I’m sorry it’s so hard right now. I too, am so glad you’re not stuck in isolation with your husband.
My mentor says that this pandemic is accentuating whatever we had before. If we had worried about money before, now it’s worse. If we focused on helping people before, now we’re trying to find ways to do that still... I had decided on Feb 2 that I will leave in a year (since I have five kids and I’m just trying to start my business I need time to prepare) and now I’m absolutely certain that I do not want to stay with this person I’m stuck with. It is beyond horrific being isolated for who knows how much longer, pretending to be ok when I want to scream.

I’m so sorry your husband is gaslighting you by saying it was a mistake. He’s probably just decided he doesn’t like how this is working and wants you back to abuse... I know how hard it is. Mine is pretending, an Oscar-worthy performance, to be the good dad and husband he wants me to think he is. He slips up and forgets to pretend to listen to me sometimes. I see through the cracks in the charade when he walks out of the room as I’m talking or when he totally forgets to get me anything for Valentine’s Day or Easter. But for the most part, he’s pretending so hard, I have to keep reminding myself of the worst things he’s done to me, to keep my brain from tricking me into getting comfortable with him again. He’s done the good-cop bad-cop abuse of me too many times for me to fall for the fake nice behavior anymore. But it still hurts. I figure, if he is able to pretend to be nice now, it’s a choice, and he was choosing to be completely uncaring and hurtful to me in the past. And even now. If he cared. He wouldn’t be pressuring me to act in a way that makes him more comfortable, he would want to work to repair the relationship. He hasn’t even asked me why I haven’t had sex with him since Jan 11th, or why I never sleep in our bed. We have never talked out loud about him being anything more than a little bi, although for a while he was obsessed with talking about transitioning.

Can you cut off as much communication with your husband as possible? Are you getting a divorce? It’s expensive, but during a divorce you could make it so you only communicate through the lawyers... my sister wouldn’t let her ex communicate with her at all except for one planning phone meeting once a month for the kids’ schedules. They would talk while having a third person on the call to help mediate the emotional abuse. After more than a year, he has toned down his behavior finally and they are able to communicate a little better now and without him verbally abusing her.

Have you read about narcissism? Do you think your husband falls into that category? It’s my theory that all of us will do much better in future relationships if it’s with other people who have also gotten out of abusive relationships with narcissistic spouses, if not GID ones. When there’s the common ground of having been abused and fighting to get free and find peace and happiness, I think it’s not going to be as scary as it would be if we tried to make new relationships with someone who’s had a normal, pretty easy life but may be hiding something. Two of the biggest lessons I’ve learned though, are that if someone is trying to get you to feel sorry for them, they might be a narcissist. And anytime someone does something that makes you think, “Huh. Who would DO something like that,” it’s a super big red flag.
If only I could go back to when I was 17, and thinking that about this 25 yr old man who would become my husband, things would have been sooo different. I mean, who dances and loudly sings “Sweet Transvestite” from Rocky Horror on the street corner. “Who DOES that. But it’s ok, he’s lonely, and so nice.”
  I think we all have SO much more wisdom about all this than we did when we got into these relationships. I think we’ll all be fine going forward...

Thank you everyone for your words of encouragement and support.  There are only a few people in my life that I can talk to about this and they are sympathetic but they can't fathom what I've been through.  You do.  

I started to read up on narcissism and my STBX does have many of the signs.  There was a video on YouTube about how to deal with a narcissist and it stressed over and over again - NO CONTACT!  I do feel much more at peace when I haven't heard from my husband.  Unfortunately, I can't completely cut ties with him because of financial details that are being worked on, including the house sale.  He'll be cordial a few times and then he reverts back to his begging, rewriting of history, and trying to make me feel sorry for him.  Thus the cycle begins anew. 

Thanks for the suggestion for on-line counseling.  I did contact my therapist and she said she thinks there are legal issues because I moved to another state.  I don't want to start with someone else, especially a therapist that might not be sympathetic to my situation.  I had a bad experience two years ago.  

I think the worst part of this is spending all this time in isolation thinking back on what happened and my previous hopes and dreams for the future and how fake they turned out to be.  It took a lot of reflection to sadly realize that things that were out-of-sync in our sex life were indicators that he never was sexually attracted to me because I am a normal hetero woman.  At the end, he did admit that he was attracted to "some men" (the Drag Queens, I suspect) and then he retracted that statement.  He also said he was "bi-curious".  To me that means a person is interested in having sex with a same sex partner because they are already having sex with an opposite sex partner.  In other words, a gentler way of saying "I'm want to have sex with men."  

Thank you again.  It is helpful to know that others have navigated through this painful process.  I am confident that I will.  It just sucks right now.  Especially since I'm all alone, 24 hours a day, in a strange town.  Still, it's better than being in quarantine with the STBX and his nuttiness.  

Stay safe everyone.  

One thing this quarantine is really good at showing us is whether our lives are set up in a great way for us, as in, am I living with people who I can more or less enjoy and not be abused by during an emergency like this.

For myself, I love my five kids, even though they’re crazy and wild and all that stuff, I’m so glad I’m not separated from them all these weeks/months. But being stuck with my GIDH is torture to my brain and emotions. It just emphasizes that I need to get away from him when I can, and no guilt or regrets about rescuing myself out of this.

For you, it seems like this is showing you very clearly that you will need to build up support systems, find groups of friends, maybe figure out a hobby you’ve always wanted to try, as soon as you’re able to. I know it’s a tall order, when you’re still reeling from abuse and separation and all that. But maybe you can use this time to research and decide on a hobby or type of group you’d like to get involved with. Preferably several. Maybe you can start learning and connecting with people now, and look forward to when classes/ get togethers can start up again.

I’m in the process of learning how to build my business, and it’s more daunting than I can put into words. I had no idea that to have a successful business in my field that I would have to do all of these things (build my website, write blogs, make videos, be present on Facebook three times a day, take communication courses, network an hour every day, so much accounting etc etc) It’s all truly a stretch for me on my best days, but while stuck in this abusive weird situation AND home schooling 4/5 of the kids, it’s insane. BUT, it really helps me have something to focus on, it helps so much. So I think if I was in your place, I would pick something, (maybe woodcarving for me personally.) and start practicing in order to eventually connect with a group who does it, too.

Also something that is helping is a lot of mindset work. I want to read “The Power of the Subconscious Mind” and “Loving What Is” because I’ve learned a little about them already and they’ve helped me, but there are a million interesting things out there for being happy and choosing the life you want.