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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!