This is my first post here on this forum.

On a secret Facebook group someone asked us what The Gay Thing has taught us, what we have learned through this experience. Here are my musings:
•    To look beneath the surface. What looks like a perfect couple/family/marriage may hide great pain and suffering. So a great sense of care and compassion for all this hidden burden of pain. It is the invisibility of TGT that is an important part of its poison.
•    I am forced to work on myself and my past: the only area that I have some real handle on. So some healing of ancient (childhood) wounds.
•    A sense of mystery, of having to accept things that I just don’t understand. To trust that there is still some loving reason and purpose, even if I don’t now see any glimmer of it.
•    A simply massive increase in my knowledge and understanding of sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular, even as I lose the modest sex-life that I used to have!
•    I am now a LBGT ally, but not an unconditional or uncritical one. I expect and demand some reciprocal compassion and understanding from them.
•    The limitations of God and prayer. Some things do not, cannot change. However much you try. However much you pray. However much you want them to. TGT is one of those things. At least in 99.99% of the time.
•    The pain is endless and excruciating. But life goes on. Is it any ever easier? Perhaps, a little. But we straights (we humans?) are stronger than we ever dreamed.
•    Very few friends understand, can understand. Our pain is an embarrassment to them, they don’t know what to say.
•    The very foundation of our lives, of our being, is shaken. Our judgement, some of the basic, most important, most thought-through choices of our lives now look like a mistake. ‘Does that mean that my whole life is founded on a mistake or a misunderstanding? Or can it still in some way be redeemed?’
•    Does our MOM, our Mixed Orientation Marriage, give something to others, despite us? What does it give to both of us? Are we really better together than apart? So far, the answer seems to be ‘yes’…

Last edited by Sam (Admin) (October 21, 2016 11:29 am)

Oh gosh, I've learned so, SO much from my journey through Gayland, and the journey of exiting that place.  Some about me, some about people in general - or life in general:

- that the nagging feeling in my gut that things aren't right is trustable.
- that me being unhappy long-term isn't something I'm locked into.  If I can change it, I will.  If I cannot, I need to figure out if I want to accept that reality, or move in a different direction.  No more sitting in my spilled milk, crying about how I'm sitting in spilled milk.  I've got a nice big mop now, metaphorically.
- that I don't want to be anyone else - I'm okay with being me.  I'm not perfect, nor do I really want to be.  I don't envy anyone else's perfect-looking life.  I'm good with what I've been given, and I'll gladly work with that.
- I don't want love if it's only given half-heartedly.  If you're not all in, I'm not sticking around.  I'm not going to beg you to stay, even if that's my first inclination.  We can hash out how to solve a problem, but at the very base of it, if you aren't worried about my unhappiness, then you're simply not concerned about me for any reason other than what I can give you.  And that's not good enough for me anymore.
- Life is hard, and so are relationships.  But you shouldn't be fighting to walk up a muddy hill carrying a boulder and consider it a good match.  Love's not THAT hard.  Have some tolerance and acceptance, but not so much that YOU are the only one tolerating and accepting.
- No one has the right to keep huge secrets from their spouse.  It's not purposeful and it's not healthy.
- You can't reach for something better until you put down the crap you're already holding.
- Your heart shouldn't trump your head in love.  If you wouldn't advise your friend to stay, then you should seriously consider the same advice for yourself.
- Be at least as kind to yourself as you would be to your best friend.
- You can't make others in your life happy by your own constant suffering.  If they're happy that way, then you're not teaching them the right lessons, anyway.
- You teach others how to treat you.
- If you're not on your own side, no one else is going to hop onboard, either.
- You can't have peace living in a train wreck.  Stop telling yourself that you just need to get better at accepting living in a war zone.
- You are as important as everyone else in your life.  While I'm all for making sacrifices for your children, you count, too.  Your happiness is not nothing because you're a grown up now.
- If you live your life according to how everyone around you wants and expects you to, then you're a slave to other people's convictions.  Have your own.  And then don't force others to live by those.
- Intimacy (both sexual and not) are very important within a marriage.  It's the backbone of the difference between a marriage and every other kind of relationship you have.  Don't tell yourself it's not important because you can't see yourself getting it.  Starving people never try to convince themselves that food isn't important just because there isn't any to be had.
- Different sexualities are incompatible.  Period.
- Where there is smoke, there's fire.  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
- There is no true definition of "gay".  But if your partner is cheating with others, lying, gas lighting, deceiving, etc., it doesn't matter if he/she sees themselves as gay or not.  You've got a problem, and it's not the word gay.  Walk away.  No,..... RUN.
- Your marriage is an example for your children of what marriage should look like for them one day soon.  If it's crap, don't think you're doing your children any favors by staying in the marriage for their sake.
- Choosing to stay in a relationship past the point where there is hope for change is literally choosing to stay unhappy.
- You are stronger than you know.  You can do things.  All you've got to do is put one foot in front of the other and start walking.  It may take you forever to get there, but you'll get there sooner than if you never start walking.

There are so many more, but I think that's enough for today!

Kel
 

Last edited by Kel (October 21, 2016 10:28 am)