Do you regret divorcing and/or coming out?

A quick update about this therapy I tried last weekend:

Actually my sister got it all wrong, and so did I. It's no conversion therapy. What the therapist proposes is a reconstruction in the sense of me being able to understand who I really am and how I was "built" along my lifetime (not sure if it made any sense). She, the therapist, doesn't want to change me - quite the opposite, she wants me to understand how I ended up where I am, so I can be true to myself, to who I really am, and then I'll be able to rebuild myself, by getting rid of the lies I've told (others and myself)and disguises I've put on. I asked her specifically about how she felt about gay people and she said there's nothing wrong about being gay. I was very assertive, so I asked her again and again if she thought being gay was wrong or sick or sinful and her answer was always "no". I also questioned her "what if in the end of all this I came to the conclusion that I'm really gay?" and she said "that's fine, as long as you are honest to yourself". So it made me feel more comfortable and I'll be seeing her again this next Friday.

After I left her office, I asked my sister (who's a conservative Christian, although she's more liberal than the rest of my family) if she was open to all possible outcomes. Like, if I were truly gay. She said she'd be fine too, as long as I'm happy. But, as we talked, I realised there are some strings attached to it...

She said she hopes that I'll stay married and won't "turn out gay" and that she's doing all she can (including affording my tickets to her town and the therapy itself) so that, if I do separate and come out, she'll have a clean conscious. She won't feel guilty, in the sense that she'd feel she'd done all she could to avoid this scenario. I'm not saying that she doesn't love me or care about me...but, in a sense, she wants me to be happy according to what she thinks it's right.

She also told me that, if I do come out, I'd still be her brother and she'd still love me. But she'd never accept a male partner of mine. She wouldn't have him over in her house. She wouldn't want him to be part of her life. He'd no more than just as an acquaintance. I thought "that's tough to take!" , but I said nothing. And she's the most liberal person in my family...so I can only imagine how hard all the other (my mother included) would treat me.

 

I sincerely hope for it to be true. I know it might happen someday, but I'm not counting on that.

 

Funny thing is, I think in my case my father would accept it faster than my mother. She's very, very conservative, bit he is more of a progressive, a liberal, leaning very much to the left. I know it'd be shocking for him to have a gay son, but he's the one who says no one should suffer any kind of prejudice, so I might get some acceptance from him.

 

That's true, at least she's open for conversation. And she's not very judgemental. So who knows?

I'll keep seeing my current psychologist while start seeing this new one. The one that lives in my city is more of a listener. I mean, I tell him how my weekend went on and then he gives me some insights. The psychologist who live in a different town is more of a councillor, in the sense that she'll do more of an "invasive" job. Invasive is not the word...I guess she's going to ask me more than just listen. I don't know if it made any sense.

Like I believe she's going to give me real tools in order for me to build a path to be who I am. With my current psychologist I think is more of a place where I go, talk and then he says things for me to think about.

Yeah, this explanation sucked, I know! Hahahaha

 

I was worried about that too, I must say...but I didn't have time to talk to him about it, because I usually meet him on Tuesdays and my sister offered me to go to this second therapist on the following Wednesday, so I saw her on the Saturday after.

 

You know what? I just realised something I want to share with you.

As you well know now, I want to be openly gay and separate, but I have this huge sense of responsibility and guilt about leaving...and, because of that, I'm stuck in a hope that I may overcome all this and stay happily married, because leaving her would be too painful.

So this new therapist was talking to me about certain things last Saturday, and now I just had this insight:

My father left my mother when I was six. And I had all the issues of not having my father around. And I saw how intensively my mother suffered because of him. So, from a very early age, I promised myself that I'd never cause this much pain to any woman or to my family. So I came to realise; maybe that's why it's so difficult for me to leave!

And also, as everyone here knows how conservative my family is, I grew up listening to all these stories about how much of a jerk my father is, so I hated him until I was 18 years old. Then I realised "he's not perfect, but he's the only father I have. So I can spend the rest of my life hating him and crying over the father I never had, or I can start a new story now". So I forgave him. Our relationship improved greatly and I, for the first time, had the chance to hear his side of the story. I'm not saying he didn't do anything wrong (because he did), but he's not the devil some members of my family told me (funny, my mother never said anything bad about him - on the contraire, she always told me to love him no matter what).

Anyway, I told this story because, as I said, people said to me my father was a jerk and I never wanted to be like him. And everytime I think about leaving, I feel I'm the bad guy, the worst person in the world, the most selfish man who's ever walked on Earth. So I see myself as a villain and I can't forgive myself because of that.

So maybe that's why the second therapist told me some of my ideas are "contaminated" and that we'd have to clean them so I could move on...wow, I hadn't really understood that up to now!

 

Yeah, his case was different, but I honestly don't know much...the few things I know is that he was never really welcomed in my mother's family. Since he came from a poor family, he was viewed with suspicion. And apparently he had affairs with other women from day one. He even had a girlfriend when he got married to my mother...so yes, our cases are totally different.

I'm still to find a way to break the cycle of guilt that stops me from moving on. Hopefully, someday I will. I just wished it happened sooner.

 

Wow, that was really inspiring!

That's exactly how I feel sometimes. One day, she was the love of life, the other, she wasn't anymore...I have a really hard time accepting it (and so does she, obviously)...I just can't understand what happened. I mean, even though I felt like I wanted to be somewhere else during a considerable part of my marriage (this thought itself creates a lot of guilt inside of me) and I've longed for guys all the time (even when I wouldn't admit it to myself), my feelings towards her changed so, so fast... I'm still trying to figure out what happened.