Barbara1416,

Welcome.   It is hurting and trauma that you are feeling.

For myself it was like getting hit by a bus.   What part of the marriage vows and promises didnt my now gay ex (GX) understand.

In the end you have to realize its an arrogance and malevolent cruelty on you.   Who made these spouses gods, demi-gods or supreme beings that they can decide what the marriage is for us.  They are not supreme beings.  We gave them our hearts but we can just as easily take our hearts away.

There ant many kind moral people out there that would never treat someone they cares about this way.


Build your support system and know that you are woth so much more.

Hi Barbara, 

It makes total sense that you're scared.  Ending a marriage after 23 years is a big change.  Finding out that your husband is gay is a big change, too.  Not what you signed up for. 

There are people on this forum who find a way to stay married to their LGBT spouses - they're over on the MOM board.  If you are intent on making your marriage work, or if you'd like to see what that kind of relationship looks like, you might want to post over there. 

For me, as soon as my GXH came out (after a long marriage) I was done - he wanted to have sex with men, and there's no way I wanted to be married to him while he hooked up with men.  Also, by the time he came out, he already had a boyfriend and had spend years lying to me and gaslighting me.  Even though I was hurt when he came out, I also was relieved because I now understood why our relationship had felt so bad. 

Think about what YOU want in your marriage.  He wants an open marriage and he doesn't want to have sex with you.  Do you want an open marriage? 



 

Sorry you are here. It's terrible to have this dumped on you.

Focusing on the title of your post, whether you should stay or you should go?  Ask yourself this:  would you have married a gay man who deprives you of intimacy, and would rather watch gay porn and be with men and throw you into an open marriage against your will?

I don't think you would have.  I'd start building your support network of family and friends, and visit with a lawyer so you can start plotting your escape.  You can't stay in a situation like this and maintain your sanity.

I've  been married for 38 years. I came home from work one day thinking I was happily married. My husband stated his is transgender. He's  making himself out to be the victim. He kept telling me he loved me and didn't want us to end. But he needed this. Im destroyed. He kept saying he didn't want to be a woman and he had to work it out in his head. We'll after a month of living on a roller-coaster from he'll he has suddenly started be secretive.  I think I'm dying inside. I won't kill myself but I do wish God would take me. The pain is just to great

Alone38,
   Ex-wife of a trans-identifying man here.  We'd been married 32 years at the time my now-ex walked in one day and announced he was "a woman in a man's body."  The behavior you describe is very familiar to me, as I experienced it with my now-ex, from the bald announcement that he *is* transgender, which probably means that he's been turning this over in his head for quite some time, on his own, not sharing it with you.  That he hasn't been willing to share any of his questioning with you until the moment he dropped his trans bomb is not a good sign for expecting open communication from him going forward.  Or, at least, it certainly wasn't with my now-ex. 

 I also heard the "I want to stay married" but "I'm doing this" line.  Together with his feeling that he'd been vicimized by being born male, that added up to his feeling entitled to having what he wanted, which was to live out his fantasy he was a woman and have me there to serve as guide to womanhood, to validate his new gender identity, and to acquiesce to and act in his newly redefined sex life.

That your husband has started to be secretive is a red flag.  It means, at the very least, that although he says he wants to remain married, he does not want to communicate with you about what he is feeling, which is not the behavior of someone who is committed to staying married.  His secretiveness might also mean he has an online community he's interacting with, and, fi so, that online community is likely egging him on.  His secretiveness may also indicate that he has already taken steps to, as the trans community puts it, "feminize" himself, but doesn't want to tell you.  For some trans-identifying men, my ex among them, the secrecy is part of the turn-on.  

 I understand your anguish.  I felt it, too.  It's very hard to be ambushed by an announcement of something you had no idea about, and that fundamentally alters your past, your present, and future.   You will need to have support, which this forum can supply in part, but you will need someone in your everyday life, whether that's a friend, a family member, or a therapist.  It is very easy to be drawn into trying to figure your husband out, and that can overshadow your need to figure out for yourself what you want for yourself, and in my experience and that of other women who have been through this, your spouse will be massively self-centered and self-involved, to the point he will absorb all your attention, if you are not careful to focus on your own needs and what you yourself want.   It's easy to fall into a mode of reacting to him, rather than acting on your own, and deciding for yourself what you want.   Blue Bear (a poster here) has asked of others, "If you knew before you married your spouse what you now know about your spouse, would you have chosen to marry them?"  It's a useful question to help you sort out what you want from what your spouse wants for/from you.  

  Keep posting--and maybe start your own thread here on the support forum?
 

   

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (Today 8:22 pm)