing also seems to describe this faith as some vague esoteric feeling (“waffle... spiritual levels... open up their hearts to the universe of love and let the lord come shining in”)
Giving the impression that my choices were based on some sort of “spiritual feeling” that wasn’t there before, and suddenly... "hooray it works for us".
 
And that's precisely the reason I didn't go into the subject of faith, because it all had much more to do with my thoughts and consequences and actions that followed upon those.
 
Being a Christian does not eliminate thinking for yourself and make your own choices, not even the stupid ones, which take (sometimes a lot of) time to figure out what you could or should (have) do(ne) differently. Or even denying whether you are walking the right track. I only wish I would have known all years earlier, but I needed to learn to go through it.
 
I don’t think the fact that one is or isn't a religious person is the problem. Because I don’t think you have to be a believer to consider things and take a good look at your life and decide which way you want or do not want to go. It’s about simply making choices like I figured out for myself to be the right things to do, that is... if I wanted to be true to who I am in the first place and on a whole. Responsible, loving, honest, reasonable intelligent, creative, a Christian commitment to promises I made…and so on.  And the most important one of all in that aspect is: being a married wife. A lesbian yes, and also certainly not ignorant of the fact that I didn’t/couldn’t be all that was expected of me.
 
But... oh wow…it could have been awesome if some spiritual light flash came from heaven and changed everything. But don’t you think if that was the case, God could just as easily had done ‘the complete workover’? So that I could enter here as ..ahum…straight spouse… instead of just giving me insight in myself?
 
At some point "I came-out of the closet”, but I started to realize that if I held my firm grip on being a lesbian as my sole center of identity, I would not be truly whole myself but would just please a part of me. And by doing so would walk right into another closet…. My own new closet of narrow thinking, where everyone (including myself up to some point), was putting me…
The closet of "a lesbian can only be herself if she acts on her feelings and would go for her desires"...
 
Brrr….  Never again, not in any kind of closet…
 
I am myself. A woman who is among other things also lesbian and can choose freely to not follow just and only her feelings. There is more to life than sex, there is more to life than other women.
…and eventually even sexual feelings for my husband grew (specifically: I enjoy being with him while having sex and I long for and enjoy giving my husband a good time. And these are all the specifics you are gonna get ). I found out who I was and dealt with it, I choose and it may have taken me some time, but eventually I chose wisely. And certainly my christian faith inspires me and sets my attention to right and beautiful principles.
Not because of some spiritual light bulb that came loose on my head, but because I made choices and those choices were right and good and according to real love. Like sometimes a small stone can cause an avalanche (...of further thought and considerations).
I was and still am a married woman. That was and is my first priority. Stupidly enough it took me a while to figure out the “why” for that.
 
If I was straight and I would have fallen in love with another man…those outlines and boundaries would also have held me accountable for my doings. There is no diffrence, because without those guidelines it would make me just as every gay-spouse that make the life’s for their straight spouses a rejection and dismissal. 
You do not need religion to set that stage.
 

“My concern is that people following your advice to - and excuse me for paraphrasing - open up their hearts to the universe of love and let the lord come shining in might find themselves in even hotter water.”

My faith brought me further on my track, but more in a way that I started to see how society and cultural behavior is actually breaking down what was intentionally meant to be good. Only valuing behaviour that is mainly based on following ones feelings, and the strive towards fulfilling oneselfs sexual feelings is deemed the most important. Instead of considering the meaning of real love and keeping true to what is valuable and have high regard to the other in marriage.
 
Well, if that underlying faith is deemed wrong… I am certainly NOT impressed with the secular view either, being the general view :
A gay person can and should not be other than only be true to his or her feelings.… So if a couple chooses to stay in a monogamous MOM even out of love (!!) it is still considered wrong and almost generally presumed they should actually divorce. If anyone tries to tell a different story, one is often met with a great amount of cynicism.
 
I do not say “take my advice”, I just describe my considerations. 
And that is certainly not about floating in some spiritual clouds! 
Everyone should think long and hard for themselves what they really feel, need and want in the situation they're in. That's important. Not to follow my way, but the right way.
But I think a MOM is only a successful MOM if both partners are holding each others the best interests and feelings up high, trying to find a foundation on which they can both stand equally honored in that regard. To my opinion you do not need the Lord to tell you that, one should know that from the heart.
Though I certainly think He approves

I. was writing a reply but it got too long, sorry about that, I have pasted it into my notebook to finish later, back soon.  

all the best.

finally...

I don’t know why you’re surprised I see the religious aspect as being important to both of you,  you’re members of an evangelical group and, um, well I read your husband’s posts!

‘there are more important things than sex’ – that’s what my ex always used to say.  Brr!

When eventually another decade or so down the track he said there’s more important things than love, well I knew he was wrong about that.

I wrote my long piece about how I see it all fitting in, love family and spiritual experience, all of it - satisfying to have written it but it’s not really suitable for posting on a forum.  So here I am just responding to your post.

Falling in love with someone else when you are naturally monogamous – that’s highly stressful isn’t it.  And yet it happens so often in a MOM.

Both you and your husband have alluded to a breakthrough in your sexual relations – I’m not interested in details thank you very much, but it has occurred to me that under the umbrella of a spiritually-committed monogamous marriage you might have found common ground in sexual expression through being a match in terms of dominant and submissive.

Mainly it seems to me from the stories here the gay spouse is submissive but the stories where they are dominant seem to have an extra slice of abuse.

But even when that is not the case, even when you have everything else going for you, my personal feeling about it is that without the equality of mutual attraction it is like an electrical charge that isn’t fully earthed.

 

Hi Phoenix, nice to meet you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity and your kind words.  Yes I have seen the conversation about my presence, and I fully understand the “why” for it. I can assure you I will not respond to other threads then this one. I have tried to answer some questions by telling about some of the things we wend through and choices I/we made in hope it may encourage others.
Congratulations on your marriage, a sparkling and thriving new journey. And your new job!
I will ask if needed, thank you very much, for now its just that my English is not as spontaneous good as my husband's so I take a little longer to write. But please tell me if i am speaking gibberisch.