No worries about the knucklehead. I am going to leave djtharm's comments stand as it is for it speaks volumes of him right there.
You're doing really well here by listening to advice and try to walk your own journey while your W figures out her chit. Like I said previously, people do fall in various places on the sexuality spectrum. I've seen many situations where men experimented with men yet they married women; vice versa with women.
It is not necessarily the death knell of your marriage! Try to view it as a speed bump or a wrinkle in your marriage. Treat it as such.
I don't want to hijack, so essjay, if you'd rather me not post here, just let me know. I have my own thread, too, in the infidelity forum.
25yrs, my WW never mentioned being attracted to women before this. She expressed attraction to male actors and athletes, though. I think she would have exercised boundaries with male co-workers who came onto her, but I believe in this case, she didn't think she needed to, since the co-worker was a woman.
Okay but, without sounding abrupt, why does that matter? I mean, what I said applies to you in my opinion. In other words, a wife suddenly telling her h that she is "now" a lesbian, without ever showing signs of it before, deserves to have her words scrutinized and doubted. (The phrase "believe nothing they say and half of that they do" is tripled....) Don't tell HER that of course!
I just have a hard time believing all her feelings for you and men in general, are gone. However, there's got to be something going on in her life AND OR the marriage that you can explore.
Find your role in this and realize that it's empowering to learn that you played role in the marital crisis, b/c it gives you some direction! It can be the focus for your efforts b/c you can only change you.
Why treat this differently than if it were an affair with a man?
I'm asking b/c I'm not sure there is a reason to, but again, I'm not sure.
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
Okay but, without sounding abrupt, why does that matter? I mean, what I said applies to you in my opinion. In other words, a wife suddenly telling her h that she is "now" a lesbian, without ever showing signs of it before, deserves to have her words scrutinized and doubted. (The phrase "believe nothing they say and half of that they do" is tripled....) Don't tell HER that of course!
I just have a hard time believing all her feelings for you and men in general, are gone. However, there's got to be something going on in her life AND OR the marriage that you can explore.
Find your role in this and realize that it's empowering to learn that you played role in the marital crisis, b/c it gives you some direction! It can be the focus for your efforts b/c you can only change you.
Why treat this differently than if it were an affair with a man?
I'm asking b/c I'm not sure there is a reason to, but again, I'm not sure.[/color]
I agree with you. It doesn't make any sense. I'm treating it like a regular affair, and I hope that it ends within six months and that she comes back remorseful and shocked at herself.
M 16 T 17 W moved in w/ AP (OW) 5/14 ILYBNIL 5/14 A discovered 6/14 D papers served via USPS 8/14 Filed my response 9/14 D final 5/15...
I'm gonna bet that dhartm has an LGBT very close to him and this is too close for comfort....
Dhartm,
What gives you the right to pass judgement on others? It's people that hate, like you, that cause many gays to hide in shame. Sometimes they hide so well that they get married just to hide their true selves from their own family (like my aunt did). It's heartbreaking. I'm wondering how you'd handle it if your own child came out? Would you take away your love?
Any God capable of designing and building the intricate workings of our universe would surely not be so small and petty as to judge a person for who they loved. Why would you dare to put a limit on the breadth of God's compassion?
Just wondering, but how is it that you know those "bi-curious" sites so well? The last time I heard an anti gay rant like that, it was delivered by a classmate that came out of the closet five years later....
What gives you the right to pass judgement on others? It's people that hate, like you, that cause many gays to hide in shame. Sometimes they hide so well that they get married just to hide their true selves from their own family (like my aunt did).
That's the point of that kind of speech, though. It's precisely to make a given demographic feel shame. It's precisely to make them want to hide. To keep them out of sight of the speaker, so that the speaker doesn't need to accept them. It's about delegitimizing people that the speaker finds to be somehow inconvenient.
This kind of thing isn't an accident, and to see it crop up in a space filled with hurting individuals in need of a safe space is really quite disappointing.
essjay, there's a lot of really good advice here for you, and I'm really glad to see you embrace it. I can only imagine the confusion, hurt, and shock that you're going through.
Whether these feelings are new for your wife, or she has been hiding and burying them for many years now, please know that your wife is also feeling confused, hurt, and probably shocked as well. We don't live in a world that looks kindly upon homosexuality, and things are even bleaker for bisexuals. If your wife is truly exploring her wider sexuality for the first time, she is going to need support and understanding.
You're not yet ready or able to supply that support, and your wife is not yet ready to ask for it. Take this time to find a new personal equilibrium, and work on yourself. Heal and stabilize, and do all of that good DB stuff. And yes, while you should definitely treat your wife's engagement with this OW the same as you would any other infidelity in your marriage (and good on you for having the wherewithal to recognize that!), be prepared to dish out some extra compassion once you are capable.
At some point all of us LBS have to sit down and take stock of our situations. Every one of us will, eventually, reach a point where we have to decide whether we love our spouses more than we love our marriages. If your wife is a lesbian who has been buried in shame and hiding from herself all these years, then I hope you have nothing but the utmost sympathy and compassion for her, and choose to love her over your marriage to her. The odds are in favour, though, of this being one facet in your wife's complex sexuality finally asserting itself, and once she has explored it and realized that relationships are relationships regardless of the sex of the people you have them with, and that women can disappoint her just as badly as men can, then she'll be in a very difficult place, I think.
That's when she'll need your support. She'll not only have the guilt and shame of the affair to contend with, but also the same imposed on her by the dhartms of the world. That's shame she probably internalized a long time ago, and it's going to rebound on your wife with a vengeance if/when her relationship with OW falls apart.
Get yourself into a place where you can be the man who doesn't disappoint her at that time.
Me: 31 W: 31 T: 10 years CL: 7 years IDLY: 01/13 Sep: 07/13 I Moved out: 10/13 W Currently seeing OM Pets, but No Children
Me: 34 W:33 T: 10 M: 6 S: 6 D: 5 BD: 5/14 Still together(ish) Not giving up: 7/14 D talk has slowed, a lot. Gradually working on things together. Still separate bedrooms. Slow and Steady wins the race.
Friday Night Evening spent at home – quality time with eldest daughter. Asks where’s mum? – I said out with a friend, I’m not lying to my kids anymore covering for her. With both looked at each other knowing what ‘out with a friend’ meant – spending the night with OW. Even daughter is saying that W is in MLC and is being ridiculous. If she has any guilt, turmoil, fog or depression we certainly don’t see it at home, does she not know/realise what she is doing is wrong and what it’s doing to our family?
Saturday She arrives back home as if she has just come back from work and it’s a “normal” day at home with her family, as if nothing out of the ordinary routine had happened. Nice afternoon with D's boyfriend at football. Saturday night I walked out of lounge as she was constantly on her phone and I suspected that she was on the website again. She said she was on Facebook, but, that she was indeed on the site earlier but only to terminate her membership of it. I said great, and that I was pleased and pleased for her. She said I’m not doing for you I’m doing it for me. Actions speak louder than words I know so we’ll see.
Sunday I was out gardening and doing things around the house all day, which i'm really begining to enjoy. Noticeable that she came out to talk to me a few times. “ I can see you’ve done that, good job etc” Don’t know who called who but MIL was on phone. I was out in garden and W came out with phone saying MIL wants to talk to me. MIL told me that she is still trying to come to terms with this. She has told W to go back to me and work on the marriage. Even told her to go and get some help from Doctor or someone!. All of which W expected tbh. Not going to make her do any of those things. We had a family dinner that evening with eldest daughter and her boyfriend, strained –W had a little too much wine and it showed occasionally. I helped and offered to help as much as I could, even made her laugh with me with some comments.
All in all a nice day -apart from the elephant in the room...
Ages: Me 58 Wife 50 Together: 27 years M25 D24 D21 Bomb Droppped 21 June 2014
When i'm out in the garden in GAL mode doing my own thing - she comes out to me to talk/ask/show me something;
She makes us both a nice lunch and we sit together - we'll not too close! - and talk and chat.
She's cooking evening meal - i offer to help and indeed do, (one of my 180's) we end up laughing and joking in the kitchen.
Brick wall is still there though. When she realises that we are having fun it's almost as if she conciously reminds herself to stop and the ice queen returns. No warmth, no eye contact and body language gives away that she's not getting too close - physically or emotionally.
She asked me what her mother had said to me on the phone, was she helping, being helpful? I said well i think that is between you're mother and me really. I heard a big sigh as i walked out of the kitchen...
I walked back into the kitchen to see her on her phone; she turned to me like a caged animal ready to pounce - she was just waiting for me to say something phone related and we would have had an arguement there and then. I didn't say anything, thankfully and the situation was diffused.
I'm learning..
Last edited by essjay; 09/09/1412:59 PM.
Ages: Me 58 Wife 50 Together: 27 years M25 D24 D21 Bomb Droppped 21 June 2014
I'd vote don't engage w/ MIL about it. Just tell her that it's W's life to live and that you're not giving up on her, but you aren't going to try and coerce anything out of her.
Keep up the GAL, expect nothing.
Me: 34 W:33 T: 10 M: 6 S: 6 D: 5 BD: 5/14 Still together(ish) Not giving up: 7/14 D talk has slowed, a lot. Gradually working on things together. Still separate bedrooms. Slow and Steady wins the race.
