I have always had a feeling that if I found someone else he would want to be their friend and sort of crowd his way in. We have been divorced for several years but I still keep my private life private. I have not let my children know about my male friend so that doesn't get back to him. It is none of his business

My ex has no boundaries and the comment your partner made creeps me out. Were they ever to meet my friend certainly would not be friendly to him. 

I think that is why I have decided living together won't work for me. I will have no privacy. He will be jealous in a way, he will want to know, who where and when, and lik you say, Abby, it's none of his business. He moved on, I am not prying into his life, I have no desire. I know he doesn't want me to get hurt, (his words) I just wonder what he knows about getting hurt....! I am not looking forward to the 'messy time' when this house gets sold, and we both go our ways...but it has to be done, rather sooner than later. We have just extended this process by another 8 months or so, and we got right back to where we were. No point in thinking it will be ok, or the hurt will go away, I have to do what I have to do. MOVING ON. 

Ordinary guy wrote:

...or a small pig.

That'll do.
 

I think that in any relationship the sudden felt lack of genuine affection and intimacy is a major red flag. Even if the partner isn’t struggling with TGT at all. We still had a sex life of sorts, it just never had the emotional reward from my point of view. I did point out at one point that I was finding it difficult to get into the swing of things when I constantly felt like my partner was thumbing through an instruction manual behind me, while issuing instructions and telling me to hurry things up!
 I think that after reading through nearly all of the threads on this site, the lack of intimacy is the most damaging thing. I feel like I have given everything I have and received nothing in return except abuse. I have a therapy session today, and I will voice my concerns about TGT with my therapist to work out how best to approach the subject. If I am dealing with a deeply troubled partner in denial, then I think my final act as a truly loving person (let alone husband) should be to help them on a path of self actualisation. This will destroy me, I know that. But, as my Father always said:

”Son, sometimes the most important fight to take on in your life is the one you know you cannot win”

4875 days….

longwayhome wrote:

Ordinary guy, Let me first say I may not be understanding your post correctly. If you mean to say that your role, as you see it at the moment, is to help in your wife’s self-actualization? If this is correct? Then this response is intended in that vein.

Please know I also don’t mean any of this to sound hurtful or harsh.

In my opinion, Its not ever within another person’s power/control to help another person self-actualize, especially the other spouse taking that role. I don’t think anybody should push someone to self actualize. Personally, I think that could become very high conflict, very quickly.

You know, when I initially discovered my husband’s nine month same sex affair. I was stunned, shock, lost for words, totally threw me into another universe. I’m a pretty sensitive person and I just immediately went into this deep sorrow space. It’s also how I believe I was able to get any real truth from him, but I wouldn’t make this realization until much later.

Anyways, all that to put a bit of perspective to what I want to share next. Once he admitted his same sex attraction to me, went about talking how it could be worked out in terms of opening the marriage, etc. He let so much out of the bag - nobody could stuff all that back in the bag. He thought he could and tried for the next 15 months. I never allowed room for him to change his original story.

I could never open my marriage, he should have known this about me. But he lost himself in all the possibilities. It almost destroyed me and he didn’t even blink an eye to notice.

Today, I believe he has come to some level of acceptance in terms of his same sex attraction, doesn’t like the word gay at all. That is no where near the self realization that is required to live openly. But it is him accepting a part of himself, that I think, he always hated and tried so hard to deny.

The only thing to do in many of our situations is get out of the way - this was never our fight to fight, it’s theirs, we got dragged in unknowingly.

Again, just sharing my opinion and I hope my post isn’t offensive to you, it most certainly isn’t the intent.

Please take care, be well.

It is not within my power to help her realise anything. If we are dealing with deep seated denial, then the psychological manifestation of this is evident in the vulnerable self behaviours. This takes the form of projection on to me in the form of abuse. The trope that developed over the last few years was that I was “always in the way”.  I couldn’t understand what exactly I was in the way of, until I stepped back and looked at the changes in behaviour over a period of years. I asked if she would entertain the idea of going to relationship counselling to help us rediscover some sort of intimate connection in an effort to help me recover from the deep depression I am battling. I also said that I am being treated in line with domestic abuse recovery. I asked if at the very least, the abusive behaviour could stop to allow myself some breathing space and that I was frankly becoming increasingly desperate and suicidal. What did I get as a response. That I have effectively been a cancer in her life for the last thirty years and that we should just call it a day and split up. I have said over and over again that I want to try and work things out, but there is no desire on her part to even acknowledge the fact that her treatment of me is abnormal at all.
 If TGT lies at the her mental issues, then I think that as a fellow human let alone husband I have a duty to try and get her to accept this. This is not for my benefit, but for my son’s. He does not need to see his Mother behave like this. I don’t want him to think that this is what a relationship with anyone should look like. This whole fragile ego and self-hatred thing projected on to me  could be down to a deeply repressed and denied unconscious true self.

4877 days….
 

Last edited by Ordinary guy (July 4, 2021 7:11 am)