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March 24, 2023 8:32 pm  #1


A cloud over our lives was lifted, but it cost us our marriage.

I’m starting to be on the other side of my grief with this situation as it’s been going on longer than I initially realized. But it’s my first post and I thought I would share my story so here’s a long one:

My wife and I have been married for almost 14 years and we have three sons all under the age of 12. She was a breath of fresh air in my life and for the better part of a decade we lived a perfectly happy little life. But that didn’t last as for the past five years she has been suffering from, what we thought, was severe depression and anxiety from a post-partum depression after having our youngest son. Her anti-anxiety meds treated the symptoms but not the cause and her hormonal birth control just dulled everything so she never truly felt the “ups” but rather felt only the emotional “downs”

I took it on the chin that I couldn’t help her with this and that all my attempts at romance (gifts, outings, etc.) were rebuffed. It honestly felt like it was my fault, but it wasn’t, not in the least. During this time I noticed that she would get jealous if I got closer to her friends, especially if they were a little more attractive. Nothing I was doing was physical, just talking and having good conversation, and a few times it created some very awkward moments. I interpreted this as me getting “too close” and so I backed away from her friendships. What had actually been going on was that she was attracted to these friends, even though they were straight, and wound up having these unrequited feelings for them despite us still having a love life. So, after yet another experience like that at one of her hobby outings she realized there was more to those feelings than she thought, and that suppressing those feelings was why she was so depressed. So she came home and told me that she was bisexual and was wondering what it was like with other people…what it would be like to have a “wife”. This broke me, and I became defensive when she mentioned a possible divorce.

At this point she got off hormonal birth control and was experiencing almost manic highs and incredibly depressive lows. She pushed her homosexual feelings under all this in order to try to see what living in a monogamous marriage as a bisexual would be like. Our romance improved, or so I thought, but she apparently was just very afraid that I would take the kids and leave her on the street, which was ABSOLUTELY not the case, so there was some degree of acting that took place during this time. Months went by and her lows worsened, she was having anxiety attacks every other day…and eventually started planning a suicide. I caught her at this stage and we got her to a psychiatrist who provided some MUCH better medications that actually defended against her anxiety. Meanwhile, I had about three months of “acting like a single Dad” to our three sons due to her recovery from this episode.

She then went on a major business trip for her art biz and went to a gay bar with some friends. She then ghosted me on my texts and calls the remainder of the trip. I would get maybe one text from her a day. I was so incredibly worried during this time, my mom was with me and saw the whole thing unfolding and it’s not easy to had your sadness from your mom. But she left a day before my wife was set to arrive and that night my wife told me, via text, that she realized she was a homosexual & demisexual and that we should divorce. Here we were, just RECOVERING from layoffs, nearly losing our home, surgeries, our kids’ learning disabilities, COVID isolation, the bisexual reveal, and now this…my world collapsed around me. I could not hide my sadness from my children. I just told them that I was sad, and that mommy made me sad, but it wasn’t her fault.

When she came home we just went to bed and held each other and cried. When we woke up the first thing I did was apologize for how I acted during the first reveal, I realized that this was who she was. It was easy to see, honestly. For the first time in several years the friendship my wife and I shared was back in full force, full throttle, but her side of the romance was gone, snubbed out by the realization of her homosexuality. After I said my piece she apologized for the whole entire situation and more. These feelings were what caused our troubles for these several years and really not much more.

I’ve been reconciling the fact that our relationship needs to drastically change and I do appreciate her being respectful enough of our marriage to end it before she starts truly seeking out a partner. But I’ve loved this woman through thick and thin for years. Her and her alone. So some days it’s incredibly dark, and others I see our friendship, our family, surviving and me becoming stronger and more confident.

It’s hard to rationalize being passed over like this and not interpret it as some form of ugliness or unattractiveness on my part. But that’s where she’s still here, she’s not letting me go down that path, she always reassures me that this is NOT my fault and it is NOT a mark against me. That I am worthy of love and that if she was a different person then she would still be throwing herself at me, and I her, like we did all those years ago. But to me, she has become even more beautiful since that dark cloud over of depression over her has been removed…so it is all the more difficult to let her go….but I know I need to…I know she needs it. I would rather deal with being divorced to a best friend that is a lesbian than have my wife be suicidal and bearing with a dead-ish bedroom until the kids graduate or I grow old and pass on. So in that, we are sparing each other a worse fate.

So here I am, in our house, gradually discussing the terms of our extremely amicable divorce and just living life a day at a time. My wife and I comfort each other as we grieve the loss of our marriage…but she is months ahead of me…and she realizes this. We’ll tell the kids this summer and we’re looking to move close to each other in another city where we have more friends and family. We’re not 100% on the move…but we’re 100% on staying family friends and giving each other enough time to grieve, heal, and be whole but in a much, much, different way.

 

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