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January 8, 2021 11:26 pm  #11


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

ThisTooShallPass wrote:

IHe went into this marriage with the full knowledge that he was attracted to men.
He took away my autonomy and ability to make an informed decision.

This is what haunts me most of all.

 When I found out he'd been "fantasizing" during sex with me, that was even worse. I felt absolutely disgusted and violated.

This is what terrifies me most of all. I once read a comment by a gay man in a hetero marriage who said he "closed his eyes and thought of England" when having sex with his wife. WTF.
 

 

 

March 22, 2021 4:42 am  #12


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

Ahisma, other posters are right - find a new therapist specialising in trauma.  My randomly picked therapist luckily picked up super quickly on my complex trauma. She has helped me sooo much to name what happened, and to help me believe it is his shame, not mine. Its only now I can talk about the degrading and dehumanising sexual abuse and assault from the last 5 years of our 25 year marriage.  But he didnt admit being gay  until 2 years after our divorce. And then only secretly to our adult kids, never to me.  Ahisma, I had feelings of violation - because I HAD been violated.

 

March 22, 2021 11:23 am  #13


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

I totally understand the sexual violation issue.  I feel like I was used as a sperm donor because I fit a particular pedigree that my ex-wife wanted from a stage prop of a husband.

I”m going to be a bit controversial, so my apologies in advance.  I actually consider the sexual activities that our closeted spouses/partners participated in with us to be a form of rape.  Look at a common definition of “rape”, pulled from Wikipedia just because it’s written in plain English:  “Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person's consent.”

I didn’t consent to sex with a lesbian.  I consented to sex with the straight woman who I thought my ex-wife was.  I shared what I thought was the most intimate interaction I ever had with someone who tricked me to get me into that place, and didn’t feel the connection with me that I thought I was having with her.  No wonder so many of us are sexually messed up by this situation.

And find a new therapist.  Not sure if this is encouraging or depressing, but at the very least, it explains why you feel the way you do.

 

March 23, 2021 6:05 am  #14


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

Blue Bear - yes it's soul rape, that is the way I feel about it,  It was all about what he wanted out of me, he was not in love with me at all, just what I gave him.  He did not care about me, only what could steal from me - it was a bonus how much he could fool me.  He gets his jollies out of tricking people.

Where else can I say that but here.

To me it was like being abused all over again, the way his offence was not acknowledged, by friends everybody really, it is so swept under the carpet.

Yesterday I watched a show on the tv, it was called Criminal Confessions and it was a documentary and the officer who conducted the interview is telling the story.  A gay man gets killed and the man who killed him is his boyfriend married with children.  The start of the show is the audio tape of his wife calling emergency services on discovering the body in her basement and her daughter there too - she is in such shock and pain and concern over her children.

The officer gets his confession.  It is a horrible story, he has murdered his longtime best friend boyfriend because he's been putting pressure on him to leave his wife.  And he wants to stay in the closet.  There was lots of tears in the early stages and lots of lies and the officer points out that the tears are an act.  He got put away.  The show concludes with eulogy to the dead victim and interviews with his family members and no mention, no mention of the wife.  No acknowledgement of the pain she's in, no recognition of what he's done to her.  No interview with her at all.  It's like it's too much for people to deal with.   

Ironically the most acknowledgement she got was from her husband who told the officer she'd be really upset if she found out about the family friend being his boyfriend.   he wanted to stay in the closet, he didn't care about her pain.  and nobody else mentioned it.




 

Last edited by lily (March 23, 2021 6:09 am)

 

March 23, 2021 11:10 am  #15


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

Blue Bear wrote:

I totally understand the sexual violation issue.  I feel like I was used as a sperm donor because I fit a particular pedigree that my ex-wife wanted from a stage prop of a husband.

I”m going to be a bit controversial, so my apologies in advance.  I actually consider the sexual activities that our closeted spouses/partners participated in with us to be a form of rape.  Look at a common definition of “rape”, pulled from Wikipedia just because it’s written in plain English:  “Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without that person's consent.”

Well said. Mentally, I have always categorized it as rape also.

My wife began her full-blown relationships with women years before we had a child. She went through the IVF process believing she was a lesbian and having affairs with multiple women. Her aim was to have kids at any cost. My use was sperm donor, baby sitter, and financial sponsor.

I find the law lacking. If someone deceives a partner about the physical aspects of a sex act (taking off condoms, not using birth control) this is illegal and rape. If someone receives financial compensation for sex with a partner, this is illegal and prostitution. But if someone is deceptive about their sexuality for financial compensation or to create a child over a longer time period, this is completely legal. The law simply seems to ignore the sexual long-con, when it is a sinister hybrid of rape and prostitution.

Soul rape is accurate, Lily.

 

March 23, 2021 5:34 pm  #16


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

oh Upside, isn't it horrible - I must have a black sense of humour now because I thought omg he's right - thank you for pointing out my ex was a prostitute, and that got me laughing!

Through reading historical romances I have gained the impression there was a law, in Victorian times maybe where a man could be sued for breach of promise if he led a woman on and didn't deliver.  Not sure if women could be sued at all.

Making laws seems to me to be a double edged sword in that they can be both used and abused.

 

March 24, 2021 12:23 am  #17


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

I am 60 years old and my husband came out to me six months ago. He started have hook-ups with various men for a year prior to coming out and has been watching gay porn for many years. We were married for 38 years and together for 42. He is sixty one years old and is an attorney. He moved out about three weeks past coming out and he now has a 40 year old boyfriend who is definitely intellectually and financially inferior to my soon to be ex husband. My children, both grown and very supportive of me asked me if my reaction would not have been the same had he hooked up with a 40 year old woman. I actually found it very difficult to answer them - I just felt that my husband "changing" his sexual orientaion was devastating, but I could not articulate my feelings to them. Can anybody explain to me, from their experience, why on an emotional level, it is so much worse when your husband cheats with other men rather than another woman?

 

March 24, 2021 5:32 am  #18


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

well because he hasn't changed his orientation, instinctively you know this, he has been cheating you all along.  It isn't  just now, it's been all the time, from the moment you met he has been cheating you.  And only now you know.  

It's not just your present and your future that is changed, it is your past as well.  I had a similar long marriage, it is devastating and it takes time.  In terms of romantic love, he had stolen my entire adult life.  And it's more than that, it's being in a long term damaging relationship.  My lawyer said to me at one point you do realise he is emotionally abusing you don't you, and he is financially abusing you too.  No, I had no idea, I hadn't even heard the term emotional abuse before.

 Recognising the truth of him was pulling the bandaid of trust and belief in him off the emotional pain I was already in.  The first three weeks the only way I could start to process was standing under the shower, walking along the beach, raining at the beach even better.  Finally it got to the point where I had been standing under the shower for 40 minutes and walked out onto the verandah to dry off in the sun and either I was going to start vomiting or I was going to start crying, it was line ball for a moment I even started to lean over the railing to be sick but I started crying instead and that is when I knew I would be ok.

hugs.

 

 

March 24, 2021 6:18 am  #19


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

oliviap,
  What's the difference?  Lily said it: because he didn't CHANGE his sexual orientation, he REVEALED it. 

   Why does that distinction matter?  Because what he revealed is that he was never able to be interested in you romantically, but only acting a part, deceiving you--lying to you--for the entire length of your relationship and marriage.  The difference between being cheated on with a male partner instead of a female one is that his cheating with a female partner would at least leave your past intact.  You would be able to look back on it and say, well, at least we had that.  But because he was in hiding and pretending for that 40 years, your past now looks like a mirage.  What you thought it was it wasn't, because although you thought he was present and his reactions were what they appeared to be, you now know they weren't. 

  He was also having sex with you under false pretenses, lying to you about his attraction to you, and using you as a beard to extract value for himself.  He was denying you agency and the knowledge you ought to have had in order to to consent freely to him.  Up this thread a few posts, Blue Bear wrote that because of these factors he considers his now-ex-wife's having intercourse with him to be a form of rape. 

  Moreover, a person who is lying and hiding in order to protect an image and a closet engages in a subtle--or not so subtle--form of domestic abuse, complete with all the behaviors that are recognized by psychologists as abuse.  Here's a link to an article on "the secret sexual basement" by the psychologist Omar Minwalla, which Longwayhome posted to its own thread.  It's enlightening.

Here's what she posted (and you might look for her thread and read the comments).

The Secret Sexual Basement” is a metaphor to help us better understand the concept of a deceptive, compartmentalized, sexual-relational reality (DCSR) in the context of an intimate relationship(s) or family system. It represents a person’s deceptively hidden sexual, romantic, and/or emotional intimacy with others that is not shared with the primary intimate partner

https://secureservercdn.net/72.167.241.180/226.c7e.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/The-Secret-Sexual-Basement_2_12_21.pdf

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (March 24, 2021 7:45 am)

 

March 24, 2021 6:43 am  #20


Re: Feeling of Sexual Violation

Thank you for replying - what both of you say makes a lot of sense. When my GID husband finally confessed, I felt that my whole relationship with him was a lie. He has also emotionally abused me since the start of our marriage and later on it got so bad that I felt worthless and started to withdraw from society. I luckily had a bit of a mindshift in the past week where I actually realised that I will be far better off on my own  not having to experience the fighting and emotional abuse any more. It is just as if something clicked in brain and I am now almost looking forward to a new life on my own without the constant outbursts of anger from him. I have also realised that I experience much more peace when limiting any contact with him. Even our dogs which stay with me seems to be more relaxed!
 

 

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