Offline
After my gay was-band announced one day that he was gay and divorcing me (no heads up, discussion, I got nothing for the 20 years of being his loving and supportive wife).....I paid $5000 (out of pocket) for a private psychological assessment to see if I was crazy. Seriously.
I was found to be sane and highly empathetic.
Within 3 years of getting married I started anti-depressants. Over the years I was diagnosed with treatment resistant major depressive disorder. Fistfuls of pills and specialists. I even did several months of rTMS treatment.
All of this was him.
When I started to unravel the lies, manipulation, all the ways he used me, gas lighted me....he wanted me to suffer. He wanted me to be too depressed to function. He wanted a beaten down shell of a person, so that he could get everything he wanted in life and discard me when he didn't "need" me anymore.
I had endless amounts of support, empathy and love for him. Had he been honest and upfront, ironically I probably would have been a major support. Instead he destroyed me and ensured I lost everything in my life and truly suffered.
I have no empathy left for any of these GID spouses. And being such a wonderful amazing person actually got me absolutely screwed. So, I don't recommend it to anyone anymore. Straight spouses need to have LESS empathy and kindness. Because they have to be selfish for the first time in their lives and look at what they want and need. And not what they GID spouse wants or needs. Or they get eaten alive.
Offline
well said, Anon.
My ex enjoyed my suffering too, he deliberately broke down my confidence in myself. Not just all the gaslighting and rebuffing, piecing it all together after leaving I can see that he'd play games on me like hiding my car keys and then putting them back where I'd put them after I'd spent ages looking for them - he thought that was fun, I saw him standing there and smiling the more I doubted myself the more he smiled but it just didn't cross my mind that he was actually doing it to me at the time.
I don't think we did anything wrong - when it comes to love that's the way it works you care for each other - we were deceived into believing we were pair bonding but it turned out it wasn't reciprocal at all. Something completely different.
The point came when I couldn't take the lack of emotional support from him any more and emotionally I backed away, I centred myself in my studio, my friends started coming to visit me there. Just as I was starting to thrive, he managed to take me down again, I believe he secretly knocked over my 3ft terracotta sculpture when she was dry but not yet fired, as just one part of his campaign, my second 3ft sculpture, he shared the same fate, it was like being psychologically kneecapped. But I still had myself. I fired the pieces. My empathy, my arm was round my shoulders now. I sat where I fell and recovered again and then I found this forum and learnt the term Gay In Denial - it put the ground under my feet.
Last edited by lily (February 8, 2025 4:34 pm)
Offline
That's the mind fuck to me. HE NEVER LOVED ME.
20 years together. I lived with this man. I loved him beyond words. I pictured growing old together. And to find out that I have never been loved....well, it destroyed something inside of me. As of yet, I have not recovered. It still hits me sometimes. He had a relationship with someone who deeply loved him, supported him, sacrificed for him.....and I had nothing.
I will never forget the lies he made when he walked out. How he promised to be "fair" and still support me. How he would ensure I was taken care of, even though we couldn't be a married couple anymore, that he cared about me and would always "love" me.
For three years (and counting, as I'm STILL waiting for the divorce to be finalized) he has condescendingly sneered "is this fair?" to me as he did increasingly awful things (like cancelling my health insurance) and would become more malicious when I told him no it wasn't. He enjoyed bringing me to my knees.
And yes, I do still really struggle with the fac that that's the kind of "love" I got in life. It isn't fair. I didn't deserve it. And now I am going to be facing the later years of my life alone without any safety net, since he ensured that I don't have anything left.
He isn't capable of empathy.