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1 of 1- Nemo
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On the rollercoaster...
Hi - new here. I'll try to be brief.
My wife and I (56M) have been together for almost four decades. We are in the final years of raising our large family, and we had been looking forward to downsizing and growing old together. We have had our share of struggles over the years, including intimacy issues that got much worse after she had a hysterectomy two years ago. She blamed me for our problems in the bedroom, and it has been a sore point in our relationship.
A couple of weeks ago, she confessed to me that she identified fully as a lesbian, and that she really wanted a sexual relationship with a woman. This was not a surprise, because she had been slowly "coming out" for the past few years, first identifying as bisexual, then claiming that she was more demisexual. She had admitted to some same-sex attraction back in college, and she now says that these feelings never went away. Again, this has been a long time coming, so I had been expecting something like this for a while.
So, after both of us working through the implications of her admission, it seems like a lot of the air has cleared in our marriage. We had been talking about selling the house, downsizing, and moving to a smaller place. Of course, all that is now in question, and I'm not sure what the future looks like. However, it does open up a lot more options, since living apart is the likely endpoint, and we won't need to compromise so much on where we want to move. We want to live close to each other to make it easier to keep in touch with our grown children and their families. But all that will need to wait a couple of years until the youngest is old enough to go on to college.
The big issue for me right now is the emotional rollercoaster. Oddly enough, now that the air has been cleared and I can stop blaming myself for some of our relationship problems, I feel closer to her than I have in a long while. It's like I got my friend back again. We had a lot of fun this past weekend going out for lunch and doing some grocery shopping. We still like to snuggle and watch movies, and we even ended up with a friendly sexual intimacy a couple of times. However, she has been attending lesbian-sponsored events, for which I am happy for her to spend time with "her people", but I do feel a little left out since she can be "out" but I have nowhere to go. The other day I saw a comedy sketch with a man and a woman hooking up, and even though it was played for laughs, it hit me really hard that I'll never be the object of someone's desire again.
Anyway, I just needed to reach out and introduce myself. I know most people's stories seem to end in a difficult separation and divorce, but we do not seem to be on that path. What experiences have people had splitting up but staying best friends and continuing to remain connected to adult children?
- freedmyself
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Re: On the rollercoaster...
Hi Nemo,
It sounds like your wife has been up front with you and has not had a same sex relationship behind your back. Seems to me that this sort of honesty lends itself to the kind of friendship you're hoping for, and that is a wonderful thing when you've spent your lives together creating a family.
Most of us on this forum have not had that experience - more typical is that we were intentionally deceived, lied to, gaslit, and cheated on prior to finding out that our spouse is LGBT.
My GXH imagined that we would remain friends, and right after he came out to me, I kind of thought that might happen too. And for the first couple of months after he came out, we acted like friends. As I started to have some time and distance to look back at our relationship, though, it became impossible for me to maintain a friendship with him for a couple of reasons. One is that I don't trust him, which is a basic expectation I have of my friends. So my story differs from yours in that way, the trust and honesty component.
The other reason is that after decades of being in the closet, all the stuff he was already doing behind my back became out in the open, and he greatly preferred hitting the gay bars with his friends to hanging out with me. His "we'll still be friends" line turned out to be something that he told himself to feel better about having lied to me, and something that I believed because it was better than thinking I'd be all alone in the world. Took a few months for me to realize I actually was better off without him, even as a friend. Again, lots of lying and deception that makes my story different from yours. I can be friendly with him - we also have adult children, and I see him occasionally when they are in town for holidays and our time together is fine - but we are not friends.
Part of my rollercoaster was the slow opening of my eyes to the fact that he had an entire alternative life built out for himself, right under my nose. As soon as he came out to me, he stepped out of our marriage into the alternative life and left me flailing around.
I'd like to challenge the idea that you'll "never be the object of someone's desire again". I imagine you have some healing to do before thinking about another partner, but I think it's really early in your life to call yourself finished in the romance department.
Hang in there, and be kind to yourself - this really does get better.
- Ellexoh_nz
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Re: On the rollercoaster...
Nemo wrote:
.....A couple of weeks ago, she confessed to me that she identified fully as a lesbian,...
What experiences have people had splitting up but staying best friends and continuing to remain connected to adult children?
Nemo....sounds to me like you're both caught in the bit where she's relieved she's told you and you haven't thrown a grenade about it....and you're still living/loving/ believing in/holding on to what you've had for so long that you're tiptoeing around each other hoping nobody gets hurt.
I'd say my former partner and I are close acquaintances these days. He's already living with another woman to have a hetero-r'ship with to cover his bisexuality.
And our children? I think in some ways it's harder to retain a level, communicative life with my adult offspring because as adults they already have opinions about trust and cheating and are often not willing to talk deeply because they don't want to hurt, put their foot in it, or admit to actually getting on better with the other parent.
I really opened a can of worms when I left him.....
but I'm circumspect enough to know that looking forwards is better than looking back, losing balance and falling over. One day/conversation at a time.
Elle
KIA KAHA
- Nemo
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Re: On the rollercoaster...
Thanks for the support and encouragement! It is a bit uncomfortable going through the holiday season with all the family around and the uncertainty hiding under the surface. I know it must be worse for everyone else with the ugliness that they have been through. She and I are still close, for now. But, we are still talking about separating in the future, so this is one of the last times our family will be coming together like this. I guess everything comes to an end, eventually. Better times lie ahead.
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