Hey everyone, 

Found out my wife of 11 years was gay about 9 months ago. It has been the most painful thing I've ever experienced. Lost 20 pounds in about 3 months. Terrible sleep. Crying. So much crying. Hell, I cried while writing this. There was a time I would have bartered with the devil to have her love me. I would have traded anything. 

Thankfully, I'm getting my PhD in psychology and knew some things about how the mind works that helped me get through (and keep getting through) it. Here are a few of the things I've learned and can speak from personal experience about. 

Note: Please add these in as supplemental to your health plan. I highly encourage getting a therapist/counselor and following other advice at SSN. 

1. Recognize that you are compromised, but not weak...Regardless of your story, all of us here will carry some amount of trauma from the relationship. That trauma changes the way you see things. Think of it like a lens that covers the camera to make everything seem blue. You have never seen a non-blue world, because you've always had the lens on. All of your decisions made sense in a blue world, but now that lens is shattered and you don't know how to act. You desperately want to go back to what you know and want. However, what you want and reality is are in dissonance. Your decisions will sometimes pull you in the "want" category and sometimes in the "reality" category. You are compromised and will bend over backwards to change reality to suit your "wants". You want to call your gay spouse, but you also know that no good can come from it. This feeling is called dissonance. And we, as humans, hate it. We WILL choose a side, we CANNOT sit in dissonance. You will either convince yourself it is a good idea to call your spouse or convince yourself that it won't help in the long run. Think of it like a game of tug-o-war where one side will win and cause you to do a behavior. Just like a game of tug-o-war, having more players on a side will ensure victory. When you feel a tug in the WANT side, recognize that YOU are tugging that way. Put other people on the side of reality! Want to call your gay spouse? Call your best friend to see if it's a good idea first and then let them win. Follow their advice and realize that if you win your wants, it's bad in the long run. This takes strength! It takes so much strength to recognize this and to act on it! Our wants have always directed us. Now it is time to put your behaviors more in the hands of others who love you. You may be your own worst enemy towards the path of healing, but it does not make you weak! Your vision will become clear in the end and your wants will evolve, but you have to give your eyes time to adjust to this new reality. 

2. "Just because it's painful, doesn't mean it's bad for you"...I think I tell myself that everyday. I tried to hold onto the small edge of happiness by saying that this stuff is helping me create a better life in the end. It's helpful in that it 1) gives me power to reframe the whole situation to my terms 2) just helps me feel a little better 3) keeps me from spiraling downwards. Feel free to use my mantra or create your own. Either way, it puts you in control of narrating what this means to you. Your spouse wrote so much of your story, but YOU get to decide what it means. 

3. Find at least one behavior that you will not give up... My world was thrown upside down and I needed at least one place to anchor my ship to. I am still in my PhD program so I decided that I would ALWAYS go to class regardless of how I'm feeling. Sure, some of them I got up from and called my mom to cry for 20 minutes, but I still always went! Much like the reframing mantra, this puts your behaviors back into your hands. It is imperative that this behavior is not something influenced or controlled by your partner (Don't pick, "have dinner at the dinner table" if that was how you spent each evening with your gay partner). Also, a few lighter suggestions based on my psychology studies: make 1 social behavior, and 1 physical behavior that are all yours. 

4. Be fucking greedy and enjoy it... You no longer have to be responsible for another person. They always got on your case about doing the dishes? Fuck those dishes. Never ate ethnic food cause your partner didn't like it? I'm talking Ethiopian, Mexican, Thai, whatever-the-fuck-delivers-at-2-AM... This is the time to life YOUR life 100%!!! 

I am now dating a straight girl and it has been amazing. Being intimate with her feels like something I've dreamt about all my life. You deserve to have this feeling. 

That's all I have for now. I'll keep checking back in. Cheers.