OurPath Open Forum
This forum is for discussion of issues related to Mixed Orientation relationships only, that is when one partner is heterosexual (straight) and one is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning.
If this does not apply to your topic, please find another forum.
* Opinions posted here, including that of the Administrator, are the poster's own and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of OurPath.
* As a peer-to-peer network, any advice given is that of a peer, based on personal experience, and should not be considered professional in nature.
* Any discussion of LGBT related issues is acceptable provided it remains constructive and respectful of other viewpoints. Hateful, degrading, or prejudiced speech and/or personal attacks will not be tolerated.
NOTE: Due to recurring spam abuse, you must register to post.
This forum is hosted for free by Boardhost. Create your own free forum!
1 - Meadow
- New member
Offline
Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
Twenty-Six years for me... I am 65 years old now. My husband is younger, he has much more life left than me. I won't even begin to try to explain how frightened I am about the future finding myself here at this age and stage of my life. Oh goodness, that's an entirely different discussion, wow!
I always knew it was possible he was gay. Well, there were signs and suspicions but nothing concrete or that I couldn't talk myself out of. There were always problems with intimacy until it stopped altogether. There were things I found on his computer that he chalked up to normal curiosity, yadda yadda. Everything happened the same for me as I hear everyone else was going through.
A few years ago things started to really change. We spent most of our marriage never arguing. I truly thought we were best friends. Now I know that there were so many problems and I was completely fooling myself. We had always played video games together since the beginning of our relationship... old ones like Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft... his friends and my brothers said they were so envious that we did these things together. We were even married in Everquest before we were married in real life. A few years ago, he started doing his own thing, playing his games without me. I started feeling left out and neglected. If he wasn't playing games by himself, he was watching sports. My whole life revolved around "when" it was convenient to run errands so I had him captive in the car to have someone to talk to. With all of those years crammed into a few sentences, eventually I saw the games as the enemy. I was becoming lonelier and lonelier.
A couple months ago, I made the decision to buy a fixer-upper 700 miles away from him, near my children and grandchildren so (and we both agreed) that I could have some joys in my life. I was so empty. I had to add here that in February my five-year-old Yorkie love of my life died of a rare autoimmune disease... he was fine one day and seven days later he was gone. Through the hardest years of my marriage problems, he had been were I found my joy. I felt like my world had imploded. My husband loved him too but he went into the basement, to his computer, and let me grieve alone while i later found he took his grief to his game friends. That was when I decided I had to do something, I was literally alone... So I bought the little fixer upper and focused on that with my husband's agreement that it would help me have a fuller life. Initially we decided it was a vacation place where I could get away and be near my kids when I felt alone or I was hurting and that we each would travel to and fro until he retired (7-10 more years).
There's so many layers to how this is unfolded but I feel I've said enough to fast forward to right now. I didn't see him from the first of May the first of July. We talked on the phone... we argued on the phone... I still didn't understand what was happening. I just felt like none of it added up. I found out that he had been lying to me about how he was spending his time. I discovered he had established a community in his game of dear friends over the last three years including women who were having conversations with him privately, who he knew all about their lives and their families and they knew about his life (no wife mentioned), and particularly another friend, a man, who he had exchanged phone numbers with and he referred to him as his very best friend (I thought that was me.) This man sent "him" a hand-drawn etching of "my" dog as a gift which means he also has our address. I discovered pictures of our home, our pets, the living room of my new place in threads of conversation that he was sharing with people I'd never heard of... There is never a mention of a wife - no we or us in his conversations. I felt violated and rejected and deceived. Mind you, all the time he's telling me I'm an emotional problem he can't handle. I was working so hard to find out how to fix everything. I was desperately trying to reach him because i love him and 26 years is so hard to say goodbye to.
So he came a couple weeks ago for a visit (to my little vacation home, wrong... it's my forever home now) and came out to me. He said he had never cheated on me and he had never acted on his sexuality but that he has known his whole life but denied it to himself. He said he felt like the clock was ticking and he just needs to know if there is more to life than this (gutted me.) I responded supportively, I was devastated for him to discover that he has carried this burden. He came out to the kids and our oldest Granddaughter (all adults). We all cried with him and vowed to be there for him. He swore that he doesn't want to upend the family. He wants us all to stay close (he was the stepfather to my children), he told them he needs them, he cried and hugged them all and told them how much he loves them. He was given all the love and understanding anyone would hope for.
So he went home a couple days ago - and to my shock he is still unavailable to me. He doesn't answer my texts, he makes me wait for phone calls and responses, he gets mad if I ask him if he's playing his game (he says he left the game). When I got upset and tried to explain that the pain doesn't stop for me here and that even though I accept it, it's still going to hurt me and I need his help with it. He tells me I'm tough and I'll get through it. Sharing his news with me, hasn't changed his emotional absence at all. He just dropped the bomb and is leaving me alone with it. I told him this morning that I need some space because talking with him is usually only painful for me, but alone time is a respite. Again, I feel deceived and I feel like I may have been manipulated to make this easier for him yet again. Forget the 26 years that I could have made choices in life, that wasn't bad enough but he's still doing it.
He won't get counseling, the rules are his, any response from me is labeled an emotional mess. The long and short of it is - I am gutted, I feel so alone, my head is in a whirlwind of unpredictable moments of tears and moments of sanity where I find rest. I am financially dependent on him and he doesn't want a divorce and agrees that he needs to continue to support me. I can't divorce him, I can't live if I do. So I asked him today for space. I don't want to talk every day. I can't hear I love you when I don't believe it's true, I can't hear him call me by my affectionate nickname that he has called me for decades, I can't say I love you because he doesn't care. He does "not" care. But I think not talking to him will be easier than talking to him. He can't continue to inflict the pain and rejection if I don't hear his voice. I told him I will call him only if I have issues managing our homes and need input and that we will not have any future emotional discussion. His life is his and mine is mine. I don't want input from him and I don't want to give him input (which he has always leaned on me for.)
I feel like a monster choosing myself - I feel like giving up is now "me" causing my own pain but somehow that's better. I will stop ramblng now with something anyone reading this should know. "I want him to be happy." I don't want him to live a life that he despises. I don't want him to stay with me out of pity. I want to be there for him. I want to be his best friend. I want him to stay in our lives. I want him to find someone to love the way he wants to love someone and be loved. I would be his biggest support system... it's only that "he" wants me to give him all of this but he "refuses" to understand that I need him to walk through this pain with me. He's giving me "nothing." STILL
What the hell kind of life lesson is this?! Obviously there are thousands of stories during this journey that I could share - I simply don't have space for all of what we've been through. If you feel I've omitted anything please feel free to ask. I am literally begging anyone to understand and tell me I'll get through this.
He was my hero - smart - reasonable - fun - handsome - funny - I grew so much in this relationship - he healed so much old pain in me when he came into my life - I believed he was my only safe place in the world...
Thank you, whoever reads this for allowing me this forum to just scream out in pain, I know it's not just my experience and my heart is here for you too if you're living through this but thank you for allowing me to plant my feet and start the healing journey.
Let me just push this "submit" button before I don't...
- OutofHisCloset
- Member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
Meadow,
So sorry that you need to be here. What you're going through is an incredibly painful experience, and an equally painful stage in coming to terms with a partner's disclosure. We've all been there.
So many of us have discovered (or finally been told) about our spouse's/partner's secret life and lifelong struggles. So many of us have experienced our partner's self-centered lack of empathy, or their cold turn against us, because our pain feels to them like an accusation they reject and recoil from, even as they cling to the marriage (saying things like they don't want "to upend" the family, and want to "stay close") as a security blanket.
Every part of this is painful for you, of course: the realization of a marriage conducted under false pretenses, as well as the knowledge that he was willing to deceive you and allow you to invest in a relationship with him while knowing he couldn't--and didn't want to--reciprocate, the knowledge that he has operated in his head and with others as if he were a single person, signaling to you just how little you counted in his inner ordering of his world. And now the out-in-the-open evidence of his lack of empathy, and his turning his own bad faith behavior around into an attack on you, as if you are the problem.
Please know that none of this is your fault, nor are you to blame, nor do you bear any responsibility for his heartless selfishness. He may cast himself as, see himself as, the victim, of you, or society, but he bears the responsibility for his choices. He duped you. He misled you. He lied by omission to you. He was willing to act as if he were something he wasn't/isn't, and it is unfair for him or anyone else to take you to task for taking him at face value, at what he presented himself to be. At best we are the collateral damage of a person who finally speaks the long hidden truth about themselves. At worst we become the object onto which they take out their long suppressed resentment at not living the lives they wanted for themselves.
I hope you have someone in real life (in addition to this Forum) to talk to, whether friend or family. It helps. Counseling helps. And legal counsel, too, has to be part of your support group. You cannot rely on his good will. For me going to see a lawyer was hard. It was to admit to myself that there could come a legal end to my marriage. But I knew that uncertainty was part of the psychological pain I was feeling. Seeing a lawyer to understand what financial support will be available to you in the case of divorce is to give you a better sense of the reality you're dealing with, and once you know that, you have something concrete to work with. Please make that positive step for yourself.
Falling out of love with someone as an act of will, dealing with the pain of cruel rejection is painful and difficult, especially after decades of bonding. We feel with you and for you--we've lived it.
Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 21, 2025 10:25 am)
- Meadow
- New member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
OutofHisCloset wrote:
Meadow,
We feel with you and for you--we've lived it.
I'm sure you know this already but finding a place to just say it out loud is so freeing. Like you're exhaling finally... Thank you for that. I watched a Ted Talk last night that in the very beginning she said "You are not alone." and I knew I needed to step forward. You know, you hear people say, you never really know someone until you've divorced. After 26 years I had no idea my husband was selfish. I had not the slightest idea all these years he was putting himself first the entire time. I'm so broken by that. It makes me wonder if I ever knew him at all and that makes me so incredibly sad. Who did I love? But his recent behavior, the callousness, the detachment, I don't know this person at all.
- •
Thread Starter- lily
- Member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
Hi Meadow,
Good for you, hitting post - yes a big milestone in recovery, huge. I have to absolutely echo everything OutofHisCloset said, all of it.
Looking after yourself now - finding out where you stand legally and getting clued up to what is happening financially,, keeping your own counsel. and giving yourself lots of hugs.
Who diid I love? One day I am looking at him, we are standing in the garden talking and I had this inner vision of him where the bulk of him is standing in the shadows completely detached from me and only a small amount of emotional energy is going down his arm, enough to manipulate a sock puppet in front of my eyes - I had conducted my marriage with a sock puppet!
Last edited by lily (July 21, 2025 12:48 pm)
- Meadow
- New member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
Who diid I love? One day I am looking at him, we are standing in the garden talking and I had this inner vision of him where the bulk of him is standing in the shadows completely detached from me and only a small amount of emotional energy is going down his arm, enough to manipulate a sock puppet in front of my eyes - I had conducted my marriage with a sock puppet!
Yes - I loved someone who wasn't real didn't I? Thank you for this good cry - these are the things I want to face. Thank you.
- •
Thread Starter- Meadow
- New member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
Thank you Lily... Hugs back!
- •
Thread Starter- OutofHisCloset
- Member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
I felt the same emotional devastation from realizing that the man I'd been married to for 32 years (36 at the time of our divorce) was not in fact the man I'd been married to for 32 years. I felt as if my whole past with him was a lie, that nothing was as it seemed at the time. His reaction to my telling him this was to say it was "real, that it had happened as it happened." To which I said, but you are telling me that the whole time you were someone other than you seemed to be. I took him at face value, believed that he his actions and words at the time were an honest representation of who he was, while all the time, according to him now, he was hiding himself from me. It's like we've been living in our own individual Truman shows, when our partners know that they're acting, and we are sincere.
The person that you see now? The one who exhibits such callous detachment? That is the person behind the mask. He's always made the calculation that his interests were paramount, and that you could be sacrificed to them--but now it's out in the open. It's a breathtaking unmasking, painful, but ultimately clarifying.
- Meadow
- New member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
I am amazed at how my brain let him be the person I thought he was, I guess the person I wanted him to be. I'm not sure I'm at all qualified to think I know anyone anymore. What you said about the unmasking, I think I've read that sentence twenty times over because you're right - there he is! I see him now and he slipped around in my house unnoticed for a third of my life. I don't know whether to be amazed that he pulled it off or sad that my dream is over.
The person that you see now? The one who exhibits such callous detachment? That is the person behind the mask. He's always made the calculation that his interests were paramount, and that you could be sacrificed to them--but now it's out in the open. It's a breathtaking unmasking, painful, but ultimately clarifying.
- •
Thread Starter- Ellexoh_nz
- Member
Offline
Re: Terrified to write this post - making myself do it
Welcome to our Forum Meadow 😊
You are among people who
know how strong you will
find that you can be.
Me? I'm 67. Separated after 38 years. If given a choice to go back to my, admittedly easy life with my former bisexual partner and the often difficult life I face now....
I would choose now.
Elle
KIA KAHA