where do i start

where do i start
D

desertwife&mom

Registrant
Well this is not the easiest thing to talk about because my husband is not ready to talk about this with other people and has only told me...therefore any feelings I have about this I am unable to work through with anyone else...it's something I just try to be sensitive about with him and work through my own feelings by myself.

My husband and I have know each other since high school. We had always been friends but nothing romantic until after graduation. I went off to college and he went to the military. Our lives took different paths but after 4 years apart we started talking again which progressed into a relationship and now three years later we have a son and are married.

My husband had shared bits and pieces of his ordeal with sexaul abuse as a child by an older boy in his neighborhood. But he did not find the courage to share with me the expreimentation with the same sex that he had gone through while in the military.

This was all a shock for me and very overwhelming. At first I felt betrayed and like I couldn't trust him but when I started to realize how hard it must have been for him to deal with this all...it made me love him more and want to be there for him.

We don't talk about any of this anymore but I can't imagine that it all just went away. I don't know what to do?

I want to support him but I don't want to push him to seek therapy or talk about this highly sensitive topic.

I have tried to do my own research on male sexual abuse but I don't know how to sort through it all.

There are so many unanswered questions...Is he repressing everything? Will he one day reveal to me that he's gay? Has he dealt with this all? And does a person really ever get past something like that?

I love my husband and want to spend the rest of my life with him...but I'm afraid. I don't want him to suffer silently all his life.

I'm lost...... :( :confused:
 
The hardest part of loving a survivor is probably waiting for the time to be right for them. I just implore you to be patient with him. He is hurting and will need all the love and support you can give him.

I would suggest not taking his experimentation with other men as a personal issue. He did these before you came back together, so it never had a thing to do with you. I sympathize with your shock, but be thankful he loves and trusts you enough to confide this in you. Hopefully he got it out of his system, but life has no guarantees.

About the only advice I can give is to forgive him of his deeds before you were together. And, just be there foy him and give him the love we all so desperatly need. It may be a tough road at times, but hanging on will help lead to a happier, more fulfilling life. I will pray for you both. Thank you for sharing with us!
Casey
 
Hi - I can relate to your story, the military part and all. I do not know what to say except you are facing a bumpy road. I believe that improvement is possible, even if recovery takes a long time. I found that focusing on progress and not looking too far ahead is the best, especially in the beginning. Take care and PM me if you wish.
 
desert wife&mom,

If you had to find us, I'm glad you found us.

I've known my boyfriend of 8 years since school as well--but I didn't find out about the SA--or his acting out-- until last fall. And since then, he's only felt comfortable sharing his secret with one other person.

I know how hard it is to have to process all your emotions alone. Of course you don't want to betray your husband's trust, but it's important for you to have some kind of support for yourself and your own emotions. I've said before how much it helped me to have lots of support in terms of other stressors in my life right after I found out about my boyfriend.

Your husband may not want to talk about it anymore because he wants you to see him the same way you did before you found out--sometimes any step away from what's normal, even if it's a step in a better direction, is enough to scare us "back to normal." Maybe this is part of your fear as well? I know I was very, irrationally afraid that my boyfriend's facing his abuse would mean the end of my relationship one way or another-- when I worked up the courage to tell him this, he hugged me and said, "Why would I want to leave the only person I was able to tell?"

Please keep reading and posting-- ask your questions, share your feelings, sort out your research. It helps us all when we're feeling lost.

take care,
SAR
 
Hi
I doubt he's gay, and I say that for a few reasons.
These days, in our more enlightened times, coming out as gay isn't such a big deal ( That's my view as a straight guy though ) and abuse does confuse us greatly.
It did me, and I've been married for 30 years !
I also acted out with strange men, and my wife also found out about that.

I can't imagine how tough that is for her, or for you.
But I do know that I didn't betray her in the true sense of the word, from where I am now in my recovery I don't even think I betrayed myself either.

Much of this behaviour is driven by the doubts, guilt and shame of what happened to us controling our thoughts and actions.
We believe that we are smart enough to get over it all by ourselves, unfortunately we aren't.
But the confused thinking becomes obsessional, and on a mixture of brain chemicals - adreniline and dopamine - we lose much of our ability to think straight.
That's the simple version as I see it, and as you move on and support your husband it'll begin to fall into place.

Can you do anything ? of course you can.
Forcing him, or telling him to get help and therapy probably wont work, that's a decision we seem to have to make for ourselves.
But show him that you love him and support him, still trust him and believe him, will create a climate where he'll feel safer to ask for the help himself.

It's not going to be easy, and you'll get frustrated and angry for sure. But we're not easy people when we go through our healing.
But the results are worth it, the guy you fell in love with is still there somewhere, he just needs a helping hand.

Take care of yourself though, that's the number one thing for you right through this difficult time.

Dave
 
Re: does someone ever get past something like this... I posed the EXACT same question to our couples' therapist a few years ago. We were having so many problems due to anger.. I was just convinced that this would always be a problem, that our relationship was doomed, that there was no way out, we were helpless victims knowing that the sexual abuse would never ever go away... I was so devastated with what I saw as the inevitability or the finality of it all.. that we could never ever make this go away.

My therapist said something very intersting to us that I often share on here:

"yes, the abuse will always be there, realistically you can never make it go away. However, you CAN and many people DO learn to live with it - to incorporate it into your life and your life experiences like an old shirt. When a shirt is new its stiff and stifling and hard to wear and hinders you. Over time, you wash it, mend it, sometimes you take it off and look at it, tend to it, and it becomes very broken in. You are still wearing it but it is much more comfortable, it is no longer the stiff strait-jacket like thing that it is for you now".

Powerful words, and very true.
 
Oh also forgot one thing:

Re: concerns about being gay - there's a lot of confusion when a guy is molested or abused by another man. There's always the questions "why did this guy pick me? Does he know something I don't? Is it because I'm gay? Why did my body respond when this guy stimulated it?" (which it does no matter if it is wanted or unwanted stimulation - thats just how the sexual response works, its largely unconscious, especially for men.

All of those questions go through a survivor's head and they sometimes are convinced they are gay.. my fiance thought he was gay for years and years because of the abuse by another man, which led him to do the opposite - have a lot of sexual expereinces with a lot of women as "compensation" (staggered with years of a lot of drinking and no sex at all).

Its really hard to understand or put some logic behind the actions that survivors take when they are reacting to abuse or acting out sexually. Some people go one way, others go another, some "act in", others "act out", some waffle between the two, there's no set way that anyone responds. However, there are a few typical types of responses and your husband's response is definitely one of those. I would bet a lot of money that he is responding to the abuse not demonstrating who he really is inside.
 
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