I came out to my husband about a month ago, he was really great and supportive at first. I have recently developed a anxiety problem and it all came out while I was in the middle of a "new medicine induced panic attack" and it was the first time I had ever even admitted it to myself. So I'm still navigating through all that means to me as well as what it's going to mean to my marriage. It's been a long hard month, both for my husband and myself. He has questions and I don't have answers. For him or myself. Lately, my husband has become quiet and barely speaks to me most days. My being gay wasn't the main cause of my anxiety when this all started, but is beginning to become the only damn issue in my marriage as far as he's conserned, when we've had problems for years. The other day he pretty much told me that it doesn't matter if we had other problems because now that I'm am gay it just pretty much trumps any other problems I tried to bring to his attention for years now. Which hurt because I really do love my husband and have driven myself sick with trying to keep my family together. He said he's trying to sift through all the truths and lies, and that he doesn't want to talk to me because he doesn't want to hurt me. I ended up having a panic attack over that one because. I didn't know I was gay and I never meant to lie. I never meant to hurt him in anyway, and I don't know what our next moves are yet, I'm just scared and don't know. I can understand why he's hurt and angry, but for the past month I've lost my identity around him. I'm no longer his wife of over a decade, I am no longer quirky or goofy or funny. I'm not the any thing other than gay. It is messing me up, I feel like I found a part of myself I never knew existed and each day since I am losing all the other parts of me. I realized the other day that, For years when something was wrong between us I would chase him down and beg him to talked to me so I could fix it. Eventually I would give up my stance in the argument and just go along with whatever he wanted because all I have ever wanted was to keep him happy and be a good wife and mother. I know that that is wrong now, but I didn't realize what I was doing until the other day. I have been making myself not chase after him. I need to focus on getting my attacks under control and I can't do that if I'm letting his emotions control mine. Which is when he started really kind of giving me attitude. Tomorrow we plan on having a big talk, I told him he needs to be honest even if it hurts me. That I don't know where we will go from here, but we only have two options. Either fix our marriage, (yes I know I am gay and being married to a man is not being true to my gay self, but I do still have lots of love for him) or end it because staying the way we are is no longer an option. I can't get better and still be living life exactly the same way as before this anxiety problem, now with the added dose of lesbianism on top of everything else. I guess this was more of a rant than asking for advice, but I don't have anyone else to talk to about this, so I'm open to anything, advice or personal stories whatever.... Thanks so much for listening. (*hug*)
(*hug*) Is having him go into counseling with you, an option? We are going thru very similar, we almost lost it all a few days ago, and like your husband, mine is blaming everything on the gayness and nothing at all on what his behavior has been like for a whole. It's strange, because up until I told my husband, our problems didn't seem "major". We had a fall out, almost exactly a week ago and it's like even things we didn't realize were problems were very big ones. But yet, it's all cause of what I told him and not at all his complete selfishness in every single aspect of his life. I told him we have to start counseling, we can't live like this. So hopefully we'll start somewhere soon. I know a lot on my part was not being completely honest, I wasn't even being honest with myself, so I don't know how I could have changed that before now. It's very much making me realize how hard I've been trying thru the years, without even realizing it, to make "this" go away. Self discovery is a real bitch. I really really hope your talk is productive and insightful in whichever way it needs to be and that maybe it answers questions, gives you the ability to realize more of yourself and your husband opens up to everything going on and wants to help make it better. I may be odd in thinking being gay doesn't prevent you from being in a happy hetero relationship, I mean you did fall in love with him at somepoint, right? Even tho you were gay, you still had feelings for him and started a life together. Color me naive but I think it's possible to.
