While, I am new to all of this myself...I think the up and down emotions, and 'off' weeks, memories, and bad sleeps are normal for the things we are dealing with. Anger over the betrayal, and anger cus this is not what I signed on for, are what get me...
I hope you take some time for you, to give yourself some self-care. You are a survivor. And there are plenty here that share your emotions. 
 

Sometimes I'm reading along here and someone new posts, and people are all like "get a lawyer, get a sense of the financial picture, know where the bank accounts are ..." and I'm remembering how deeply in shock I was for days on end when I first learned the dirty little secret.  There were days that I had to coach myself by speaking out loud: I'm going to walk down this street and make a right at that corner, so I can stop by the deli on the way home and buy a carton of milk so I have milk for the coffee in the morning."  I actually coached myself out loud.  I had days when I'd decided the ONLY problems I'm going to even THINK about are the ones I NEED to solve today, so the most serious thing I need to solve today is, I need to figure out whether I have enough quarters for the laundry machines downstairs.  And that is the most serious problem I am going to handle for the next 24 hours.

Hi Count,

yeah, time is your friend.  Approaching your 40th it must be kinda wry but it is on your side now.

40 is a big milestone, it's the age when you have to let some dreams go.  Oh I never became an olympic ice skater, damn, I am too old now sort of thing.  It happens to us all.

But there's a lot of people will say life begins at 40 and that's true too.  You have the possibility of a good future ahead of you in a way that many 40 year olds don't.  One good thing about your wife is she has set you free.  I cannot tell you what it is like to witness the emotional suffering of the bewildered straight husband as time marches on.

I see it up close and personal as well as in the world around.  Your wife has set you free by showing her true self.  She was always the person she is now.  Right there, every tick of the clock, right behind her lies.  How can you not feel angry how can you not be scared, it is a shocking deception.  The damage they cause is intense and affects your whole family.

it's cold-hearted, isn't it.  That's how I feel about my ex - and I thought he was such a nice man no he's not, he's more horrid than I ever imagined.  I kinda feel like i got my heart back all clean as I understood that.

But you are lucky she has shown her true colours now.  The ones who won't come out of the closet their entire lives.  oh god, it's horrid and everything gets blamed on the straight spouse.

"The ones who won't come out of their closet their entire lives...horrid and everything gets blamed on the straight spouse."
  This is one source of my anger.  I don't think my husband will ever come out of his closet because he doesn't want to take the consequences of doing so.  He's got a public persona that serves him very well, and he's got an ironclad system of managing himself so his urges are contained.  He compartmentalizes, distracts himself with meaningless computer games or junk books, immerses himself in work, refuses to talk about himself.  And as long as I went along with that--put up with it--we could carry on.  He was fine with it; I was not.  I carried the burden of it.  I didn't have the coping skills he had, and I didn't want them.  I wasn't satisfied living a lie, hiding myself, living dishonestly.  
  So the result has been that he floats along seamlessly, garnering respect from our colleagues, and I have over time withdrawn, because it's so difficult not to be able to look people squarely in the eyes, literally as well as metaphorically.  I'm the one with the reputation of being difficult or not engaging.  
  This, I think, is one of the unexamined damages, the way we are manipulated or herded into behaviors that serve to serve them well (so to speak), without our quite realizing what's going on, knowing only that it feels wrong and unsatisfying and unfair, and then find ourselves vilified for.  Often this is occurring before they come clean or we begin to suspect, which makes it even more difficult to discern as it's happening.  At the same time we're internalizing this view of ourselves, as difficult, withholding, insufficient, and learning to blame and second guess and question ourselves.
   I was hurt by the knowledge that my spouse was willing to sacrifice me to his closet because it showed how little he cared for me and my well-being, but I am angry over these results.  And because my spouse is likely to stay in his closet, and for some time we will continue to work together, this is going to continue to be a dynamic I have to negotiate, while being quite aware that were I to simply speak out, I'd be the one vilified for "outing" him. 
  It's an injustice, and injustices call out to be righted.  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (January 27, 2018 9:29 am)

OutofHisCloset wrote:

"The ones who won't come out of their closet their entire lives...horrid and everything gets blamed on the straight spouse."
  This is one source of my anger.  I don't think my husband will ever come out of his closet because he doesn't want to take the consequences of doing so.  He's got a public persona that serves him very well, and he's got an ironclad system of managing himself so his urges are contained.  He compartmentalizes, distracts himself with meaningless computer games or junk books, immerses himself in work, refuses to talk about himself.  And as long as I went along with that--put up with it--we could carry on.  He was fine with it; I was not.  I carried the burden of it.  I didn't have the coping skills he had, and I didn't want them.  I wasn't satisfied living a lie, hiding myself, living dishonestly.  
  So the result has been that he floats along seamlessly, garnering respect from our colleagues, and I have over time withdrawn, because it's so difficult not to be able to look people squarely in the eyes, literally as well as metaphorically.  I'm the one with the reputation of being difficult or not engaging.  
  This, I think, is one of the unexamined damages, the way we are manipulated or herded into behaviors that serve to serve them well (so to speak), without our quite realizing what's going on, knowing only that it feels wrong and unsatisfying and unfair, and then find ourselves vilified for.  Often this is occurring before they come clean or we begin to suspect, which makes it even more difficult to discern as it's happening.  At the same time we're internalizing this view of ourselves, as difficult, withholding, insufficient, and learning to blame and second guess and question ourselves.
   ... 

This is absolutely the crux of the issue: we keep their secrets, but it isolates us from our own friends, family, and support network.  I want my daughter to know I don't just have these crazy irrational mood swings, but I can't explain it to her without involving her in her father's secret.  I want her to know why I have days when I just can't seem to cheer up and cope with things like socializing or planning a vacation.  But I can't tell her why, and it makes it appear like I'm just unhinged.

I am angry with my husband, but also at other times I have sympathy for him.  What he did was selfish and manipulative, but at the same time he has an honest desire to be a good person, and he knows he's fallen short.  I want to get everything out in the open, and I don't want to carry my anger any longer.

I always hate armchair diagnoses, so I have avoided using phrases like "high-functioning autism" but sometimes I wonder if that's what my husband is.  He is a very, very smart person -- but he doesn't see events happening in sequence.  You and I could look at a chain of dominoes and understand that if we knock down the first domino, the last domino in the chain will fall down.  My husband actually won't see that.  In day-to-day terms, it means he doesn't understand the simple laws of physics, but he's a very smart person and has learned how to compensate and deflect, by making jokes about himself, or by watching how other people act and just imitating them.  Once, a long time ago, he bought a huge Christmas tree and tried to get it to stand upright in a Christmas tree stand that was about the size of an ashtray -- obviously meant for a very small, light tree.  I was actually stunned that he didn't understand the tree was not going to just sit there perfectly balanced in that tiny little stand, but he was actually enraged when it kept falling over.

I find myself going into this because people don't always understand just exactly how much is missing from his thought process; he went to an Ivy league law school, speaks multiple languages, and has at times worked at the very highest level of the legal profession -- but he doesn't understand that if you pour scalding hot bacon grease directly into the trash can liner, it will melt and then as soon as you try to lift the bag out, everything will spill out all over the floor.

So I get angry at him for being so self-absorbed that he doesn't see how his obsessions with secrecy have drawn me and my daughter into this Alice-in-Wonderland universe ... but on the other hand, I can't honestly attribute it to selfishness when it may just be part and parcel of his inability to put things in a logical order and predict consequences.