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How do get past the fear of leaving?

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by LostInDaydreams, Nov 25, 2016.

  1. LostInDaydreams

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    How do you get past the fear of leaving your opposite sex partner, and the fear of messing everything up, and not being able to manage all the changes?

    I can't get past it. I keep trying to convince myself that my partner and I can continue as we are forever, and that it's all going to be OK. Sometimes I think that it's the only option.

    I think I know that's not the best solution and that it's not going to make me happy. We're not having sex at the moment, so I think a conversation might come up at some point.

    I just don't know what to do.

    Has anyone else felt like this? What pushed you to speak to your partner about it?
     
  2. Landgirl

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    What pushed me into acknowledging my sexuality, and starting the process which eventually led me to separate from my husband, was the death of a work colleague who wasn't much older than me (I was 54 at the time).

    We had been married for 32 years, and have one son who is now 30 and is on the autism spectrum. Since my mid 30s I had recognised that I was attracted to other women, and in retrospect I think I have always been gay but my family background and upbringing meant it had never occurred to me to consider it as a possibility.

    What pushed me to finally act was the fact that I felt very strongly that time was starting to run out, and it was now or never, that if I never did it, it would be a lasting regret that would haunt me on my deathbed. Since then, I have lost my best friend to pancreatic cancer at the age of 54, and two more work colleagues who were barely 60, and all this has simply emphasised to me that you only live once, and time would soon be running out in which to find another person and build a relationship with them.

    So it was a straightforward toss-up between staying and loathing myself for my lack of courage, or leaving and risking a future with no partner. I haven't found anybody yet, but I have a lot more self respect. I don't believe there is a single "soulmate" out there for each of us, that my husband was "the one". As my therapist pointed out, he met my needs then, but my needs have since changed.

    Sex between us was always an issue, with him wanting it much more frequently than me, and we had been sleeping in separate beds for some years. We should have addressed all this years ago, but both of us were too frightened to risk confrontation.
    Having a marriage in which there are no arguments is not the same thing as having a marriage that is happy.

    I don't know how old you are, so I don't know how helpful this will be. I don't know whether I would have been able to do it without the support of my therapist over the last two years, or if we had been experiencing financial difficulties.

    As a friend of mine said to me recently, "Since becoming what other people called selfish, I've had a much better time. If you don't look after yourself, who else is going to?"
     
  3. LostInDaydreams

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    Thank you for sharing, Landgirl. That's really helpful.

    This is sort of what's going around in my head. There's part of me that feels, if I stay with my partner, I might regret it in years to come, and that it's not really fair on him.

    On the other hand, I'm in late twenties, so I don't think I feel that time is running out in the same way you did. Part of me does think that there's no point in delaying the inevitable and wasting time, but I don't feel any pressure to do it soon. But it's scary, so I keep putting back telling my partner for various reasons, and waiting for a good time to do it.

    I find it hard to envision that being the reality of my life. It's such a huge change.