- opinions/advice please -- k, 13:46:20 06/18/08 Wed
I've been suspecting that my husband is gay. We have only been married for three years and have not had sex for the last two. He is not interested in me physically, when we used to have sex, I was always the one to initiate, quite often he wouldn't be able to climax and would lose his erection if I asked him to touch me. He claims it is not a big deal, talking about it makes it worse for him and we'll get through it. I think he'd be happy if we just never had sex again and I never brought it up. He is a wonderful man, we are good companions, but I feel that we are living in make-believe. I not only want passion, but am in my later thirties and don't want the opportunity of having children to pass me by. I know he loves me, but I can't live like this any longer and don't want to hurt him. I feel that if he would just admit that he's gay, it would make a separation easier.
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- Just a thought re "trauma" -- Cherrie, 20:17:02 06/16/08 Mon
I ran across an article on post-traumatic stress disorder and was pondering my own feelings of having been "traumatized" and "shell shocked" when my husband came out to me. So, I looked up the disorder on the internet and ran across something called chronic PTSD. It really hit home. I think I spent all my non-work hours (and quite a few work hours) for six months on my kitchen floor curled in a ball. And I don't remember much of that time at all. Lost tons of weight (the only positive side-effect of the whole thing :-)).
And it's not the first time I've been "there". I grew up in an emotionally-abusive home, and much of my emotional reaction to my husband's coming out was a replay of my reaction to childhood emotional abuse. So, it may be a pattern of sorts.
Anyway, I thought it might be a useful thought to throw out there in case anybody else feels like it might be helpful.
PS: I have an actual live boyfriend these days. Sweet as sweet can be... so he scares the shit out of me. :-) One of these days I may actually relax, trust, and simply love, but it is definitely a process that takes time.
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- Can we go back -- Cara, 16:56:54 05/01/08 Thu
For the past 15 months this forum has really helped me and now I could really use some advice. My husband of 25 years told me he had met a man was questioning his sexuality and moved out. He never moved in with him but had a relationship but stopped it as he said he could not handle what he had done to me and the kids and missed us all too much. The kids rejected him and I had little contact with him. Now he is a broken man on anti depressants and has no life. I believe he wants to come home. I felt I had moved on after a hard hard time not coping so now can't understand why I would even consider going back but I think deep down I will always love him and at 50 can't really contemplate the future on my own. But how can he possibly be gay one day and then not even though he was supposedly straight all his life. is it possible we could have a future together and would I be ale to trust him again.The wa he acted was so out of character for him as he is at heart a good honourable man
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- Dinesh D'Souza on CA Same-Sex Marriage Ruling -- LS, 10:55:02 05/21/08 Wed
Right-wing conservative Dinesh D'Souza has written an article criticizing the recent CA Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized same-same marriage.
(http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2008/05/19/gay_rights_vs_democracy?page=full&comments=true)
A point of interest from this article:
"In issuing its ruling the California court appealed to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The basic logic is that gays have a right to be treated like everyone else. But just like everyone else, gays do have the right to marry. They have the right to marry adult members of the opposite sex!"
Grrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeaaaaaaaaaattttttttttttt idea, eh?
I was hoping that some of you might like to let him know what you think about this. :)
L~
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- To any and everyone -- Carl (inspired), 16:46:08 05/22/08 Thu
I was browsing Youtube and found the "Ex-Gay=Ex-Wife" video and found the address to this page. I myself am a straight man, but I find it inspiring that people are behind a cause to rid the world of ignorance. Far to long people have let an ancient book blind them of the changes that need to be made. Our world must grow, and accept everyone. Kudos to the individuals out there who dare challenge the status quo, and with the wisdom to do something about it.
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- On Unconcious Homosexuality -- Beamer, 05:42:47 05/14/08 Wed
I have had this passage in my files for some years and just re read it. When I did I thought that sharing it here might be food for thought for some of you as it is for me..
There is a source statement at the bottom.
Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata and Unconscious Homosexuality
There are elements of bisexuality in every individual. In the course of a normal development, the homosexual instincts are weakened and the heterosexual come to the fore, paralleling the development of the anatomical signs of bisexuality. The nipples of the male, for example, remain in an “embryonic” state.
If the homosexual instinct does not disappear, however, but continues its development, the result will be either open homosexuality, if the individual is conscious of his tendency, or latent homosexuality, if he is unaware of it and it is hidden in the unconscious by the authority of the moral censor.
However, the thinking, the aspirations and the actions of such a person will reflect his internal conflict.
In some cases, the homosexual elements are not manifested till advanced age, appearing like a mysterious flame glowing through the ash.
It seems to us that no other perversion (or to use a better term, paraphilia), in its latent occult state, makes such liberal use of various masks and distortions as the homosexual inclination.
A close study of Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata leaves no doubt in mind that the jealous murderer Pozdnuishef is presented as a homosexual who did not know his own nature; even the author, Tolstoy, failed to realize this.
Nothing is told of Pozdnuishef’s childhood. At the age of fifteen, together with his older brother, a student, he lost his innocence at a house of prostitution.
It is very probable that this older brother had a determining influence on the development of the younger boy. Psychoanalytic studies have shown that a visit to a prostitute may conceal the unconscious wish of entering in this way into symbolic contact with her other clients. This unconscious wish is even more evident in a joint visit to a brothel: a joint visit to a prostitute is one of the masks of homosexuality.
Again there is a long hiatus in the biography. Up to the age of thirty, he and his friends had “on our souls hundreds of the most varied and horrible crimes against women.” (1) Before marriage, he had relations with hundreds or even thousands of women, “just like Don Juan,” and he believed that most men behaved as he did.
Don Juan, this picture of a man in the eternal quest of women, is likewise a masked form of homosexuality. He cannot find the object of his quest and is untiring in his efforts. Nothing can satisfy him since he seeks satisfaction where he cannot find it. He cannot abandon the search because an incessant voice from the unconscious drives him on, and he does not know whence will come the call and where it will lead him.
This unceasing flight from one woman to another is sadistic, and an even stronger sadism must develop when a latent homosexual is bound by marriage to one woman. Unconscious but aggressive homosexual tendencies and sadism are inseparable phenomena. When one of the partners to a marriage is a homosexual, the marriage becomes a form of torture, especially when the homosexuality assumes an aggressive shape. When it is passive in its manifestations, it is associated with self-humiliation and the homosexual then tries to play the role of a woman taken in violence.
Pozdnuishef is a sadist. He does not know, just as his creator did not know, that the hate impulses in his marital life were caused by the unconscious desire for a man, a partner of his own sex, in his marriage. It would be impossible for him to find happiness in any marriage. At the end of the story, Tolstoy, with a fine intuitive feeling for the truth of his character, has him say the following: “Yes, if I had known what I know now, then everything would have been entirely different. I would not have married for ...I would not have married at all."
In his marriage he sought the impossible. We learn something interesting from a chance remark introduced at the beginning of the description of the honeymoon. “That is the way they all get married and that is the way I got married, and the much-vaunted honeymoon began. What a vile name that is in itself! I was making a tour of all the sights of Paris, and I went in to see the bearded woman and the water-dog. It seemed that it was only a man decollete, in a woman’s gown.” A curious chain of associations; from talking of the honeymoon to the story of a woman with a beard who turned out to be a man. This process of association can be understood if it is regarded as a cover for something hidden.
A few pages further: “In spite of all my efforts to make my honeymoon a success, it was a failure. The whole time was merely vile, shameful and tiresome. But very soon it became also painfully oppressive.” At one time sensuality would gain the upper hand but soon hate would come to replace it.
It may be said that when an excessive reaction follows coitus, expressing itself in hate and disgust, the act was contrary to the nature of the individual or was not performed with the real sexual object. Depression expresses the absence of satisfaction or the emergence of regrets at having created an illusion of replacing the real object. This may well be the reason why individuals who substitute an imaginary for a real object prefer to perform the act in complete darkness. Under cover of darkness, the unconscious has a greater leeway to create a fantasy-object.
The feeling of hostility recurred after each episode of sensuality and was the outstanding feature of Pozdniushef’s marriage. “Reason was not quick enough to sophisticate sufficient pretexts for the hostility that constantly existed between us."
"What is chiefly vile about this is that in theory it is taken for granted that love is something ideal and elevated; whereas in practice love is something low and swinish, which it is shameful and disgusting to speak of or remember. You see it is not without reason that nature made it shameful and disgusting."
This is an example of displacement and rationalization. What is actually so revolting is an act which remains unconscious and violates the normal ethical feelings.
There is insight in the following words: “This animosity was nothing else than the protest of human nature against the animal which was crushing it.” “I was amazed at our hatred of each other.... This hatred was identical with the hatred felt by the accomplices in a crime, both for the instigation and the accomplishment of the deed.” An unloved wife, it would seem; but men are usually not jealous of an unloved wife. “During the whole course of my married life I never ceased to experience the pangs of jealousy."
It was not till after ten years of marriage, however, and after his wife was the mother of five children that she gave him any real cause for jealousy. Till then it was groundless and artificial. Finally, he constructed the situation which he needed.
Pozdnuishef himself brought “ him “ together with his wife. “Even at the first glance he impressed me unfavorably. But strangely enough some peculiar fatal power impelled me not to keep him at a distance, not to send him away, but rather to draw him nearer to me. Why, what could have been simpler than to have talked coolly with him a few minutes, and to have said ‘good morning’ without introducing him to my wife? But no, I talked with him deliberately about his playing… I said that my wife played very well. Wonderful thing! My relations to him that very first day, that very first hour of my meeting with him were such as they could have been only after all that occurred subsequently. There was something strained in my relations with him…. I presented him to my wife."
The homosexual, unaware of his inclination, arranges to have his wife meet the man to whom he himself is attracted. Reason struggles with his unconscious desires. He describes “him” in an unfavorable light: “He had almond-shaped, humid eyes, handsome, smiling lips, a little waxed mustache, the latest and most fashionable method of dressing his hair, an insipidly handsome face, such as women call ‘not bad,’ a slender build, though not ill-shaped, and with a largely developed behind, such as they say characterize Hottentot women (my emphasis)."
It was to be expected that this description would contain some reference to the femininity of the object. The behind, like a woman’s , made a special impression on Pozdnuishef, and he remembered it well.
The attempt to make the desired object disgusting is the expression of the struggle against the forbidden impulses. However, the forbidden impulse was victorious and he becomes a match-maker, “I saw that from his very first glance her eyes shone with peculiar brilliancy, and apparently as a consequence of my jealousy there passed between him and her something like an electrical shock, calling forth something like a uniformity in the expression of their eyes and smiles. An unknown something forces him to act, apparently against his own interests."
"I remember that moment especially because at that moment I might have refrained from inviting him to call again, and if I had, the trouble would not have happened.... ‘Do not think for an instant that I am jealous of you,’ said I, mentally, to her,’ or that I am afraid of you,’ said I, mentally, to him, and I invited him to come some evening and bring his fiddle and play with my wife."
The unconscious had triumphed. The homosexual creates his wife’s infidelity first in his fantasy (the first ten years of Pozdnuishef’s jealousy) and then in reality (in the eleventh year), and his sexual affect is expressed as this jealousy. Such a hypertrophied jealousy is almost a certain sign of unconscious homosexuality. In the corollary of this, in the case of the passive homosexual, who desires the female role, the feeling of jealousy may be entirely absent, as in one of my cases. For several years after his marriage, the husband slept with a bachelor friend of his while his young wife slept in another bed close by. Their living conditions did not require such a degree of hospitality.
In another of my cases an active homosexual who did not recognize his true nature carried his jealousy to an insane extreme. This man, who was quite advanced in years, turned his home into a living hell. He suspected his wife of infidelity, and often involved his children, some of whom were still in their teens, in the ugly, embittered scenes, speaking of his suspicions as proved facts. Accusations, leaving home, attempts at murder—all were steeped in tremendous affectivity. But despite the fact that he fed his jealousy for more than twenty years by every possible suspicion, he never made any effort to convince himself of their correctness. He needed the impassioned state; he toyed with pictures of infidelity in his fantasy; he rehearsed the scenes in his thoughts; and he would have nothing of the truth, which might endanger his jealousy, the representative of his homosexual passion.
The chief protagonist of the Kreutzer Sonata played in the same way with the affects of attraction and repulsion, which terminated in catastrophe.
Pozdnuishef knew very well that it was “inevitable that this man should please her, and more than that, that he should get a complete ascendancy over her, without the least hesitation conquer, overwhelm, fascinate, enchain, and do with her whatever he willed. I could not help seeing that, and I suffered awfully. But in spite of this, or possibly in consequence of it, some force, against my will, compelled me to be especially polite and even affectionate to him.... In order not to yield to my desire to kill him on the spot, I had to be friendly toward him."
He again invites the hated seducer to come for an evening of music with his wife, even though “all know that … especially by music, the largest part of the adultery committed in the ranks of our society is committed."
"I wanted to heap abuses on him, to drive him away; but I felt it was my duty to be friendly and affectionate to him again, and so I was. I pretended that I approved of everything, and once more I felt that strange impulse which compelled me to treat him with a friendliness proportioned to the torment which his presence caused me."
Pozdnuishef (and Tolstoy as well) thus believes that the hostile impulses are his true feelings; he regards his endearments only as a cover. To us, however, it would seem more likely that the endearments expressed his true feelings and that the hostile sentiments were the cover. The feeling of hate for his wife, however, was genuine enough.
This chapter ends with the words, “I pressed his soft white hand with special affection.” And the next chapter begins with, “That whole day I did not speak to her—I could not. Her proximity produced in me such hatred of her that I feared for myself.” And when at night she came to visit him, “I began to fan my wrath to a greater heat, and to rejoice because it grew more and more intense in me… Having given free course to my madness I intoxicated myself with it, and I felt the impulse to do something extraordinary which should show the high-water mark of this madness of mine."
The secret feeling of the unconscious homosexual tries in vain to find its adequate expression. “Under the influence of music, it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I really do not understand, that I can do what I can’t do… Music excites and does not bring to any conclusion."
Pozdnuishef, who had already had the experience of finding the violinist at his home at an improper hour, forgets all his concern and unthinkingly goes off on a business trip. One night away from home, however, anxiety overtakes him, and forebodings of evil crowd his heart. “How could I have come away?” He feeds fuel to the flame of his jealousy, that he may abandon himself to it.
The description of his return to Moscow is one of the best in Russian literature. The affect intensifies and grows out of all proportion. In the onward rush of the night express, there is something mysterious, symbolic and impassioned. To produce its greatest effect, Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata should be read at night while riding in a train. Jealousy is the expression of a forbidden fantasy; the mental picture of an infidelity scene is a painful experience for the jealous individual, but this suffering is only the secondary perversion of a perverse passion.
"As soon as I took my scat, I had no longer any control over my imagination, which ceaselessly, with extraordinary vividness, began to bring up before me pictures kindling my jealousy; one after the other they arose and always to the same effect: what had taken place during my absence and how she had deceived me! I was on fire with indignation, wrath, and a peculiar sense of frenzy, caused by my humiliation, as I contemplated these pictures, and I could not tear myself away from them, could not help gazing at them, could not rub them out, could not help evoking them… A kind of devil, perfectly against my will, suggested and stimulated the most horrible suggestions."
The blind affect leads him with irresistible force to the inevitable end. He shifts the blame from himself to another, his wife. “If she had not yet done anything out of the way, but had it in mind to—and I know that she did—the case is still worse; it would be better to have it done with, so that I might know, so as to have this uncertainty settled.” In psychoanalysis, this is called rationalization, the use of false motives.
He comes home, late at night. The violinist is in the dining-room as his wife’s guest.” My self-pity vanished and in its place came a strange feeling of gladness that my torture was now at an end, that I could punish her, could get rid of her, that I could give free course to my wrath.” He flung himself down on the divan in his room and sobbed. “’I, an upright man … I, the son of my own parents … I, who have dreamed all my life of the delights of domestic happiness… I, a husband who has never been unfaithful to his wife!… And here she, the mother of five children, and she is embracing a musician because he has red lips!’ “
The red lips—he has already spoken of them before—these lips and the musician’s feminine behind have seduced him.
He turns into a beast. “I came into the state of a wild animal.” He throws open the door of the dining-room. “The very same madness which I had experienced a week before took possession of me. Once more I felt the necessity of destroying something, of using violence; once more I felt the ecstasy of madness and I yielded to it."
When assault and murder are substitute actions, replacing a sexual act, a knife or a revolver, depending on the sexual symbolism, will be the weapon used. Pozdniushef threw himself on his wife and then on the musician.
She seized his arm. “Her touch was repulsive to me and still more inflamed my anger. I was conscious of being in a perfect frenzy and that I ought to be terrible and I exulted in it.” There is a detailed description of the knifing and of the movement of the blade in the wound.
After he had inflicted the fatal wound on his wife, he went to his room, was overcome with drowsiness and went to sleep. The affect of murder, which replaced the affect of the sexual act, had likewise a sedative action. This is one of Tolstoy’s most wonderful intuitions.
He sees his wife in a dream. “I remember I dreamed that she and I were friends, that we had quarreled, but had made it up, and that some trifle stood in our way; but still we were friends.” As he drove the blade into her side, he realized that this was not the deed and this not the person he was really concerned with; he would have liked to recall to life the accidental victim. Her infidelity remained unproved.
Up to this point, the hero of the Kreutzer Sonata speaks in the first person singular. In the sequel, which was written a year later, Tolstoy takes the word himself. He presents the principles of his sexual credo: sexual love should not be practised. Sexual intercourse and marriage are sins. The highest ideal is complete abstinence and celibacy. He is even opposed to the having of children.
Such preaching can come only from one whose sexual life is a surrogate for those forbidden desires the indulgence of which is regarded as sinful, shameful and disgusting.
"We must understand that no aim that we consider worthy of man … is ever reached by means of union with the object of one’s love (whether with or without a marriage rite). On the contrary, being in love, and union with the beloved object, never makes it easier to gain any end worthy of man, but always -makes it more difficult…. But carnal love, marriage, is a serving of self … and consequently it is a fall, a sin."
In this sequel, Tolstoy is no longer a poet, but a law-giver. Over the head of Pozdnuishef towers the figure of Tolstoy; above Tolstoy is the shadow of another who preached to his disciples, “Leave thy wife and follow me."
"To seek to replace sexual love by the pure relationship of brother and sister"—is an error and leads into the shadow-world of deception.
[Translated by Dr. J. V. Coleman, Grasslands Hospital, Valhalla, N. Y. Published in The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. XXIV. No. 1, January 1937. All quotations used in this paper are from the translation of the Kreutzer Sonata published by Thomas Y. Crowell Co. in The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi.]
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- I have no one else to talk to about this... -- Nick, 22:04:19 03/26/08 Wed
Hello,
I'll try to keep this brief...but all of you know how difficult that can be.
My wife and I are 25 years old, and this October will be our sixth year together (a year and a half of that married).
Several months before our wedding date (we had a long engagement), I encouraged my wife to try and understand what might be lesbian or bisexual preferences. I wanted to make sure that we were starting our marriage honestly, and that I wouldn't find out at 40 that my wife was a lesbian.
She made several lesbian friends, went to lesbian clubs, read lesbian literature, etc...I supported her as long as she was faithful, and I trust that she has been.
After a few months of this "discovery", she decided that while she definitely was attracted to women, she was still attracted to me and that what we had satisfied her.
We got married, and things have been great until now.
I confronted her about some of her recent moodiness, and it came out that she is scared about the possibility of her being a full lesbian. Like our previous concerns, she doesn't want it to hit her at 40 when there might be children, a house, etc...
She says she feels a certain "emptiness", and that she doesn't know if having a woman in her life will change that. We've tried to fill this emptiness with church, volunteer activities, hobbies, etc...(please keep in mind that we were addressing her "emptiness", and not what we thought was lesbianism). She's seeing a therapist for anxiety/depression, and she's currently taking some medication. It isn't helping.
At this point, I feel it's important to give a brief description of our relationship. We really do seem like "soul mates", and everyone we know envies our chemistry. We are alike in so many ways, and I love her more now than I did six years ago. We have a very loving, understanding, and supportive relationship. Our lives are incredibly intertwined, and we've changed jobs, friends, etc...for each other.
So...right now, we're looking into finding a therapist who understands the situation and is impartial. I know that any "standard" therapist will try to "fix" her lesbian tendencies, while a standard "GLB" therapist will immediately push me out of the equation (I've spoken with several during the first "incident", and this happened universally).
We want to salvage our marriage, as we simply have a unique, one of a kind bond with each other.
However, neither of us have the tools to do so...and neither of us know if that is possible.
Does anyone have any advice?
Does anyone have any experience with situations like this that ended with the marriage intact?
Does anyone know of good techniques, practices, etc...that may save our marriage?
I'm a grown man, a former Marine, and a former martial arts instructor...and yet each day I feel like I'm inches away from sobbing like a child.
I need direction.
Please help.
(I'm willing to provide my email and phone number if someone may be able to help)
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- need some support -- sophie, 00:10:53 04/12/08 Sat
I could use some support tonight....
I'm living with my bi husband and we haven't made any final decisions about divorce. There was no deception in our relationship throughout our marriage until he had an 'emotional' affair with a man from work. I was told six months into it.
It's been another six months since then and I haven't been ready for a decision. He's not either. I'm not over the affair even though he stopped seeing the man. I work through it in my mind and the affair isn't even the issue. It's that he's bi.
Tonight he told me in the intimacy of a very honest conversation about sexuality, that masturbation is better than being with me. (or any other person) His reason? Because he "can finish". He's had erectile dysfunction throughout our marriage, and as we've gotten older it's worsened. Viagra doesn't seem to help. It's at the point where he experiences pretty strong performance anxiety every time we're together and isn't able to complete anything.
What he said tonight....I just felt crushed. I can't shake this feeling that I am not enough...that I am not good enough..that I am just really bad at sex...that I've had too many babies and am no longer what I used to be....that I am just not the right gender for him.
It just feels like crap and I need to vent.
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- My Marriage is Over -- Jeremy, 06:47:24 10/24/07 Wed
I feel like I need to tell this to someone and this seems the place to do it.
In September, my wife came out to me to tell me she was gay. I knew that she had struggled with same-sex attractions in the past and I could easily live her having bi-sexual feelings. I just never thought that she would be a full blown lesbian. She hasn't been seeing anyone. She hasn't even dated another woman. She just came to the realization for the previous months that she had absolutely no attraction to me, or any man, what so ever, but that she did to women.
We haven't been married long (it'll be 2 years in November) but I have built countless futures around this woman whom I love more than I thought possible to love another person. To know that she no longer can love me the same way; or even that she never did has shaken me the core of my being. I can't find purpose in life anymore, I just go through one day at a time with no clear goal in sight. Just go to work, come home, sleep (in a separate bedroom now) and repeat.
Since she came out to me, she has since come out to her family, my family and all of her friends. She also started to build a life that seems to actively exclude me. I know she had months to move through her mourning over our marriage before I did, but this still hurts almost as much as her not sharing my love in the first place.
How can I move on? We're in the process of filing of papers for a dissolution of marriage and I'm searching for my own apartment. But I'm always lonely and depressed. Even when I'm with other people. I fear that will get even worse when I'm living by myself. I can't afford counseling or medication of any kind. It seems I have to work through this alone, cold turkey-like. I just don't seem to have any where to turn.
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Replies:
- Re: My Marriage is Over -- Beamer, 07:47:42 10/24/07 Wed
- Re: My Marriage is Over -- p, 12:22:32 10/24/07 Wed
- Re: My Marriage is Over -- thefinitemonkey, 08:18:08 10/25/07 Thu
- An Update -- Jeremy (homeless), 04:52:50 11/14/07 Wed
- Re: My Marriage is Over -- Lewis, 11:49:01 12/02/07 Sun
- Update (For anyone interested) -- Jeremy (lonely still), 00:28:56 02/08/08 Fri
- How -- Jeremy (Hoping to Move On), 10:23:24 04/17/08 Thu
- Re: How -- jj, 20:00:56 04/17/08 Thu
- Re: How -- Beamer, 06:53:42 04/18/08 Fri
- Re: How -- Bob, 12:23:28 04/21/08 Mon
- I'm having a hard time -- Liz, 10:47:25 04/18/08 Fri
I divorced my husband last year because of his lack of interest in me sexually and emotionally. The last couple of weeks I've been weeping almost daily.
Those of you who have gone through this, how long does it take until you feel whole again.
I'm angry at myself for allowing the marriage to go on much to long.
I'm feeling such sadness and sometimes I don't feel I'll recover from it.
Any supportive words are appreciated.
Liz
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- need advice -- r, 23:51:01 04/06/08 Sun
i have been married to a man for 5 yrs, living together for 8year, we have 2 beautiful daughters. Mid last year i noticed changes in my husband, subtle but there. We had always communicated so openly, as he travelled alot we talked for hours most nights and just loved each other and our family - it was the most important thing to both of us. As i said I noticed changes and after weeks of arguments he finally admitted to having had an affair with another man he met on the internet. he promised it was over and these feelings he had for men were insignificant compared to what he felt for me. And I beleived him. For a couple of months it seemed like we were back on track - and then i caught him on a gay chat room.We had a hugr argument over this and he asked me to help him - I got him a therapist. We still werent back to the couple we were but I was hoping that would change. That was January and he promised he had done nothing since and was working on getting back to us. I asked if he was coming back home at the end of his work contract to us, as in the time he was in our home he told me he loved me and was here for me( i assumed finally our lives were going to go back to as normal as they could be ) and then said he doesnt know, he is still trying to sort his head out. I told him to make a choice - he choose to leave but still felt that we would be together again he just needed more time to process everthing that had happened in the past months - I found out this weekend that not only has be been on chat rooms but he has been having sexual encounters with other men and seeing some men more than once. He works away from home so this has been easy for him to cover. He now tells me that he still wants his marriage and his family but this is the only way he can get back to us and the reason he wasnt able to tell me all of this is that I flip out about it - wouldnt anyone ?? He wont admit that he is gay - he tells me that there is alot of grey area where sexuality is concerned. I get all this and I also know my marriage is over - you dont love a person and disrepect them so totally - but how do you move on and find your place again. How do you ever trust again ? How do I tell my daughters about this when the time comes ? I have so many questions I want answered for myself and from my husband. When I ask him a question he just gets defensive - when will it not matter to me anymore ?? I am seeing a wonderful therapist but I dont think anyone else can possibly understand unless it has happened to you too. Your thoughts and advice would be appreciated
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- Another thing -- Domino (oops), 23:26:06 04/05/08 Sat
Well, every day I find out something else. I posted just ethe other day that I didnt think my husband engaged in gay porn. And I finally just came out and asked. And he said yes. He said he looks at all types of porn, but it doesn't mean he is gay. He said he still does it sometimes and will likely continue to. He says it is for the shock value. I truly do love this man. We have a close connection, which has always been more as friends than husband and wife - lacked intimacy. He was verbally abusive, blah, blah, I've said all this before. I think he is confused with himself and I know I am confused about him. I don't know what to do to help him and in the meantime feel I am losing myself. What else is out there that I haven't learned?
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- Is my husband gay? -- Mashel, 15:47:06 03/25/08 Tue
Hello
My husband has been surfing numerous gay sites for months. He is still sexually interested in me, although he would like to have more "wild sex" and things that include anal-anything for him.
I confronted him about the sites, and he tells me he is not gay, he just wants to compare his penis size, that the spam e-mails he gets make him feel inadequate so he just wants to compare.
I am lost. Any help?????
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- One more thing -- domino, 23:29:24 04/03/08 Thu
I'm adding to my other post. The 4 month relationship took place 20 years ago - and I don't believe he has ever cheated on me since then. Nor have I ever found any evidence that he has engaged in any gay porn, cell phone stuff, email, or any evidence at all. The primary things that make me question are the 4 month relationship, and the manner in which he has treated me. I could never do anything right - verbally abusive - and not interested in sex. Criticized my body, etc. I feel guilty even thinking he could be bisexual or gay, and yet...it's still there.
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- Is this a sign of a gay husband -- Kaylee (Confused), 18:49:59 04/02/08 Wed
A friend is in fear that her husband may be gay, on his cell phone she found that he had called and interacted with some kind of gay phone sex line I guess one that you can leave messages for each other. When she confronted him he had tears in his eyes & this was the first time she ever saw tears in his eyes in their entire marriage. He claims he is not gay and was just having fun. He is likely gay or not? I forgot to add that their sex life has been lifeless for many years.
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