Phoenix, 

It makes me sad that some think no MOMs are worthwhile. I can imagine many of them may not be. I respect someones individual decision to stay or leave. I’ve never asked my husband to leave and he’s never wanted to leave. I truly believe our marriage is better than most straight marriages. We did very briefly (for a day or two) discuss divorce early on after his revelation. We were both a mess at that point. We are in a very good place and we are absolutely planning for a very long term future together. 

Lily, 

I don't understand why you say support is deteriorating aside from having some valuable people leaving. 
I also don't understand why think straight women are being marginalized and silenced?

for me there was no prior revelation, just my own sudden wondering if my partner was gay even though he said he wasn't, it got me searching google and this forum was the first place I found.  I was in so much shock I literally fell to the floor.  the new information changes your view of your past as well as the present it is overwhelming, yes traumatic.

slowly I have come to understand that there were people all around us - his family and friends, who knew he was gay and nobody ever said a word to me until now we are separated I have heard a fair bit.  The closet isn't about homophobia, it is about hiding the gay to attract a heterosexual partner.  

all goes to say the straight spouse needs a lot of support and is in a delicate state and we can help them in their quest to find real answers to their own questions.  There is such a thing as objective reality.  I think the MOMs section has been a bit of an over reach - done for the best of intentions but it's compromised the original site.  I do not feel comfortable enough on this site to respond to new posters any more - it would be an over reach for me.  Mainly I don't feel supported, tho I did in particular by your posts.  thank you.

wishing you and everyone all the best, Lily

ps, just wanted to add Daryl you are a trooper the way you are there with a common sense post over and again.  And there are still numbers of such good people here.


 

Last edited by lily (October 3, 2020 2:09 am)

Definition of success. Relative to what? the person/persons in the marriage/r'ship, or those on the outside looking in and judging?
For me it's being okay with the choices I've made. Whereas I used to see my r'ship with my bi partner a success which included the intimate side of it...now it's a success but that intimate part is no longer relevant to that success. There are some who'd say "it's not a r'ship without sex" Well boo to you....this is my take on what I took part  in building and growing until my bisexual partner changed the dynamics and after 3 years soul-searching I had to do a bit of dynamic-changing myself. I know it's an ever-changing beast as well. We're in a bit of a hiatus at the moment as we plan to move cities and I'm aware that while my stance on no intimacy won't change .......my partner's need for sexual connection may become too difficult for him to ignore. But as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  said "Don't cross that bridge til you come to it" 

Elle

Last edited by Ellexoh_nz (October 3, 2020 8:49 pm)

TangledOil wrote:

........ I consider my MOM a success even through were only 10 months post revelation...... I knew for close to 28 of our 28 years together, at least on some level.........

 

Even though you say you knew on some level about your partner that's certainly different from being told/finally realising/having the fact out in the open. It took me 3 years to get to the point where I said to myself and my partner "I no longer want you sexually" and another year to come to terms with the fact that if every other part of our life was good....why leave it. 
I advise you to live with this revelation (I was going to put new revelation but it's not is it?)...live with it for 3 years. And read more, talk more....do you know for a couple of years before my partner brought up exploration with men I had been convinced it was a woman, or women, I was competing with. The woman he had been seeing (and was okay with anal sex) was my enemy! and every woman I saw during my day I'd ask myself  "is that her, does she look like that?" and I'd be green with jealousy. I tormented myself like this for months, bought several books about infidelity, cheating partners etc, was sad, cried often. 
Then slowly the realisation dawned that this! whatever it was had been started back when he first suggested we meet other people (the start of our open r'ship) and what we had built up over all the years...started going downhill. 
I'm a thinker, process much of what goes on internally, so kept many of my dark thoughts to myself, forever the one who backed down in confrontation

We'd had a meet with a bisexual man, he appeared to LOVE the interaction. Then he met the woman who let him fuck her anally. Did it make him feel then that he needed more? Needed more male contact. I tormented myself & kind of knew my partner was tormented by NOTHING. 
When I finally found SSN it wasn't an instant "oh well that's it! I'm out of here!" I was still emotionally and financially invested in the life we'd created together. Co-dependent? You betcha I was and, at that time, co-dependent was  an arrow to the heart from people who judge others, not how I saw myself at all. So I did a lot of soul-searching, and after 3 years (it was the statistic I read about how long people stayed together after the moment of disclosure, the point in time when you pass a point and know things will never go back to how they were before)....I decided that since sex had always been the fulcrum his life turned on/was influenced by then if I was to feel safe I would put it out of his reach. 
I don't know if he sees anybody, a bit on the side, a website he uses for chat with men (I have suspicions, have learned that suspicion only eats away at my heart so rarely allow it in)

10 months isn't long in the scheme of LGBTQ mindfucks.....give yourself more time Tangled. Rome wasn't built in a day. And we are building a new version of ourselves. The outcome, the final destination.. doesn't matter as much as the journey getting there. What's super important is that you make the right decision for you.

Elle