warning discussion of death Hello After my husband died last year, I started exploring my feelings for other women. I never really had a great sex life with my husband, which I attributed to childhood sexual abuse. But after he died, I thought maybe that was because I was gay. I was excited about relationships with other women. I identified as lesbian. But something about that didn’t feel right. After spending some time here, I avoided EC for a long time. I took time to think about it. The most important thing is that I’m coming up on the one-year anniversary of my husband’s death. This will be hard because his funeral was on Valentine’s Day. We almost met on Valentine’s Day. It was a blind date and I felt meeting on Valentine’s Day would be too much pressure. So we waited a day and met on February 15. At the time I felt that I was grateful we weren’t having the funeral on our anniversary. Fifteen days before my husband died, my father died. He had a short but serious illness. On the day of his funeral, I had to rush my husband to the hospital. He had been sick a long time. He lived for a week. That was because he had a strong will to live. After Tim went in the hospital, I barely thought about my father. Tim occupied all my energy. This was also true after he died. His funeral was two weeks after my father’s. This has been a lot to process and I’ve been dealing with it along with other things which is why I haven’t been here. An extra difficulty is that I was raised Catholic and that’s an entirely different story. But I am aware of Catholic holidays. Ash Wednesday is February 14, the anniversary of Tim’s funeral. It’s the beginning of Lent and it’s when Catholics get ashes on their foreheads, as a reminder of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That’s going to be a difficult day for me. But I’m preparing for it. So I’ve been processing a lot. Looking back, I do remember having crushes on boys as well as girls. I think my sexual problems with my husband probably did come from abuse. The problem is that as I was getting better, my husband was getting sicker. He started to decline in 2014 and it was downhill from there unfortunately. I do feel like I can explore my feelings for other women for the first time. But first I had to get through the anniversary of their deaths and some other things. Giving myself permission to explore how I feel about other women is new and I hope it’s ok to change my mind. Thanks
OMG, you've been through a lot. But your feelings about women must be a separate problem that you will be able to deal with more clearly later. My story is similar. I experienced sexual abuse as a child, oddly one of my girlfriends also told me she had been abused by her stepmother! In my case, it was my father. But we both turned out gay. Was that the reason? I don't know, just coincidence I guess. My husband knows about the abuse and thinks that that is the cause of my sex problems. I have never been able to enjoy sex with men, beyond stimulation and even then I think what turns me on is ideas and nudity not the actual act. Sorry if TMI. Anyway I have felt I was lesbian since I was 16 and the fact that I don't enjoy sex, to me just proves it. I do not want to tell that to my husband though. He thinks it is the abuse, maybe he's right. I am still with my husband and I love him. He has somehow managed to love me despite my problems. He thinks it's not my fault that I'm "damaged goods" and he hated my father for doing it. He has never criticized me for being lousy in bed, and does not make the link with me being a lesbian. I definitely want to get on with my life as a lesbian, but I don't want to hurt him. He doesn't deserve that. For now I am hoping I can keep my marriage but somehow please myself and another woman too. My husband suspects I am gay because I have told him some of my past secrets but I don't talk to him about it. I want him to forget about it so I can pursue what I want to do without upsetting him.
So sorry for all that you have been through but do hope you get to explore your feelings for women and enjoy it
Hello Very sorry for what you’ve been through. Definitely not TMI. Hope you’re able to work through these issues in a way that makes sense to you both. I think child sexual abuse can really mess with your head as far as feelings about adult sexual orientation. I thought I was straight after some of the abuse but before that I was saying I liked girls. Although as I got a little older I had crushes on both girls and guys. I was confused. Im sorry your father did that to you. That was terrible. In my opinion that doesn’t make you “flawed,” it makes you someone who haas been through something terrible and has the strength to keep going. Take care.
First of all my condolences. I don't know what to say. Losing all my family is the only reason I'm exploring this cos I'm kinda on my own in this world now. I'm not saying this is the same for yourself or anyone else, as i only have my own experiences to base this logic on, so my apologies if I have got this wrong. I have to be careful what I say but when it comes down to male and female parts, which does it for you? Whichever one it is that what I imagine you are. That's how it is for me. Again everyone is different but that's how I come to terms with it myself. My apologies if that sounds blunt, but without that thought process, I wouldn't even be on here now. It's changed everything for me. Hope this helps. But again, I can only base this on my own experiences
