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1 of 1- StraightSpouse1979
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Never say could things get any worse
So Wednesday late afternoon my husband asks what my plans are for Fourth of July. When I tell him what I had already told him previously that my best friend and kids were coming over for a cookout he said he was invited out. I said well that is ok I can do the cookout myself and proceeds to tell me to Virginia.
Now backstory. I had noticed over the course of the last few months he has been glued to his phone like some giddy teenage girl, literally and figureatively. On two occasions I had caught him in the garage on the telephone with a "chick". When i asked if I am crazy that he is having this verbal "affair" going he said he has met some people through support groups one of which he has gotten close to and that there is not anything to worry about he does not see her this way and she is in Virginia.
When confronting him about two days ago saying this and now he is going to Virginia he said there is a group of people going to be there, yeah and he is staying at this "chicks" house too. I do not normaly spy but i got into his verizon account and he has been on the phone every day sometimes twice a day with this "chick" for months and they are thirty minute to two hour conversations. I was heartsick and nauseous
This morning he begs to be able to come home early, i had told him dont bother coming home until Sunday night. He said he was miserable, missed his girls, it was horrific there, blah blah. I looked at the verizon log again and he couldnt even go four hours and another phone call to this "chick". He tells me he realized that he does not want to be as extreme as they were there and he was mortified to be around them and he walks in the door like a member of the villlage people with short shorts tight and like holes in them like some nineties teenage girl.
I am heartsick over the way the "man" that i have spent HALF my lifetime with I am fourty this novemer and we have been together since i was 19.
- Leah
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Re: Never say could things get any worse
OMG seriously. No wonder you are nauseous and heartsick. This Is tough. Forty is no age at all honey. You have lots of life left to live. Take such tender care of your grieving heart. Disengage as much as poss and stay out of spying mode - it just harms your heart. You don’t need to know what he is doing....I did similar and now wish I just got the evidence I needed and disengaged.
My ex said similar about not wanting the extreme of a gay lifestyle, but still wanted me to be his wife. He is bisexual, possibly. And so now is married to another woman. But still I am doing so much better without him in every possibly way. It has been so tough and I am triggered endlessly in my new relationship, but I am fighting to get free from the person I spend 27 years with.
Step out of the drama triangle. You are not the hero here to save him. Nor are you the victim anymore, you know you don’t want a female partner, and you are not the villain because of that. You can stand your ground. You can set boundaries and begin to make plans for your escape. DISENGAGE as much as you can from the drama that will suck you dry.
Mine was far more subtle and it made the choice seem more difficult - denying he is gay completely and is bisexual, who knows if that is true? But I wanted my partner to be honest and open with me, and make me feel safe and honoured, but too much was broken after so much betrayal that I couldn’t imagine getting over it. I hadn’t betrayed him for 27 years....but had suffered abuse verbal and emotional to such a degree that I felt I was the problem. He was walking out the door the whole time, he had no intention of making our marriage work. It was a problem he didn’t want to fix. And so has gone on to remarry quickly a woman who is happy to have a bisexual husband.
I am happy not to have a husband who disrespects me and calls me names and has zero empathy for betraying me so long and then walking away when the timing (our youngest left home) suited him. I feel used as a mother and wife who did the lion’s share of organizing homes and a good life for someone who was so deceitful and yet holier than thou all the time acting like I was demanding and crazy. Argghhh
Good luck, the future can be bright. I am convinced now that despite the pain I still feel, that it is the best outcome for me. Dying to the past. I think that is why the meditation is so helpful. Letting go of the past is the practice, being present NOW and seeing clearly. And when you do that, then you see that you can choose to live differently, to be different in relation to this person. I am still struggling with letting go of expectations of kindness. My MiL dying and still he won’t be in touch? It hurts, but I can love her. Send my best wishes for her graceful passing. One sis in law sent a photo. It meant a lot small gesture though it was. I think if my GIDXH could have then it would have been kind and healing, but I have to see he is true to type, not interested in my wellbeing on any level. Just gone, dead to me and I just have to get on with my grief and acceptance.
It isn’t easy, but we can be happy and free....I have more moments, days now that are truly free. But sometimes things come up... A comment by my son about how his dad “never really wanted a dependent wife situation” arrow zing by and I am breathless with the shock. - so maybe he might have said something about that “NEED” like 25 years ago!!!!!! Seriously they are just dickheads.
- Rob
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Re: Never say could things get any worse
Straight1979, Leah too,
Yep...my GX could not go more than 1min to maybe hour max without texting her girlfriend...she left the marriage long before we were divorced.. I could sit in the same room with her and not a word to me for hours as she texted her girlfriend. Her girlfriend was like the Christ..so much better than me ..the solution to all her problems.. I was garbage.
And you know what..when I see her now she does not seem happy. Kids mention her still constant anger sometimes.
Wish them well with their new love...but don't for a second think that their new love is as fierce, dependable and loving as we were.
"For we walk by faith, not by sight .." 2Corinthians 5:7
- MJM017
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Re: Never say could things get any worse
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Last edited by MJM017 (July 12, 2021 1:37 pm)
No - It's not too late. It's not hopeless. Even there, there's something I can do. I just have to find the will. Ikiru (1952), film directed by Akira Kurosawa
- OutofHisCloset
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Re: Never say could things get any worse
StraightSpouse,
Wow, your husband has gotten brazen. Going away for "the 4th of July"? Yeah, sort of, except he left off a lot about where he was going and why, which is lying by omission. As if carrying on a secret liaison over the phone--and bold-face, straight-out lying about it-- isn't bad enough.
So then he goes and seeing other men prance around in women's clothes brings it home to him how much they aren't women so he wants to run home to "his girls"? This is typical behavior, in psychological terms known as "approach-avoidance." He approached the thing he wanted--the dress up--and then when it so forcefully reminded him that saying one is a woman and dressing up like one doesn't make it so--he sought to avoid it by fleeing back home. I remember my ex saying that he hated seeing himself in the mirror because the reflection staring back at him forcefully reminded him that he looked like "a man in a dress" (his words); it was easier to sustain his fantasy if he parted himself out, so to speak, by admiring (and taking selfies of) his legs in stockings, or a "breast" carefully arranged and posed in a push up bra, or dressed up and acted it out, preferably with me as audience and participant. This was all, I later learned, textbook behavior.
So I would be very wary of your husband's declaration that he wants to come home because he misses the girls, and not take it at face value as the truth. He took a step, made a foray out into where he wants to go, and it scared him, so he wanted to scurry away; but I'm betting he won't be able to stay away, and although he may retreat for a while, "she'll" be back. Or so say the experts on men who cross-dress and feminize. Also my ex, who used to describe his hunger to feminize and to feed it as "an itch that is nearly always there" and that he needed to "scratch."
Leah, our transgender-wanna-be spouses may not be subtle, but when, as so many of them do, they declare they still love us and want to stay married to us and still desire us, that places us into a dizzying contradiction, as well. I remember that when I first registered and wrote here, one of the first comments I got from Phoenix said something like, Well, at least your spouse still desires you, and suggested that because this was the case, maybe I would come to be able to continue to live with my feminized spouse. I didn't know what I do now about men like my ex--that their real attraction is to themselves, to the woman they feel they are inside or would like to become, and that any love and attraction they feel to us competes with that other love. We are essentially always in a triangle as the "other woman" in our own marriages. This is SO HARD for us, even when we learn about autogynephilia, and even more so for other people to wrap their heads around, that someone's love object would be themselves in their alter ego, because for the rest of us, the love object is OUTSIDE us and is another actual person.
StraightSpouse, I'm with Leah. From the perspective of a woman who is much older than 40 (I'm 65, 61 when he dropped his trans bomb), you have so many good years ahead of you!
Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 6, 2019 7:30 am)