Daisy wrote:

You are right, I am realizing that I don’t know who he is. It makes me sick, I believed and trusted him. Im still on an emotional roller coaster, I only learned that he is gay a few days ago.  It feels like a nightmare that I’ll never wake up from.

 
I am in the same nightmare and the lies are endless.  I am sure that a study one day will show that we were chosen for our empathy and compassion.  They dont deserve it.  The betrayal and deception is endless.  The more you dig, the more you find and the more the emotions get all in turmoil.  What kind of person do you need to be to deceive someone and rid them of all the facts to make a decision? A bad person, a sefish person.

We are all in the dame boat and its a shitty ride….but you are not alone and we are all struggling.  Lots of good advice here.

Hi Daisy,

First off, welcome to the club that nobody ever imagined joining. There is a lot to come to terms with in your situation. One thing I can promise you Daisy is that deep within you are not lessened in any way by what has transpired. Reading through your account, it seems that your significant other has been fighting a battle with himself for his whole life. He knew from an early age that his sexual orientation was not what he thought it should be. The internal battle was between his true self (existing in his unconscious mind) and his false self (the disassociated personality he constructed to navigate social acceptance). He is unfortunately one of gay men that existed in complete conscious denial of his true self. He pursued a heterosexual relationship with you in order to project to the world a false version of himself as a heterosexual man. This internally projected facsimile of heterosexuality was a way to suppress his actual sexual orientation. This seems extreme and difficult to understand in retrospect, but the reasoning for it lies in basic human psychology.
 In all of us there exists some fundamental needs that need to be satisfied in order for us as humans to exist. The generally accepted model for this is called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Essentially, the first base sections are your physiological needs, food, water, warmth, rest and so forth. The second level requires security, safety and shelter. When you have these in place, the next levels are primarily psychological needs. These are the needs for love, relationships and friendships that form the cornerstone of psychological well being, mainly in the form of a personal acceptance by others as a member of whichever society we operate in. Unfortunately in human psychology, if one or other of these base needs are not satisfied then the upper sections of the model cannot exist. Sitting above these base needs are our sense of self worth and self esteem which are often extremely fragile. I believe that your S/O tried to maintain a heterosexual identity out of a deep shame that if his true self was socially unacceptable and would therefore lead to social exclusion and rejection. Humans fear this death every much as the fear physical death.
After the divorce, he explained that he had been true to himself and had engaged in same sex relations with other men. He seems to have tried again to reject this true version of himself by embarking on other failed heterosexual relationships. It seems that as a final attempt to control his homosexual orientation, he went back to what he knew had worked for him in the past. His safe place, with you Daisy. But, the Genie was already out of the bottle this time and even this escape route was not viable. He then seems to have conceded to himself as much as to anyone else that he couldn’t deny his true self anymore.
I don’t know if he was ever unfaithful to you in anyway. I don’t know if he lied to you in so much as he lived a lie to himself. He came back to you because you are obviously a very special person Daisy. You always will be, and your own self esteem and self worth should only ever be fortified by what you have been through. As others have wisely suggested, look after yourself and possibly find a therapist to help you through your grief. Be free to speak of your truth and pain to your friends and relatives because you didn’t build the closet and therefore you shouldn’t ever live in one. It is all still so unbelievable and difficult to comprehend, but there are friends here who can support you as much as they are able. Lean on them, ask them whatever you want and they will listen.

Be well Daisy.

Ordinary guy

4903 days…

lily wrote:

The thing that bothers me is that he doesn't want you to tell anyone else and he doesn't want to talk about how much it's hurting you.  He's not giving you solid answers, instead he's co-opted you into his closet.   

And there's all that family involved.

If he is anything like my ex you might find he is a bit of a spin doctor, wanting to control the narrative with your family and subtly putting you down and him up.  sorry - I know it's horrible to contemplate but if he is like that then a bit of careful observation will serve you better than trying to talk with him.  

He can't tell you not to talk with your family - it's your story to share with your family and friends, don't let him take that away from you.

^^^
You talk to whoever, and about whatever you want to. You owe him nothing in this regard. If everyone one finds out he’s gay, then so be it. There is no need for closeting the truth now. Go and be with your own tribe, he can go and be with his.

Thank you all for the support, it has helped me greatly! I saw him face to face tonight.  I needed to tell him how his “lie” has affected me. He could see I was upset and asked what was wrong. I told him I didn’t know what was real anymore and that everything from the beginning was a lie.  He tried to turn the tables on me saying we already talked about this and where was my self esteem.  Wrong thing to say… I let him have it.  I told him he should have told me he was gay at the very beginning.  That all this time he made me feel like everything was my fault. ( the ED, etc). And I believed it.  His reply… he isn’t gay, he said that because I kept going on and on about it. Really??  You cried and told me about your two male sexual encounters, you didn’t want anyone to know.  He said he’s depressed and can’t be around anyone and that any relationships with women don’t work out.  I told him I know he’s gay, I have had my suspicions…. unusual reaction to men kissing, Brokeback Mountain is your favorite movie, the way you act in bed, etc. I’m not an idiot.  He didn’t like that and I didn’t back down no matter how hard he tried to convince me I was wrong.  There are many ways  to end a conversation why would you choose to tell me you are gay? I told him he needs to own his truth and that he will have all the time he needs to do that.  I’m not playing this game anymore. It then went to that I’m a wonderful person, I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s him… not me, he’s not gay.  Oh, yes you are… own it!  It felt so good and I actually feel some relief.

yes ok, that's pretty clear - as soon as you say you won't tell you're a wonderful kind person.  Instead of owning up he is trying to make you back down.  He is managing you.

The likelihood is he will preemptively ramp up his attentions with your family.  

While you stay hostage to his secret you are losing your true story.  

This is something akin to a bomb going off in your life, it is only natural to talk about it what if it were something else, say you got caught in a flooding creek and got rescued by an idealistic young man towing your car out - who would you tell.  How much more so do you need them by your side now.

Having said all that, you can get a mixed bag of reactions when you do talk about the gay thing so always worth being a bit careful whom you do confide in.  Family is best.  And as Elle said somewhere recently you don't have to tell him you've told!

He already knows he's gay.  And it doesn't sound like he wants to admit to it any more than my ex did.  I just accepted I knew and stopped asking him about it at all and he found that much easier to handle.  Gay in denial is a way of life.