Good day everyone. I have to disagree with members asking that Gary's thread be taken down. I think it's an invaluable and instructive insight in the gay husband's mind...and manipulations. For all the straight wives who suspect their husbands are gay, in just a few posts Gary has perfectly demonstrated just why it is so very difficult for both the gay and straight spouses to end their relationship. So personally I want to thank Gary for his invaluable contribution to this site. I hope he and his wife find happiness, separately. 

Here are the things I've learned from Gary's posts:

1. Gay-straight marriages are abusive and neglectful sexless relationships pretending ​to be loving marriages. 
2. Gay husbands (like me) never really loved their straight wives, we used you purely as cover to hide our homosexuality.
3. Most gay-in-denial husbands are (or at least act like) toxic narcissists and yet we crave approval/validation other than from our wives.
​4. While a gay-in-denial husband can lie to himself, his wife, and others, his mind eventually breaks down because of the strain of living in the closet and pretending to be the perfect husband/father. 
​5. While closeted, or semi closeted, the gay husband actually believes the lies he's telling. 
​6. In my opinion, the only way a straight wife can find freedom is to divorce. Her gay husband will never leave.  

​And here is the proof I found directly from Gary's posts:

​1. Gay/straight marriages are abusive:  

 "I am 54 yo and have been married for 27+ years...When my wife and I have sex, I do my best to enjoy her and only her.  I'll admit that sometimes I fail and gay thoughts seep into my brain but it isn't about anyone in particular.  I genuinely try to honor my wife's efforts at sex.  We don't do it very often but it does happen a few times per year...Now my wife may see me looking at some men and read my thoughts.  I'm not sure about this and I really don't find all that many men attractive.  To misquote Jerry Seinfeld, 98% of all the men out there are undatable!   In this same vein, months, even years can go by without either of us mentioning TGT.  I don't bring it up often because I know it is uncomfortable for her at the best.  I don't think it's on her mind very much because of this but I could be wrong...I am ashamed to say that I do look at porn.  It is infrequent and, yes, my wife knows that I do it on occasion."

2. Gay husbands (like me) never really loved their straight wives, we used you purely as cover to hide our homosexuality.

​"So fast forward to age 25.  I meet my wife and we instantly become best friends, then lovers, and then we get married.  I'm still in denial through all of this. As a matter of fact, when my wife and I were dating I would even go so far as to stop at an adult bookstore on my way home from a date with her to buy gay porn." 

3. Most gay-in-denial husbands are (or at least act like) toxic narcissists, wearing masks of perfection while also hating ourselves. We also crave other's approval/validation while neglecting our loved ones.

​"I did basically say that I was good guy...Today I volunteered to go paint and repair a house flooded by Hurricane Harvey.  Since I am old, fat, out-of-shape, and unaccustomed to manual labor, I am POOPED!  So I'm going to bed early...​If you have some money earmarked for charities that you haven't decided where to spend, the need is still great here in Houston...Fast forward again 20 years and in May 2017 my youngest graduates from college and begins her career.  The gay man in me doesn't let me forget my vow.  I had raised my children.  My job was done...My wife told me that if I felt that I needed to leave that she wouldn't hold it against me and we'd always be friends but that if I were going to leave to do it sooner rather than later so she would have time to find someone new as well.  That really messed me up.  I'd rather her say that she'd never speak to me again.  I can live with the former but not with the later.  Perhaps it was a loving gesture but I wish she'd never said that.  It opened the door to the closet and I haven't been able to get back in and close the door since.  Where we go from here I do not know yet..." 

4. While a gay-in-denial husband can lie to himself, his wife, and others, his mind eventually breaks down because of the strain of living in the closet while pretending to be the perfect husband/father. 

​"...So I sink into a deep depression...Back 20 years ago I went to group therapy for sex addiction and also attended one SAA meeting. Depression affects more than the person who has it.  My wife and I go through some tough times for the next year or more and then a social worker type counselor convinces me that I should get a divorce and live as a gay man or that I would never be happy and possibly commit suicide.  I initially agreed and went home and told my wife.  She and I began making plans to spit.  Very difficult.  As part of these plans we had to tell our families why we were separating and so I outed myself.  It did not go well but no one has talked about it in 20 years.  The counselor wasn't right but she wasn't completely wrong either....I once again sunk into a very bad depression complete with lots of anxiety.  My psychiatrist prescribed a new (but very expensive) antidepressant that at least seemed to calm the obsessive thinking.  It was less successful at fixing the depression and anxiety that still exists today.  I'm okay while my mind is busy but when it is at rest it goes back to try and solve the problem.  At the recommendation of my psychiatrist I saw a couple of psychologist for counseling.  They didn't help at all...Where we go from here I do not know yet.  I'm still committed to growing old with this woman but I don't know how long I can stand the depression."

5. While closeted, or semi closeted, the gay husband actually believes the lies he's telling and part of this is subtly shifting the blame to his wife for staying together, not having sex, or the relationship's breakdown.  

​"One night when we were in bed I told her that I was bisexual.  She was rather upset with me for a day or two.  Honestly I thought she had figured it out already.  Before that she would regularly make jokes about me being bisexual or cheating on her with another man so I was a little surprised by her reaction...I meant no harm but I wound up hurting the person I love the most...Also I am of the belief that I married my wife for the right reason.  I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.  It was real.  It is real  Yes, I also looked at it as a cure for my homosexuality as well but I truly love her.  I didn't marry her as a cover or a beard or anything like that.  She was not and is not a placeholder until something better comes along.  I suspect your marriage started out the same way.  Enjoy your memories of when you first loved your GEXH.  That love could certainly have been genuine...However, when looked into the faces of my beautiful kids I knew I could not leave them.  So I vowed that I was going to raise my kids even if it killed me.  I got down on my knees and prayed to God that if he wasn't going to remove this burden from me that at least give me the strength to handle it until I raised my kids." 

And later: 

​"I've done many things that I'm not proud of but I have not cheated on my wife...She said she would stay with me as long as I didn't cheat and so I haven't...Back 20 years ago I went to group therapy for sex addiction and also attended one SAA meeting...I would even go so far as to stop at an adult bookstore on my way home from a date with her to buy gay porn​...I would stop on the way home and shall we say, consume porn. I am ashamed to say that I do look at porn.  It is infrequent and, yes, my wife knows that I do it on occasion...So what are some of these things beyond lying to her before/when we were married.  There are probably many that I don't remember but during the first crisis about 20 years ago...What I most feel badly about here is that before the internet, when there was an adult bookstore seemingly on every corner.​" 

6. In my opinion, the only way a straight wife can find freedom is to divorce. Her gay husband will never leave because he's too scared.  

​"I'm still committed to growing old with this woman but I don't know how long I can stand the depression...My wife and I had "the talk" that I wrote about planning yesterday regarding what she wants.  It wasn't a good time for it but I thought I might as get it out of the way while I had the courage.  Sure enough, it upset her to talk about it.  I told her to take her time and think about it.  I told her I wanted to stay and continue the good, although flawed, relationship we have and the depression is getting slowly better but I couldn't promise anything about that.  She said she'd think about it and get back to me in a couple of days. She's really happy when we don't talk about TGT.  I told her to tell me this thing and then I'd put the subject back in the closet with me. I know that's not healthy but we'll wait and see what she says...I have thought several times over the past few months that perhaps I should end the marriage--not for my sake but for hers."

​What follows is now purely my opinion and I should stress to anyone reading this that I'm not a psychiatrist nor a mental health professional. I'm just a gay ex-husband who divorced his wife. So here are some practical points I'm trying to make for any straight spouse wondering whether to stay in a "not so bad" marriage or separate/divorce.

​1. You're never going to hear the whole truth from a closeted or semi-closeted husband.    

​Facts don't lie. Unfortunately, gay-in-denial husbands lie as easily and effortlessly as breathing. As Gary has demonstrated in his very open and courageous posts, spending a lifetime in the closet alters our perception of reality. I believe this is why a gay husband can claim to have "never cheated" while in a subsequent post writing that he went to counselling for sex addiction. Clearly, these two statements contradict each other, but strangely not to a closeted man. Whether gay or straight, a cheating husband will always do several things: minimize ("It happened just once"); rationalize ("I was molested as a child which is why I sleep around"); blame ("My wife and I no longer have sex because she's gained weight, doesn't ask for sex enough, asks for sex too often, the apartment isn't clean...blah blah blah); or flat-out lie about it ("I never cheated. You're the one cheating!"). So a straight wife is never going to hear the truth from a husband who started lying about his sexuality around age 5 or 6. So he'll do everything possible to explain away his homosexuality. Thankfully facts don't lie. Porn histories don't lie. Craigslist messages don't lie. Used condoms, wierd stains, sex toys, and kinky underwear don't lie. It's these facts that bring straight a spouse here, not his slippery rationalizations. 

​2. The gay spouse suffers from the worst kind of self-hatred. So he's too scared to end the relationship himself, but he'll do everything possible to try to get you to end it. 

​This is what gay husbands do to "smoke out" their straight wives: cheat on you; stop having sex with you; emotionally abuse you (by making "jokes" about your weight for example); neglect you and your children ("I just have to leave on another business trip. Yes that Dave from the office will be joining me again"); and make you feel like everything wrong with the relationship is your fault. It's cruel, deliberate, and soul-destroying. We do this because we hate ourselves and strangely take it out on you for staying. But rather than bury my corpse of a relationship, my wife and I staggered on like zombies, fueled not by love but by truckloads of anti-depressants, and supported by an army of paid counsellors, preachers, or online enablers. Keep in mind that society does everything to keep a couple together, even in the most extreme circumstances like a gay/straight relationship. The truth is gay/straight marriages simply don't work. If you disagree, read this post from a gay husband who tried a mixed orientation marriage (MOM) and regretted it:

​"Having been the man attracted to other men in a "don't ask/don't tell" MOM from the ages of 26 - 43, I now see our MOM as a weak decision that only delayed dealing with the fundamental problem in our marriage. For most of those 17 years, I believed the connection we had was far more important than sex or sexuality; marriage is not based on sex - it's based on love, values, day-to-day compatibility and shared long-term goals!  And although I still believe those qualities are the foundation for a successful marriage, I now add another: authentic desire.  A "best friends" marriage isn't such a bad thing (especially if you feel you have no other choice), but a marriage without mutual authentic desire is not something any young person should settle for.  You are not meant to be a piece of art that hangs on the wall for your husband to admire from a distance.  You are meant to be loved, body and soul, with unbound intimacy.  If you do not receive ALL of that love and intimacy, you will gradually devolve into a shriveled, malnourished house plant - alive, yes, but really only existing. Maybe an open relationship is an easier way to transition out of a "good" but unsatisfying marriage.  Maybe it's a way to move on in the short-run without completely blowing up your lives.  For both my wife and I, looking back, I think we regret spending too many of our younger years together.  When I came out to her at 26 we should have split up.  Yes, it would have been ugly and painful and horribly, horribly humiliating for both of us...but looking back...we each sacrificed 17 years to the other and that was a much higher price to pay." 

​3. You have to take a leap of faith and end your gay/straight relationship. The longer you delay, the harder it gets. 

​Given everything I've read here and my own experience, I firmly believe that gay men cannot remain married to straight wives. For the reasons that I've provided both above and in my own thread, to remain in the marriage is to choose a cruel, abusive, and loveless relationship completely devoid of intimacy. Compatibility isn't love. Comfort isn't love. But the end of any relationship has its complications. Decoupling is hard, particularly when young children are involved. Whenever a straight wife starts posting here, I often give the following advice:

​a. Get tested immediately for STDs.
​b. Only practice safe sex with your gay husband (after you confront him, he'll likely pursue sex with you to prove to you and himself that he's straight). 
​c. Build a support network of people who support you, not just your relationship.
​d. Share EVERYTHING here, or at an SSN meeting, or with a trusted friend/loved one.
​e. Do everything possible to protect your finances and financial security, this includes meeting with a lawyer to discuss separation/divorce.
​f.  Keep repeating to yourself, "I deserve love, I deserve intimacy, I deserve kindness."

I wish both Gary and his wife much happiness, either together or apart. And I applaud him for coming here. I hope he found the answers he was looking for. Unfortunately, for me and my (then) wife, happiness didn't mean quasi-celibacy. Joy wasn't my wife knowing her husband was constantly watching gay porn and cheating on her. A happy marriage was more than depression, lies, and neglect. For years, I claimed that I "loved" my wife but the facts suggest otherwise. I loved my closet more than anything else. I think the most loving thing I ever did was tell her I wanted a divorce because it freed both of us. We divorced in September 2015 and it was incredibly hard for us and our children. Now a few years later, we're both much happier apart than we ever were together. I hope that helps my friends.

I agree, this kind of insight and honesty is a Godsend. Thank you Sean.

Sean wrote:

​1. Do you believe your gay/straight marriage was an emotionally abusive relationship (abuse but with mental bruises)?
​2. Was your ex-husband a narcissist or did he display narcissistic tendencies?
​3. What made you finally decide to leave?
​4. How long did it take for you to start healing?
5. How are you now?
​6. Had you stayed in the relationship, what would have happened? 

​ 

1. Yes, very much so. The constant gaslighting is insane and makes you feel insane. The constant "you're crazy!" response to piecing together evidence not only enrages you it makes you begin to question your own intelligence, your own gut, your intuition and your ability to know reality from paranoid fabrication.

Mine was physically abusive also. If he couldn't shout me down, he would frequently resort to grabbing my upper arms and shaking me or putting his hands around my throat. I'm not the kind of gal you can do that to. I don't go ragdoll like he wanted. What happened was his head split open by a coffee mug in one instance, his nose busted open in another due to me headbutting him in the face. Not pretty.

2. Most definitely. He still is. Everything was about him. How something made him feel, how something impacted him, what me finding porn evidence and lies was doing to him, how the relationship coming undone was destroying him, how it might affect his relationship with his young son, what people he knew would think if I spilled it, how this was all a result of his problematic life (he was blameless, this was all caused by other people).

He still cannot/will not talk about anything that resulted outside himself to this day. It remains how destroyed he is.

3. I think I just reached a point where I became too weary to carry on. I lost all care about how he felt, I lost the ability to try and help him, I plain lost everything.

My situation is rather unique in that this busted out into the open 2 weeks before I gave birth. I had had enough of the evasion, lies, secrecy and hiding games. The inattentive behavior, the awful sex, just everything. Combine that with being 9 months pregnant and the exhaustion of that - you get one fed up woman!

4. I can't answer that. I don't believe I have healed at all. His refusal to deal with anything and his continual trying to hold onto me and my son has allowed for no distance and no healing.

5. Not good. Suspicious, flighty, untrusting, cold, uninterested. I've lost quite a bit of luster according to my older kids. They see changes in me that have not abated.

6. Most likely continued abuse mental/emotional/physical and escalation of violence. I took pictures of my bruises to document what kind of person he was in case I needed them for any purpose.

As of now, I'm so completely shutdown to him in all ways, it's like he's not a real human being for me. He's this odd entity that comes around playing dad and pretending he's all better now. Nothing he says registers with me, nothing is believed, no way he feels acknowledged, no thing he does credited. He's rather like a ghost that drifts in and out of my house. Without substance, without purpose.
 

Hi Sean,

I was just logging in to say how much I appreciated your post on Gary's thread - it was a comfort not a distress.  and here is this post with the questions for Gigi and others.  (Gigi your ex sounds a lot like mine)

1) yes, emotionally abusive

2) yes, he lies as easily as he breathes.  Everyone thinks he's really nice but he isn't.  My father was not gay but a narcissist so I can compare the two.  Both were/are able to charm people easily.  My father kept people in line with the sensed but unspoken threat that he'd throw a tantrum if he were crossed.  My ex keeps people in line with the implicit threat that he'll throw a panic attack - leading from the bottom as it were.

3) I realised he was gay.  A couple of things happened that made me fear for my safety.  I just didn't want my life to have been about him, that's what gave me the steeliness I needed.

4) no idea.  In a sense I started healing before I left, it started when I realised I had to stop looking to him and look to other people for emotional support, when I stopped sharing a bed.  It took a huge leap when I moved into my own home.  I don't think you can get over the damage, there's no getting over the moment you realise that it's 40 years since you last snogged someone and no idea how to do it anymore.  It's appalling, the pain I'm in.  Thank goodness it is not over him.

5) see above, not good but definite improvement to my marriage, looking back it is to look into the badlands, all grey and dark and miserable and no colour.

6) nothing good.  awful thought.

I am 63.  It's a big difference to 43, it's even a big difference to 53.  I believe that a successful relationship with another straight would make for a much happier outcome.  I believe it is much more possible to achieve before 60.

awake wrote:

OMG GIGI!
I got the same.."YOU CURED ME!"  
I think Viagra and fantasies of other men is what cured his limp noodle.

OMG, Awake,  I want to laugh but the horror of all that followed after that comment from him ....horrifies me to no end.
And to think, I was so young and innocent, I'm mortified now to admit I was flattered that I had such a positive effect on him!!!!!!   Again, OMG!!!!!!!!