My divorce is done but i find myself suddenly in depression. The future looks so bleak and scary and i find that i am regretting getting divorced. I just want my family back together again. Why am i suddenly second guessing everything again?

Thank you for sharing Grace. I'm sorry you're hurting. Our first holidays after a break up can be difficult. I'm just 15 months post-divorce and now two years following separation. Perhaps some other members who have many more years post-break up can share what worked for them. In my experience, what really helped was time. I spent 25+ years with my ex-wife and suddenly found myself alone, over 40, no kids, and in an empty apartment. Lots of tears at first but it's getting better for all of us. Please don't isolate. If you feel the need, post here 3-4 times a day. Send a private message to a fellow member and connect via telephone. Get all of that bad juju out of your heart so it can heal. I hope that helps in some way. 

Thanks for writing Nosurrender. In response to your question:

1. Just one question...do you believe that men who know they are gay who do this to innocent women...do you believe that these are not crimes? Do you believe that women like us in this pathetic situation where the men in our lives purposefully misrepresented themselves for various selfish and corrupt reasons that resulted in the ruining in peoples lives as they knew them ...do you think there should not be, as there is now none from what I can tell...do you feel that there should be no laws in place to protect women like us from gay men in denial, or in some cases, gay men not in denial who are just plain criminals looking to commit the perfect crime? 

I'm so sorry you're hurting Nosurrender. You've asked a fascinating question. I'm not an expert in criminal intent so I'll only share my own experience. When I married my wife back in 1999, I didn't have some master plan regarding how I wanted to f*ck up her life, nor the lives of our children. I considered myself straight, was in love with a woman, and really wanted to have a wife and family. We met when we were 18 and our early days were happy, fun and loving. Something changed for me in my mid-30s. We mostly stopped having sex and when we did have sex, it was completely without passion. I also started living a virtual gay life through internet porn although I didn't have sex with another man until I was 40. Coming out is a very long and painful process. And the longer I waited, the more difficult it became. Until I said the words, "I'm gay" in my early 40s, I simply didn't believe I was a gay man. And there are countless examples of gay-in-denial men on this website and often spouses who still deny their partners are gay despite overwhelming evidence (like emails, photos, and Craigslist ads) proving it. While it's tragic, I'm not sure it's criminal. If what I've read is true, roughly half of all marriages end in divorce and I can only assume that a great deal of these relationships end because of cheating/infidelity. I don't believe that anyone goes into marriage thinking, "I'm going to cheat on my husband/wife." Over time, relationships break down, spouses cheat, and I'm not sure if this type of thing will be criminalized some day.

2. As my journey through this trip to hell and back continues, the question of this being lawful haunts me. How are people supposed to know treating people this way is WRONG if there is never a penalty? Does it not make sense that if one case makes headlines and makes an impression, others who intend to misrepresent themselves will think twice? 

​This may be small consolation, but I feel gay/straight marriages will eventually stop happening. Why? Because society is becoming more tolerant towards the LGBTQ community and gay people are coming out in their teens rather than 30s or 40s. I've only read one thread on this website where it appeared a husband really used his wife to have children, fully knowing he was gay at the time. That is truly evil in my opinion. Given what I've read here, the gay/straight marriage appears to be more of a gay man marrying to conform in his 20s and then suffering a mid-life crisis in his 40s. So the gay/straight marriage seems to be more of a phenomenon for men 40 and older and less of an issue for younger people. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s as I did, there were no positive role models for being gay. Gay people were mocked, fired, persecuted, and even arrested. We married women to conform and hide, not to ruin your lives. Whether this is criminal is up to legislators and eventually the court system I guess. Speaking of criminal acts, it's interesting to note that up until the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 14 states (Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri (statewide), North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia) still had anti-sodomy laws that essentially made it illegal to be gay. So just 13 years ago, it was still a crime to be gay.

​What's my point? Although I fully understand your anger, I'm not sure it's truly possible to criminalize gay/straight marriages. I hope that helps in some small way.  

Last edited by Séan (December 21, 2016 3:30 am)

    To my mind, both of you, No Surrender and Sean, make good points.  NoSurrender, through your question, "Shouldn't this deception count as a crime?" you lead us to consider a larger question: "What counts as a crime?"  And Sean, you point out that until quite recently, here in the US homosexual sex was considered a crime.  The criminalization of homosexual love, then, has a clear bearing on the situation of all straight spouses in marriages with gay men/women.  So maybe what ought to count as a crime is the criminalization of homosexual love!
    Laws regulate behavior, endorsing, excusing, or forbidding behaviors.  I can point to other examples.  Until not too long ago, there was no law against marital rape; in fact, there wasn't even such a concept as marital rape because a man was thought by virtue of marriage to have the right of access to his wife's body, a clear indication, by the way, of who was making the laws and in whose interests.  In the same vein, domestic violence was seen as a "private family matter," and the police rarely intervened and husbands were rarely prosecuted.  (In terms of laws governing women and family status, I could go on and on and on.) 
   So although I agree with Sean, that gay people will feel less and less as if they need to hide their sexuality (even from themselves), I also think NoSurrender is raising an important point--who is it that laws protect (and why)? and, what do laws criminalize (and why)?  And while the situation of a straight spouse married to a gay man/woman might not be a legal crime, she's certainly been "sinned against," to put it not in the language of the law but the language of morality/ethics.  And while I don't think any can hold ourselves or each other to the status of the most brave among us, I think we straight spouses all also see that many gay people did come out in very repressive times, and in our pain wonder why our spouses couldn't do the same, especially when they profess to love us, but were/are willing to subject us to pain. 


  

Sean,
  You wrote, above, in your long reply, "Something changed for me in my mid-30s.  We mostly stopped having sex and when we did have sex, it was completely without passion. I also started living a virtual gay life." 
   The language there seems to me dishonest, in that it suggests that passion simply evaporated all on its own, and that your feelings were not the reason for that evaporation or the lack of passion, and that your virtual gay life wasn't implicated in the cessation of sex and the lack of passion.  I can't help but remember what you wrote in a very early post--that you had come on this forum to do "penance"--and think perhaps you need to consider when exactly in your coming out process you stopped being a victim of a homophobic society and began turning your wife into one.