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Starting my life over again

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by Landgirl, Jun 2, 2016.

  1. Landgirl

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    Hi everybody! Thanks very much for all your welcome messages. I've been reading threads on here for over a year now, but have finally joined up and begun posting.

    It seems odd that I didn't feel like posting when I had so many questions I needed answers to, and am only doing it now when I am further down the line. I've no idea why that is, but reading your stories helped give me the impetus to get things moving after being stuck for so long.

    I am 55 years old, and last year I walked out of a 32-year marriage, after spending the last 20 years of it questioning whether I was gay. Why did I stay for so long? A whole variety of reasons: -

    I never felt loved by my parents, and leaving the one person I knew loved me deeply seemed both stupid and frightening, like going back to my childhood.

    My husband is a really decent guy, and it seemed wrong to leave someone like that. Plus I knew he had his own emotional issues arising from his own childhood, when he was sent to boarding school at the age of 6. He had a nervous breakdown 3 years before I left, and I knew he would react very badly to a split.

    We have a son with Asperger's Syndrome who is now grown up, and has remained with my husband in the family home, because he doesn't handle change at all well. I knew that I would not have been able to cope as a single parent to a child with special needs, and it didn't seem fair to expect my husband to, either.

    In 2010 my mother died suddenly, and the following year I lost my job, and saw all 4 of my aunts diagnosed with cancer. Over the next 2 years they all died, and my husband had a breakdown. When he was sufficiently well, and had space to focus on myself for a change, I had a breakdown of my own, and entered therapy to deal with the effects all these losses had had on me. After a year of seeing the therapist, I finally felt secure enough to raise another topic, namely was I gay? This had come up twice before in previous therapies, and each time the therapist had brushed it aside. However, this was in the 1990s, when lots of unregistered therapists were able to practice, and I was unlucky in my choices, with one in particular giving me specific advice for which she would be struck off nowadays. My current therapist was horrified when I told her what had happened, which had basically resulted in me spending 20 years in limbo not knowing what to think.

    A couple of months later I came out to my husband, and whilst he was initially sympathetic, we had several months of trying to come up with a way to keep our marriage alive, before deciding that our needs were incompatible. I moved out into a flat last November, and am still getting used to being on my own.

    The hardest thing is not being able to visit our son whenever I want (his anxiety issues mean that it will be a while before he feels able to come and visit me in my new home), because my husband refuses to see or speak to me. Pretending I don't exist, and attempting to block out what has happened by frantic socialising outside of work, are the only ways he can cope with what has happened, and they are not sustainable long term. I think he is heading for another breakdown.

    When I first moved out, all the effort of gathering sufficient strength to leave, find somewhere to go and accomplish the move, whilst trying to explain everything to my son and keep things as calm as possible for his sake, meant I existed until Christmas in a state of numbness, neither devastated by loss or relieved at being out of my marriage. It was only in the New Year, when I also lost my best friend to cancer, that reality hit me and I experienced deep grief, and prolonged episodes of crying and depression.

    The problems with my husband are ongoing, but in other areas I feel I am slowly beginning to move forward bit by bit. I am fully out at work, and although my new job pays only a fraction of the last one, the support of all 80 of my colleagues has been invaluable. I have started dating a woman I met online, and although this experience is fraught with its own issues (the subject for my next thread, perhaps?), for the first time in ages I can envisage some hope for the future.
     
  2. baristajedi

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    Hi Landgirl, first, again, welcome to EC!

    Thanks so much for sharing your story. You are so brave and strong. The changes and risks you took, you inspire me. I'm so sorry for all the loss and struggle along the way.

    You are living your truth, I'm inspired by that.

    Warm welcome. I look forward to reading more of your posts!
     
    #2 baristajedi, Jun 2, 2016
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2016
  3. FalconBlueSky00

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    Wow you've had a really hard few years. As someone who's been hit all at once with a lot of loss and trials also in the last few years, my heart goes out to you. It's so wonderful that you've found such a supportive job! I hope the future will be kinder, and that you will find some closure soon.
     
  4. Landgirl

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    Thanks very much Baristajedi and Bunny45 for your kind messages. I will be off to work shortly. Working Saturdays is not very helpful when it comes to building a new social life!

    A lot of posters here have recommended joining meetup groups. I haven't found general interest-based meetup groups to be particularly helpful to me, and the LGBT meetup groups are concentrated in the big cities, and I live in a small village. I suppose I could join, but often I'm too tired in the evenings after work to be interested in driving for miles to get there.

    However, what I have found to be helpful is to join a choir. I don't know about other countries, but certainly in the UK there has been an explosion in the number of choirs being set up. They come in all forms - choirs that sing sacred music, world music, pop music, choirs that audition and compete, choirs that don't, single-sex and mixed sex, and so on. In most cases, you don't have to be an especially good singer either.

    Several lesbians I know belong to either an LGBT choir based in the city, or a local women's choir. I tried several choirs before settling into a mixed community choir just 10 minutes from where I live, and the person they assigned to help me on the first day turned out to be a lesbian who had held her civil partnership at the place where I work, so I felt instantly at home!
     
  5. baristajedi

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    This is great!!! You will get a lot of joining a community like that! For me, socialising and building a strong network of support have been so beneficial in my journey.