Her

The pain of having your partner go through this is excruciating. I don't think there's another thing I've done that was more painful than that. Especially considering the role you or I played in it. Her pain is real, authentic and has every justification.

However.... She would not die without you, as uncertain as that seems at the moment. People are resilient, they have to find the steam to move forward. I'm glad she's starting an anti-depressant, but disheartened that therapy isn't an option.

To a certain extent, I'm worried you can't be the one to save her from this. She might need to come to some consensus on what she wants from life and decide for herself what the reality looks like, if it involves an open marriage or not.

Life doesn't give us what we deserve. It's unjust. My therapist told me that coming out was one of the first truly selfish acts I did, but she didn't mean that in a shaming way. She meant it in an empowering way. I was acting for myself. I was advocating for what I wanted MY reality to look like. Both of you living a lie isn't justice either.

 

This is the absolute worst. I don't know how to get past it. It feels like in order to live my life I have to harm someone I love.

 

Like many of us who have come out later in life, you have been conditioned to be the caretaker, to put the needs of others ahead of your own. You have a very simple but yet very difficult choice in front of you. You can choose happiness or you can choose unhappiness. Your role as caretaker is what makes this a difficult decision.

If you choose happiness, then you must do things that might make you feel selfish and cause short-term pain in your wife as you allow her to grieve the end of her marriage. While extraordinarily painful for you both, this is a necessary step if you want to move forward on your journey of authenticity and rediscover the part of yourself that was so alive when you were with him. She will also find happiness again one day with a man who loves her fully as a woman.

If you choose unhappiness, then you remain on the current path of relieving your wife's immediate pain and putting her needs ahead of your own needs. Unfortunately, this is short term thinking. She can never be happy knowing that you are sacrificing yourself for her. Nor can she discover her authentic self and happiness. So in the long run you'll both be miserable and unhappy.

Do you want to keep on watching the same bad chapter of the movie over and over again, or do you want to skip to the next chapter?

 

Listen to SiennaFire. As always, he speaks wisdom.

You didn't destroy her. She is not destroyed. She is reeling from a fact she doesn't want to be true, but reality exists whether we want to believe in it or not. The truth sometimes hurts, but it is still the truth.

Her job now is to find the coping skills necessary to deal with it. That is not on you; that is on her. The anti-depressants might help her. And she really needs to work with a therapist. You can be supportive and loving and understanding, of course, but don't let your guilt and caretaker tendencies drag you down into an unhealthy codependent spiral. Much as you might want to, you can't save her. Only she can save herself. It is that way for all of us.

As SiennaFire so eloquently said, you have two doors in front of you right now. Which one you choose to walk through is completely up to you.

 

The antidepressants will hopefully help get to the point where she will be willing to go to the therapist. Sometimes the depression can be so deep that it is hard to make it to that office. There is much research about the benefits of a combination of talk therapy and drugs. Depending on which medicine it is, there will be a ramp up period and so you can't expect immediate results (unless it is a short lasting one and those results fade until the next pill is taken). Also, unfortunately sometimes the first med doesn't always work. It can be trial and error.
This must be very frightening for you. Are your children aware at all about her deep sadness? I can see how you feel leaving the house is an impossibility at this point. I get the sense from your posts that she has struggled with anxiety and depression in the past? Is there a therapist that she had a relationship with before? Perhaps you could ask for a house visit or two? Better than having her end up in the hospital....

I suspect she isn't comfortable sharing with her friends that you are gay? I wonder, though, if she could share with her friends that you cheated. Strangely enough, anger can be a great motivator to move forward. Right now, she is weighed down in total sadness. I am guessing that if she shared with a good friend or two that you cheated, she will find some external support that, right now, she doesn't see that she has. And this, too, might help her move forward.

 

Hi Taxodium, it sounds like a difficult situation. We talk a lot here about the problem of acceptence of being gay. And this sounds like the major challange for her. It's often the same when relationships ends, it's hard to accept and take in, and one of the partners sometimes mentally shuts it away. When she says that she just can't go to a therapist right now, my guess is that she can't go because then she (intuitively knows) has to accept (that you are gay and that the relationship might be over). She needs time, but she also needs to talk to someone. And preferably with someone else than you. I completely agree with amomwhoknows, anger is something good which can help her move on. It's sometimes hard to remember when the anger is directed at you. We try to dampen it. But she has the right to be angry. And at the same time, I definately don't think you are doing anything wrong. You are taking her seriously by telling her this.

 

SiennaFire, you write so beautifully, so kindly. You are very helpful. Thank you.

Taxodium, please be kind to yourself. Berating yourself will only make you feel worse. You can't help how you feel.

 

Taxodium, your wife is manipulating you. She's manipulating you and your emotions. I know the tactics very well and am intimately familiar with them. You need to put your foot down, even if you still love her, what she's doing to you is wrong. She knows she's manipulating you because it's getting you to comply, so long as you comply, the more she can have these meltdowns and continue to manipulate you. It's circular logic, many manipulative women utilize it to their advantage in a huge way-- she's your wife, so you may not see it, yet, but what's happening to you is serious abuse.

 

I read this and crumpled up inside. I am in this position. The anguish of hurting someone you are close to is terrible. Have kids with, have shared ups and downs with. How does one go forward?

 

I feel that you have reframed the options in a disempowering way. The question is do you want to be happy or do you want to be unhappy? I would think that most people would choose to be happy. I can image you thinking to yourself, “Yes Sienna, but…”. Please hear me out.

I must challenge your thought process of either sacrifice her or sacrifice you. I know it may appear that way to you right now. I know how difficult it can be to watch the woman you love be in tears because of your actions. While I did not enjoy that phase, I also realized that it was important to let her grieve so that we could move on with both of our lives. If you continue to think of this in terms of sacrifice, rather than as part of the healing process to get to happiness, you will probably stay stuck and won't get to where you need to be.

I also sense that part of the problem is that you continue to have some degree of internalized homophobia. You referred to yourself as a faggot in a demeaning way in this thread. My gut tells me your own internalized homophobia generates shame and guilt that makes it easy for you to choose to sacrifice yourself as punishment for being a faggot. Yet such atonement is not required if you can love yourself as a gay man. With love and acceptance you will find the strength to lead your wife through healing to happiness, so that you both can move on with your lives, rather than being stuck in purgatory.

Hopefully this gives you a different perspective on your choices. Both will be challenging and difficult, yet one path leads to happiness and the other despair.

 

First watch it with the anti-depressants. Sometimes, they can make things worst and meds may need to be changed. (Or make sure you understand the side effects for the beginning of taking them.) Also, if things are really terrible, she may need a short acting med to go along with the longer acting one, for times of deep panic.

She needs to tell someone. If not in real life, then on the internet. While perhaps not ideal, a website like Surviving Infidelity might be a place where she can find the support I think she needs desperately and to have reinforced that she has done nothing to be humiliated about. Also, chumplady and her supporters do a fabulous job "lifting up" people who have been cheated on, but are pretty harsh on the cheaters. I will tell you that on surviving infidelity, in particular, there are lots of really sad partners who are at the beginning stages of this. The good part is that there are also lots of "voices" encouraging the new posters that they will get through this. And that it isn't their fault.

I disagree with Benway. I don't think she is manipulative. I think she is in utter panic. From Taxodium's postings, it sounds like there are preexisting issues with depression/anxiety perhaps. She needs to get the help necessary to proceed. I am also not clear what Taxodium's vision of a future is. Was a MOM his goal originally, divorce, separation, etc? And then, equally important, is what is her vision? And is there an intersection where these visions meet. There very well might not be, and that means that one partner has to play the "bad guy" to force an action.

Taxodium, if divorce is your goal, perhaps it is time that you make an appointment with a counselor who helps couples transition through divorce and go by yourself. Get some suggestions about things like sleeping arrangements, family activities, attorney meetings etc. Your actions, while well intentioned, may be making it more difficult for her to see a pathway to the future that she deserves. I have no idea, but professionals can help you figure this out.

Do some reading on the experience of the leaver vs the left behind. Or the cheater vs the person cheated on. Try to get a sense of where people are, X months after discovery, to understand a typical timeline. She is likely going through the grief process similar to a death. But sometimes people get stuck and need help getting to the next step. It isn't always a linear process-- people sometimes move zig zag and revisit a stage. She may not be able to completely heal with you around. Complete healing may be years away and that is just the way it is.

Are there mechanical issues that are fueling her panic about being alone? Is she worried about money, custody, etc? With the help of a counselor, you may be able to work through some of these concerns rather quickly (or at least validate whether they are real worries or not).

 

TAXODIUM, my heart really goes out to you.

You are 4 months in. You don't know what will happen and you are fearful and scared, and don't want to be "selfish." And your wife isn't doing you any favors with her reactions, but hopefully it is just her going through grief stages and will lessen over time.

I understand the self-loathing and went through it too, and still it comes up. And the feeling responsible for every change in your spouse's mood (before and after they know).

It sux. Some people can exit immediately and gracefully and with the knowledge and blessing of their spouse. And for the rest of us there is this this middle ground of pain, fear, and self-loathing.

 

Hey man. I would echo the thoughts of some others who suggested that your wife really needs someone to talk to. She needs someone on her side in this. The Straight Spouse Network is one place to start.

You should also tell her that you understand she is angry and scared and it's very important to you that she gets support. But you can't be the one to provide it, because you are the cause of the problem. Tell her it's ok to talk to others and tell them what's going on. You don't want her to be alone with this.

In other words, help her to start helping herself.

Also, if there's any way to spend a bit less time together, it would be good for both of you. Can you get away for a night or two each week?

 

From the other side of the bed, from my experience - I could not heal while he was still there. I wanted him to be there, to hold me, to do all of those things. I felt exactly that way - I didn't do anything wrong, I didn't deserve it. It was so hard to see that he didn't do anything wrong either, and didn't deserve any of it either.

In my case, if I expressed those feelings - both the damn you! and the thank you for not leaving, it was not manipulative. It's the cycles of grief. There is so much grief involved in this. I didn't want him there, and I didn't want him to leave. I wanted things to be "normal", to be what I was used to. Obviously, that could not be the case. Even yesterday - more than a year after he came out and 11 months after he moved out - I still wondered, couldn't we just have been happy?

Here's the thing, though, until you stop blaming yourself for doing this to her, you're not going to get better. You cannot possibly be happy - in or out of a mixed orientation marriage - if you continue to blame yourself and take all that guilt. She feels weak - I totally get that - but I bet she's not. I bet she's stronger than either of you give her credit for; I found that out about myself. He was a caretaker, too - and I've had to buck up and take responsibility for things I should have taken care of years ago.

You've got to love yourself. You've got to take care of yourself. You've got to be selfish. That doesn't mean she won't hurt, because she definitely will. It also doesn't mean she won't hate you, but that's not a guarantee and that's on her, either way.

The right thing is not often the easiest thing. From my perspective, you did the right thing by telling her. She does need someone to talk to; I found the best support in a divorce/separation support group, but PFLAG might be an option or some other group for LGBT issues. Or even a depression/anxiety support group. It doesn't have to be one on one counseling and she wouldn't have to talk every time, but just to find other people who are struggling in similar, if not identical, situations - it can be a huge weight lifted. It helps to know you're not alone.

I wish you the best, and the best for her as well.

 

Taxodium,
I want to recommend an incredible book written by Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon. The title is "Urgings of the Heart" and you can find it on Amazon. The insight I got was life changing and benefited me tremendously. Before I can help others, I had to come to terms with the part of me that I had previously considered shameful. Embrace all that you are as God made you. I wish you the very best.

 

There is a difference between the normal sadness of loss, or grief, and depression. Depression is a medical condition that does not allow you to heal. I'm glad she's starting medication, but if you feel the need it's ok to strong arm her into therapy, a doctors office, whatever you need to do to get her help. I know you feel like you are the cause, but depression is a medical condition the same as if you needed your appendix removed. You did the right thing by being honest with yourself and her. If you want check out this TED Talks, it explains the difference is grief and depression very well.
https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share
I wish you and her healing and understanding.