Canary2 wrote:

Different I guess and Sean,
I appreciate your stories and they do help me to empathize with this situation a little bit better. I do understand how it must have been terrifying to grow up in the 80s, and I can easily see the other side to this. But my story, I still have a hard time relating this much empathy towards.


I also began to realize that if he ever questioned giving up his “compartmentalization”, it was for a brief second. And only because as he hit his 50s he simply was not able to maintain his bullshit anymore.

Oh, he had a choice, but it was a choice he likely wouldn’t have taken. With some guys it does not matter how accepting everything and everyone else is. They just don’t want to have an public relationship with a guy. Basically, he might have wanted you for company (not be lonely) and for social reasons. However, being open, honest, and willing to take a guy out on a date in public is another matter.  Their public persona of not gay is more important than everything else including your sanity and even reality.  I know it sounds strange but in some ways it is easier to arrange a roll in the hay than to talk oneself into being seen in public with a gay person. Sadly, he isn’t the only guy like that. 

Anyway, it isn’t surprising that the other guy would also be married. Another married guy would be less likely to out him than out gay guy so that would be a more “ideal” partner for a likewise closed man. 


 

Sean01 wrote:

Category 2: Young men who have pre-marital gay sex and/or date men, but hide it from themselves or downplay it as a "college thing." Some also claim they were "sexually assaulted" to their future wives because they can't accept they actively sought out sex with men. They marry women hoping this will "cure" them; often because their families or church communities have convinced them marriage to a woman is the solution to their "same-sex attraction." These men have sporadic sex with men before and during their marriages. They essentially "split" their lives: living by day as a straight husband/father but then cheating on frequent business trips. Once caught, many of these men identify as bisexual.  

This was exactly my situation. There was religion involved, and prayers for "healing". I think he truly *intended* to be straight and would probably have stayed married and "bi" if I had not chosen to leave because of my own mental health. When a person is forced to compartmentalize themselves in this way, you never, ever know the true person. Though there was not (as far as I can tell) deliberate intent to harm, you just can't live with a person who is not whole.

Shortly after he moved out he had a complete mental breakdown requiring a few months in the hospital. I've had to distance myself for my own emotional protection. I think his sense of self just broke apart because of all the compartmentalizing and being "forced" out of the closet. I didn't out him (that goes against my values) but I did insist that he join an LGBT support group and tell the kids before we separated. Throughout our marriage, he consistently (and probably subconsciously) put himself and his self preservation first. I understand that it was necessary to his survival. But the collateral damage is great. 

He has just announced his engagement to the first man he met almost minutes after our separation. We'll see how that ends up...  I am glad to be free of all of the confusion, but deeply scarred from a 30+ year marriage that was never a healthy relationship. I thought that maybe we could be friends after a bit of time to adjust to our new lives, but I now see that this would do me a lot more harm than good.



 

Doesn't this describe your ex-husband Lily? 

Category 3: Openly gay men demonstrating personality disorders who actively seek out women as "beards." Many are divorced (from women) or already have long-term boyfriends. When challenged about their sexual orientation, some emotionally abuse future female partners. They actively pursue kind and unsuspecting women. They marry solely with the intent of hiding their homosexuality from themselves and others.

lily wrote:

I don't see my ex fitting into any of the categories.  It seems to me there is an innocent little gay child at the heart of the categories and that does not fit my ex.  He wasn't trying to avoid or cure his gayness.  I think the deception was the best part for him.  

I do think religion plays into it a lot, if only because we are taught to let down our guard and trust the people in the congregation we are part of.   Putting things together with hindsight it appears to me that when I met my ex he had a boyfriend who was part of an acting troupe and I remember him telling me he had been invited to join them but no he kept the boyfriend on the side until the time came he returned to Australia with me at which point he must have dumped him.  It wasn't so much that in picking me he was picking life in the closet, it was more like he'd found the right wallpaper.

He pretended to want sex with me, but really, he didn't - that if you like is the inevitable hurt - but on top of that by the time I was in my 40's, emotionally speaking it was like death by a thousand cuts.  Somewhere in the grittiness of my soul I started to regroup.  I was still in a complete state of confusion but the point where I recognised I couldn't rely on him to protect me from others and stopped looking to him to look after my feelings and started to look after myself and my friendships independently of him is the point I started to feel better.

When it came to divorcing his two priorities were his closet (keep me quiet) and money (more for him) and much as he was emotionally invested in the money and tireless in his efforts to get more it was his closet that mattered the most.

Hi, I was in a marriage for 20 years. I was married young and very naive, very sheltered evangelical.

During the end of our marriage and after our divorce, I know there was an enormous amount of gaslighting and looking back, I can see that there was some there the whole time, and I had no idea at the time. I'm still in counseling going on 4 years for C-PTSD, and I often entertain an idea that my ex-husband was deeply closeted gay. I think partly I entertain this because it makes everything make sense, and partly because I can hold a tremendous amount of compassion for it when otherwise I'm tempted to feel anger toward him. Here are the "clues" that I have, if one could shed some light and maybe that I may not be crazy?? 

- While we dated, ex talked about gay men a lot. He would say his heart went out to them, and how they must be marginalized, and how he feels sometimes they were molested as children. He would go back and forth between this, and making homophobic remarks. He would be mortified because was hit on by gay men a lot, flirted with. He would often comment that he didn't want people to think he was gay by a gay man talking to him.
-During dating if we were ever making out, he would tell me I needed to keep my hands to myself. However once we got married, he forcefully took me after I asked if we could wait a while as I was scared. It was just a few brutally painful thrusts and then he turned and went to sleep.
- Sex was always PIV, and he was always in the mood and often initiated, but never really asked. But it was so difficult for me. He wasn't interested in my body. I learned to hate my body even though he never directly said anything hateful. He didn't want to touch it, didn't admire it verbally, and never wanted to put his mouth anywhere. I think my breasts kinda grossed him out and he certainly never went down. Sex was minutes long and foreplay was just a bit of dry labia rubbing (sorry for the TMI). I was so young and naive I couldn't figure out why I would still be so horny all the time, yet didn't enjoy sex. I didn't have anything to compare it to.
-I remember as a newlywed thinking it felt like I was having sex with a woman. I know this seems odd, and I felt horribly guilty for it, as I had never had sex with anyone of either gender. All I know is I often had to close my eyes and black out his face to try to imagine it was different.
- He only commented on my body through other men. "Bob says you have nice legs," "Ben says he would like to be in bed with you," "Mike says he would like to wear your thighs like earmuffs." I felt he was not-jealous beyond a healthy extent, I felt as though he would happily hand me over on a silver platter. I had a coworker touching me inappropriately on a regular basis and when I told my ex, he scolded me and warned me not to say anything to the man as to make him upset: "I have to work with him, and I don't want things to be awkward," he said. He once urged me to send a racy picture to a male friend of his "as a joke."
-He seemed to really lose interest in me as a person but adored hanging out with his male friends. He was a firefighter so  was with them a lot of long hours and days at a time, but would still go on campouts and hunting trips with them. One friend in particular, he spent an inordinate amount of time with. 
-After about 3 years of marriage, I began to suffer from depression, and asked for counseling/therapy to help. I asked for it multiple times over the years, as I began to feel hopeless and severely depressed. He would discourage me from getting therapy via guilt. "I guess I must just be a terrible husband if you need therapy," he would say. I would end up reassuring him and apologizing to him for making him think that. He also would become furious if he thought I was talking about our relationship to my sister or family.
-At least 3 of his business partners, he told me everyone talked about how they were gay and he would like to befriend them. 
-Just before the divorce (lots of reasons including financial abuse), ex began spending a lot of time with one of said business partners. He would be gone overnight quite a bit, but would always make a point to tell me he wasn't with another woman and he had never been with another woman. He talked about wanting a divorce, how I was getting in the way of the lifestyle he wanted, how he wanted a motorcycle, and how I should be with someone else.
-Yet when I finally filed, he freaked out. When he moved out, he immediately began seeing someone else, who he is about to marry (divorce finalized 6 months ago). 
-He began doing strength training and body building and having lots of pills around the house for "male endurance."
-He told me he had dabbled in porn because I didn't like the jewelry he bought me when we were dating (????). He told me he had been frequenting massage parlors for hand jobs, strip clubs for lap dances. 


The thing is, I just want to move on. But I have almost lost my grip on reality feeling as though I'm insane. I feel like I'm going crazy or have already gone crazy. I am working on healing and holding it together for my two sons, but my mind won't let go of all of the confusion, so badly that I sometimes get dizzy. Everything wrong in our marriage he blamed me for and God knows I was responsible for a LOT of the crap in our marriage, I have been working so hard to heal toxic patterns and fix all of the places I caused damage. And at the same time I know I was not the only one who caused damage, but part of my mind still believes it was all me. 

Any light to shed would be much appreciated.

-Confused and Hurting

Thank you for your response! To answer some questions and expound on some comments: Yes, he was raised in a similarly evangelical Christian background. From reading through the forum and your observations, advices, etc, what would make the most sense in this theory is that he was not living a gay lifestyle or had never acted on his desires until possibly the end of our marriage, the last couple of years. This is when he took sex off the table completely, blamed it on me, and seemed to be having a lot of sexually-based experiences, including some sort of pills he was having shipped right to the house in plain view when both of us knew we were not being physical at all. In that theory, I imagine him living vicariously through me before this - making comments about what other men were saying they wanted to do to me, letting his male friends touch me (fondling once, grabbing a$$ several times for another, when I told him it was making me uncomfortable, he would say I was making a scene, causing drama.) 
I know I'm indulging far too much into these theories when I should be making peace with not knowing. Something in me just feels like I would feel less crazy if I knew the answer; on the other hand, I have an over-active guilt drive that always worked in his favor. Maybe I would feel guilty if I dug until I found out the answer. 

As for your comment that he sounds like an *sshole - yes, I agree when you read this that's how he sounds! The problem is and part of the confusion, he wasn't - at least not on paper. He was SO nice. Everyone always told me he was the nicest person they had ever met. He was charming and polite and sociable. I was awkward and shy and nerdy and introverted. Of the two of us, I was much more likely to be emotional, lose my temper, or have moody days. He would buy me things, buy flowers, help me around the house some when he was home, etc. Any change in my mood really bothered him, I worked and worked to become less emotional and more steady and stable. (TW next sentence) I finally got myself into therapy despite his protests, at the point when I knew my depression had become life-threatening and didn't want to leave my boys without a mother. This was around year 16. Our relationship got progressively worse the better I got. I think it was good for him in some way, that I was always focused on how horrible of a person I was. I think me staying depressed and withdrawn was somehow useful to him. Why didn't he want me to go to therapy? At year three when I began asking (I know this sounds strange, me asking - but I didn't do anything that was a financial commitment without him agreeing), sometimes I imagine I could have saved us if I had been able to go.

The person he is engaged to now is another woman. And as for the porn, I had no idea about any porn whatsoever all of those years, much less if it was gay or not. I completely trusted him, my opinion of him over the years went up, and my opinion of myself went lower and lower over the years until I was convinced I no longer "needed to exist". (trying to keep from going to dark here) I picked up so many toxic patterns in the relationship over the years, that this just snowballed. I am working with two therapists to try and undo all of my toxic coping mechanisms - I really want to get better.

I will end with this:
He often told this story to our friends, about us being at a wedding while we were dating. And when I had gone to the bathroom, a gay man who he knew from Starbucks (this man just liked him, gave him free coffee sometimes, always friendly to him) and his partner walked in and recognized my ex, and walked over to carry on a conversation. He says that he was so anxious for me to return to stand by him, so that people wouldn't think he was "with" them.

Sometimes I think that story is a metaphor of our entire marriage. 

And I grieve myself as a young woman, and that young woman's precious body that was treated like something to be used, discarded, played with, neglected, ignored.
At the same time, if any of my theory holds true, my heart just tears in half for him as well. It just hurts all the way around.

Last edited by k_926 (June 21, 2024 8:48 am)