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! :)


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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-25-2006
Thu, 08-31-2006 - 9:46pm

Thanks for the link, I am going to check out the resources as well as I talked to my Parrish priest and he has given me the emergency contact numbers just in case. I know that the man views me as nothing more then the indentrured servant and when things are not done to his liking then that angers him, so I just bide my time and gather resources and strength from within to know that none of this is my fault no matter how many times he tells me that line, I have to know that it is not. It is almost like having two parts within ones self, the intellectual that can know that a beating is not her fault and that the reactive course should be to leave and if necessary defend herself, but then there is the life long victim that has been raised to feel that she is not good enough for this world that can creep up and take over and feel that the beating was my fault if I would have just ......it is just ludicrous. Right now we are in the honeymoon stage of the violence chart so he is being cordial to me. Nothing like a confused, abused, lesbian, married to an abusive alcoholic. Like something out of a bad Lifetime TV movie, lol.

Thanks for letting me vent, having had no one to talk to for the last three years other then my nephew and my next door neighbor (and only because she insists on making sure that I am okay and she hates my husband), butI don't tell her anything because I am afraid of her confronting him and what it will cause when she leaves.

Enough venting, sorry.

Nina

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-29-2003
Thu, 08-31-2006 - 10:08pm
((((Nina))))

 C  >^. A .

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2005
Fri, 09-01-2006 - 2:56pm

Stay strong, Nina. I'm glad we can help.


Hugs


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iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2006
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 8:36pm

Hey Kristin,

I am also new to this board and I can so relate to your postings!!! I have been seperated from my dh of 14 years (he was my second) You know that song "Twenty Years and two husbands ago?" lol... I was reading your post and it was like reading everything that I went through also. I also have always been attracted to woman and I didn't realize what it was that I was feeling, I mean it was how we are raised, we get married and we have children. I have a 10 year old son and to top it off we work together, we met there.. double whammy... but like you I knew I was miserable, I kept trying to figure it out, what do I do? Now in my case he was not abubsive in the way that your dh is but he is a very controlling person, pretty much like sleeping with the enemy.... I can tease him now about his compulsive issues but I digress. I worried like you how do you change your life in this manner and it isn't easy I am not going to lie to you. I have known my partner for over five years and I have always been attracted to her. We both do heating and air and she would come into my shop and one day I finally got up the courage to call her and we knew then that we had something very special. In the beginning I did not think that I could break up my marriage, how could I do this to my son, what would my parents do? my friends? work? We are both very well known in the industry since it is such a male dominated industry and we are two of three woman in this area that do heating air.... so at first we were just going to try to make it work and keep my marriage in tack, not, we decided after a week that we couldn't do it, we had to be together all the time... I promise that I am going to make a point with all of this. My marriage had been falling apart for many years but I had tried to hold it together as he had, we had done the counseling thing and all of that, but I stayed gone for the most part and we were both abusing alcohol and that was not fair to our son. We were both miserable and we both knew that something had to be done. My partner and I found a place to rent and we moved in together. Now I have never flat out said to my dh that hey we are a couple but he is not blind and there is kinda an unwritten rule don't ask and I won't confirm sort of thing. My son sees us as a couple in his own eyes and absolutely adores her. She is his family! If I put him in time out she is right there with him!!! As for my parents, they love her, I was sure that they were going to disown me the whole nine yards, Dad told my partner she was the best thing I had done so far.. and makes jokes that someone needs to tell me that my boyfriend is not a guy :) he has a sick sense of humour. Mom has been good with it from the get go just said please don't like make out in front of me, lol... The friends part, ok that was tough, I pretty much found out that they are all homophobes and none of them will have anything to do with me but I am okay with that now because I have made so many new friends that accept me for just who I am, and for the first time in my life I am free to be ME ! No more pretending.... Work is the same, the rumours went around for awhile about me but they got bored with it. My relationship with my dh is great, we are better freinds now than we were when we were married.... as you said or one of the other girls said in one of the other responses we were not connected intimately, we were two friends that got married and we tried to make it work but you can't make the emotional connection be there. We have been fortunate to be able to keep our friendship as it is for our son's sake and have an unusual joint custody arrangement, we switch every two days, this is the way our son and us have had it from the get go and it has worked great. We live about 10 minutes apart. At first he had issues with my partner but now he has come to accept her and has even at his suggestion made her the emergencey contact for our son at school. I guess all in all what I am trying to say is to follow your heart! It won't be an easy road but it is true that when you follow your heart everything else starts to fall into place. I am happier now than I have ever been, my partner and I are building a wonderful live for ourselves and my son and have lots of dreams yet to live! Once you make that first step as scary as it is everything will start to fall into place. Keep in touch!!!! Good luck!!!

Brenda

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2006
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 9:21pm

Hi Nina,

I am so sorry that you are going through what you are. I was not in an abusive relationship with a man but I was in a controlling one and I understand the despair and the isolation. I know that you can find happiness, I never dreamed that I would be able to break away and make the changes that I have. You asked in your other message to Cat if you would ever find anyone that would accept you for who you are, yes! you will!! That woman is out there!! Hang in there.... we are all here for you.

Brenda

Brenda

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-25-2006
Tue, 09-05-2006 - 11:09pm

I dream of breaking away, but it seems just that, a distant and happy dream that can never come to be for me. I am trying to gain the strength. Harder being differently abled. I just want to so the light at the end of the tunnel for once and for it to quit being the darn train.

Nina

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-23-2006
Wed, 09-06-2006 - 7:41am

Hi and


Your story is very much like mine.

 PPCLSIG.jpg picture by CalyD44

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2006
Wed, 09-06-2006 - 6:51pm

Hang in there..... you will find a way to break the cycle! You have found a huge support group here and we are all rooting for you. Check in with us often.

Take care,

Brenda

Brenda

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-05-2006
Wed, 09-06-2006 - 6:57pm
Thank you so much for the welcome. I am excited to be here! I have met so many new friends. I plan to spend lots of time here... take care. Brenda

Brenda

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-15-2004
Wed, 09-06-2006 - 9:20pm

Hello kristinmariem, my name is Sebastian Bruce. When I came to this wonderful community of women, I felt very much at home. When I came out as a lesbian, I was comfortable with myself. To make a very long story short, I've lived my life as a woman, then as a lesbian, then I finally came to terms of my transgenderism. I'm a ftm (female to male). But that doesn't make me any less an understanding person. While I grew up in the church, that didn't stop me from being myself. I learned that my Creator loves me no matter what.

I've met three women from this site, two of which, I fell in love with. Online and eventually, upon meeting them, in real life. Unfortunately, things didn't work out, but that doesn't stop me from loving them from afar. Some people don't understand how someone can love someone that they just met, well, one of our members has said, "If you love yourself enough, then you're able to love someone else." (I guess I got that right).

Even though I cannot comment on your situation, I do hope that you know that you have to be yourself, no matter what. Please take care of you and your children. Since I don't have children, I wouldn't know how it feels to go through what you're going through, but you will get through this.

Anyway, welcome, please stay and get to know us.

Hugs!

Sebastian Bruce

 


Hugs,


Sebastian


 


http://www.facebook.com/sebastianbruce