Another strange little item - to my knowledge, my ex has had five serious boyfriends over the years. I should have modified my last summary of them, to signify that I know nothing about the newest one. I could probe my kids more about him. So of the four I know about, two were married, and those relationships tended to end after a couple of years. It was the unmarried friends that he lasted the longest with. The one I knew the best, because they were "friends" while we were still married, stayed unmarried through most of their 12-year-friendship, but the friendship appeared to end after he finally got married (to a woman). The other long term relationship lasted 20 years or more, and that one never married, and he was a very eligible doctor. I was surprised to hear that relationship seemed to fizzle out in the last year or so and there's a new "friend".

A funny story about the friend I knew the best - he came by my house one day when he knew my ex-husband wasn't there, and invited me to go swimming with him in his private pond. I was nine months pregnant and it the whole thing felt weird, so I made an excuse and didn't go. But I never forgot that incident. At the time, I wondered if his friend was hitting on me, although he had shown no signs of doing so and I was very pregnant. But some men like pregnant woman. It was only after I began to suspect that my ex is gay that I wondered if his "friend" was feeling guilty and wanted to tell me something. 

 

Sean, lots of us have questions for you here! Just quickly to reassure you - I have gotten excellent therapists, psychiatrists for all of us. Between Boston and NY I feel very lucky - and like you said my closeted husband thrives on recognition and approval so he is very good at work, and financial resources aren’t an issue, for which I am grateful. But here’s the giant “but” - it’s still super hard if someone is lying. He still wants that front up so there is only so far the rest of it can go. I really hate lying, and I really hate the bias that is driving it. Stop it people - you are causing great harm. And thank you Sean for having the conversation these guys can’t - look how much we need it. Ugh.

Gloria wrote:

A friend of mine that works for Tela Flora told me that a LOT of florists are gay and their wives have no idea. Beastie, you are lucky that your family can accept a bi sexual man. I wish you the best of luck and I will be holding a good thought for you.

Thank you so much, Gloria. I do have to give props to my Mormon relatives who, despite the Mormon church's negative stance on anything other than vanilla, heterosexual, married sex, have been very accepting of my transgender daughter and my gay high school niece who's had a girlfriend for a couple of years. My bisexual son sees no reason to tell the family because he's happily married to a woman, but the few who know totally accept him. 

In fact, my bisexual son's happy, eight-year-long passionate marriage to his wife is what totally convinced me my ex-husband isn't bisexual but only attracted to men. A bisexual can have a healthy sexual relationship with both sexes. He couldn't.

As far as my ex-husband's family, the older generation still can't accept alternative sexuality. His oldest nephew came out decades ago and was ostracized. I think the younger generation would accept him. But at this point, the main problem for my ex isn't society accepting him - it's him being able to accept it himself. 

 

Thank you, Gloria.

Also many thanks to Sean for the podcasts. They were very informative. I'm so glad I found this site. I do feel a sense of closure now that has been elusive for almost 25 years. I felt emotionally healed before, and my significant other is wonderful and helped me heal, but closure is different than healing. I just kept wondering, uncertain of my conclusions about his sexuality. I no longer have any doubts at all. 

Thank you everyone for posting. In reply: 

Beastie wrote: 

1. Yes, much of his behavior was truly monstrous. I know there are disagreements over your use of the term narcissist but that's the one diagnosis I've always been certain of with him - he is a malignant narcissist and has damaged a lot of lives on the way. He also had some sociopathic traits on the way, like setting fires and fighting constantly as a child/teenager. My (now adult) children still struggle with the effects of his narcissism. The court ordered them to visit him every other weekend, which was enough time to continue the damage. 

Tragic. Question: what is their relationship with dad now? While closeted, I believe I had a form of gay-in-denial (or GID) narcissism and I do believe that closeted/questioning spouses display a lot of narcissistic traits. Conversely, I also believe that many straight spouses are co-dependents. 

2. The Mormon church has a very problematic relationship with gay members. It prefers the term "same sex attraction" and used to act like even having SSA was a serious sin. They have been very active in fighting equal rights for gay people. Recently it's modified its position somewhat, by allowing that people with "same sex attraction" were born that way, but God wants them to live celibate lives and resist that temptation. So it's not a sin to BE gay anymore, but it is a serious sin to have gay sex. It used to quite openly encourage mixed marriages, but I think it does not anymore, but there are plenty of local leaders who still do. Some Mormon couples in mixed marriages were very open about it, and one was even on some TV show. One of the most vocal couples eventually divorced - of course - because they decided neither one was willing to live without the intimacy they craved and deserved. (Lolly and Josh, I think were their names) Now they've come out in support of gay rights. 

I've interviewed Josh Weed, the former poster boy for gay/straight Mormon mixed-orientation marriages (or MOMs) Josh and Lolly Weed’s account of why their “mixed orientation” marriage failed is remarkable. (slate.com). I am very strongly against MOMs between gay men and straight women.  

3. The Mormon church got into a controversy when a few years ago it declared it wouldn't even baptize the children of gay parents unless the children were old enough to renounce their parents' lifestyles. That was so extreme there was a big backlash and they had to back down. So they may be making tiny baby steps towards progress, but overall, the Mormon church is a very destructive place for a gay child to grow up in. 

While I'm no scholar, this isn't the only time the Mormon church found itself scrambling to adapt to public opinion. The church was forced to denounce polygamy and also had to reverse a prior ban on blacks becoming Mormons. 

4. And, of course, my ex grew up in the sixties, when it was even worse. Back then, gay people were as sinful as murderers, and Mormon parents were taught that it would be better if their gay child had died than to go on to be gay in life. The suicide rate among gay Mormon youth is still tragically high.

How sad. 

5. So I feel compassion for my ex-husband, because I know he felt like he had no choice but to pretend. His father was already beating him for other things (who knows, maybe he got caught with boys as well and just didn't tell me, he did tell me he used to dress in his grandmother's underwear, so maybe he got caught doing that, and he used to brag about how the other boys in the locker room would stare at his penis), and they definitely would have disowned him. But what I just can't forgive him for is all the cruelty that he then chose to inflict on his wife and children, maybe out of his own frustration and anger.

Well this is his version of events. I reckon straight wives can be skeptical when their closeted/questioning husbands paint themselves as victims. If he's been a liar and a cheat your entire relationship, he's likely lying about his past. 

6. I know he was watching porn because a couple of times I found his secret porn tapes. I was a good Mormon girl so wouldn't watch porn myself, but the one time I popped in one of the tapes it wasn't gay porn, but it was violent against women. I was so disgusted I ripped it out after a couple of seconds and destroyed it with a hammer. I don't know if my ex-husband would ever have been brave enough to rent gay porn, because back then you had to go in the store and rent it physically, so I always figured he just focused on the men. And there were other times I woke up late at night and would find him "asleep" in the recliner, but I could tell the TV had just been turned off.

Sad. 

7. I've actually been tempted to try to track down his former best friends...

Correction: former boyfriends/lovers. 

8. ...but I'm scared. I'm still scared of him even though we have no contact, and it's been almost 25 years since we were together. I really felt, at one point, that he would have killed me if he could have gotten away with it. So I'm afraid if I contact one of them, they might still be in touch with him and tell on me. "Hey, your ex-wife is spreading the rumor you're gay." I shudder to think what he might to do me then.  Unfortunately, I can't remember all their last names, and the ones I do remember aren't on Facebook or anything like that. Remember, we're boomers.  LOL. 

I wouldn't compromise your safety and the last thing you want to do is be on this toxic man's radar. 

9. I've talked to my kids a lot about it. At first they were just like, ewww, mom, don't make us think about dad and sex. My daughter was the first to say, yeah, I can see that.

Daughters often understand dad's unspoken secret before he comes out.  

10. My oldest child is MTF transgender, and my middle son is bisexual, so they both figure, yeah, runs in the family. But their relationship with their dad is very fractured and they aren't around him much. They do say that there is obviously no affection or intimacy between him and his current wife. They also have witnessed homophobic behavior from him which I didn't really see. 

Sometimes closeted men act like the biggest bigots/homophobes as cover.  

11. I used to hope he'd come clean one day, but I now accept that will never happen. Your validation alone means the world to me. It sounds strange that validation from a stranger on the internet could help me, but I've read enough of this thread to respect your willingness to be open and honest, no matter how hard it is. Plus, who would know better than another (formerly) closeted gay narcissist?  I'm just relieved that I wasn't imagining something ridiculous, and that I can be satisfied with the last puzzle  piece!

Glad to have helped in some way but please keep in mind that I'm not a mental health expert. 

12. Another strange little item - to my knowledge, my ex has had five serious boyfriends over the years. I should have modified my last summary of them, to signify that I know nothing about the newest one. I could probe my kids more about him. So of the four I know about, two were married, and those relationships tended to end after a couple of years. It was the unmarried friends that he lasted the longest with. The one I knew the best, because they were "friends" while we were still married, stayed unmarried through most of their 12-year-friendship, but the friendship appeared to end after he finally got married (to a woman). The other long term relationship lasted 20 years or more, and that one never married, and he was a very eligible doctor. I was surprised to hear that relationship seemed to fizzle out in the last year or so and there's a new "friend".

Our Path's Kristin Kalbli and I discussed these "Brokeback Mountain" relationships here S5 Ep 5: A Former Closeted Narcissist in Recovery Answers Your Questions - OurPath.  

13. A funny story about the [boy]friend I knew the best - he came by my house one day when he knew my ex-husband wasn't there, and invited me to go swimming with him in his private pond. I was nine months pregnant and it the whole thing felt weird, so I made an excuse and didn't go. But I never forgot that incident. At the time, I wondered if his friend was hitting on me, although he had shown no signs of doing so and I was very pregnant. But some men like pregnant woman. It was only after I began to suspect that my ex is gay that I wondered if his "friend" was feeling guilty and wanted to tell me something. 

Shudder. Closeted men are f*cking crazy...I certainly was. 

14. I should also clarify my family's skepticism. They're willing to accept that he is bisexual. They just struggle with him being exclusively homosexual.

Likely because some of them still believe being gay is somehow evil or perhaps a form of mental disorder...as many churches still teach. When straight spouses find proof their husbands are engaging sexually with other men, I encourage them to ask their husbands, "What does gay mean to you?" and/or "Can two men actually love each other?" rather than jumping to the "Are you GAY!!??" interrogation. If a closeted/questioning husband thinks of "gay" as being exclusively drag queens, back-alley sexual deviants, or angel-winged pride float glitter boys, he isn't likely going to see himself as being any of these because he has such a negative view of homosexuality. 

15. Which, in its own way, still hurts a little. It's almost like they're making excuses for his lack of interest in me, while pretending he must be attracted to women in general even if he also likes men.

I reckon it's time to stop yelling at the deaf my friend. The only people who might consider your ex-husband is/was gay are those who first accept that gay people truly exist. So I'd stop debating this with people who can't even acknowledge that people are born gay or, worse, that being gay is some form of "choice." I've long stopped engaging with people who can't accept me nor my relationship with another man. Move on. 

16. I've just become so confident in my own sexuality and attractiveness, particularly when I was younger (gotta be realistic about aging, ha) that it stuns me they think there would be some reason he just couldn't be attracted to me, personally, but still be attracted to women in general. I think it comes from their own lack of understanding of the entire phenomenon of mixed marriages. I think they just can't accept a man who is only attracted to men could be married for so long. 

I agree! 

Rose wrote: Sean, lots of us have questions for you here! Just quickly to reassure you - I have gotten excellent therapists, psychiatrists for all of us. Between Boston and NY I feel very lucky - and like you said my closeted husband thrives on recognition and approval so he is very good at work, and financial resources aren’t an issue, for which I am grateful. But here’s the giant “but” - it’s still super hard if someone is lying. He still wants that front up so there is only so far the rest of it can go. I really hate lying, and I really hate the bias that is driving it. Stop it people - you are causing great harm. And thank you Sean for having the conversation these guys can’t - look how much we need it. Ugh.

While I'll always defer to mental health professionals, I still believe your son is suffering under the crushing weight of keeping his dad's secrets. For me personally, my ex-wife and kids only started to heal after separation, divorce, and my coming out. If I may be so bold, I think your "take it slow" approach with your son is more about you coming to terms with what your husband's homosexuality means to you and your marriage. This is understandable and clearly there are financial concerns as well. However, I reckon it's time to rip off that (pink) band aid. If your kids know dad's gay and have probably known for years, I see no reason to tap dance around it. It's time to free both yourself and your kids of this terrible burden. I don't see any benefit in forcing your kids to live in denial...as their father has for most of his life.  

FinallyFree2 wrote: 

1. I’m also an exMormon with a gay in denial husband.  We have been married over 25 years and our sex life has sucked for the entire marriage.  Being Mormon, he was my first sexual partner.  I had nothing to compare it to but I knew it lacked the passion I had with prior boyfriends.  Thankfully he moved out in February of this year.  He wants to be married “living apart together” so I can continue to be his beard.   I was so sick of him making excuses for not wanting to have sex with me.  I don’t know how many times he called me oversexed cause I wanted sex at least once a month.  Our last time we had sex was over 8 years ago.  Prior to that, he could rarely maintain an erection.  I spent the last 25 years feeling like crap and unattractive.   Being constantly turned down has played a major impact on my confidence and body image.  Last year I lost over 50 lbs and been working with a personal trainer, three times a week, for the last 10 months.  Thankfully I am feeling stronger and better about myself and feel much much better since he moved out.  No daily reminders that he isn’t attracted to me.

I'm so sorry he did this to you. But I'm thrilled you're now separated and fabulous. 

2. I always thought he might be bisexual and or gay.  After my father passed away in 2018, I went to therapy and that is when I asked him if he was gay.  His reply, in front of the therapist, was he “didn’t like labels”.  When I asked him again in December 2021, after he suggested he wanted to “live apart together, I asked him again and he did not answer the question.   So yes, I think he is 100% gay even though he does not want to admit it. 

I agree. 

3. I hate the Mormon church for pushing gay men and women to marry straight spouses.  If the Mormon church was more accepting, maybe there would be less couples having to do thru this trauma.  I’m so glad I left years ago!

I think it's time we stopped looking for guidance about homosexuality and gay marriage from a church that believes in the planet Kolob.  

4. I have been reading these boards for years and listening to the podcasts.  It has made me feel that I’m not alone.  Beastie, just know that you are not alone too.

Thank you for sharing your story. Keep coming back. Be well! 

Last edited by Sean (April 16, 2022 3:19 am)