it’s been a while since i’ve really written because i simply have not had the energy to write my fingers like my heart paralysed it’s been nearly a year since i really started thinking about it coming out telling her the woman who has given me her life given life to our children sacrificed herself so i could succeed while i secretly sacrificed myself all of who i am on the altar of wife family this straight life i have created and then following depression suicidal thoughts almost choosing the pine tree i told her hiroshima nagasaki tchernobyl fukushima complete total meltdown her me us destroyed annihilated 4 months later suspended animation feigned equilibrium her dangerous fragility has closed my closet doors each of us pretending the giant faggot elephant can’t be seen ---------- Post added 26th Jan 2016 at 03:24 PM ---------- i've read a lot on here about how each of us has the *right* to be happy and to be "who we truly are." On the flip side I've read a lot on the straight spouse network about how when we come out we completely destroy our straight spouses and many of them never get over the lies, the betrayal, infidelity and the feeling that their lives were a farce. So this is my struggle. Minute by minute. It dominates my thoughts. What RIGHT do I have to destroy my wife's life for *my* "happiness" ? What about *her* right happiness ? What about *my* responsibility to love her and take care of her and grow old together like I promised I would even before we got married? What fucking RIGHT do I have to take that away from her? I swear to God if there were a treatment, a pill, an injection to be straight I'd take it a hundred times a day. I hate this. I hate myself. I hate the pain I have and am causing her.
Hi TAXODIUM, I can relate so much. I think it's not at all uncommon to end up back in the closet after the first coming out. It happened to me too, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Please know that you have bravely taken the first few important steps forward, and set something in motion that most likely was inevitable in any case. You will feel the forward motion again, and things will get better. Sacrificing oneself is only possible for a certain amount of time, I think, before the heart wakes up and begins to talk us out of it. Keep posting here on EC, reach out to us or others in your life that you trust, whenever you need to. And to add a thought: isn't genuine happiness what we're wishing for? We wish genuine happiness for our spouse and for ourselves. We want to be able to make others feel genuinely happy. Is that really possible when we compromise a part of ourselves? While we hide that part away, or tweak it a little bit?
Thanks, Sorrel. I am very lucky to have found this place but also to have several close friends who are in this situation or who have gone through it. They quite literally save my life at least once a week.
Coming out is a journey and it's not a simple journey down a nice, straight, even road. Some days you will feel more positive and gain a bit of momentum and then you will have days when everything grinds to a halt or you hit reverse. It's very hard, but it's also very normal. Your wife does have a right to happiness, of course, but you don't make her happy by denying yourself or pretending to be someone else. On the surface it may appear that everything is okay and you are both content, but it's really not healthy to maintain that deception -- to each other. Happiness is a two way street when you are in a relationship/marriage and real happiness only comes from complete honesty. The thought of hurting someone who has given you so much is painful and distressing and nobody in their right mind would suggest otherwise, but sometimes we have to ask ourselves if it's better to hurt someone honestly than deceive them with a lie. No easy decisions, but you are doing the right thing by talking about it. Don't struggle on with it alone.
I definitely agree that the happiness you can provide is not gonna come from a genuine place. Over time it just gets harder to maintain. Besides how can we really make someone else so happy if we are slowly dying inside? I get accused all the time of fucking my ex over in ever possible way. I do feel guilty for hurting her, but our relationship wasn't the grand love affair she seems to romanticize it as. I knew all the feelings I had inside, I knew that aside from my sexuality, things just weren't clicking anymore. And in the end, it was realizing that I cannot continue in this relationship. I cannot grow older and look back in regret, the life I denied myself of.
I'm in a 48 year marriage to a woman I truly love and will never leave. She has known I'm gay for over 10 years, but, wants me to be gay celibate. It turns out I'm all celibate. I've recentlt restarted therapy because I'm so lonely and depressed and my new therapist has given me a new vision to encourage me to find a support group. I've started to be more bold and am going to my first group soon. I hope to find a way to live my str8 false facade life with an injection of a once a month social time with like minded me.
manic post c’est un des ces jours when everything dans ma tête is running together comme les carrefours les intersections d’une autoroute and all the cars are swerving pour éviter les unes les autres and all i can think about c’est de m’enfuir de m’échapper to get the fuck out run cours run aussi vite que je peux because je me sens coincé i can’t breathe je suffoque dans le cellophane like a fish dans un aquarium je nage in circles around and around around je vois l’extérieur mais if i jump i’ll die