Jens
What!!!  Let's flip this.  Do you need a clean house to get frisky no.  This is NOT about you.  My advice next time he turns you down get out your best vibrator and take care of business right in front of him.  Tell him you don't need him or a clean house to orgasm.
Vicky

Thank you everyone for sharing. Vicky it's great to see you back on the boards again. I hope all is well with you and your family. There are two things I'd like to comment on from recent posts. If anyone is new to this forum, our current discussion is about closeted gay husbands (who we often refer to as "gay in denial" or "GID") who appear to have narcissistic personality disorder (which I'll shorten to "narc" or "NPD").  

JenS wrote: "[My gay-in-denial husband] said that if the house was cleaner when he got home he'd get a hard on that night. But then I made the house perfect and he still didn't get one.   And I was very tired from all of that cleaning and chasing the kids around so that everything was PERFECT and just the way he wanted it."

​Thank you for sharing JenS. I've read other posts like this. I recall a gay in denial (GID) husband forcing his wife to take several showers before they could have sex. And only he could decide whether she was clean enough for the 'reward' of sex with him. Another common element I've read about are gay husbands watching gay porn, while still of course professing to be straight, to get aroused enough to have sex with their straight wives. There are also straight wives forced to use sex toys on their GID husbands so he can pretend he's having sex with a man rather than a woman. The list goes on. In my opinion, gay-in-denial narcissists (GIDN) are like adults with the emotional maturity of toddlers. We parents know that if you let a toddler set the rules, you'll soon be spending your life cutting off crusts, leaving hall lights on, and doing a whole host of other bizarre things. The parent eventually says "NO", the child has a fit, and everyone learns what boundaries are. As a recovering narcissist, I know this behaviour all too well. Narcissists slowly test your boundaries because we believe you shouldn't have any. Why? Because what counts is what we want and those around us have to do what we want. And when our straight spouses dare question our sexuality or refuse to obey our ever-increasing demands, we give them the silent treatment, gaslight them, or simply wear them down through verbal or emotional abuse. JenS and others should say "NO!" but be ready for his retaliation like the silent treatment.   

Rob shared: "One cannot make up  the things these spouses do to us. My ex's discard of me physically was swift and sudden... like a light switch. But I know how devastating and demeaning the feeling is..  she would not even hold my hand...suddenly any physical contact was not allowed...zero ..zip ..none  (but I'm not cheating on you). It is not humane. Not morally right. Not what they promised. To treat a spouse in that way takes a special lack of morality. It is abuse. I know it hurts to hear that too as spouses are supposed to love us."

​Thank you for sharing Rob. This reminds me of the final years of my own marriage. I didn't have sex with another man until my 40s. But once I'd had sex with a man, it was similar to what Rob described; like "flicking a switch." After sex with a man, I just couldn't enjoy physical contact with my (then) wife. I'd squirm out of hugs, refused to have sex with her (all the while blaming her of course), and generally resented her. I guess I resented her because she wasn't a man which was cruel and unnecessary. Deep down, narcissists like me are cowards so rather than do the right thing, the honest thing, I think I tried to make things so bad to force separation and divorce. We limped along for about 18 months before I finally asked for a divorce. Perhaps this is what Rob's wife was doing as well. The only thing you can do with a full-blown narcissist is get away, then go no contact (or limited contact if you have kids). Once away from the narcissist, healing is slow but inevitable. But to stay means choosing to remain in his/her alternate "toddler" reality which is essentially "ME ME ME!"

The gay narcissistic husband is indeed an adult, and yet possessed with the maturity of a five-year-old boy. Only a severely developmentally stunted person could maintain he is straight while watching gay porn, having sex with men, and lying to his wife about both. The GID husband won't likely see reality...regardless of how much evidence you collect. They live in a different reality, their reality. And this means the bizarre rule setting and rejection JenS and Rob so bravely shared above. The only way forward while your husband continues to deny his homosexuality is on your own. You can't love him back to sanity. I know from experience that I had to undertake that journey alone. There are many women here who found incredible strength in saying "NO!" to men who had manipulated, lied, and neglected them for decades. Vicky is a great example of someone who called "bullsh*t" on her GID husband and thereby took back control over her life. I'll try to find the thread where she shares about it. I hope that helps in some small way.     
 

Last edited by Séan (January 25, 2017 8:10 am)

A straight man doesn't need a clean house to have sex anymore than a straight woman needs a car with a fresh oil change to do so.  It's all just excuses.  And bad ones, at that.  But it's brilliant, in a way - I'll tell her that I need something that's practically impossible to accomplish with small kids at home, and which will also exhaust her if she attempts it (no matter if she succeeds or not).  I'll exhaust her trying to make her meet my requirements.  It's f'ing brilliant!  And it's all lies, hon.

I can tell you that except in very rare circumstances, sex is an escape for me - and it's usually even moreso for men.  I can be having money problems but sex is free.  I can feel "eh" all day, but when I'm wanted, I feel great.  There are circumstances that fall outside of this - extremely bad news about my children can do it (and I mean REALLY bad).  And then my husband doesn't bug me one bit, but instead, holds me and kisses my brow and tells me how much he loves me.  There is NO circumstance in which our lives are too messy or busy to be having affection and desire for each other.  And that's how it's supposed to work.  Conditions are not supposed to need to be perfect for the two of you to need to connect physically and emotionally.  It's part of what makes our lives feeling okay when all the rest of it is crumbling around us.  It's the glue that makes marriage a relationship different from all the others in our life - the kind of relationship that makes us feel united with another person and it's both of us against the world and all our problems.

Please understand that the reason we believe these lies they tell us is because a) we're the type of person who presumes innocence when listening to another person, and b) we trust our spouse implicitly because we feel that we SHOULD.  Let me speak about both of those a little bit.  Presumed innocence can be great, when used with people who deserve trust.  It means that when something in your relationship looks "off" or questionable, you assume that despite the outward appearance of the situation, there MUST be an explanation.  With truthful, loving spouses, it's the best way to go.  It's not just marriage that this type of thinking is good for - also with your own children, your coworkers, your extended family.  I've suffered many a time when one of my siblings couldn't figure out a situation and presumed I was guilty of something when they could have just asked for an explanation. I spent years being steady as a rock, and at the first chance, he would assume that something that didn't fit the puzzle meant that I had motives that I'd never exhibited evidence of before.  I would be SO hurt, insulted and offended that he assumed the worst of me, until I figured out that he didn't presume I was guilty because I deserved that - he did it because that's the way he thinks.  We'd all have better relationships if we presumed innocence in our relationships - but only up until the point where the evidence showed that this mode of thinking wasn't the best for that person any longer.  And it DOES happen.  I have had to switch with my teenagers lately - because they've lied so much to me that I cannot assume they're telling me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth any longer.  I need to DIG.  and I don't feel bad asking for more details, because they earned that.  It's my job to raise them, and knowing the truth of their situation is part of that.  So while I don't presume guilt, neither do I presume innocence.  I'm at the "presume needing to know more" phase.  You may be a person who presumes innocence when that shouldn't be the case for that person any longer.

Then there's the loving spouse thing.  The one where we have a picture in our mind of how we should behave if WE are to be a good spouse, and for a lot of us, that means implicit trust in our partner.  I get it - we wouldn't have married them if we didn't trust them.  But evidence should line up with the truth 99.9% of the time or we're giving them trust they don't deserve.  Once what they're saying flies in the face of reason and doesn't align with their other behaviors, it's time to start protecting yourself by questioning your spouse more deeply or watching for other evidence to support conclusions.  It would be one thing if you found one single text message on their phone and they said they had NO.IDEA who it was from.  That it must be a wrong number.  But the other evidence should support that claim - you should see either a text back saying, "who IS this?", or no text back at all.  You should see no other evidence of something being off in your relationship - like a lack of interest in you lately, or time that's unaccounted for with where they've been.  Once those things start to show up together, you NEED to question more and start watching for what the real explanation is.  Otherwise you're giving THEM more credit than you're giving even yourself.  At NO.POINT should you need to decide between trusting them vs. yourself.  But we do - and for spouses who deal with a partner who gaslights, that is EXACTLY why we believe them.  Because we trust them SO implicitly that we think we should believe them over our own truth.  And you should NEVER be in that position.

There WILL be times when something happens to make us go "Hmmmm."  And that's okay - but we should feel ZERO regret about asking our spouse about it.  One time my current husband came home in a funky mood.  I asked him what was up, and he said that he knew it was ridiculous, but I'd butt-dialed him, and he heard me talking to someone with a man's voice (this would have been as I was getting home from work while hubby was still at his job).  Now, if I was guilty of something, I may have gone off on him about HOW could he not TRUST me? What was WRONG with him that he doesn't have faith in me, blah blah blah.  But I had done nothing wrong and I knew that, so I unraveled the mystery with him.  We looked at our phones to figure out when the call happened.  I could have just said, "I don't know who that was, but I did nothing wrong."  Instead, I wanted to reassure him.  We figured out the call came as I would have been getting home and pulling into the driveway.  I told him that my 18 year-old son was home and came out of the house with a friend and introduced him to me.  He probably heard this strange voice (which would technically be that of a grown man) during the butt dial.  That was all he needed.  I told him he could ask my son if he wanted, but he declined.  He believed me.  But I had NO issues with reassuring him.  The explanation made sense, and it was benign.  THAT is how it's supposed to work.  Not that the pieces don't fit together and defy logic, but require blind trust to believe.

Trust yourself, hon - your intuition, your intelligence, your experience.  And put that together with the evidence and come to a conclusion.  It shouldn't be that you need to trust someone blindly that's not even acting like they give a sh*t about you anymore.  In NO other circumstances would we do that to ourselves.

Kel

Forever...do not leave the house. Call an attorney and get a free consultation. They will tell you do not leave!! Go to as many lawyers as you can for a free consultations. Gather your facts,ask lots of questions. Keep a notebook with questions,thoughts and answers you may come up with. Keep posting, we are here for you.

"I just saw an old friend from years back who told me that two decades ago he used to make fun of my body and that she worried about me because I'd started to doubt myself."

​Oh Jen I'm so sorry you had to go through all of this. Reading that was like a punch in the gut. As Kel, Vicky, and others have shared, there is no going back once you've accepted reality. Love isn't anger; nor lies; nor manipulations. But it starts with loving yourself unconditionally and with that love, you naturally demand respect from those around you...including your husband. Thank you for sharing.