Hi, I'm an old woman and I was very happy to divorce my gay in denial ex husband.

By midlife I was already in a lot of pain but I had stopped looking to my husband for love care or comfort and building my own life from my studio at the bottom of the garden and so when I learned the term 'gay in denial' from this forum, it was a crucial piece of information and I finally understood - as in experience and time and observation finally weighed in  - that x really was gay and really did not love me.   But I didn't want to blow up my life.  I thought I am over the hill, I just want to be in my studio and we can be good friends can't we.

No.  Wrong.  Over the hill, sure, but a whole lot of life still left to live.  And no he was not my friend.  By the time I got away from him I was in my 50's and in even more emotional pain,  It was my lawyer who used the term emotional abuse.

for me it was clear - away from him even with no one else, even a cave in the Himalayas was better than staying.

Hope things work out for you, all the best, Lily

I’ve been on a journey for some time now. Essentially I’ve gone through an existential crisis for the last year. Intense personal therapy and grinding hour by hour to sort through it all. What I’ve endured. What I’ve carried and taken the blame for.

I’ve a significantly detailed theory on how I got here. Sone is my own shame loop but mostly it’s 2 decades of looking at “it” but not seeing it. I’ve changed vantage points and now more clearly see what I knew was there but was obscured just enough to be vague and ambiguous. The daily behavior. The moments when she couldn’t flip “modes” fast enough. The shallow platitudes that historically passed as “love” when it was in reality just maintenance and protection.

Through all of it it’s the grief I feel that is hard. That and the recognition that I’ve been an emotional pack mule, structure and I’ve been isolated. The loneliness is like death. And accepting all my dreams are dying is the daily grind, really. But ironically, because it’s a different pain now I am finding myself. Because I lost me or had him stolen from me. I’m trying to like myself again.

My shame loop predates my marriage. It’s how I internalized the religious conditioning I experienced. How I saw myself with mortality and eternal life. While I still have faith, how I experience it now is changing. Instead of feeling like I have to earn love, that if things don’t go right, I feel responsible and own it, I am learning to break that pattern.

But, this pattern followed me into marriages and other relationships. Now, instead of feeling judged by God and others, I’m seeing life as more experiential and that I am a good, but imperfect person but that I don’t have to take responsibility for everything that happens around me. My belief is I was the perfect person for my wife in that my strengths and weaknesses could be used against me and for her benefit to hide behind. Her system recognized it. Whether she always consciously knows it or not, I fill a role that keeps her from looking deeply within and must be maintained at all costs.

I’m sure I’m not alone. But there isn’t a girlfriend per se. Her connections are emotional with plausible deniability and I know some of the women don’t see it for what it is. She clearly connects with different women for different purposes and I’m left as the functional cover and support staff. But because I’ve been so conditioned by her the ability to even have a conversation is unsafe and pointless. Any obvious experiences that have happened with women years ago were rewritten, forgotten or ignored. Like it never happened.