Hi Team,

Here's our monthly update. We are only a couple of weeks away from our disclosure anniversary! We are not an anniversary-celebrating kind of people, but I feel like this is an important milestone. I very much welcome any snarky/funny gift ideas!..

Disclosure was an unusual event and an unusual year then followed. 

Currently, we hardly have any upsetting or emotional moments, the rollercoaster is definitely slowing down. It's summer where we live and life is generally much better in summer. Beach, wine, and catching up with friends. The biggest fight we had last month was about our poor dead cat's ashes. My husband (is a total moron) wants to keep them in the house. Seriously, forget the gay porn, THAT is perverse! Is there a forum where I can go rant about that???

In the last year, we have both worked on strengthening friendships outside of our relationship - both as a couple and individually. I think it has been very good for us. We have always thought of ourselves as happily isolated unit (COVID lockdown was a bliss!), we get a lot of social interactions at work and then spend a lot of energy with kids, so socialising with friends had never been at the top of our priorities. We are intentionally changing it this year. For me it was important to gain more independence from him and strengthen my own networks, for him it was an important step in reconciling his past and present identities. Conclusion - friendships are just like relationships - they need investment and effort but can be quite fun! 

He is still in therapy for his trauma and sexuality. I started psychodynamic therapy to work on my trust, hyper-independence, overfunctioning and to ensure co-dependency tendencies I had in the past relationships don't resurface (yes you can be hyper-independent and codependent at the same time!). I'm sure I'll dig out more issues as I go along. I parted ways with my cognitive behavioural therapist that I have been seeing on-and-off for years - I didn't think she was adding much value recently. We are not in couple's therapy at the moment, but have someone on standby should we ever feel we need them. We feel like we can resolve and repair most issues on our own currently.

We are not looking to see/date other people at the moment. My husband realised that he does have quite a bit of internalised homophobia. It manifests in him seeing same-sex sexual interactions as wrong - not wrong for others, but wrong if it is him, who is taking part. He desires the interaction, but can't help feeling it is wrong. I think to fully get over it and move on with our lives, he will eventually need to sexually engage with a guy on his own. I believe (or hope?) that it will help him to assert and reconcile his bisexuality. I don't believe it will be "opening the pandora's box and ooops he's now gay". There is no way to know for sure, however. Frankly, I am not in a rush to find out - not anymore. Early this year we did couple's sessions with his therapist and he tried to rein me in by saying "don't push the sexual interaction with a guy thing, it will happen naturally and organically". That used to infuriate me soooo much! I thought, I don't have all the time in the world to sit around and wait while he figures himself out! Well, I now understand that a forced interaction will not help him figure himself out. It does have to happen naturally and organically. It still annoys me, but there is no way around it. So I choose to stay despite the ambiguity and the risk that his sexual identity may change, again... Why? Because it feels good. Today. So I choose to stay - today. If this feeling changes, I will review.

Quick self-care reminder:
- Don't fixate on your partner's sexuality: straight, gay, bi, asexual, etc. - it doesn't matter. Instead observe how you feel in your marriage. Are your needs being met today? Is the situation getting better or worse?
- You don't need this big "evidence" or reason to leave them. "He/she is not meeting my security and/or intimacy needs" - are all the reasons you need to move on
- Build, maintain and rely on your own support networks. Narcissists will try and isolate you from your support networks, functional partners will support you strengthening them
- Trust your intuition. If you sit with yourself calmly for long enough, you will know in your heart what you need to do

Oh yeah, sex. Sex is good. He's currently fantasising about a threesome with a woman... lol... So yeah, maybe he is not that "gay leaning" after all, at least not consistently... 

Love to you all!