In your opinion, is there a way to support the GIDH throughout the coming out process? I still deeply care for my husband and I want to see him come into his true authentic self. I know I cannot be what he wants/needs as his wife but is there a way to be supportive as his friend? Or does it really have to be a journey of self discovery?

Sean, first thank you for all the information you have provided.   I've posted my story a couple times but I guess I just wasn't ready to deal with it yet.  I've been married 12 years and my husband and I have never had what I would consider a healthy sex life.   I tried everything, nighties, offered toys, porn.... I was willing to do whatever it took.  He always made need feel like a bit of a freak.   At its best we would have sex once every 3-4 months. Finally I settled on him being asexual.  Then I found Craigslist ads on our computer history.  M4M, T4M, W4M.... Pretty much all of them.   When I confronted him he said he was just bored and curious. Totally innocent.   Said he had been in a funk and promised to be better.   Started buying me flowers and kissing me goodbye every morning. ( just a peck though) don't think he has ever kissed me.    I stumbled onto his porn addiction then.  First it was always deep throat woman on men, but every now and then there would be a gay porn.   Then he discovered periscope.   He would watch couples, just women, and more and more just men.  I have found tranny, gay, bi....   Once I stopped pursuing sex we stopped having sex.  It's been close to 2 years now.  And it was maybe once the year before that. I've reach a point that I just can't continue to deny it any longer.   I reached out to my preacher for guidance and he believes it's just a porn addiction and that it can be overcome.    I'm going to confront him with what I know, any advice on how to approach this?.

Here are some incredibly insightful posts into the gay husband's mind. These are taken from a thread called "Back and forth..." http://straightspouse.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=513​. I highly recommend reading it.

JK wrote: "I think statements like that must be rooted in the fact that our GID spouses were never really present, in their own lives.  Mine was always distant.  Never horrible, but never present.  He never seemed to find joy in the little things that I loved about being a family.  Even when our daughter died, he gave a beautiful speech, at her funeral.  I remember thinking that he seemed more concerned about people remembering his speech than he was about remembering her.  I don't even mean that in a cruel way.  He just never seemed present."

​Wow! This perfectly describes how I lived my life in the closet and later as a gay-in-denial husband.

Foolme wrote: "Another thing my kids always noticed was if you asked him a question he'd answer what he thought you needed answered not what you actually asked (ie Q: When is Sally's birthday? Ans he could give: She'll be 10!) He was always distant but very present for school work or sorting out college courses etc, I think deep down he felt if they got a good education and were all "degreed" he'd have succeeded. Sometimes I feel really horrible badmouthing him and feel protective of him. In fact I don't bad mouth too often as he did provide very well and continues to do so for me......that can't balance out the lack of respect, lies etc though. I don't believe any of these spouses will ever be truly happy either........I'm not sure they'd have the staying power through the level of therapy needed to break down walls built up for 40+ years. On the other hand they could surprise us all and get married to the love of their lives next year LOL....who the hell knows anything anymore!!!​"

​Again another post that completely nailed it. Thank you for sharing your insights. Looking back to my priorities before coming out, they were:

​1. Hide my sexuality
​2. Play the 'perfect dad & husband' as cover
​3. Please others to distract them
​4. Give my wife just enough love & attention to maintain the marriage
​5. Have sex on the down low

​Adult gay men need validation and the first way they try to get that validation is through hook ups with other men. But it's a bit like trying to survive on only junk food. We all need to please others to feel accepted but with the gay-in-denial husband, it becomes a frenzied obsession. And we force our children and long-suffering straight wives to play the 'happy family' role along with us. I've always believed that mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and narcissism come from my inability to reconcile reality (gay man in a straight marriage) with my interpretation of reality (I have to marry a woman and have kids). I think this is why so many gay and straight spouses suffer depression before the gay thing comes up. Take depression for example. I believe that periods of emotional depression are simply when our conscious minds can't process certain situations nor accept consquences. I believe my depression was just a form of mental limbo during which my mind shut down to protect itself. I only came out of my depression when I dealt with my sh*t, apologized, and worked very hard to change. Does that make sense?  

​Foolme wrote: "I'm not sure they'd have the staying power through the level of therapy needed to break down walls built up for 40+ years.​" Very true! I'm working through all of this now and I can tell you it isn't easy. But I still believe the straight spouses have more courage, greater honesty, and an even bigger challenge to knock down the walls of their unreal marriages all while raising kids. Yes gay husbands have challenges, but the straight spouses who share here every day are the real heroes. You are all such incredible examples for your children. Thank you both of you for sharing. I've learned a lot from your posts and the posts of other straight spouses who have so bravely shared here.

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

Hi Rob! Thanks for writing my friend. I'm glad you're here. In reply:

1. Sean,  don't take this personally but if those were my ex-wife's priorities and demons  I'd have to say:
What a immoral and demonic way to live   to have 1  through 3  ..   a insincere 4  and they follow it all up with 5.  What a scary person.....I want to run far away from such a person.

​I take no offence whatsoever Rob. There is something else that no longer scares nor offends me: reality. The truth is that starting around age 5 or 6, I knew I was attracted to boys. I also knew I had to hide it because it was "bad" or somehow "wrong." So I'd been hiding my sexuality for a good 12 years before age 18 when I met the girl I'd marry. My secret was my first relationship...my baby if you like. I didn't want to be a dishonest person, just like no one wants to be an alcoholic. But hiding my sexuality was my priority, I married to conform, played "straight dad" as best I could, and subsequently spent most of my life as a black-belt people pleaser.
​
​2.  While my ex did not follow up with 5 until the end (beginning of the end)  she could not hide her narcissism  anymore either..  She did 1 through 4   but her narcissism started coming out more and more...  I can't see TGT but I can see the narcissism sprinkling throughout the marriage ..then in the later years even leading up to her affair it came much more where everything made her angry.  So she followed it all up with number 6; become a raging abusive person and make life hell for your spouse.

​Again no offence taken. I think we gay spouses develop narcissistic personality disorder ("NPD") to cope with emotions like shame due to being closeted. I've often shared my belief that NPD develops along the lines of addictions like alcoholism. Few people are born full-blown alcoholics, drinking themselves sick every day. It takes years if not decades for the addiction to get out of control. Similarly, I believe the gay spouse shows "sprinkles" of NPD because the shame of gay marrying straight is manageable, at least in the beginning. But the gay spouse's curiosity eventually leads to pornography and finally same-sex affairs. Withdrawing both emotionally and sexually from our loving straight spouses compounds our shame. And as the shame compounds, we go from self-centred or self-absorbed to being full-blown narcissists or even sociopaths. Anger is just the narcissist's final weapon when the lies, manipulations, and gaslighting no longer work. It's cruel, wrong, but sadly inevitable.  

Thanks again for sharing Rob. I've learned something from your post and hope my comments make sense.

Thank you for writing Sam! Good to hear from you and thanks for all of the admin help with the forum. This forum has been a Godsend for me and many other fellow members. I've read your post and I'll try to reply but I'm not sure I've fully understood the gist. But here goes...

1. I think you may be overusing the NPD label just a bit. 

It's possible!

2. I have dealt with it for a lot of my adult life, my ex-monster-in-law could be the "poster child" for NPD. There are a lot of aspects to it that make living near such a person a living hell. Casual friends don't see it, it's only when you are in a close or family relationship that the true devastation comes out. The best past of divorcing my wife was to finally be rid of the family obligations to her. She made every family event a living hell, and the biggest problem I had with my ex before she came out was not understanding how or why she put up with it and forced me to do so as well.

​Thanks for sharing. That must have been hell. Questions:

a. Do you believe your wife was always a narcissist or did it get worse closer to disclosure of the gay thing?
​b. Is she now out of the closet?
​c. How is your relationship these days?  

3. What you are describing , IMHO, does not come up to NPD. If you were "full blown NPD" you would never recognize it in yourself, it would be everyone else's problem who doesn't go along with you 100%. 

I hope I'm getting this. I think your point is: "Sean you can't have narcissistic personality disorder ("NPD") because you're writing about it. Narcissists can't understand their own narcissism." Is that correct? If I've understood what you've written correctly, I mostly agree. From what I've read, few if any narcissists overcome their NPD. But yet here I am posting on a straight spouses forum. I firmly believe that NPD is a gay spouse's response to shame: shame about being gay; shame about cheating; and shame for lying about it. I believe NPD to be largely a defense mechanism via which we gay spouses deal with being gay yet are completely unable to accept it. The porn and cheating are simply our coping mechanisms in my opinion. I consider myself a recovering narcissist. When I first started posting here, my messages were glib and sarcastic because I was using humour to deflect from my mistakes, my culpability, and overwhelming shame. My position was akin to: "well maybe I'm a narcissist but it's equally my ex-wife's fault because she's such a black-belt co-dependent." Again...blame & project. Now I realize that my wife just wanted love and attention from her husband. I also accept that a gay man is completely incapable of giving a woman what she needs in a relationship. Gay can't marry straight as I've read time and time again here. I was also very cruel to my wife in the final years of our relationship. I acknowledged my mistakes, apologized to her, and through this forum have worked very hard to overcome my self-centredness (or perhaps NPD).  

4. What you are describing, I think is a growing sense of entitlement or selfishness that comes from suppressing what you are and being unhappy with or ashamed of yourself for having to suppress it.

​100% agree. But isn't this textbook narcissism? If we gay spouses don't suffer from NPD, why then do we all use the same narc tactics (like gaslighting and projecting) on our straight spouses? The similarities are striking.

5. You are forced into a situation that makes you unhappy because of other's expectations, and maybe your own. Yes, when you finally decide to please yourself rather than others, it causes pain, but you do it anyway because you feel it is owed to you. A person with NPD would not care, or maybe even realize, that his actions are hurting others. An NPD person will be angry with a person who doesn't go along because the NPD person "knows" that he is right and the other person is wrong. The anger you are describing is a little different, it comes from being torn between doing "what's right" and doing what you feel you need to do. Not to excuse anyone's behavior. 
 
​I agree with your analysis: the NPD person is always playing a role. I was thinking about this yesterday. NPD is simply wearing a mask your whole life and that mask hides a very broken soul. Unfortunately, our partners fall in love with the mask. Gay spouses like me are different creatures because our lives are based around hiding our sexuality. That's why I married a woman. My mask was "straight man" and anyone who threatened that fake persona had to be contained which unfortunately included my (then) wife. In response to what you wrote, I think the constant anger I felt as a gay man was from the utter exhaustion of pretending to be straight. It the kind of short-fused anger you feel when you haven't slept well for months or years. A gay-in-denial husband (or wife) is constantly angry from the emotional equivalent of treading water with a brick for years or even decades. That anger comes from mental exhaustion, sexual frustration, mixed with a burning self-hatred. I believe the narc only feels anger when his/her ego is threatened so it's a kind of selective anger. It's the kind of anger you'd see when asking us, "Are you gay?" or confronting us with texts and email messages proving an affair.   

​Does that make any sense? Regardless of the labels, NPD or self-centred, Sam I think we mostly agree. What you call self-centredness or self-entitlement is what I call narcissistic personality disorder. I think they exist on a spectrum: from self-centredness; to NPD; to sociopath; to psychopath. I believe I went from self-centred to NPD and then back to self-centred following my coming out. I'd love for you to share more Sam to explain your point.   
 

Last edited by Séan (March 10, 2017 5:39 am)