He Says He Cheated With Men Because He ‘Resented’ Me
Her husband cheated with men, but blames her for it. They tried reconciling and then she found out he was on cruising sites.
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Dear Chump Lady,
After 32 years of marriage my husband had an affair with another man 20 years his junior.
I found out on my own. Played detective. We decided on marriage counseling where I learned that he had resented me for the last 10 years. The therapist asked me what was going on in our marriage during the time of his affair. I felt as if I was being asked what part I played in the affair!
We decided to work on an “even better“ marriage.
Five months in, I thought we were doing great, communicating, holding hands, etc. I couldn’t help but feel something was still off. I looked at his phone and found he is using a cruising site called Sniffies. Basically a gay hookup site for men.
I haven’t let him know that I am aware of his new infidelity.
I’m thinking I should wait until the holidays are over. Why is it so hard to just tell him? I can’t tolerate being treated so undervalued and disrespected. I know I need to end things. Why do I still worry about his feelings? What is wrong with me? Where is my self love and respect?
Fellow Chump,
Heather
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Dear Heather,
END THINGS. Give yourself a new life for Christmas. The old one is shit.
After 32 years of marriage my husband had an affair with another man 20 years his junior.
Your husband didn’t discover he was into men after 32 years of marriage. And I sincerely doubt this was his first affair. Deceptive sexuality and double lives suck, whatever the flavor of chumpdom, but I encourage to check out the support site OurPath.org. Unknowingly being a beard is a special kind of pain. A pain that is overlaid with the weight of homophobia. Righteous chump grief and anger are often eclipsed by sympathy for the cheater — the pressures that keep someone in the closet, and the expected rejoicing at their newfound “authenticity.”
This frame ignores the fact that he used you.
If he argues that he couldn’t come out of the closet and divorce you honestly because of homophobia, consider that HE KNEW HE WAS ATTRACTED TO MEN. And he denied you that knowledge. Moreover, he chose to act on his attraction and conceal it from you. Which wasted your time, extracted your resources, and risked your health. Those are all moral choices. He may be a victim of a homophobic world, but he didn’t have to choose to victimize you.
Cheating is a character problem, not a sexual orientation problem.
Your husband seems perfectly content to stay in the closet, continue to use you, and BLAME you for his unethical behavior!
We decided on marriage counseling where I learned that he had resented me for the last 10 years.
Resentment doesn’t make his dick hard for men. Cataloguing your faults, real or imagined (aka “resentment”) is the PERMISSION he gives himself to abuse you.
Again, he has ethical choices on the decision tree to divorce you honestly and come out. He chose not to do that.
The therapist asked me what was going on in our marriage during the time of his affair.
Don’t pay the bill. If the therapist complains, ask her, “What was going on in this office that made me not pay my bill?” If she points out that whatever happened in her office has nothing to do with your ethical obligation to pay your bill, reply: “Exactly.”
I felt as if I was being asked what part I played in the affair!
You were. It’s standard RIC blameshifting.
We decided to work on an “even better“ marriage.
OMG, what kind of hopium are you smoking? He’s attracted to men and blaming you for his affair! There’s absolutely nothing to work with. Shame on that therapist!
I looked at his phone and found he is using a cruising site called Sniffies. Basically a gay hookup site for men.
It’s over.
Time for radical acceptance and self-care. Your marriage is over. See a lawyer, do not tell him, lock down the finances and get yourself tested for STIs.
I haven’t let him know that I am aware of his new infidelity.
This is a terrible place to be. But as he’s been able to fake an investment in you for 30+ years, perhaps you can fake one in him while you line up your ducks to leave his ass. Screenshot your evidence and don’t confront him until you talk to a lawyer, would be my advice. The element of surprise gives you a tactical advantage. But chances are you probably can’t keep this to yourself and resist the urge to confront him.
He’ll just try to stick your head back in the mindfuck blender to preserve his entitlement. It’s hard enough to leave without kicking his manipulation game into overdrive. You don’t need faux remorse, self-pity, or his anger to contend with right now. Or the second guessing that would result if he tries to hold your hand and pretend he cares. (He. Does. Not. Care.)
Do not tell him you know.
I’m thinking I should wait until the holidays are over. Why is it so hard to just tell him?
Don’t tell him.
I can’t tolerate being treated so undervalued and disrespected.
You absolutely should not tolerate those things.
I know I need to end things.
Good. Focus on that. When you get the urge to confront him, redirect your energies to calling an attorney, sorting out your finances, and figuring out the all-consuming project of creating a new FW-free life.
Why do I still worry about his feelings?
Because he’s acting like a God King and you’re used to his entitlement. Also, you’re a human being who bonds. Ask yourself why he’s not a human being that bonds? Don’t you deserve to share your life with someone who gives a shit about your welfare? He clearly doesn’t.
What is wrong with me? Where is my self love and respect?
Oh, it’s over there with that divorce summons.
Heather, get your shit together and divorce this user. Best Christmas gift ever is peace and sanity. Big ((hugs)).
I am a former unknowing beard, also married for 32 years at d-day (disclosure/discovery day). It took me three years after d-day before I ended it: a year and a half trying to “work on an even better marriage” and, after I’d concluded that my spouse was not committed to anything but himself, another year and a half to do the necessary psychological and logistical work (seeing a lawyer, looking for housing, examining my finances, etc) to leave.
I have participated in the open forum over at OurPath for ten years, and I can tell you that what you’re feeling is entirely normal. It’s very common for straight spouses who first come to the forum to come concerned more for their spouses than for their own feelings. It’s very common for spouses who first come to the forum to believe their spouse’s new honesty about their sexuality/gender identity will result in the intimacy they have been missing. It takes time to incorporate the knowledge of how they have been resented, devalued, manipulated, conditioned, deprived of intimacy, and blamed by their spouses for years.
When your spouse tells you s/he is not straight or identifies as trans is its own special kind of mindfuck. Their cheating is both like and unlike “regular” cheating, because not only do you have to process that your spouse has chosen to have sex with another person, you have to process that your spouse is not fundamentally attracted to having sex with you. (This goes for most trans-identifying men, too, who are fundamentally attracted to themselves, but themselves acting as if they were female/women.)
Please listen to Chump Lady. Stay stealth, even if this feels dishonest to you. Remind yourself that your spouse kept a secret from you for your entire marriage (and married you under false pretenses). What you’re doing now is protecting yourself, and protecting yourself from someone who has been willing to deceive you for your entire marriage and continues to lie to you. The situation is categorically different. He’s secretive out of entitlement; you’re going to be secretive out of self-protection.
A lesson I learned, both from living it and from listening to other straight spouses, is that a closeted spouse values nothing so much as that closet, and will eagerly sacrifice you for that closet. Your spouse may try to guilt you into not speaking to anyone, and frame that as “outing” him, but telling the truth about what is happening to you and in your life is not an attempt to do his damage (yet he was perfectly willing to seek sex with men on a public website…). You need to be able to talk about your own life, and you need someone to talk to. This can be a therapist (not a marriage counselor!), but someone for you, and preferably someone who has experience counseling women in your situation. It could be others on a website like OurPath, or a trusted friend or family member. (I found it easier to talk to others online before I told a friend, and I didn’t tell a family member until I was sure I was going to leave, because I knew once I told my mother, I would for my own self-respect have to leave, and I wanted to be sure before I told her.) You don’t have to–and shouldn’t–keep his secret and live in his closet, because it’s damaging psychologically for you.
On the OurPath Open Forum, there’s a “general” section that has a pinned thread with suggestions for how to get through and what help to see in the initial shock of finding your spouse isn’t straight. And, I’ll say now, since I didn’t see it–or have overlooked it–in CL’s answer, that if you haven’t already done this, you need to see a doctor and be tested for STIs.
Heather, I ditto everything Adelante,Tracy, and the others have said. I was also an unknowing beard married 38 years and together 41. Our uncontested mediation divorce (BIG mistake on my part) was finalized last month. I’m so sorry you have joined our ranks, especially at this time of year. I wish I had received this advice on my D-day (discovery). I would add that I found listening to the OurPath podcasts, especially the three Ryan King episodes VERY helpful in those early days when you’re unraveling the skein of mindf*ckery. Another helpful resource is the blog posts at NotMyClosetdotcom.
OP what you need to worry about are Sexually transmitted diseases results not this stone cold abuser’s feelings!
I’m sorry your world is falling apart we know that pain here. HOWEVER – Get angry and get planning!
Everything Tracy says is spot on including no confrontation over the new discoveries so that you buy yourself time to plan your divorce.
It’s often hard for chumps / normal people to maintain a life of deception with a spouse because we’re not narcissistic sociopaths. After D day #2 I tried to pretend to not know while consulting attorneys and gathering information, and fell apart from the stress of deception within weeks! I was dumb enough to confront FW narcopath over D day #3 and #4 but I finally wised up nearly a year later, he’d been gaslighting me and continued to lie and steal.
Unless you live in a place like Saudi Arabia, this is 2025 not 1825 in terms of LGBT rights! FW CHOSE to deceive and abuse you when he can instead have lived an honest life as an openly gay man. He stole a massive chunk of your one precious life.
Hell yes, this needs to be a priority!!!! Then never let him touch you again, ever.
True, and in addition to the risk of STD’s is that if you are intimate with your husband after fiding out his secret life, in some states that counts as “condonation” and it erases his infideliy because you condoned the behavior by resuming a sexual relationship after knowing of the infidelity.
A gay married friend (married to a man) would call Heather’s husband an “abusosexual” since the fact that his sexuality is abusive is a trait that supersedes all other identifiers like gay, straight, trans, bi, nonbinary, whatever. In fact, he thought all “abusosexuals” should be lumped together (preferably on a penal island far away from civilization).
He said this to express his exasperation at the idea that anyone would pull their punches and hesitate to report a particular workplace harasser because the latter was gay as if gay individuals aren’t also frequently victims of sexual aggression. He didn’t think it was “woke” to “rob someone of their consequences” and quoted the line from Shawshank Redemption when the protagonist asks fellow inmate Red if the prison rapists are homosexual to which Red responds, “They’d have to be human first.”
OP, get your ducks in a row. Say NOTHING. All the attorneys are out of their offices for the holidays but they are hit with a massive onslaught of new business in January. For now, make copies of all important documents and stash them in a safe place. I sealed mine in an envelope and asked a friend if I could keep some paperwork in her garage. She gave me her garage pin code and I was also able to hide go bags there. This went on for months so I also stashed albums of my family photos and my grandmother’s jewelry that I worried he would take or destroy when I confronted him. YOU CAN DO THIS. It is a momentum that will build. You talk to an attorney and sort things out. Make a plan. Get away from this abusive MF.
I made digital copies of all of our documents and put them on thumb drives, which I mailed to my best friend. Paperwork that it is important to have as an original, I mailed to her as well. Amy my grandmother’s Bible, my mother’s silver, and other things that were important to me. When I left, I walked away with what I could carry.
To clarify, that was in 2017 when I left the Cheating Abusive Douche, not in the 1980s when I left the Soulless Abusive Adulterer and Attempted Murderer.
Yes to this advice and make digital scans of documents so it’s easily accesible wherever you are, rather than relying on paper copies stored at your friend’s garage. This is easy with phone apps and when you run and are dealing with attorneys it’s essential to have digital files.
Klootzak had oversight and access to any app I would have put on my phone so I couldn’t download a scan app. It would have raised his suspicions for sure. But amen for anyone who has this capability. Trying to save paper copies was a headache!
I would advise any chump who is planning to leave a spouse/partner who has the kind of oversight over their phone that you mention to get a pay-as-you-go burner phone for important communication with attorneys, taking digital images, etc. Keep it on silent and in a place your cheater won’t look. If you need to, rent a post office box for any necessary snail mail correspondence. Get a reloadable pre-paid debit card to avoid something showing up on your credit card bill that would give away the fact that you’re moving to divorce.
This is the exact same shit they do while closeted, so why not beat them at their own game. I wish I had done this!
Heather, get another cell phone if it will help you screeenshot, transfer and save important documentation.
While sorting through ex’s stuff to send to him, I found five boxes for new cell phones. I’m sure other cheaters have multiple phones for cheating.
I created an email, forwarded his emails to his online AP, then deleted the record of forwarding their messages so he wouldn’t know I had them.
Heather, you married in 1993, and that April was one of the biggest demonstrations in American history, when over a million people attended the march on Washington for gay, lesbian and bisexual rights. The military had a “don’t ask, don’t tell policy.”
I doubt your cheater risked losing his life, job or even his social status if he didn’t marry a straight spouse. He could have remained a bachelor and kept his preferences, sex life and partners private.
Instead, he lied to you both directly and by omission for over three decades. For the next month or so, until you get a lawyer and file, please allow HIM to continue to think you are still in the dark about his resumed activities. Document what you can and send photos and other evidence to a safe space he doesn’t know about and can’t access. He’s stolen three decades from you, and used your time, energy and financial resources. It doesn’t matter if he’s gay or straight. You don’t owe him anything. Keep your silence like he kept his.
So sorry this is happening to you during the holidays.
These 2 quotes:
and
Write them on your bathroom mirror.
Your situation – as tragic as it is – is also very clear. He used you for a long time and kept it up even after society would have accepted him much more willingly.
Yeesh…even 30+ years ago my hetero-married gay cousin came out of the closet and respectfully divorced his wife so that she could build an authentic life for herself. Gay cousin and his partner are constants at family reunions and he is the de-facto patriarch of our family. All the racist homophobes have died off and what started off as a bastion of bigotry now welcomes the whole rainbow. Your spouses excuses are all crap.
I made the HUGE error of confrontation when I could evidence…please take CLs advice on this one and move forward quietly.
Making the active and conscious choice to drag an unknowing partner into the closet with themselves is the biggest red flag for narcissism and other Cluster B personality disorders that you could possibly ask for. Even during the darkest of times for LGBTQ people there have always been those who managed to stay closeted without marrying an unsuspecting partner or managed to partner with a fully-informed and consenting beard if need be. There’s no excuse for duping another person into unknowingly joining you in your secret sexual basement closet.
Dear Heather,
I am a gay man. I am a gay man who thought he was in a 20 year monogamous relationship with my FW. Turns out I was the only one in that monogamous relationship. My FW had been engaged in a double life before, during and after our marriage.
His proclivity to lie, deceive, use, gaslight and engage in all manner of manipulation and mindf@ckery had nothing to do with me, or with us. I learned the hard way that his secret sexual basement predated us by years.
Chump Lady’s advice this morning is spot on. Your FW has proven that he is deceptive and manipulative. Trust me – there is no amount that you can change that will ever fix him. Ask me how I know.
You have every reason to be outraged by what he has been doing, and is still doing to you. Tap into that anger and let it propel you forward. Marshall those ducks in a straight line honey, and then unleash legal Armageddon on that worthless cheat.
No one is going to lie to you here. This stuff is hard and may be some of the most difficult stuff you will ever do. But the vast majority of us will also tell you that it is worth every tear, every heart ache, every lost dream, and every dollar it will cost you to be rid of this a$$hole.
God speed on your journey to your best life!
Yes, at the very least start implementing what you need to get divorced. I agree with secretly making copies/downloads of the finances and getting that to a safe place. I opened a secret safety deposit box for that and also put cash in there for when the time came. Although most of them are off for the holidays, you can make an appointment now to meet with or call an attorney in early January. The firm I used for closeout is open until noon on Christmas Eve and is making January appointments. I know that because they just said so on their Facebook page.
And get an STD test pronto. Do NOT have sex with him if you remain around him.
Here is where I am personally getting stuck.
Regardless of what his true orientation is, the experience of being closeted, etc,(and I do not blame the idiot one iota for not coming out in the current world-that is also the extent of any pity I have for your fuckwit), 10 years is a very long time to keep resentment bottled up without being ethical or proactive about it(read: fuckwits take the easy way out with violent frequency). I think if I were in your position, I’d be very concerned about the next time he will conveniently have some rosary of things you have done wrong in his back pocket so he can maintain centrality. Being real? He already has that particular gun loaded-he’s just waiting for you to speak up again to pull the trigger.
Moreover, he kept doing it all after you had both strode to apparently make things better.
He is perfectly OK with you being in the dark and being his wife while he goes and does whatever while putting a happy face on it all and blaming you for the bad parts.
This is not your fault. You didn’t lie. He did.
Where self-respect and self-love starts? When you stop being OK with it and kick his happy ass out.
I get it-I’ve been to THAT part of Hell-you’re used to loving the idiot unconditionally and protecting him-and frankly, it’s good to have loved. It’s also part of why it’s so hard to let go of. The other shoe has dropped. He has betrayed you on more than one count. The LGBTQ+ experience complicates things…the betrayal? Still the same bullshit. They (gender/sexuality and fidelity) are NOT mutually exclusive, Period. What he really is does not change the fact that he lied and betrayed you multiple times. There is no justification for THAT behavior. Or his being OK with it. He unilaterally changed the rules on you. And in a very Darth Vader sort of way, I bet he would not be opposed to changing them again.
Your self-love and self-respect come when you cut him out of your life and invest all of that time and energy back into yourself. They come, grow, and return when you assert your boundaries and take your life and your happiness back. The holidays will be hard (having a hell of time myself right now), but honestly? I’d rather pine for a dead life than walk on eggshells or feel like I was only good to pay the bills and wait on that idiot.
You will see things more clearly the further you walk from the crater. It’s hard-especially at first-but it’s very worth it.
You do not have to make any excuses for this moron that you don’t want to. You are not a bad person for wanting out. You’re not divorcing him because he’s gay/bisexual/pansexual/whatnot. You’re divorcing him because he lied and he cheated and that’s not OK.
We are here for you!
And a Happy Tuesday to those that celebrate!
Get out now OP, there is no fixing this. Therapy is just further abuse. It was the final straw for me. I’ve told this story so many times here…ExFW and I were in couples therapy and I was doing a workbook page that I’d been assigned. I was supposed to draw a ven diagram where my responsibility for his cheating overlapped with his responsibility. I drew a big circle, wrote his name in the center and then ripped the book to shreds. I called him then and there telling him not to come home. I didn’t understand that I was being further abused then, but I do now. RUN! Get out. You’ll never be sorry you did.
he resented you because he’s gay and you were putting expectations on him and he wasn’t interested…its classic cheater projecting…try to think of the orientation issue as a distraction -.follow all the normal dealing with narcissist guidelines and don’t talk to him….he will lie and say you made him turn to men….but eventually you will figure out he always was this way and had whatever personal issues excuses he had he still intentionally lied to you and use you as a prop….Someone that lied to you like that was never your friend….and its hard to break the mindf*ck of realizing that everything you believed was an intentional lie…but you can start over…..and your life will be so much better for not having this guy around…– the real issue is — it doesn’t matter what peoples excuses are…..you need to treat every one regardless of gender, orientation race whatever like a human being with respect— and what you are experiencing is the opposite of respect, its manipulative control…its going to take a long time for your brain to unpack this but first step:….get out,.get tested for STIs asap…and go live a better life
Quite right – the orientation issue is irrelevant. Cheating is cheating.
Cheating is cheating, I agree. But the orientation issue is relevant. It’s relevant because it comes with its own particular heartbreak.
Death is death, too, but the way and age someone dies makes a difference. My mother died of old age at 96. My father died of suicide at 72. I grieved both their deaths, but the grief was different, and they each came with their own set of concerns. Whereas I had to deal with the ambiguous grief (as it’s called) of my mother forgetting who I was, with my father I was wracked with guilt (e.g., I should have heard his intention in his voice when he called me the day before). And when my nephew in the Marines was killed in Afghanistan by an IED at 24, the experience was different from when another nephew died at 24 in a car crash. For one thing, the nephew who was a Marine was treated as a hero, and buried at Arlington, and his parents were comforted by Marine brass at the ceremony, whereas the experience of my sister, the mother of my nephew who died alone in his car (no other car was involved, it was an unlucky moment of inattention), was very different, and she had no social structure to hold her up in her grief.
Perhaps the idea that “the orientation issue is irrelevant” stems from the laudable goal of seeing both gay and straight as normal sexual orientations. But it’s possible to believe that gay and straight are both normal sexual orientations and also acknowledge that if you’re straight, and your spouse has been deceiving you for years, and blaming you for the lack of intimacy in your marriage, that comes with its own very specific heartbreak and social context–so often, the deceived spouse hears only how awful it must have been for the deceiver to “have” to hide his sexuality all those years. And all of us here know the pain of a social context that tells us that we are somehow to blame for our spouse’s cheating.
I have NO sympathy for anyone born after 1960 who knowingly uses and abuse their spouse of the opposite gender. None. And this man did so for at least 10 years and probably a lot longer.
My godfather (circa 1947) didn’t figure out he was gay until the 1970’s. I remember him at our house, woebegone because another relationship had ended and giving him a hug then saying, “Name, wait until I grow up – I’ll be your girl!” I was very young.
He laughed, hugged me and told me I would always be his best girl. Not terribly long afterwards he realized he wasn’t bisexual – he was GAY. It was not safe to be openly gay at that point in time. But he didn’t waste anyone’s time and life promulgating a lie.
To this day, I am still his best girl. He would crawl over broken glass for me if necessary. He doted on my children and enjoys his honorary position as additional great-greatpa to my grandchildren. My son is named after him (he cried). I went to his wedding and cried buckets of tears for joy.
So Heather – run. Your best life is ahead of you. Interview lawyers, see your physician and dentist (I bet you’re grinding your teeth! and if prescribed antidepressants you may develop dry mouth and cavities), gather and copy ALL the financial information, consult a CPA. Get a nice hardbound journal and write.
But call it quits. Discuss the best way forward for YOU and set yourself free of him.
In consultation with your financial advisor (one who has a fiduciary duty TO YOU) and your attorney, decide if keeping the marital home is wise or if selling/splitting the proceeds and starting fresh is best. Presuming you own your home.
All my best to you and yours. Dump him. He’s a radioactive Twinkie and no one needs that in their life!
Hi Heather:
I am so sorry this is happening to you, and that it is happening during Christmas, when everyone is celebrating family, love and togetherness.
My STBX was trans and complicatedly gay. (None of which I knew prior to marriage, despite the fact that we were friends for years and dated for years prior to getting married.) By which I mean that he was an autogynephilic transvestite, attracted to the idea of himself as a woman being sexual with men. There was no place for me, a biological woman in that scenario so my job was to make the meatloaf and be a beard. He also resented me deeply, and once spent four months with his CSAT (also a sex addict) therapist cataloguing the many ways he resented me, and including my flaws such as not turning off the lights when I left a room, being frequently late, and similar crimes.
I realized at the end that the core of his resentment was simply that I was a biological woman. You have to be very, very careful, because some of these men resent everything about you, including your existence, and especially now that you know his secret and could harm his precious image. Mine did, and towards the end when I knew who exactly who he was (by which I mean how deceptive and malevolent) threatened my life, brandished weapons, and so on. I agree with the other posters who say stay and gather intel, but please understand that you are at risk and have a back-up plan so you can quickly flee or defend yourself if need be. On the plus side, his focus is probably elsewhere, and you don’t matter much anyway, so if you act happy and clueless he may not notice anything.
A life like you are living, and I lived, is based on lies and suffering and is damaging you at every level of your being, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. You will see that once you leave. I wish you Godspeed and the courage to see the better life that will be yours on the other side of this.
My experience with my autogynephilic ex accords with yours. My ex both desired me and resented me in equal measure, and because of the same reason: I was a biological woman and he was not. He vampired off my sexual response, so he could ape it for himself, and resented me for it at the same time. In his mind my place was to make it my life’s work to apologize for being female and to serve him because he had the misfortune not to be female. The degree to which this was true now astounds me: when once I complained about a haircut, he upbraided me for my “cis privilege,” saying “I wish I had your hair!”
A big Christmas hug to you my friend, we have walked the same long road. As I’ve read what you’ve written over the time I’ve been here, I often nod my head to your posts: many I could have written, though not as articulately as you do. We lived with such a strange pathology. Yesterday I joined OurPath, I’m sure there are other women and men who’ve lived this strange disorder, in which a woman is a beard and a model of womanhood, the thing autogynephiles so long to be and so despise and resent in anyone not themself. I feel mangled from the experience, but am nonetheless here and still standing and still leaving lights on and being late, and celebrating that we survived our bout with a monster. Merry Christmas, Adelante and I wish you all the joy and beauty that you so deserve!
It is indeed a very strange pathology, and one most people can’t wrap their heads around. It took me a long time, and I was living it!
Merry Christmas to you, too!
(I’m “Out of His Closet” over at the OurPath Open Forum.)
I’m sure you saw or read The Shining. Whether married to the “right” gender or not, abusers typically descend into snowballing Jack Torrence-style hate ruminations against their partners, likely because blaming women for everything was modeled to them from young ages.
Or to quote Khaled Hosseini, “Like a compass pointing north, a man’s accusing finger will always find a woman. Always.” I think the scapegoating is clearly based on a patriarchal template though we know that, in practice, abusers can be of any gender or persuasion attacking partners of any other gender or persuasion. In the end it’s about power and the expectation that partners exist only as extensions of self in the minds of abusers.
Ugh. You’ve just reminded me that my ex was obsessed with The Shining. Brb, throwing up
One weird finding in research on incarcerated batterers and spouse-killers is that they have an attraction to films, stories, books, articles, etc., presented from the victim perspective (often synonymous with “women’s perspectives”).
I think that takes DARVO to a whole new schizo level because it appears these freaks actually view themselves as the victims in these scenarios, as mentally gymnastic as that sounds. I suspect it’s why these types often cry buckets over, say, sad songs, abandoned puppies and landmine victims half a world away. It’s because they always identify with victims… except their own, whom they typically cast as villains.
Interesting. I’d like ti see this study if you can still remember where you read it.
FW was certainly very adept at convincing everyone that I was the perpetrator and perhaps even believed it on some level. But my sense was that FW enjoyed these violent stories in a “Oh no that’s terrible!” (while secretly identifying with the bad guy and getting off on the carnage) kind of way.
This person gleefully gave me a detailed account of the infant smothering scene in IT while I was breastfeeding our 4 month old.
I can’t remember the chapter but the study was mentioned in The Batterer authored by Donald Dutton (disgraced FW asshole forensic psychologist) and Susan Golant (who might have needed a male beard in order to publish her original ideas).
Actually the fact that Dutton– who harassed a grad student at the U of Toronto while attempting to cheat on his wife) published such an incredible expose of domestic abusers might even prove the point of the “alacrity” study, which is that domestic abusers seem to be schizophrenically split between identifying with their own former “victim selves” and also their own childhood abusers.
Heather:
You said you can’t stand being treated so poorly, being undervalued and disrespected. But if you’re waiting to end things with him until after the holidays, then you *are* tolerating that behavior.
Even though I’m sure it’s very hard to admit this to yourself, but you must assume that this gay love affair is not the first time he’s ventured into that arena; he didn’t just wake up one day, ask himself if he’s gay, and decide to test the waters by finding a gay lover. FW has likely known for years, if not decades, that he was gay, and he was using his respectable heterosexual marriage to you as his cover.
Assuming (1) You’ve already hired an aggressive divorce attorney and have crafted a strong exit strategy and, (2) You have all your other ducks in a row (e.g. you have your finances nailed down, you’ve collected copies of all your financial, medical, credit, tax, identification and legal documents, you’ve seen your gynecologist and been tested for the entire battery of STDs, you have scoped out future housing options, you have secured an individual therapist for yourself, etc.), then I recommend you use your next counseling session to blow him out of the water by speaking your truth. You’ll both be sitting in front of a trained therapeutic witness, and that would be a great opportunity to admit what you know about his gay excursions (bring plenty of irrefutable proof!), to clearly state your boundaries going forward, and to tell him to get the fuck out of your life NOW.
HOWEVER, if you don’t yet have an attorney, you don’t have your finances nailed down, you haven’t gone through the tedious process of organizing all of your documentation, you don’t know where you’ll live if he ends up with the house or the house needs to be sold, you haven’t gotten with your doctor to check your health, etc., then WAIT until these tasks have been accomplished. You want to be in the strongest possible position BEFORE you make your next move.
Every minute you spend with this lying, cheating impostor is a minute you can’t get back and a minute you’re taking away from your own recovery and reinvention. FW does not deserve another 60 seconds of your time, devotion, trust, support, consideration or attention. I know it’s scary as hell, but it’s time to finally stand up and take care of yourself!
I would argue all chumps are beards in that one of the reasons serial cheaters marry is to appear like everyone else and hide their double lives where they are perpetually dating. So the cheaters are only initially “in love” and attracted to their chumps for a short period of time. The additional pain for chumps like Heather is that their cheater may have never been “in love” or attracted to them. However, in all chump situations, there is abuse, deception, and no love. Heather, I am sorry for your pain. As Tracy and others have said, you need to get out. This is too damaging for you to stay in your marriage. It’s a terrible decision, to leave, that we chumps all have to make to save our lives. Take care.
I agree. In my case I was chosen not as a beard to cover up a double life, but to cover up the reality that FW is secretly a perverted sicko. A wife and kids made him look (and probably feel) normal. He managed to keep the secret sexual basement well under wraps for a very long time before the double life ever came into play.
I forgot to mention that the decision appears terrible at the time but in reality it’s a wonderful decision because your life is better. Chumps deserve better and get if afterwards with peaceful lives.
This one really struck a nerve for me. I, too, was married to a man who used me as cover to stay securely in the closet. It was the 1980s, before “Don’t ask; don’t tell.” He was a former monk, divorced from his first wife who he claimed “ran off with a patient of hers,” handsome, charming and the life of every party. As a shy, socially awkward and socially anxious woman who felt totally inadequate from years of abuse by my parents and years of cheating on the part of my first husband, I found this guy devastatingly attractive. I even believed he was attracted to me, that he loved me like he said he did. A few people tried to subtly warn me, but I just didn’t get it until years later, in retrospect. ‘We were married on the second anniversary of the day we met, and he immediately put in his application to join the USAF. He was assigned two thousand miles away from my family and friends in the midwest.
In a way, I’m luckier than Heather. I didn’t waste 32 years of my life. We were together 3-1/2 years. On the day after our wedding, he announced, “Now that we’re married, I don’t have to be on my best behavior anymore.” And he wasn’t. Throwing things and screaming at me turned into throwing me down the stairs, slamming me through a wall in our base housing and then a nearly successful attempt at murdering me. Within 72 hours of that murder attempt, I had found an apartment, enlisted friends to help me move out of the base housing and into the new place, had unpacked and was staring at the walls and wondering what came next.
I had never caught him cheating, probably because I was looking for other women, not other men. He just wasn’t that subtle, and I caught on AFTER I left him. He didn’t just prefer men; he preferred men belonging to religious orders. (The wife of a former brother of his in the Order told me about the orgies the monks would have on the roof of the monastery, and how great it was for them because “everyone could get with everyone else.”) She knew, and she chose to marry him anyway because they were best friends and she didn’t care about sex.
At that time, and in that state, you could not divorce an active duty military member without their consent. Even if they had tried to murder you. I had no police report, because he dumped me in the middle of nowhere, and when I got to a phone and called the police, they didn’t even bother to show up. No proof of attempted murder. The base chaplain just told me to shut up and cover it up. So no proof of abuse. Father Steve turned out to be a special friend of my husband. That would have been a far bigger deal than knocking around a spouse appliance. But I had my own apartment, and eventually they transferred him to another AFB and he wasn’t as interested in keeping me under his thumb.
I have never felt so lucky to have escaped than I do right now, and grateful that I didn’t waste 32 (or more) years of my life with that soulless abuser and adulterer.
We didn’t talk about such things 40 years ago — at least, “nice people” didn’t talk about such things. I had never heard of “our path,” didn’t know that “lavender marriages” were a thing. I’m hoping Heather and anyone else experiencing this particular brand of hell is able to get far more support than I did. Right here is a great place to start!
I’ve read pieces of your story before, but not the whole thing laid out like this. I’m glad you left him and survived.
Monks having o*gies…wow. Assuming this is true, of course. But, wow. You know, you think you’re an old lady, and have seen and heard everything…and then you hear of something like that.
I believe the monks had orgies. I have heard similar stories before from former seminarians and from the priest who was responsible for the novice monks and apparently was a ringleader with the dragging of mattresses up to the roof. As to why he (or anyone, really) told me about all of this . . . that I don’t know. I’m an old lady now. I’ve seen a lot and heard a lot . . . people who know they are dying will often tell their nurse far more than you want to know about their past. I think sometimes they’re looking for forgiveness? I don’t know. And night nurses whose patients finally went to sleep at 2am will sit and talk about really dark shit until the call lights start going off around 4.
Years ago, when I worked in a Jewish hospital, I heard a lot of stories about WWII and the Holocaust. Sometimes those stories still haunt me.
And the ghost stories I could tell . . . .
I’m so glad you got out with your life Ruby! Shannon Watts, Lacey Peterson, Jennifer Dulos. I wasn’t an unknowing beard but FW was considering a fatal accident for me. There but for the grace of God go I
The fatal accidents and attempted murders and actual statistics still scare the life out of me. I absolutely cannot comprehend how someone who claimed to love you can calmly plan out a fatal accident for you. It boggles the mind. Still keeps me up at night — like right now. I’m off to write a few hundred words in my journal so maybe I can get to sleep.
My goodness Heather! You can’t save a marriage to a gay man (unless you enjoy lifelong celibacy) let alone one who cheats. He is not going to stop being gay or being a cheater.
You ask why you can’t let go of the hopium. I’ll tell you how to let go. You just act. Kick him the hell out. You have to be away from him so you can think clearly. Only then will you get back the self respect he drained out of you.
You’ve been appallingly manipulated by both this awful man and that insane therapist. They’ve told you the problem isn’t that he has sex with dudes behind your back, it’s you somehow causing him to “resent” you. That therapist should be reported to whatever governing body is appropriate for telling you that the problem is you and if you if you work on the marriage, he would somehow stop being gay and stop cheating.
Is it religiously based counselling? I can’t imagine a secular therapist saying such a bizarre thing. It’s incredibly irresponsible.
So get some peace of mind right now. He will always chase dick, because he is a FW. Even if he’s actually bisexual rather than gay (I tend to doubt it, but it doesn’t matter) he is going to cheat because it’s who he is. As CL says, redirect yourself into action rather than agonizing over the whys and wherefores. He cheats because he’s a garbage person. You agonize over leaving him because you’ve been manipulated and frog boiled over 32 years. No wonder you bought into that therapist’s nonsense. FW has had 32 years to get you under his control. That ends now, because you’ll just do the actions you need to do to get free and ignore the tugs at your heartstrings like feeling sorry for him, the false hope of thinking he can be fixed, etcetera. That’s how we all did it. Don’t bother to warn him that you’re divorcing him, just do it. Get that attorney ASAP and demand FW leave the house, but not before assembling the evidence and separating your finances from his. Much love to you and please let us know how it turns out.
Edited to add; As soon as you can, get STD tested. Every chump should.
My favorite comment! You cut right to the heart of it!
I’m incensed at the therapist too so many hideous ones out there ruining lives
Truth. Most of them suck. That opinion was also expressed by a therapist I know, a rare good one.
I strongly second Chumplady’s suggestion to check out OurPath. Look for my story in the “Our Stories” section.
So he blames you, Heather, because he’s attracted to men and cheats with him. Ridiculous! Do these people ever listen to themselves? Rhetorical question, I know they don’t.
Chump Lady has it right. You have nothing to work with here. He’s going to keep cheating and almost certainly has been for years. Follow her advice – lock down your finances, screen shot evidence, and start talking to lawyers. And get tested for STIs.
Straight people do not understand this. But being gay is not a sad, pathetic situation that forces you to hide in a straight relationship while keeping a secret string of gay lovers on the side. I’m sorry, OP.
I’ve come back to this page multiple times since it was posted. It just eats at my soul. I’ve lurked her a long time and never commented, but I must speak now. Before I settled on the college major that morphed into my career, I was an art major. Many, many of my classmates at that time (in the 70s) were gay men. I cannot even count the number of times I heard serious discussions among those classmates about how they intended to marry and have children. I heard “I will marry, have my kids, and then I have will my lovers and she can have her own”. Talk about a “spouse/parent appliance”! I’ve had life-long acquaintances with men who actually acted on this. I think we can all agree, that some of these folks, regardless of sexual orientation, want children and will do anything to have them. I can understand that urge – but the absolute cruelty of deceiving a life partner into being bred like livestock to satisfy your reproductive urges is simply appalling to me. I went on to finish medical school and an obstetrics residency. I recall a lovely woman who married such a man, had a son, and then made repeated futile visits to my office to be tested for non-existent vaginal infections. “But doctor,” she said, “he won’t have sex with me. He says I have an odor.” I finally told her I didn’t think the problem was with her. They divorced and he went on to live with another man. This was less than 10 years ago. I sincerely feel that if you find yourself unexpectedly married to a homosexual of either sex, you should immediately divorce and sue for damages. This is not an accidental error made by a deeply confused individual. This is a callous disregard of your humanity and your rights. Think of Princess Diana, Camilla, and Charles – that was, in my opinion, deliberate deception and abuse of an innocent. And I am quite sure that this is exactly what has happened every time I hear one of these awful stories about discovering your spouse is attracted to something you can never be. That spouse knew from the beginning what they really wanted. It was all a deliberate lie from the start.
Thank you for sharing this from a perspective not many of us would be privy to… x