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1 - steph87al
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Am I crazy?
Was everything a lie? Because if it was, and it was so easy for me to believe I must be insane. Or a pathetic fool.
My husband confessed to me Monday night that he’s more interested in pursuing future relationships with men than continuing our marriage. At first he said he was bisexual. After many heart to hearts in these last few days, I’ve come to know he is gay.
I look back at when we first started dating. The first trip we took together was before we’d said I love you. There was such chemistry and flirting and excitement and sex. I remember us being in our hotel room. We were on the bed and for minutes and minutes, for all I know it was hours he was just looking at me, holding my face. I’d been in previous relationships, I’d been in love. But this look was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was like he was looking into my soul. I wasn’t ready to say I love you. But I knew that’s what he was thinking. I’ve never experienced anything like it, having someone look at me that way. I can’t stop thinking abut it now. My husband is gay.
And then there was our sex life. It was the best sex I’d ever had. We both described it as great sex. He initiated more often than me. He’d tell me how sexy I was, how attractive I was to him. I can’t stop thinking about that either because my husband is gay.
How can he be gay and these experiences be real? Did I make them up? Am I seeeing something that was never really there? Has my whole relationship and marriage with him been a total lie?
He says it was real. He says that he was in love with me, the sexual attraction had been there. But how can that be? My husband is gay. And if it is true, what does that say about me? What does that say about me as a woman that a gay man fell in love with me and found me sexually attractive?
I feel like I’m going insane. If anyone out there has asked these same questions, please share your experience with me. I desperately want to believe that even though him and I will never have it again, that what we had was real.
- broomhilda2
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Re: Am I crazy?
steph87al, It sounds like your husband was a good conman. I'm dealing with these feelings right now also. My husband says everything was real too. He's adopted so I don't know if it was easier in his mind to accept me in the role of his "girlfriend/wife". For example, he was brought into a family of four when he was 3yrs old & was told these people were now his mom, dad, brother & sister... I don't know, I'm still trying to make sense of it all.
You had a far better sex life than we had, but after 28 years my husband now says he's not sure if he's "gay or bisexual"... um, hello. You've been with me for 28 years and you don't even know if you're at least bi-sexual?!?
I can never imagine myself, forcing myself, to be with a woman. It would feel like a form of rape. Is that what it felt like to him all these years when he touched me? I feel like I've suffered the greatest emotional abuse ever & that a precious part of my life has been stolen. He says he still loves me & wants to work on our relationship... I must not be crazy because I said no.
- OutofHisCloset
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Re: Am I crazy?
Men who have been in denial and lived in a closet their whole lives get very good at compartmentalizing and hiding. And at the masquerade. I have taken to saying my ex projected himself as a hologram. To everyone, including me, it looked real, it felt real. But now I know that it was a projection for others to see and experience, and not what he felt.
I don't think it's unusual for them, once they admit or tell you the truth, to try to reassure themselves that what they did was not so bad by telling us yes, it was real. Also, because they have been in denial for so long, and learned to compartmentalize so thoroughly, they may also believe it was real. I came to terms with it in this way: to me, my life (including my sex life) with my ex was real in that it happened; the events happened. It also happened as it happened, it was real to me, because I was acting in a genuine way to what was in front of me. I was wholeheartedly and wholly there. To him? It can only have been real if he had so compartmentalized his dueling selves that he could shut the secret and denied/unacknowledged one away. It may have been "real at the time" or "real for that self," but as there was always also a suppressed, repressed, denied self--and that's the most generous explanation, not that I was being deliberately manipulated (as happened in the last years of our marriage).
Going over the past is part of the awful result of their finally coming clean. Your worry about your own sexuality is yet another way in which the lie, once revealed, undermines us at a very basic level. Eventually you will stop torturing yourself, but while it lasts it is painful and destabilizing. It's true, that as you say, you begin to question your ability to trust your own senses and your ability to assess the world around you. But here's the thing: you are not to blame here. Your senses and your perspective were working correctly. What we cannot anticipate or take account of is the deception that we don't realize is being practiced on us. Every piece of evidence we have before our eyes tells us that we are assessing correctly--and we are, given what we were allowed to know and to see.
- a_dads_straight_journey
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Re: Am I crazy?
I think there’s a level of dissociation, as defined in the psychiatric sense, that comes with denial. There has to be. Ironically, then when they come out, we then have to literally dis-integrate our lives and execute various separation tasks. The human psyche is an amazing entity to ensure its survival. It has this capacity for dissociation, that enables us to live with dissonance. In the extreme case, children that endure unspeakable abuse, have been documented to survive by dissociation creating multiple personalities. So I speculate, that a certain element of dissociation might exist for those in denial, because I believe many of the GID folk just didn’t want to accept their lot. While dissociation enables survival, I also believe the human psyche needs and seeks integration and integrity to thrive.
On my journey, it will be six years on Pearl Harbor Day since she came out, and while I am fully engaged in rebuilding and blending a new family, that full sense of integration feels a long way off still.
So to respond to the original post, you are not crazy and what you experienced as real with your partner was real for you, and one facet of a fragmented realIty for your partner.
All the best,
ADSJ
Last edited by a_dads_straight_journey (November 28, 2019 2:59 pm)
- lily
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Re: Am I crazy?
I'm not so sure, adsj - maybe the only thing they've disassociated from is their conscience.
I think part of the reason we feel driven half crazy is that it is so impossible to accept it is deliberate. They are pretending. My ex successfully played me for the fool for 37 years and literally enjoyed my confusion and distress. He resented me more and more for keeping him from the men even as he did it - that is not playing fair.
Our best friend, omg we all think they're our best friends and then go on to describe these abusive relationships.
- control
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Re: Am I crazy?
Lily- I agree with your response. In my case, at least, his behavior/actions were fully intentional. He knew what he was doing was going to harm not only me, but our daughters. He did not care. I feel he enjoyed keeping me in this situation and felt powerful using this deception against me. He felt in control of something in his pitiful life by having the ability to do this to us. It took me over 35 years (over 32 married) to finally figure out why things never felt right with him. Of course he has played the victim, but nothing I could have done would have made a bit of difference over the years.............HE IS GAY! And yes, he wanted to call it Bi, so maybe I’d stay with him & he could continue taking financial advantage of my family, NO THANKS!
Divorced almost 3 months and happy I finally figured out the truth (or at least a big part of it). It was never real
for him, he knew he was attracted to males since the age of 7/8 yrs. I did not have this info about him for over 32 years of marriage, I would not want to be married to a gay man, but it is his lack of character & integrity or general decency as a person that made me know I had to get out of it!!!
Best wishes!
- OutofHisCloset
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Re: Am I crazy?
Control,
I feel the same way--I would not want to be married to an autogynephile (transwoman), but it was "his lack of character and integrity" that made me decide I had to divorce him.
- lily
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Re: Am I crazy?
was everything a lie? I have just been reading the opening post again. You know there is a photograph of a young me and my ex, it looks like a poster for a movie - we are standing waist-deep in a lagoon with a sea plane behind us, I have my arms round his neck smiling up at him, he is holding me in his arms - really he looks very macho. In real life he never looked that macho but he sure has an instinct for a good pose.
I believe he is my lover but really he is gay, he's pretending. He knows he is acting a part and he is experiencing pleasure in his success and I can see that now but at the time I believe that he is feeling pleasure like I am, because he loves me.
I was young I had no idea people would lie about things that really mattered - if I want to I can look back and think what a naive stupid fool I was but I don't. I have accepted we are all easily fooled, even conmen get fooled, and what has happened is I have become more cautious and so far so good.
- Marie13
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Re: Am I crazy?
It is so hard trying to work out what was real. It is one of the most difficult aspects of this horrific situation. Sharing a life with someone for decades and then tossed aside.
But.....one thing i refuse to feel is foolish. Someone spent a lot of time deceiving me....what a way for him to live. I, on the other hand, lived my life openly and honestly and did what i had promised to do - trust him. Unfortunately, the deception does tend to make us way more cautious.
Steph, the only thing this says about you is that you were honest and trusting. He was not.