Hi Sam,

Sorry to take so long – I have been bowled over by an awful bad back.   Well it was a boulder that rolled onto my foot, my foot is okay, but my back - it’s been intense.  And it’s certainly given me some new thoughts.

One of the things that I remember from the time in my 40’s, not long after I lost my religion is this moment – I am lying on a sand dune having just had a swim and the warm but not too hot sun is drying the salt water on my back and I am feeling good.  So good I am feeling grateful.  Oh who should I feel grateful to now?  The thought welled up in me and I could feel the mechanics of sending a prayer of gratitude to God going into action in my chest, it felt creaky and it hurt, I couldn’t do it any more.  
So I felt my bruises for a moment but very quickly I just put the full stop in – I am feeling grateful, full stop.  And back into my sunny doze.

They say all roads lead to Rome but it doesn’t really work that way.  Literally it doesn’t.  Even when Rome was the road-building super power of it’s day it still wasn’t true.  And practically speaking all roads are different.  Specific.  Believing an Indian child guru was the living messiah led to feeling bruised and hurt.

Believing my mother loved me led to feeling loved, but believing her when she said my narcissistic father loved me led to feeling bruised and hurt.  But you know on that deeper level I have never doubted that he felt a father’s love, underneath the implacable ill-treatment.  It took his whole life but we ended up in a peaceful feeling of a ground level understanding at his end.

So back to that sunny doze – physically speaking, what is happening is a release of endogenous opiates.  (endo/exo - made inside or outside the body).  

I’m feeling good, the exercise, the sparkle of the seas, the sun on my back, the endorphins are flowing and then my conscious experience shifts into the core of me with the feeling of gratitude.  Now I am feeling what is in my heart.

My experience of a MOM was from the straight and unknowing side.  There is also no doubt it was entirely knowing on his side, he had already slept with men, he’d already been in love with a man and when I came along, he made a cool personal decision to choose life in the closet rather than a gay life without involving me at all.  He was 23 years old.  I was 19.  

In my innocence, I loved him with all my heart and yet there was this other aspect – after a little while I too felt it wasn’t developing the way I had this feeling it should be, it wasn’t developing emotionally I guess is the best way to put it, and I tried to act on it and left him - it’s an instinctive thing though, that young isn’t it.  I was easily reeled back in.

Now I’m going to put a nice warm blanket wrapped round all those memories of the ensuing decades of marriage.  And just say eventually my love for him wore out and I could feel it in my heart - he’s used it all up, is the thought that came into my head.

I fully accept what you are telling me, the way it was and is for you and the Dutchman.  And yes, we come into this world in a family situation and for me too it is not about blame, it is about wanting to be in line with what is.

There is this instinct, it’s a common one, we want to be sorted so there’s no dislocation, there is no fault line between what is internal and external.

And that’s something that is not so common in experience is it, lots of people end up in pain with a fault line and my personal experience is very much that right now.

I read Victo up above – talking about the physical response to thinking about his ex and it sounds the same sort of thing as I’m experiencing with my wrenched back - my muscles are going to clench around the pain, they just are and then it can all get a lot worse very quickly and it’s not just the analgesic medications that are needed - the endogenous relief is to also accept what is my internal reality on the other side of the fault line, as well as the pain in my back and my external reality.  To include my internal reality in the whole of my reality map.

So the internal reality of a straight woman is she might float around and who knows what but when she meets up with the right man then she becomes a real dickhead.  I mean really, no kidding!   

(no offence to any straight woman, including myself - I mean it in a very nice way)

You cannot change the past, we are where we are, we can only take the next step in front of us.

And I wish everyone here all the very best, Lily.

Hi Lily!

Here I am again. As I said, I was somewhat afraid that I didn’t quite apprehend what you wrote at the value that you intended it and so not want to tramp on what you mean by misconception or my lack of writing skills. I liked reading it even though I do see the fragile vulnerability it brought living it. I think I saw even a parallel.  Thank you for your post!
I didn’t think responding would get to this length but it did, I am sorry for that!!
 
When I read your post I had to think of a woman who had to make a drawing of herself on full scale. She portrayed herself on a large piece of paper, but when she was finished doing so, she taped a big paper brown back on the place where her head should have been.
As if she wanted to say “I can’t see anything, I am not here. Don’t mind me.”
She couldn’t see for real, she wasn’t able to. She felt invisible, especially for herself. An invisibility that grew stronger and stronger over the years that headed up to this point. 
And for a long time she kept swimming in, or was just sitting at the side of the pool.
Not able to change the past. Not able to cope with the present…
Hollow…nothing real. This woman was me in her mid-thirties.
Now…why am I telling this… it was because of something you said. Even why religion was just ‘a religion’ for me at that time.

” Lily” wrote:

Believing my mother loved me led to feeling loved, but believing her when she said my narcissistic father loved me led to feeling bruised and hurt.
But you know on that deeper level I have never doubted that he felt a father’s love, underneath the implacable ill-treatment.  It took his whole life
but we ended up in a peaceful feeling of a ground level understanding at his end.

Though it was a little different, for me my mother was the narcissistic person. I think I recognize what you mean towards your father and the hurt you felt as a result of your mother’s lack of acknowledgement in your emptiness and fulfillment of what you thought to be right and be loved by your father.
 
Daughters should have a mother to make you see, feel and believe what your worth is. Who you are. Why you are loved and so on… Instead I learned by heart that she wished she never had children, they were a big disappointment to her. And she went on living like that, and it didn’t only mess me up badly, but my other siblings and my father and even, yes, herself too. She didn’t have friends. She didn’t have a happy and loving life and died alone in her bed.
I tried several times to connect with her. It didn’t work out.
So on the one hand a parent who never wanted her children and was disappointed, and on the other hand a father who didn’t have interest in his children,  and was coping the best way he could with my mother, turning inward and unreachable.
 
My view of God was a very high and very far away to reach God. More of the father who had to deal with his own troubles. There was me talking to a high and almighty God and He could never love me. If my own parents could not, why should He… and I was never able to set that doubt aside. That was my ceiling, my heaven, my religion, until then a long struggle between doubting myself, my God, my life.
I was angry for a long time at my parents. At my mother for not wanting me or giving me the feeling to be accepted and being appreciated. At my father for letting it happen and being unreachable.
But…
A few years later, I came to learn an important piece of the whole puzzle.
All of a sudden it struck me….  I had believed what she (my mother) taught me… and I had believed this so well, everything I did, say and felt, was from that perspective. But those roots were lies. Those roots even made new sprouts, and these new sprouts were my own believes and trusts in the certainty that the lies of the original roots were real. My parents were gone but I still believed them for myself as a fact.
 
I hope you can still get my drift… because this is one of the things that helped me to reason and understanding of so many other things…
For some reason I never saw this separate before, I never was aware of my own believe in living in that lie.
But for the first time I could open up emotionally to so many things on a whole new level.
 
Overtime my religion became a relationship with God. The smokescreen lifted. God was not a resemblance of my father occupied with his Own difficulties and baring His life, but a nearby Father who knew what led me astray and what I needed to learn to get to a new and truthful trustworthy faith. A faith which was totally shattered by my parents. Also remnant of a broken world, and people who are broken themselves can never give more than their broken selves.
He was there from the beginning every step of the way. He couldn’t change the world for me anymore because He already had done so knowing what needed to be done.  But changed me instead in this world. There was no way I could have learned this any other way. The doubt was just too deep rooted and shaped.
My perspective of God changed because I was able to separate God from my parents.
 

” Lily” wrote:

My experience of a MOM was from the straight and unknowing side.  --> …… <-- he’s used it all up, is the thought that came into my head.

I truly feel with you in your loss of dreams, hopes, trust and above all, a piece of yourself as well. In being and years lost. In anger and disappointment. It drained you out and was never filled.
 
In my first post I mentioned I read much of what Dutchman wrote about how he muddled through his damaged feelings. It made even clearer the picture that formed in the years before.
A window that opened by which I was able to see the inside of his heart and relate to his personal damage my explorations in my being had made in his life.
Once I discovered that my lesbian feelings should and could not lie in the core of our relationship, in our MOM, it opened my eyes that I didn’t want to take his feelings just for granted ever again and needed to be acknowledged. Wether they were emotional, rational or broken dreams of hope and trust emerged from youth and background decades before that had to be restored. Everything that did not honor that recognition would derogate the core value of a mom which make the two way street.
This took me a long time, regrettably long, to let go of the grip that my own feelings had on me. Occupied with how I could fit my feelings into our relationship. Scared to let them go after I had just found something which I thought completed my total being. I felt whole. No more gaps. No more not-knowings… And we struggled on for a long time in which I really felt I did the right thing for the right reason.
 
Do I regret all the years before my and therefore our change? Yes and no. It is just not that simple to say just YES. Of course I say “yes” to regret all the harm I brought into this marriage.  But I am so incredibly grateful for all the things I have learned that I would never have if this road wasn’t taken. It brought so much more than just a new direction in our relationship.
My husband regrets we didn’t come to know this sooner…we lost so much valuable time and I understand that, for sure!! But for me … would I have learned who I was, or to forgive my parents, or would have known what love is to the core, or being able to snap out of a labeled cultural way of thinking and just seek to emerge my own feelings, but have a mind to think with and a heart to life with that is not constricted to cultural or religious “so called normal” behavior?
I wonder…. I doubt it.
I got to learn to take a big bag of my head and see myself as a real person. Not again, but for the first time. Visible and worthy to life. And then I got to learn what that person meant to be over a period of time. As well as for myself as in regard to the other.
So yes, I see the damage. I take full responsibility for all I have done.
I will always be my grey area of which I am fully aware of my responsibility but also know what I have learned. I it makes me feel humble and grateful at the same time. Not as some sort of eco-friendly, all-veggie douchebag* devotion nor as a religious sauce covering all the bad things with a big smile.
Every person has to go their own way and learn to forget what can be forgotten, but value the things that need to be remembered that brought insights on the why’s, the how’s and the whereto’s to treasure them.
It may break a vicious circle, it undeniably did in my life.
 
*not sure of the correct translation of this word which we have for it in Holland.
 
Hope your doing better and pain is bearable, all the best wishes for a healthy recovery! Sam.

Last edited by SamanthaNL (August 2, 2020 10:49 am)

Hi Sam,

I started a long post going detail by detail but you know it would end up the size of an essay if I kept going like that and also I realised I didn't want to.  So here I am just replying off the cuff. 

Basically I can appreciate it is a painful situation, being the marrying type of lesbian.  And people try different things and the most common from what I can see, is to have 'friendships' with women alongside the marriage - there's no acknowledgement that they are causing their straight husband pain, it's all about dealing with their own, so I appreciate your open recognition of the pain of a straight spouse in a MOM and that you are attempting to expiate it now.  That is a big step forward in my book.  That you don't speak disparagingly about your husband is great - some of the normal aches and pains of a MOM clearly are being eased.  

And that you put your monogamous relationship first means neither of you are facing the pain of a break up but I don't think it really is resolvable.  That's my personal feeling - whether you fancy someone or not, it matters to hell and back, it just does, the hurt we feel is real.

wishing you all the best, Lily 

 

I'm sorry to respond so late to your messages Lilly and Sonata.

As a result of the redecoration of the living room, it was such a mess that everything else stopped. That just had to be done first. I can't sit and write while everything is turned upside down. But here i am again... 

Lily wrote:

it would be the size of an essay if I continued

I think that's what you thought of my post ;)
I can imagine everything you say!! ... I only respond in 1 thread so well, I absolutely hope you do not mind my posts are sometimes a little longer.....

lily wrote:

  Basically I can appreciate it is a painful situation, being the marrying type of lesbian.  And people try different things and the most common from what I can see, is to have 'friendships' with women alongside the marriage - there's no acknowledgement that they are causing their straight husband pain, it's all about dealing with their own, so I appreciate your open recognition of the pain of a straight spouse in a MOM and that you are attempting to expiate it now.  That is a big step forward in my book.  That you don't speak disparagingly about your husband is great - some of the normal aches and pains of a MOM clearly are being eased. 

There is a lot of hurt that is not recognized, I do share your point. It took me a long time too, before I came to learn the depth of that hurt. I just didn’t, maybe couldn’t, grasp that my lack of physical attraction had such an impact on my husband. 
I think it is the most important part of going through with a MOM that this hurt is recognized and answered by the gay-spouse. And believe me, I am not giving myself credit for that, I am so gratefull that somehow the blinds of that window opened. As of that moment nearly every day I learned a bit more about my husband. And by viewing him in that way, it gradually eased my grip of  my hand in the cookie jar, stuck and reluctant to let go of just seeing and considering my own important feelings. I think that is the most important lesson I learned in all that time. 
And paved the way on which we could go together. 
Not by giving supreme importance to the feeling of being a lesbian and having to deal with that within our marriage but by giving the utmost value of importance to the one you willingly choose to be with in that marriage. 
That became the choice : if you still miss something in the marriage, in anyway whatsoever… something is still wrong. I started to go passed that missing feeling. Because there was a new core of value. 

lily wrote:

  And that you put your monogamous relationship first means neither of you are facing the pain of a break up but I don't think it really is resolvable.  That's my personal feeling - whether you fancy someone or not, it matters to hell and back, it just does, the hurt we feel is real.

Yes, I do understand what you say and why. Unfortunately in many cases the blinds do not open. The gay/bi is not able to look past feelings and sexual needs and likeness. As if that is the main strand to hold on to and every other step or choice keeps based on that inner self, inner miss, inner deepest need. 
And by doing so they are holding themselves captive. 
It’s a sort of selfishness they don’t seem to get out of…
They do not see what they have, they just see what they do not have. 
As if when they would…they would loose their inner selve because “that’s who they are…” 

But freedom is that you are always having a choice. You are always free to what path you can follow up on and what you find is worthwhile living for. What you want to be your legacy. 
Culture is making sexual feelings and being who you are defined by that, to an extreme high level of selfishness without seeing it, and without seeing that it just holds them captive of their own feelings, slaves to their feelings. Instead of being free they are bound.  And willing to lose and hurt their partners and even children, and everything that was good. Culture somehow considers that a meaningful way of coping with your sexuality and being who you are…. 

No…I am not perfect, far from it, but I do have a choice in what I willingly/freely can decide on. And if you choose that then you do not have the eagerness to want something else. Or having a missing-out feeling in a sexual way. Because if it did… I haven’t made my choices right and to the full core of what I want. 
Making a choice is not half as important as knowing why you make a choice. The deep significance of knowing why to make a choice, any choice. Otherwise you may find yourself in doubt a week down the road,  and wanting to change your choice. That’s because not really knowing why you made a choice. 

I may sound religious in your opinion  but I started to just thank for what I had been given in the first place and for what that meant. For who he was.  And why. 
To go beyond the so called cultural boundaries opened myself to choose and to learn, to renew what was worth living for,  therefore what was between us, how deep love really means to go and grow. 
I know for sure that my husband not only knows that I love him without restrictions or feeling of loss, that he is everything I want and nothing else. (so… do I fancy him? Yes I do! And he knows it.)

But also that he knows I understand the hurt that he felt. Maybe as great as the pain you felt and still feel. But pain is different to everyone and not measurable. But I am glad I once began to see the comparison that I could not expect or even consider that I came out of a closed, just to put him into one and restrict his being and right of who he is. Because that would not be love, that’s just being selfish and it brings about a lot of hurt. 
Choosing a MOM is willingly and wanting whole heartedly to choose for your partner without any reproach or limitation. I do not regret that choice. Neither does Dutchman. 

I hope your back is doing a lot better by now...
all the best from Holland.

I will post some more later on...

Last edited by SamanthaNL (August 24, 2020 2:10 pm)

Hi sonata,

Thank you for your kind words.
I have read your posts and my heart aches, as with many of the stories I read here. It is hurtful and damaging the relation at the same time. I already wrote some about this in my previous respond.

First of all I so want to say you are not to blame. You have no accountability whatsoever for his wrong and dishonest behavior. Nor for the fact that he couldn’t talk to you about it before he let himself into a position where he forgot he had a responsibility to you. There is absolutely nothing you could have done to prevent it happening. No! Not! Nothing!

All of these are just defenses to an essential absence, a gap, he knew was there and accepts as righteous to have as being the way he is. By giving “self-seeking” reasons that only contributes and justifies to a want he thought he needs to feed and pamper.

Is it more honorable right when it concerns a man? Because a woman… well…that would be infidelity?  Where then does disloyalty start?
Well, that is what I meant by when the blinds are down and one does not see clearly anymore: Defenses and excuses, imaginary self-rightfully following a self-centered path, leading to hurt another.

I am glad you mention the fact that you both still love each other. And in your other posts I read you both communicate on a higher and better level then before and even are still intimate with each other. That is a very meaningful and important foundation to tread onward!

That doesn’t reduce the fear and pain in this moment and for some time to come. Feelings of doubt and iniquity.  Feelings that are justly and legitimately and according  to the discovered truth that came into your life and relation.
A lot of the depth of that pain I did not comprehend at the time. I couldn’t grasp what it did to my husband inside. That it was not just the dealing with me being a lesbian, but it took a hold of his self-esteem and dignity in ways I did not understand for a long time.
Although we talked a lot and over time transparency grew. But still.
Maybe because I was so entangled with my own feelings. All focus was on :
What I was ...
How we could make this work in our marriage...
Meanwhile how to relate to my sexuality...
Believing it should not be ignored, therefore important, therefore you are what you are, even though married.
Therefore cope with that fact...

In short: It was all about me.
As if being a lesbian made me some kind of special species on which ground every step had to be dealt with. This was my personality. This was my identity. I can not deny or bargain with the fact I am attracted to women. And if I can not... you (my husband)  can not either. There’s a missing link in our marriage and you/we have to work with that given fact.

Not only that’s not true, it was destructive for my husband. I was putting him in a different kind of closet, the kind that holds the feelings of the straight person captive and victim to honor and benefit only feelings of sexuality in confirming me, despite of his own.
But being in a marriage is a two way street. It should never be about the significance of just one of the two.

Sonata wrote:

He would like to continue with it but realizes that I am not okay with it and would rather give it up than loose me.

I honestly feel that he should realize a little more than the “you are not okay with it”. He should ask himself why he would want to put this question on your plate to benefit his needs. Without considering your feelings are as important as his, he will loose you if he doesn’t come to that recognition.

Sonata wrote:

I also wonder if he can be happy being monogamous …

I find it very hard to answer that for you. I sure do not want to make you happy with a dead sparrow (I am not sure in English, but this is a proverb in Holland ;) I can only speak for my self, and out of my and our own experience. There is no trick on which it would work. Not an one size fits all guideline to follow.
But yes, I think it can work out in general. It happened in our marriage and I also see it in other MOM’s, like for instance Tangledoil describes. So yes, it certainly can be.
But it takes time. And for the main aspect…it is not only you who can make that happen on your own, even if you want it so very bad.
The most important thing you can do is set good, sensible and honest rules by which both of you have to comply to, and stick by those values.

Your husband on the other hand, has to think long and hard about the why’s of what he feels and wants and whether he wants to not just avoiding losing you,  but truly love you. Regardless of his feelings. Love reaches out, never reaches in.  Is his eye fixed on what is missed- out on or is his eye set on what he has : you!
There are many things in live you can’t have. If he would have some strong sex drive, he couldn’t go his way towards woman either. There is no difference, sexual feelings are not an excuse for betrayal to the promise (read : choice) once made to one another. And he shouldn’t  fool himself in that regard.

Marriage is not a prison, but if you decide to stay together and truly choose for each other, it must proportionate and develop happiness equally. So it can resist storms of increasing feeling of rejection (straigt) or loss(bi). In just keeping a marriage together that holds nothing more than an relationship that drags on for years of deep internal unhappiness, you’re not only sacrifice your own life but also your spouse’s . And that is far more worse.

Sonata wrote:

now that he has been with a man?

Assuming, because that is what I read in your posts, he too wants to go for staying together…
I certainly think that his past actions makes it more challenging. Having experienced something that filles the gap he feels within him. But not unreachable…even when(and he should!!) he accepts who and what his needs are… but he has to know he is more than just his feelings. He has a choice which value is the most worthwhile for him. He needs to answer questions for himself, like:
·         What do I choose and therefore want to follow? Like : this is who I am, and this is what I belief, this is who I want to be/ stand for, and no one is telling me otherwise!!
·         What is really important to uphold an go for….and more important : WHY?!
·         What does love really mean?
·         Do I love my spouse and what does that mean for myself?
·         What is my meticulous motivation to stay together?
·         What do I think my spouse feels and needs?
·         Where did I hurt her, and can I, with all questions above, regain the trust I so easily took for granted?

Thing is… these are not open and shut questions to be answers with a a superficial yes or no. What are his true motivations, well considered, going to the core of his being as a person?

Both of you have to accept each other as you are.  This sounds irrational but a fact that will help transparency and openness in communication. This is a hard choice, for both of you to practice.
Be interested and ask a lot. And when you do not understand or it makes you unsure: ask more questions.
Find ways to (sometimes playful) intimacy where you both feel comfortable with. It is your time, your way, your decision. But never a demand or boundaries crossed, but an effort in seeking to find the other, not out of “duty calls” but out of willingly being there for the other, because that is called love.

I wish you all the best choices.

Sam.