Kel, 

AMEN

Thank you everyone, and especially KK, for your honest shares. What Kel and others have described in their recent posts is similar to the stages of grief. And what we've grieving is the death of a marriage. Both gay and straight spouses go through an initial denial phase. Both deny the gay husband is actually a homosexual. He does it actively and she often tries to explain it away as "same sex attraction" or "he was molested" or "his father was absent." Both deny that marriage somehow doesn't require intimacy. This denial often leads to years, of not decades, of sexless co-habitation. Both deny that his lies, manipulation, and emotional abuse are unacceptable.

Anger is the next step. He gets caught cheating (again), watching gay porn (again), or he finally does something so outrageous that his straight wife has had enough. She starts searching online for answers. We've all been there and I think we're all on the same journey. KK is on that journey too. Vicky knows that journey. JK knows that journey. Kel knows that journey. I know that journey, albeit from a gay husband's perspective. There is nothing we can do to speed up KK's journey. All we can do is help her and other straight wives understand the truth...at their own pace. 

KK I firmly believe you'll get to a point where you can no longer deny the truth. And whether gay or straight, we've all been through the bargaining stage of this journey. It looks a lot like what you've shared. There was a time when I honestly thought I could buy the apartment below where my wife and children lived. Once settled in,I thought I'd just move my boyfriend in and everything would be ok. Wrong! It sounds absurd now but I wasn't quite ready to accept reality: a gay man can't remain married to a straight woman. Bargaining is pinning all of your hopes on couples therapy. We've all done couples therapy by the way so I'm not judging. Bargaining is trying to have sex with a husband who needs gay porn. Bargaining is hoping that your love is strong enough to save a broken relationship. We've all been there and no one is judging you. 

For those of us who have separated, divorced, and now have the benefit of months or years to reflect on our former gay/straight relationships, I think we need to respect that this is a slow and very painful process. So I applaud you KK on your journey. While I sometimes want you and others to just speed it up a little bit, I also have to remind myself that it took me the better part of 35+ years to accept one fundamental truth: I am a gay man and gay men simply can't give their straight wives the love, attention and respect they deserve. 

Keep coming back KK! We're all learning from your journey. 

 

Kel,
I was in that stage of confusion for too long.  Maybe I still am.  But when people came on too strong with a leave right now! It is hard to swallow when you're still reeling from discovery and uncertain what it all means.  It's almost like we've been conditioned to believe something so our thoughts and beliefs aren't going to change overnight.  We're used to adapting to their mood swings and modifying ourselves to suit.  It's what we've been doing for years.  So we go with this new knowledge and try and adapt. It's a perfectly reasonable jump to that. 
For me I really don't know and I can't predict where I'll be with all this in a year but I can tell everyone that my own happiness is now my priority. 

Vicky

Thank you everyone for your honest and heartfelt posts. What I enjoy most about this forum is that members share their own experience, without judging nor preaching. As I've written in previous posts, I believe the time following disclosure (or following the gay husband's coming out) is a period of profound shock for the straight wife. I spent years (if not decades) manipulating and brainwashing my straight wife; often to a point that she not only questioned my sexuality, but perhaps her own sanity. It was cruel, unnecessary, and I regret spending the majority of my life mistreating a very kind and caring woman just to hide the secret one secret: I was gay.

My ex-wife spent most of her life trying to fix me, fix our relationship, and hide my secrets. It's not surprising then that the day I confirmed her greatest fear by finally say "I'm gay", that it left her in a complete state of shock. A shock that I truly believe she's only just coming out of roughly two years after our separation. While I came out to my (then) wife, I can only imagine the pain and confusion of having a gay-in-denial husband...or ex-husband. I've always believed there is an honest core to every human being. No matter how many years I spent denying or lying about my homosexuality, I simply couldn't lie to myself. And the years of lying, self-delusion and narcissism took a physical toll on me, my (then) wife, and our three children.  

While in the closet, I suffered from insomnia, depression, addictions (first to pornography and later sex) and a host of other psychological problems. And too often I angrily lashed out at the people who were most vulnerable: my wife and three children. While my mind could deny the truth, my body simply could not. So what's my point? My point is that the brave straight spouses who post here for the first time are just starting their journeys. Not unlike their gay husbands who know they are gay but just won't accept it, I believe they come here because deep down they know the truth. They know straight men don't watch gay porn. They know straight men don't hook up with other men on Craig's List. They know straight husbands want and desire their wives. Gay husbands aren't interested in intimacy because they're not attracted to women. They accept these things because their gay husbands are black-belt liars and manipulators. Their gay husbands are narcissists. And while they mentally accept their husband's lies and abuse, their bodies are having none of it. While they continue to mentally accept an alternate reality, they suffer from depression, insomnia, or perhaps more serious stress-related illnesses. 

We're here to help them accept the truth when they're ready. As JK shared in her latest post, this forum is like a close friend helping straight spouses work through the biggest shock of their lives. As someone who lived in an alternate (straight) reality for most of my life and forced my wife into that alternate universe, I try not to judge the straight wives who try to explain away the porn use, the cheating, and emotional abuse. Changing the course of a gay/straight marriage is a bit like changing the direction of a ocean freighter. Changing the course of our lives is often a question of turning few degrees at a time. It takes a lot of time. 

While I may want to scream "He's GAY!!!" to the straight wife who repeats her husband's lies about cheating: 'His father was absent..." or (my favourite) "It just happened once." I need to remember that I told the same lies because I wasn't ready to accept the end of my straight identity and straight marriage. I need to remember that following disclosure, it took me 18 months to finally accept the reality that a gay man can't remain married to a straight woman. So I'm going to follow the example JK wrote about in her last post. I'll try to listen, support, and share my experience without preaching. I hope that helps in some way my friends. 

Last edited by Séan (January 29, 2017 3:48 pm)

I just wanted to come on to say thank you to everyone for their support. We are all coming from different places and I appreciate the breadth of opinion and experience. I realize it may be exasperating to some but, for me, I still have hope of an amicable, if platonic, relationship with my husband. I strongly desire to stay together for the sake of our child, who I believe will benefit from two happy and whole parents, for my husband who seems to need my support more than ever and for myself, as I do enjoy the stability and everyday kindness that he brings to my life. If we can get there without driving me completely insane, then I think we have a chance at something. My primary issues with him are around his denial and repression which leads to angry, passive aggressive behavior, emotional abuse, etc.. We are meeting with a counselor and I am pinning my hopes on full honest disclosure so we can stop discussing the issue of his sexuality and start dealing with it in terms of impact on our lives. There was a short, lovely period where he'd been so honest and vulnerable and I felt like we had a real chance of making it work. I just want to see if it is possible to get back there. Divorce is a permanent state - if I have to accept the possibility of failure as the price for giving it more time to work out, I think it's worth it. Whatever his issues may be, he isn't a bad person, just struggling. I love him and want him to be happy, so if I can find a way to help him without losing myself, I want to try to do that. I hope this explains some of my reasoning. Thank you all again for all your advice. It is appreciated.