So many questions-are there any answers?

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-22-2003
So many questions-are there any answers?
33
Mon, 08-28-2006 - 3:14am

Hi! I'm new here and have been looking around a little. I feel a lot of compassion and friendship on this board - and I really enjoy seeing it! This post isn't about my intro, really. I had a question that maybe some of you could help me answer for myself through your own experiences. (I apologize ahead of time if this gets long.) I'm not asking for you to tell me what I should do, but simply asking if you've been in a similar situation and how you handled it and how it turned out for you, and how you knew to act the way you did, or what you'd change if you could go back. Okay, now that the explanation is done, time for the explaining... :)


I'm 24, married to a 25 yr old guy, with two young boys, 3 and almost 1. Going back as far as I can remember, I was always first drawn to girls, and then eventually women. I had more crushes on girls than on boys. I eventually forced myself to like boys because my parents are Baptist and that's what was expected. I dated some of each after high school (while I was in the military, of all places!) I had a relationship that thoroughly broke my heart - my first true love. But, alas, I was the other woman. Her girlfriend of 7 years on and off wanted her back and she couldn't resist. I understand the feeling, but it still broke my heart. To this day I don't think I could face her because I'd probably just fall at her feet and beg to have her back. She was also my first real lesbian sexual experience. Anyway. Then I met Alex (my dh) and it was love at first sight. We've been together in other lifetimes and I just knew it was him. Buuuuut, in this life I'm finding we're better friends than we are marriage partners. But we have two kids and five and a half years into the relationship. I'm not terribly attracted to him anymore. Honestly, the intimate side of things is okay, but only after an absence (he's a trucker), and not so good when we're around each other 24/7. But I'm not emotionally attracted to him. He's not a nice guy. He's been emotionally abusive and neglectful to me, and he verbally and emotionally abuses and neglects the kids. We've been in counselling individually and together the whole time we've been together, and all it's done is shown bigger gaps in our relationship.


I really feel, and have felt for a long time, that another woman would really understand me and support me better than my dh has ever done. Frankly, more than he's capable of. He's just not that type of person. He was really meant to be a loner. I've been doing a lot of soul-searching lately about this and about religion, and I keep coming back to the same thing I've known since I was five, literally. But I live less than 2 miles from my Baptist parents and I'm in an extremely small community in the middle of the Bible belt. Another monkey wrench...my dad and my dh are team drivers for the trucking company. ARG! I love Alex, somewhere, somehow, but I'm scared of him and I'm scared of what he's doing to the kids. Aryc trembles everytime Alex LOOKS at him. He shakes and backs away when Alex talks to him, let alone when Alex disciplines him. I've talked non-stop about this, as has our several counselors, and he refuses to change. I'm soo unhappy. Totally unfulfilled, and I have no true companion.


Okay. Long post, I know. Sorry. Have any of you come from a situation like this? What did you do? What would you do different if you could go back and change it? How were you able to be true to yourself in the face of overwhelming peer pressure to "fit in"? Thanks for the help! I'll be around checking things out and I'm excited to hear from you all! :)


Photobucket

Photobucket

Avatar for mschiffven
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-25-2003
Wed, 08-30-2006 - 1:38am

my girlfriend has a theory about all this. About why many women seem to feel the need to try the relationship with a man thing. She believes it has surprisingly little to do with societal pressure and expectations and more to do with the biological desire to reproduce. A primitive instinct that may well be programmed into many of us without us realising.
Once we lesbian inclined types have had the kids, the guy outlives his usefulness... we have the kids but we still don't feel complete, we realise the guy isn't meeting our emotional needs any more. A bit of confusion, a bit of sorting through attractions to various people and ping, on goes that light and we consider hmmmmmmmmmmmmm maybe I am gay after all?

You mentioned how your Dh treats your kids and that concerns me. I would be seriously worried about the long term affect this is having on your son. Do you know why Aryc is so scared of him? Your primary responsibility in all this is to your children. Never mind who you love or are attracted to- make sure your kids are safe first. From my own experience- one parent was emotionally and physically abusive and the other did NOTHING to protect or defend me. I felt betrayed by them both. The two people in the world I should have been able to count on abused the trust I had in them and it has taken me years and years to learn to trust again.


visit my web site

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-23-2006
Wed, 08-30-2006 - 6:56am

Hi Nina!


Things have been a bit crazy for me lately so I can't remember if you have been properly welcomed to the board, but in case I haven't done that...


Caly06


Look forward to having you hear and getting to know you better.

*hugs Caly pentagram

 PPCLSIG.jpg picture by CalyD44

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-23-2006
Wed, 08-30-2006 - 6:59am

Hi again,


I am glad that you have a plan. The kind of changes you both have been thru lately can bring alot of stress to a relationship, so hopefully in a few months you will be better able to sort things out.


Glad you have the support of family too!

*hugs Caly pentagram

 PPCLSIG.jpg picture by CalyD44

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-22-2003
Wed, 08-30-2006 - 5:08pm

Ven, you're absolutely right about my kids. That's another reason I'm very glad, honestly, that he's gone so much for his job. (As shallow and selfish as this may sound...) I get the benefits of marriage - healthcare, income without having to work outside the house, etc. - but without him having to be here. But those benefits extend to the kids, too. When he's home for those few days a month, he is pretty good with them. When he's not, I just take them away and go somewhere else or do something else. Or he just sits on the computer playing games and ignores them anyway, so it's like he's not here, but he's still sitting here. Last time he was home, Aryc (3) pushed him towards the computer and told him to play his games. At this stage, ignoring is better than other forms of abuse, I guess. But I'm carefully watching it. We've fought about this and had counseling about this, etc, for years now. It's just not sinking in. But he has always dreamed of being a trucker, and now he is. So he's probably not going to give this up, which is okay with me. I was basically a single parent before anyway, now I get to really be one, but without having to pick up his mess, too.


I hope that all didn't sound selfish and shallow. I admit, it's a bit selfish, yes. But I don't have the skills and marketability right now to have a career that would adequately support the kids and myself without Alex in the picture. I'm going to be going back to school in the next year, hopefully, and will gain marketable skills. But as of yet I do not have many, especially for the area I live in.


Thanks for the reply, Ven!


Photobucket

Photobucket

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-25-2006
Wed, 08-30-2006 - 10:17pm

((((Cat))))
I am surely coming to the end of that rope. I ponder each day which is worse, the physical or the emotional abuse.... and have not found that answer. One day though I will find the right partner that will love me for the imperfect and fractured soul that I am and will be by my side to build a life together in peace and love with no pain and no abuse. Is that a fantasy??? Or can that be reality for someone?

Nina

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-25-2006
Wed, 08-30-2006 - 10:26pm

cl-tings-tang,

Thanks for the welcome, it is nice to have people to talk to being so isolated. I don't feel so alone anymore. That is a comfort. A comfort to be around other women who understand the feelings and thoughts that are going on for me and can be a sense of support where I have had absolutely zero.

THANKS :))

Nina

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-29-2003
Thu, 08-31-2006 - 12:31am
(((Nina)))) No it's not a fantasy and

 C  >^. A .

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-23-2006
Thu, 08-31-2006 - 7:26am


I hope you will hang out here as much as you can!

*hugs Caly pentagram

 PPCLSIG.jpg picture by CalyD44

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2005
Thu, 08-31-2006 - 10:17am

You can have that reality, Nina. And you deserve it. I'm glad you have found us and can confide in us.


Have you visited the Domestic Abuse

Photobucket


iVillage Member
Registered: 08-25-2006
Thu, 08-31-2006 - 9:34pm

((((CAT))))

I want nothing more then to soar and be of value to something or someone in this universe. Right now I feel like I have no value, but I am taking the small steps to try and change that so that I can see the value in myself. I was listening to a song the other day that Kelly Clarkson sings called "Because of You," and I couldn't help but think of my childhood and how my mother use to lean on me when my father was abusing her and when the song talks about how a heart cannot be broken if it wasn't even whole to start with.....I, for the first time in many years, found myself crying like a baby at a song. Guess it hit a nerve. So the first step was finding all of you wonderful and loving souls that understand that life is not always rosy, but that with people you can reach out to by whatever means needed then life takes on a whole different glow:) Here is to hoping that one day the heart can be whole and that I can share it with a woman that I can love who will love me in return. To my husband,I am a maid and a translator, nothing more, and it has taken me three years to realize that, but I am taking time now to heal myself:)

Thanks for listening:)

Nina