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- Steve
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Re: How do I survive this?
lostdad wrote:
I hope I make it to March at my job. That hasn't been going well for me. I'm in a high stress job with a lot of competition and the lack of stability at home has really put me behind the 8-ball. My performance reviews have been poor and I'm worried about keeping my job. Hopefully I can get things at home down to a routine and keep them less stressful so that I have the capacity to deal with stress at work. I think I lack the fortitude to be successful in dealing with extreme stress in both areas at once.
Lostdad is there someone in HR that you can talk to at work? Someone you can tell that you are going through some serious shit at home?
It might be good to give them a 'heads up' so they know why your performance at work might be suffering. Give them a chance to help you or at least cut you some slack.
I could easily have written the first post in this thread. I could copy, paste and sign your first post and it would be my story. Please make sure you are talking to someone about this. Family, friends, therapists. No one can do this alone.
You have a future. A good one. It begins as a flicker of hope. Nurture it until it becomes a dream and when you are strong enough you will make it a reality. NEVER give up.
- CES
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Re: How do I survive this?
I'm still struggling with anger today.. I have been for a week and based on how things are going, I think it's going to be a while longer. I don't want to be angry with her, but I can't help it. The sting of her betrayal burns me and festers and I can't do anything with it. I've told her a couple of times that her actions have caused me more pain than any transgression from any other person on this earth, but I get no response. No remorse, no apology, no apathy... just nothing.
Yesterday was 3 months since D-Day.. How fitting that it was "national coming out day". I wish she would just do that and get me out of her closet. I know that I would gain valuable support and kind words from people in my life if they knew what I was going through, but I can't betray her wishes because I said I wouldn't.
One month until the first legal meeting. This will be a pre-trial conference with a friend of the court to discuss child custody and take a course in co-parenting as required by the court. Since we have already mediated a 50-50 agreement and established a calendar and talked about most of the potential issues I don't expect it to be nervous or potentially surprising. I think it's just going through the motions.
I wish life had a fast-forward button. I'd like to hit >>x4 and skip ahead to March or so. The next 5 months are going to be brutal.
I hope I make it to March at my job. That hasn't been going well for me. I'm in a high stress job with a lot of competition and the lack of stability at home has really put me behind the 8-ball. My performance reviews have been poor and I'm worried about keeping my job. Hopefully I can get things at home down to a routine and keep them less stressful so that I have the capacity to deal with stress at work. I think I lack the fortitude to be successful in dealing with extreme stress in both areas at once.
Someday... Someday I will be happy again. I am dreaming of a honeymoon in Jamaica with a wonderful and normal heterosexual woman.. That's my goal. That will signal my the end of this awful journey and the beginning of a new and blessed life. I want this so badly. I hope it's only a couple of years from now and not 5 or 10 or never at all.
A couple of things came to mind as I read this. First, man I'm sorry it's been painful this past week. I know what it's like to get that "nothing" from a wife...it's far worse than getting a bunch of negative (in my mind).
Second, one thing that I learned from my dad was, "when your world is falling apart, make sure and secure the thing that will help you survive financially through it and after it." Carrying around the weight of your situation is a serious burden, but do everything in your power to pull it together for work. Like "leave it all on the court", then come home and spend what little energy you have left pressing in with your kids. Seriously, your wife can f*** off and take care of her own self, don't waste any energy on arguing, explaining anything, or looking for anything. Just ignore her. I know it's easier said than done.
Third, definitely hold out that hope for the future. That you can have an awesome relationship, a loving partner, and the things that you've felt missing from your marriage. But at this point, I'd warn (if you're like me) of pondering on it too much. It's almost like it's torture to desire that stuff so much, but you're unable at this point to pursue it. Try to find small joys in your life day to day. Find joy in connecting with your kids. Find joy in improving yourself, mentally and physically, so that when you are actually ready to date and find that someone, you're ready.
You can make it through this man!
- Michael
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Re: How do I survive this?
thank you very very much!
i am only a couple weeks into this now. i have told no one. (no friends. no family. how could i?!) the message i just posted is composed of the very first words i have even written about it and yours are the first and only words of support i have ever received. i am but a crater.
i believe my story is unusual and i'm not sure if it even belongs here. our relationship began with every sign that she was a pathologically-lying nymphomaniac. she was deep into a swinger and amateur porn culture in her preceding relationship. our problems were her constant lying, concealed late-night texts and calls, and my endless suspicions. we discussed that i was NOT ok with even remote liaisons, but she just moved to conceal them better and counter attack. DENY and DEFLECT! i lost any trust very early, but tried to rebuild it instead of walking away. i pitied her situation and believed that her behavior was the result of coercion and exploitation from the earlier relationship (as she claimed), but even after things emerged i was never convinced that she stopped. all the while, we careened from one life crisis to another and i just held on for the ride.
during this time, we had a child, got married, and bought a house (not to mention an elicit outside pregnancy, abortion, and domestic violence conviction). all the while, i became more depressed and withdrawn. this (and my self-medication) she blamed as the cause of our issues, and eventually said that she wanted out and that (SURPRISE!!!) she had been dating women right before we met but never mentioned it. now she claims to be gay, but my distrust is so deep that i'm not convinced that this isn't an angle she's playing. i suspect that she is using this approach to get out of the marriage, and so she can permanently hide the rest. she was already seeing a woman before she told me anything, and i had to nail her down on that before she told me. she cheated on me very earlier in our relationship (see pregnancy and abortion comment) and now she's ending our relationship by cheating on me with a woman and calling it liberation, self-discovery, and freedom.
throughout the years, i got no support from anyone. i was ashamed and too humiliated to admit to anyone about the outside pregnancy, about having to bail her out of jail, etc. i processed nothing the entire time, and then had this dropped on me when i am summarily unfit to handle it.
now she's like a school girl with a crush. she's running away as fast as she can. i have been her fool all along and now i feel like she has her support group deceived, too. i kept all of my pain from our friends believing i could never be honest. they have only seen me coping with it (sometimes poorly) and think she's a saint. now, i still can't confide in our friends as she has booby-trapped the situation and doesn't want me to out her.
p.s. i reached out to the support process, but have not heard back from the contact that they sent me. did anyone else have this experience?
- Michael
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Re: How do I survive this?
Michael, just because other people have suffered too doesn't make your suffering 'petty and self-indulgent.'
bear with for a minute, this will seem like a stretch but I promise to connect the dots. On Twitter, since Friday, millions of women around the world have been answering writer Kelly Oxford's request/invitation for them to tweet their "first sexual assault." Millions of women around the world tweeting in about what they had endured kept Oxford's wall running like a ticker tape. Many had more than one assault to tweet.
where I am going with this (apart from saying, hey, what we str8 partners have endured is tantamount to rape-- think about it)... is... so many women on there wrote "I was going to tweet my assault but then I saw all these [tweeted] rapes on here that were so much worse than mine, now I feel I shouldn't complain." Thousands (millions) of women were deciding not to take the opportunity to vent-- simply because their assault was "not as bad" as another woman's.
the whole point was to give everyone a voice! and by doing so, encourage the further legions of suffering voiceless to vent, too, the point being, ANY invasion, ANY assault is too f*cking much.
okay I'm just saying please Michael don't "compare." EVERY story helps, like lostdad said above.^ Not just as therapy for you, the teller. But for those reading, maybe "lurking", every new story resonates in some way or other that contributes to allowing them to find their voice and stop suffering in shame and silence.
lostdad. just my 2 cents. get one of those big wall calendars that shows the whole year and circle the whole month of March in red and start planning right now. Think of March as Blowout Party Month. Start filling it in now. something to look forward to. Something to pull your forward one foot in front of the other. "In March I'm gonna ______ and _____ til I _______." Just a thought. It worked to pull me up out of the Abyss one inch at a time.
and thank God this place is a place where it's okay to vent and feel the total normal healthy reaction of rage. Yeah there I said it (wrote it.) RAGE. We're human too. we may not be GID but by God we are just as human, just as vulnerable, as a gay person is.
Thank you so much for the validation. just starting to open cracks in the walls i've been erecting is the hardest first step for me.
- CES
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Re: How do I survive this?
"p.s. i reached out to the support process, but have not heard back from the contact that they sent me. did anyone else have this experience?"
It takes a few days. Also, check your spam, it went to my junk folder when they did reply.
- Michael
- New member
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Re: How do I survive this?
CES,
Thanks. it's been a week and i sent another follow-up. Nothing in the spam folder.
- CES
- Member
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Re: How do I survive this?
thank you very very much!
i am only a couple weeks into this now. i have told no one. (no friends. no family. how could i?!) the message i just posted is composed of the very first words i have even written about it and yours are the first and only words of support i have ever received. i am but a crater.
i believe my story is unusual and i'm not sure if it even belongs here. our relationship began with every sign that she was a pathologically-lying nymphomaniac. she was deep into a swinger and amateur porn culture in her preceding relationship. our problems were her constant lying, concealed late-night texts and calls, and my endless suspicions. we discussed that i was NOT ok with even remote liaisons, but she just moved to conceal them better and counter attack. DENY and DEFLECT! i lost any trust very early, but tried to rebuild it instead of walking away. i pitied her situation and believed that her behavior was the result of coercion and exploitation from the earlier relationship (as she claimed), but even after things emerged i was never convinced that she stopped. all the while, we careened from one life crisis to another and i just held on for the ride.
during this time, we had a child, got married, and bought a house (not to mention an elicit outside pregnancy, abortion, and domestic violence conviction). all the while, i became more depressed and withdrawn. this (and my self-medication) she blamed as the cause of our issues, and eventually said that she wanted out and that (SURPRISE!!!) she had been dating women right before we met but never mentioned it. now she claims to be gay, but my distrust is so deep that i'm not convinced that this isn't an angle she's playing. i suspect that she is using this approach to get out of the marriage, and so she can permanently hide the rest. she was already seeing a woman before she told me anything, and i had to nail her down on that before she told me. she cheated on me very earlier in our relationship (see pregnancy and abortion comment) and now she's ending our relationship by cheating on me with a woman and calling it liberation, self-discovery, and freedom.
throughout the years, i got no support from anyone. i was ashamed and too humiliated to admit to anyone about the outside pregnancy, about having to bail her out of jail, etc. i processed nothing the entire time, and then had this dropped on me when i am summarily unfit to handle it.
now she's like a school girl with a crush. she's running away as fast as she can. i have been her fool all along and now i feel like she has her support group deceived, too. i kept all of my pain from our friends believing i could never be honest. they have only seen me coping with it (sometimes poorly) and think she's a saint. now, i still can't confide in our friends as she has booby-trapped the situation and doesn't want me to out her.
p.s. i reached out to the support process, but have not heard back from the contact that they sent me. did anyone else have this experience?
Man, sounds like you've been through the ringer! I'm not going to diagnose your wife, but just based on what you're saying here, sounds like she might have an abuse history from childhood and doesn't value herself very much. Experiencing this with my own wife, I know that ANY kind of pushback causes her to react out of that low self-value (like she doesn't accept herself, so sees any kind of hurt or diagreement on my end as me not accepting her). Thus, the running away.
And I totally hear what you're saying about the lack of support, as you've been doing your best to hold things together and deal with them, instead of defending yourself or giving out your side of things. I have found a lot of relief in simply posting things to here, because like you say, it was the first time that I actually communicated all that had been going on for years to ANYONE.
Sorry you're going through the hurt, sounds like you don't have much say in what she does at this point, I'd say do everything in your power to protect yourself financially, legally and emotionally. And protect your child from her craziness!
- Michael
- New member
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Re: How do I survive this?
CES,
You are correct about the early abuse in her life. I only slowly became aware of little glimpses along the way. Once she started acting out and i got hurt, i was never able to support her the way she needed again. my withdrawal to protect myself and lack of processing my emotions left her emotionally abandoned and further encouraged her acting out. we were trapped in mutually-reenforcing downward spirals.
I am willing to go to a support group once i find one.
- Michael
- New member
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Re: How do I survive this?
Billie,
That truly made me laugh out loud and was refreshing. To be honest, i have some emotional issues and history of my own that make me equate suffering with love. To quote the Offspring song, "...the more you suffer, the more it shows you really care. right?!" Not standing up for myself is also a running theme. To your point, it is starting to dawn on me that this may be a gift, but i'm still reeling from the loss of a long-term family home-life with my daughter that i was really invested in. i had that growing up.
If you're missing anything, it's my Stockholm syndrome.
now on to the domestic violence...
no, it was not me. i had my home destroyed and my finger broken and then bailed her out of jail the next day. pathetic!
- Michael
- New member
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Re: How do I survive this?
Billie,
Thank you again for sharing something so personal in the service of helping me and the everyone else. I'm so sorry that you had to go through that.
I think i wrote her a pass early and never thought about it again. I commit to women eternally regardless of flaws out of a desperation to save them just like i tried to do for my mother. (That was hard to write, too.)