Hi Everyone,

As with many of you, I'm sure, I never expected to be here after 16 years of marriage. My ex wife and I had a pretty normal marriage...always a couple of downs but a lot of ups. We went through rough times personally and professionally and we were always there for one another to help pull ourselves out of the void.  Over the years, we had two beautiful boys and  my career in the Air Force was beginning to really take off. 

After our second son was born however, I began noticing a change in my ex. She started to become a little more withdrawn from me and she showed me less affection.  Our sex life was also starting to wane and it just seemed like every time we talked about it, it would end up in an argument.

Two years ago, she mentioned to me that she was starting to have feelings for women. So she believed that she was perhaps bisexual. She had talked about pursuing these feelings outside our marriage and had even mentioned that perhaps I pursue another relationship outside our marriage. I realize that this works for some people but I never understood open marriages...to me it meant that our marriage was essentially a lie. So I was opposed to it and we went on with life, having arguments about our lack of intimacy. We were still having sex but it was very mechanical and choreographed. Like she wanted to "just go through the motions" to keep me somewhat satisfied. The problem was it was all fake and the lack of passion was killing me. 

I just couldn't wrap my mind around how much she had changed. Much of our arguments were about how different of a person she had become since we married. She would always counter that with, "people are always changing". To which I would respond, "I don't think people change that damn much".  In Jan 2019, I was contemplating retiring from the Air Force. I had over 20 years in and I had built a pretty good network of friends.  The boys seemed pretty happy as well, we had just bought new house with 5 acres.  My ex was working as a rad tech and seemed to be content but started to talk about maybe taking one more assignment somewhere new. She felt her job really had no progression or future. She talked about going back to school to become a physician assistant. I eventually agreed and I put in for a new assignment in New Mexico.

We got down here in April 2019. I do like the area and my job is pretty interesting. My ex got a job working in the cath lab and making quite a bit more money.  Our arguments about everything continued until finally in May 2020, we decided it was time to call it quits. She believed that her feelings for women were far to great. I agreed and I began supporting her through the entire process. At this point, I was sleeping in the spare bedroom but quickly lost that when my father-in-law had a heart attack. We agreed to have him come stay with us because my ex knew a lot of the doctors at the hospital. Unfortunately, that meant I was now sleeping on the couch because he wanted the bed. I was clearly making a lot of concessions and I think I just wanted things to go smoothly as we made decisions for the family. 

My ex brought up the idea of purchasing another place and instead of moving the kids from place to place, we would just take turns between the "family" house and the new place. That way we would get separation and have split time with the boys. It took a long time to actually close on a townhouse. In between that time, my ex began dating women and exploring her sexuality. She eventually met someone and they have really "hit it off". Their relationship has become very serious at this point.

When we closed on the townhouse, I thought that I would find happiness in having separation from my ex and that I would be able to move on with my life. What I'm feeling now though is that I focused so much on supporting my ex in her transition that I really suppressed what I should be feeling. You can learn a lot while spending some lonely nights in a strange townhouse that your ex is slowly turning into a lesbian sanctuary. I found that I still have a lot of anger towards her and the entire situation. I am definitely throwing myself a bit of a "pity party" as I try to figure myself out. To make matters worse, I don't feel comfortable in that townhouse and question whether I really should have agreed to this arrangement. I've made so many changes during this process to my life and now I'm wondering why I had made so many concessions when she was the one going through the change? I also realized that perhaps I was viewing this entire process as "our journey" so I could maybe still find a way of holding onto her. This isn't our journey though this is her journey and I have to let her go because she is not the person that I married 16 years ago. 

I told her the other day that she should be prepared for the fact that I may just want to keep separate places..i.e. her place (the townhouse which she pays the mortgage) and the big house where I pay the mortgage. Im not sure I can live in a place (even if it's a couple days a week) where I know she's building another relationship with another woman.

So this is my story. I kept some less important details out otherwise this could be a really long story. I still love my ex...she is the mother of my kids and alway will be. We had a really strong friendship but lately I've told her that I really need to have some distance and figure myself out. I am thankful that she disclosed her feelings about women to me and didn't do things behind my back...at least to my knowledge.  Guess we'll see where this goes and all I can do is hope for the best and find some peace in what happened.