Cognitive Dissonance Theory.... could this apply?

http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html

vicky wrote:

I agree with Leslie, this forum can get nasty.  Many people here are scorned by their ex-spouse and that's fair to have a negative view.  But they should be willing to see the other side.  There's people like me who exist who are married/common law with their best friend.  No infidelity, love being in each others company, and genuinely care for each other.  Bisexuality is a real thing despite what people here say.  If people here say it's impossible for a bisexual to be happy with the opposite gender then why do they think can be happy with others of the same gender, that makes zero sense they're BIsexual. Bi means 'twice or two' for those here that don't know it.  This site has a reputation on other sites as being negative and nasty.  This is why I continue to lurk here.  To find the people who are like me, people who love their spouses unconditionally and want to find their own way together.  I started out here in February and I'd never heard of a MOM before a bi guy braved this site to anonymously post to tell me about them.  I saw him post shortly after on another site and he said it made him sick to read the posts here.  
Vicky

Perhaps you can help me understand what is 'nasty' ?  Someone not agreeing with you ?  Specific examples would be helpful.  I just don't see it.  My ex spouse treated me and my marriage with utter contempt. My hurt and outrage were directed at her and no one else.  I have not seen anything that would cause of fence here.

Vicky,
I have been on this website for six months and not ever seen one thing nasty even though most of us have had our lives destroyed for a time and damaged for a lifetime by somebody who suddenly revealed - or kept hidden with hurtful secrets - their sexual preference has completely changed. I don't get why you are even here since that's what this is about and you clearly aren't in the same situation. We wish you well in your happy situation. We all see the other side and have for a long time having lived it. I think the problem is you can't identify with those of us who have lived this horror. Being Bi or Gay isn't the issue here. Keeping it a secret and involving a straight spouse is. Using up someone's life when all along you know they'll never have a happy life with you is cruel on an epic level.

vicky wrote:

I agree with Leslie, this forum can get nasty.  Many people here are scorned by their ex-spouse and that's fair to have a negative view.  But they should be willing to see the other side.  There's people like me who exist who are married/common law with their best friend.  No infidelity, love being in each others company, and genuinely care for each other.  Bisexuality is a real thing despite what people here say.  If people here say it's impossible for a bisexual to be happy with the opposite gender then why do they think can be happy with others of the same gender, that makes zero sense they're BIsexual. Bi means 'twice or two' for those here that don't know it.  This site has a reputation on other sites as being negative and nasty.  This is why I continue to lurk here.  To find the people who are like me, people who love their spouses unconditionally and want to find their own way together.  I started out here in February and I'd never heard of a MOM before a bi guy braved this site to anonymously post to tell me about them.  I saw him post shortly after on another site and he said it made him sick to read the posts here.  
Vicky

Last edited by Judy (October 6, 2016 4:57 am)

Vicky,

One last thing. Given what all of us have been through it's really remarkable none of us aren't doing what you allege we are here. We've been cheated on, lied to, and robbed of an authentic life because of these people and yet, none of us are spewing hatred here. We come here for comfort and to provide some for those that need it. I wish you well but don't think this is the place for you. And thank God for that. This is a heartbreaking event in life. I'm glad you aren't experiencing it.

   I guess I would say that I've spent a little more than a year wondering if there is indeed a "pathway to success" with my autogynephilic transgendered husband, who is closeted. The specifics of the situation in terms of sexual orientation are somewhat different than when a spouse comes out as gay to a straight partner.  In my case, my husband does not want to experiment sexually outside the marriage (nor is he proposing a long term arrangement of an open marriage) and he is still sexually attracted to me.  However, because he is also sexually stimulated by the idea of himself as a woman (specifically a woman making love to another woman) and by feminizing himself through clothing and behavior (and ideally hormones), and has disavowed what he thinks of as a "male sexual response" (which he has defined as driven by orgasm with little range for other pleasures), he wishes only to engage in sexual behavior on these terms.  So in that way, his sexuality has become the defining context of our sexual relationship (and, ideally for him, our marital one), and that is exactly the situation of a straight spouse in a MOM marriage to a gay spouse who wishes to express that orientation outside the marriage. The situation feels similar to that felt by the spouses of gay partners in other ways as well.  I can best explain the similarity by saying that if feels as if what he's done, essentially, is to bring another woman into our marriage and into our bed. It's not "cheating" as we usually understand it; nor is it as if a lesbian/gay spouse brought her new girlfriend/boyfriend home (and asked sometimes to sleep with the new partner alone in the marriage bed and sometimes for a threesome), because the "woman" is him, but because my husband is almost always at all times whether in bed or not at least partially interacting with that part of himself (he describes it as "an itch that is nearly always there"), there's a diversion of attention from me as the object of love and desire, and a divided loyalty, too, between the woman he's married to (and loves) and the one he'd like to be.  My husband does not think he *is* a woman, but he wishes he were one and had female biology and the body and experiences that go with it.  He's driven to wish he were female and a woman (not the same thing, by the way), and that wish will never go away, which means that his attention and loyalties will always be divided between his marriage and this vision of another lover/women who is himself as would like to be although he knows he can't.  He can never achieve that desire of bringing into being that vision, and says that that no matter how much he feminizes his biology through hormones and dresses and acts the part, he knows he would still be male.  But he also says that the desire is real, and also it's unusual, it hurts no one to express it.  I would agree, except that we are talking about the expression of a newly identified desire in the context of a marriage of 34 years.  And it has hurt me, and it does hurt me, and I think it will continue to hurt me, for all the reasons straight spouses whose spouses have come out as gay feel.
   I have asked myself whether I can accommodate the new status quo.  What I've found is that as time passes, I am less and less satisfied with the situation.  I don't like walking down the stairs in the morning and finding him communing with himself dressed as a woman; I am not satisfied with a sex life in which he is never the man he lives as during the day but only the woman of his sexual fantasies and desires.  I feel as if he has brought another woman into my bed and my life and asked me to embrace her; she is his creation, yes, and he retains a male body and lives as a man publicly, but she is also very "real" in that she becomes the focus of his attention and in order for him to have sexual satisfaction we must satisfy "her."   
  And furthermore, I have watched the outlines of his autogynephilia change, and I don't like what I am seeing.  The more I accommodate, the more he expresses, the more he is driven to do so, and the less he seems to be able either to imagine my feelings or think they matter.  From what I read, autogynephilia as a sexuality is variable, but autogynephilics are driven to believe that the woman they bring into being through masquerade or biological and surgical intervention is real, and I'm seeing this, I believe, in my husband's behavior and his attitude.  That does not create the conditions under which I can continue to live with him as my husband.  
   I'm torn, and I'm hurting, and I'm scared, and yet I know that I'll feel the same if I stay.  I have days of resolve and realizations crowding in, and then my mind backs away, as if to tell me it can't handle more just now. 
  And that's what living in my MOM feels like.  There are accommodations I cannot make; others, I'm sure, can--and that's fine for them.