I am not in the same scenario per say, but I have an idea of the mind fuck you are going through.

Married 20 years. My husband sat down beside me on the couch one Saturday morning and said "I'm gay, I'm divorcing you". And then walked out. 

Since this day he has refused to speak to me. I had no idea. I felt like I had taken a frying pan to the face. I spent months just numb. I still have no idea what the hell happened. I begged him to at least talk to me about what happened....nada. I once asked if he cared about me at all, and about my own healing and need for closure. He ignored me.

All I take from this is that my entire life was a sham. And the cognitive dissonance involved in believing you were in a loving relationship with your soul mate this whole time when it turns out he was just lying to you the entire time and had a secret double life....it's brutal. There is nothing quite like this exquisite trauma.

I recommend you start by finding a therapist who specializes in trauma. Expect life to be a shit show at this point. Your emotions are going to go wild. You will feel like you're going crazy at one moment, and dissociated and numb the next. All you need to do at this point is survive. Go through the motions. Let your body absorb and feel all the highs and lows. I wish I could give you some secret to get through the mental shit show, but all we can do is walk through the storm to get to the other side. 

I am a year out. And going through the divorce process. Every day is a struggle, but I have some good moments now. You have been dealt a great trauma in your life. You have a giant gaping wound that is going to take a long time to heal and leave a scar. This forum is a great place to get support through the process.

*hugs* No one deserves to go through this. And the lack of ability to get any sort of closure just adds an extra level of cruelty. Post as often as you need.

I was 19 when I met my ex and 57 when I realised he was gay and then it took another 18 months to get divorced.

So I have some understanding of what it is like to have spent your whole life with a liar and not know it.  Just kept on loving him without question.

Then you find out.   For me I had another 18 months in which I got to see who it was I had married, not a pretty sight I can tell you.  It was horrifying actually I could see he had been playing me all the way and never gave me his true affection.

You say you found out he was gay.  I am assuming that is from looking at his computer?  have you also found that he was seeing men on the sly?

It's like there is appearance, the world we live in and then there is this underlying sense of a reality at odds with appearances.  It's there in your body, in your mind, in your memory in your feelings.  Trust yourself.  What I did was spend hours curled up on my bed and I would let my feelings talk to me.  I surfed through my memories.  It takes time and a lifetime takes a long time to sift through but you can do it.  Personally I would not go to a counsellor yet, spend some time with yourself first.

It's not an uncommon story.  I have heard married gay men saying they want to keep it secret from their wife until they die.  Mine would have, just like his father did before him except I worked it out thanks to this site where I came across the term gay in denial - up until that time it had not occurred to me someone would lie about something that matters so much.

So, I give you great credit for coming here, for seeking answers, for not sweeping it under the carpet.  I think you are doing a good thing for yourself and your children.  At the end of the day you get yourself back from under the clutter of lies.

wishing you the best of luck in times to come and a hug.  



 

Last edited by lily (October 19, 2023 2:06 am)

lily wrote:

...... Trust yourself.  What I did was spend hours curled up on my bed and I would let my feelings talk to me.  I surfed through my memories.  It takes time and a lifetime takes a long time to sift through but you can do it... 

This. I did this too, and it  wasn't until I looked back, with the knowledge that my former partner had secrets from me....
that lightbulbs went off. Realisations of.....ah! so he meant this....and....why didn't I listen to my instincts!....or...I should have been stronger in my responses/reactions. But it took a while to embed itself in my brain because you know....life, love, children etc and for a lot of that time I was actually blaming myself/feeling guilty...which I realise now was simply wrong. 

As much as I want to rewrite history the past can't be done over, so I have to take my knowledge of how and why my life turned out the way it has and attempt to make it work. I often feel a hairs breadth away from losing everything. Then I sleep well, have a good day, talk to people....and it's not so bad

Elle 

Josephine,

I think we all feel used and discarded.   My (alive) GX purposely wanted to make me feel that way which was malevolent and evil.

But the thing is they don't understand us..  We have integrity and fierce love and loyalty.    The question you need to ask yourself is would you have done anything different if his secret went unknown.    We gave our spouses fierce true love.    Its who we are.    My GX did not want to be married to me anymore...She, thus, forfeited her rights and privileges to my firece love, dependability, talents.   
 
Is this life and the next we can say we kept all our vows and promises.     We cannot change what they did but we can at least not change who we are and how we act.