Guilt, regret, shame - how does one get over it?

First, you have to be honest with yourself. Then, you have to forgive yourself. Only then, through honesty and courage, the healing will begin. Time heals.

 

Hi UKGuy

Whilst it’s not possible for me to go through your mind of what lead you to cheat with other guys perhaps I can make some logical guesses based on the fact you are still with your wife. For now I will assume cheating was confined to sex rather than a full blown love affair.

• You started to discover after you were married that you had feelings for other guys but were unsure of the extent. You managed with porn for a while but in the end you just had to know what it was like to have sex with a guy, this caused you immense mental anguish.
• You loved your wife, and possibly family, at the time and presumably still do and did not want to get divorced and then try gay sex only to discover it was not for you and was just a passing curiosity. You would have then ruined your marriage and at least 2 life’s for nothing and would have regretted this experiment for the rest of your life.
• Faced with the impossible situation of having primal urges to be with a guy on one hand and the desire to keep the marriage alive and not hurt your wife on the other you made the logical decision to try just the 1 experiment to find out for sure. You made a pact with yourself that once you had resolved the question in your mind you would come clean to the wife. Before this could happen you had to try a few more experiments just to be sure and it was at that point you were found out.​

If the events played out as hypothesised above then from a certain perspective although you cheated you did it with the best intentions of not wanting to cause your wife more pain than necessary.

If the experimenting went beyond sex, then that’s more difficult to justify. I hope I have given you food for thought that will perhaps ease some of the pain.

For what it’s worth I completely understand the dilemma. For me not knowing what sex is like with a guy nearly killed me, I became very depressed about it especially since it came at a time when my dad was dying from cancer and my own health was failing because of heart, blood, mental problems, and 3 lots of shoulder surgery. I had reached the point where I became suicidal and eventually came out to my wife who said she would prefer a gay husband to a dead husband. Had I not been so ill it’s possible I may have acted as above but would have justified as described.

Sale Gay Guy

 

Fine i'll be the asshole who asks. Are you ashamed that you cheated or ashamed that you got caught? Because from your posts it sounds like the latter concidering you said you have done it "more recently" and you are "tired of the deceit".

It sounds to me like the marrage isn't fufilling you and at some level you want out but you are scared to upset the status quoe that you have had for years.

I know i'm being blunt as a hammer and I could be wrong but from your posts here that's the impression I get.

 

Guilt, regret and shame are natural consequences when we do something that is against our basic view of right and wrong. However, we are human and we do make mistakes. But, the important thing is that we CANNOT stay stuck in guilt, regret and shame. We MUST move on, otherwise it means that we are stuck in the past. Try as we might, we cannot change the past. We can, however, learn from it, try to understand it and move on with our lives.

 

ukguy, I guess I'm going to blunt as well:

Why are you trying to salvage your marriage when you are 1) gay, 2) not getting along, and 3) are actively cheating and falling for someone else?

You are hurting her and yourself.
I was in a relationship with a guy for 5 years and found out he cheated on me. I never forgave him. It's been 6 years since then and I still can't forgive him. It's the ultimate insult, your actions say she isn't good enough/isn't meeting your needs.
In this case, you are in the wrong and you should feel guilty.
I really think you need to sit down with her and decide if you want to go your separate ways after such a blatant violation of trust; not once, but twice.

 

Not trying to be judgmental since I am not in your shoes, but it doesn't sound like you need to be putting your marriage on a better footing, but instead discussing how the two of you can reach an amicable separation and divorce. You aren't being either emotionally or physically faithful to your wife, so there is little there to salvage. You can try to work with a marriage counselor, but if you are really gay, and you seem to be saying you are, there probably isn't much point in trying to glue a broken relationship based on mismatched orientations back together again, because the mismatch will still be there. It is only fair to free her to find someone who can care for her emotional and physical needs, while you move on to find someone to take care of yours. :icon_sad:

 

Hi ukguy

If you can't forgive yourself you can't expect your wife to do that either. You are hoping your wife will say it's ok, so that you can feel it's ok. The reality is she will probably never say it was or is ok. You need to decide what YOU need and you need to be ok with it, then you can begin to repair this relationship with your wife - as her husband or STBXH.
Wishing you all the best.

 

Self esteem always comes from doing what we believe to be right. Guilt always comes from doing what we believe to be wrong. Step One is to stop cheating. Right now. For good. If you want to keep your marriage you don't have the option to cheat. Tell your wife that you are sorry and that you will be a good husband to her. Focus on her needs and forget about yourself. If you do this she will forgive you and your guilt will dissipate. But you have to continue to do what you believe is right. You know what that is.

 

All I can offer is an opinion, not knowing the details of the situation (to my mind opinions are not worth much without some backing in experience, which I lack for this particular situation), but I will venture one anyway: No, I don't think such a relationship can survive this, there are way too many opportunities for jealousy, conflict and resentment.

For what it's worth, if you agree with what I said above, you are going to have to have another hard conversation...

 

I'm bi, not gay, so my situation is probably different.

I, too, experienced the shame and guilt of cheating on my wife (with a guy). It didn't bother me that I had sex with a guy. I rather liked it. It didn't bother my wife that I was bi. It bothered her that (a) I cheated and (b) never told her I was bi.

There were a lot of other issues in my marriage that needed to be addressed before we could talk about staying together and, indeed, we came very close to divorcing. But a couple of therapists and a couple of marriage counselors later we are in a great place.

Do I still think about guys? Yes. Do I sometimes have sex with my wife and fantasize that I'm having sex with a guy? Yes. But the emotional connection that was once missing from our marriage has been re-established.

There are Yahoo groups that you can join that talk about keeping mix orientation marriages together. It can be done but there's a lot of heavy lifting involved.

 

Just from what I've seen, and I've never married, it appears that men who are under a certain age are less able to pull it off because they want to turn the corner while men who are over a certain age might be able to pull it off if "menopause" has occurred for both parties and there is an agreement for the open relationship without excessive alley cat behavior. However, there is no hard and fast rule. I know of a guy who bailed in his late 20s, who married because of a pregnancy during college, who later went back to his wife. I know guys who, after raising their kids, have in fact left their wives. Also, as to the diving line in age, there's no hard and fast number, either.

 

You know, I'll be the bad guy. I am not only not ashamed that I have a wonderful,good looking male lover of 30 years, the only reason I don't rent a billboard and tell everyone is my lover. He is from a rural area and his parents are still alive. My wife (who doesn't know I am bi) likes my lover so much that if we could banish his witch wife he could move into our bed. I am proud he has been my lover. Cheating is just a word made up by the organized church and many of their priests are raping little boys.

Rob
Seaview

 

That is what your wife wants. Is it what you want? I wouldn't want to live under those conditions. EC is about helping people leave the closet.

 

The job and the fact I am in the deep South would mean unemployment, probably for ever. Frankly I have no guilt, I have never had phone sex, sex in a park, or in the car, never been sucked off by a stranger. Jay and I have been best friends and monogamist for 30 years. Ans we both truly love our wives. I am prod of the relationship as my wife is wonderful and Jay is too. Jay (who is terribly shy) is my only reason not to.

But believe me, where we live, we would both be fired, no questions asked. It is southwest Georgia.

By the way, my wife is old fashioned Catholic who had never seen a penis until our wedding night. She values a family.

---------- Post added 30th Nov 2013 at 04:03 AM ----------

I felt that guilt and shame from age ten to age 35. I also know what still happens to out of the closet gays here. I have accepted what I am. I am not guilty or ashamed. But I am not a fool either. I don't need to make a statement to feel good because I already do. But I felt that torment for years, ate anti-depressants like m & m's and wished I had not been born. But that is over for me that God.

 

No, and it never will. Your orientation is what it is. It may drift a bit, but you will always be something other than completely heterosexual. Our only choice in these matters relates to whether or not we can live with the mismatch between internal feelings and external actions...