Hi Christianwifealone. 

I'll echo every one else and say that I'm so sorry you are here.  It's a very difficult club to join and none of us want to be here.  But we are all so thankful that this group exists to help us understand our situations and to get through what is likely to be the most challenging thing we face in our lives. 

Here's a long verison of my story that I think you will find valuable because it has similarities to yours. 

My story is a little bit like your story.  I too am a Christian and place very high importance on my faith.  Even at the young age of 21 when I met my future wife I made faith one of the most important attributes I looked for in a mate.  When I met her, she was part of a couple of on-campus Christian organizations and she went to church at the same place I did.  She was a newly saved Christian and just on fire for God.  Initially she became just a great friend, but that soon turned into best friend and then love interest.  When we were dating she was upfront with me and told me that she had a few same sex relationships while in college.  She said that was before she was saved and she said that she didn't feel that same attraction any more.  She told me without any doubt that she was hetero-sexual and wanted to be with a man and not only did she feel that way physically, but also spiritually and emotionally.  She asked if I could forgive her past and look past it and asked me if I was still interested in dating her and potentially turning our relationship into some more in the future.  

I spent a ton of time in prayer and thinking about this issue.  Who was I to condemn her for her past.  I didn't and still don't hate gay people.  I believed her.. that it was just a phase.  I didn't know any better.  I had no idea that it was a permanent part of her and that no matter how hard she tried she couldn't be hetero for her entire life.  I was just so naive. 

I spent a summer away from her working on an internship then came back for my senior year.  I spent all summer thinking and praying about it and wondering if she was the one God planned for me to marry.  I thought I was properly listening to God and following in Faith.  I really did think I did it the way God would have wanted me to do it.  

I proposed to her that fall and we got married the next summer after graduation.  We did it the Christian way.  We wen to church together, we went to marriage counseling together, we read the Bible together. We never lived together before marriage, we never had sex before marriage (well.. she had been with a few woman, but I reasoned that it wasn't the same and we didn't have sex with each other).  She even asked me to refrain from kissing on the lips because she felt that would weaken her ability to refrain from pre-marital sex.   So our first real kiss was the first kiss after being pronounced man and wife.  Isn't that the picture of the perfect Christian couple?

But I always had that fear in the back of my head.  On the flip side, I was young and stupid and didn't know anything either.  After having sex only a couple times on our honeymoon and then very sparingly afterwards.. and eventually down to only a few times a year for the first 5 years of marriage I thought that she just had a low sex drive.  Perhaps I was the weird one.  That's what old marriage people always joke about right??  Not much sex after the honeymoon phase...    Then we decided to have kids and things got so much better.  She genuinely wanted sex and it was great.. even for a couple years after the second son was born.   But then it went away again.  I thought by this point it was just a symptom of age.  I thought that after 15+ years we had made it long enough to ensure that our marriage would last. 

Little did I know... 

I saw her start to change her religious beliefs.  Where she initially said that the Bible was anti-homosexuality and she believed it was wrong.. she now started to study new-age Christian authors who claim that the Bible doesn't actually say it's wrong.  She adopted a lot more of these principles and started to hate every church we went to.  She would constantly criticize.. always negative, but never told me the truth about why.  

She hinted at struggling with this for years.  But my fear of it was so strong that it would make me depressed just hearing her talk about it, so I asked her not to share her past with me.  I thought her struggle was with what she had done in the past.. the guilt of it.  I didn't think it was because she still had those desires.  But we never fully talked about it.  I just made an assumption. 

I also thought that I had safety because she was a Christian and shared my personal religious belief that the Bible says it's wrong.  For this reason I was very closed off and felt attacked when she changed her religious beliefs.  It took away one of the things that kept me safe from losing her.  The other was our family.. no way would she ever want to divorce me because we had been together so long and we had two elementary school age boys.. that was more safety for me.  I worried that she would leave me after they were grown.. but that was still 10 years away and I was sure that by that age the sex drive would have gone down and it wouldn't have been such a big deal. 

Then she met "the one".  She met a woman at work and I immediately knew something was wrong.  She made this other woman the obvious priority in her life.  This other woman was married so I told myself that it was ok because she had a kid too.. she must be safe.  But i snooped anyway.. I found some disturbing emails where my wife was writing her love poetry and the other woman said she was madly in love with my wife.  I asked about this and she said that it's just how woman talk.. it was just a friendship kind of love.  One night she finally admitted to me that she was lesbian.  It took me two weeks of hell on earth to finally get her to decide if she wanted a divorce or not.  She still never admitted that she was in love with this other woman.  Then I caught her cheating on me and that knife cut me deep. 

Long story.. sorry..  

The reason i tell the story is that I want you to know that I understand the religious implications on SSA and how the impact our marriages.  I suspect you will find some similarities in my story to your own.  Also I want you to see that you are not the only person who didn't understand SSA and the permanence of it.  I really thought it was just a phase and would go away in time.  Guess what.. It doesn't go away.  It only grows and festers. 

I recommend you go back and read posts by Cameron (above) and Sean (another gay man who has joined our group to help straight spouses).  These wonderful men have first hand experience in being in a hetero marriage despite their reality of being gay.  What you will find is that they can help identify a pattern that shows that SSA attraction doesn't go away.  It grows as people age and usually takes one of two things to happen before the person finally accepts that it's who they really are:  1.)  They gain the courage themselves to come out of the closet.  2.)  They find a gay partner who gives them the love they have always craved and the courage to come out of the closet.  

Do you think your husband can live the rest of his life without coming out and being with a man?  


Through this experience I have learned a lot about SSA.   Where I used to think it was a choice and a sin, I no longer feel this way.  I know for sure that my ex-wife had no choice.  It's how she was programmed.  She gave it everything she had to be heterosexual, but she just couldn't do it for her entire life.  It was not a choice for her to be attracted to women.  What was her choice was what she did with that.  She should have been fully honest with me while dating and early in our marriage. She shouldn't have told me that she wanted to be with a man, when it wasn't true.  She should have ended our marriage and let me go before she met Mrs Wonderful and slept with her and lied to me for almost a year and did incredibly damage to my emotions, trust, and physche.  She should have accepted the blame for those things when I found out the truth, but she didn't.. she deflected it at me and chose to try to blame me for our marriage and make me the bad guy.   She could have done better..  but she didn't chose to be gay.  


*Disclaimer - the following is my own personal religious belief.  Not intended to push on anyone else.  I believe everyone should find their own set of beliefs and not be pushed into anything. Just sharing for the potential benefit of the OP.  Even as a fellow Christian she is entitled to her own beliefs and may or may not find any value in what I share. 

What do I believe now..  I don't believe gay is a choice.  But what they do with it is a choice.  The Bible talks about each of us having sin and temptation in our lives that we need to overcome.  Some of us have problems with lying, others with greed, gluttony, alcoholism, lack of faith, coveting our neighbors wives or possessions, addictions, etc..  We all fall short of the perfect creation that God made in Adam and Eve.  Though sin in the world we all fall short in some areas.  We are all have certain things that make our lives more difficult and make us more likely to sin in some areas.  Personally, I think SSA falls into this area.  I think it's not how God designed us, but it's how some people where made.  This doesn't make them bad people.  We don't look at an alcoholic as a bad person.  We just see someone who has a challenge to overcome to be the best model of what God created.  And what happens to those who overcome the biggest challenges..  They get the biggest rewards:   Your Christian husband has one of the most difficult burdens to bare as a Christian because most Christians condemn SSA as a choice that gay people intentionally make.  It's just not true.  Once they are married though.. They have the choice to honor their vows, resist the temptation to cheat on their spouse, etc..  

James 1:12  "Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him."

Imagine the blessing in heaven for the person who has to overcome one of the most challenging personal obstacles possible in the world we live in.  To face the SSA issue and remain in a monogamous heterosexual marriage would be true perseverance and surely earn blessing from God.  Your husband has a chance to be great if he can remain true to you.    Just an idea for a way to spin this positively.. 

 

Last edited by lostdad (January 3, 2017 4:52 pm)