So it turns out my wife is gay...

[Smye 694]

@brtrthnevetr, I'm so sorry for your loss. And no worries, I wasn't kidding with my thanks.

[Smye 694]

Well I've gone and done it - I've taken this thread and turned it into a blog - GayWifeConfusingLife.

Here's a recent posting:

As many of you know, Mrs. Smye and I have built our life together around our farmstead. We both work demanding jobs and find enormous joy in caring for our goats, ducks, chickens, and produce every afternoon and weekend - it's the stuff life is made of.

The only catch is it's also expensive. Repairs to the fence, extra feed when the snows come, the cost of watering the garden, soil alteration, and simply the mortgage required to sustain a large enough property and our home take a financial toll. But we're alright - together we make ends meet and our combined income is enough to get us by.

For now, well, we're still together. But at some point we won't be. I don't want to give up this life. Neither does she, but unless we can both find partners who A. are the loves of our lives, B. are willing to move way out in the woods and C. make bookoo bucks, that's not really an option.

It feels petty, especially with all of the other fears, insecurities, and pain surrounding this whole situation, but I'm also scared of losing my home, my goats, my food sources, my lifestyle. I don't want to go back to an apartment, or the city, or anything other than where I am. This is the first place I've allowed myself to put down roots.

Damn it.

[Inner Surfer Girl 12,015]

It sounds like you have built a satisfying life together in many ways.

Whether you have to make a major change to your living arrangements now or in the future, you don't have to decide anything today do you?

You have time to explore options and look for possibilities. Just being open to ideas will help you navigate the unknown. Solutions that you never thought of in a million years may find you if you have faith and patience.

Are you a praying person? Prayer works.

Just do what is next. You don't have to have all the answers. But, you do have to have lots of questions.

[Smye 694]

@@Inner Surfer Girl, I am not, but thank you. I often envy those who are - though this is not an option for me at the moment.

And yes, I can wait/have time... but I've always been a planner, so day-to-day feels hellish (after all, I planned for 14 years to marry Mrs. Smye at 19

[Smye 694]

Dumb therapist (she's actually incredible, but hey) encouraging me to look into match.com...

[BigTink2LilTink 723]

You have my sympathies as you go through this difficult time in your life. I too was once married to my college sweetheart. We were married for 10 years before she revealed to me at the time that she was homosexual and wanted to end our marriage. Fast forward about 5 years since then, she's now come out as transgendered and although we stay in contact with one another, and I still have love for this person (that won't ever change I believe), I did learn to move on and live my life knowing that she would no longer be a part of it in that capacity. I say that to you that in the case you both decide that the marriage can no longer work, that you too will survive this.

I too reached out to Straight Spouse Network in the early years of going through my divorce. I wanted to find answers as to why this happened to me. It was comforting to know that I wasn't the only person in the world going through this sort of relationship/marriage ending. Try to understand that what's going on is not your fault. You didn't make your wife that way. It is what it is, who she is. She's dealing with things now that honestly, you knew nothing about. You have to try and pick your pieces back up. I would suggest the following:

1. Get counseling for yourself (separate for any marriage counseling you two were involved in). You are going to need some help coming to terms with a lot of things. The biggest one is that your marriage is eventually going to come to some sort of ending.

2. Give yourself time. You are gonna need some time to heal from this. You will indeed go through the grieving phase, because you are grieving. You are losing someone in your life that you didn't want to lose.

3. Understand that her discovering or accepting her sexual preference had/has nothing to do with you. You didn't cause this. You didn't make her that way. That one was the biggest hurdle I myself had to overcome. It took me almost 2 years to come to terms with the fact that my ex wife was gay and that had nothing to do with me, and that I didn't cause that to happen.

If you ever need anyone to just reach out to and vent I am here. You can private message me if you want. But understand that you are not alone in going through this. That you will survive this. And that you will be happy and whole again.

[Smye 694]

@@BigTink2LilTink, thank you. I appreciate your support, but please also read this entry and the entirety of the thread before offering advice. Not upset, just an honest expression of my needs.

[BigTink2LilTink 723]

Hey I will admit I kinda jumped the gun a bit on this because I have been down this road before. As I said before and will say again, you will get past this. Just give yourself some time. And yes I do need to read the other 14+ pages of this to see what was all said and offered to you as far as advice. Good luck to you!

@@BigTink2LilTink, thank you. I appreciate your support, but please also read this entry and the entirety of the thread before offering advice. Not upset, just an honest expression of my needs.

[Smye 694]

@@BigTink2LilTink, thanks - and yeah, it's a bit much to pour through. The blog here: gaywifeconfusinglife might be more digestible.

[Smye 694]

OKCupid Part 5

[Smye 694]

Clearly it's been a while. Holidays have come and passed (they were excellent by the way), I've been to several Meetups and spent time with friends old and new and have generally been spending less time hurting and more time out playing - hence the paucity of posts since... Wow, it's been longer than I thought.

Quick updates:
New friends are excellent, especially when combined with trivia night, Star Wars, or a Boardgames & Booze Meetup

Back on OKCupid - now that I'm hurting weekly instead of daily and feeling quite sufficient to be enough for myself - my therapist and I agreed a while back that I'm ready to dip my toe in the Water.

I went on my first ever "date-date" just last week and had a blast.

I'm considering taking yet another OKCupid hiatus. In the last week I've...

Continued here.

[Smye 694]

My timing sucks...

Getting ready for Date #3 with the woman from OKCupid 6. I'll call her The Actress, she should have a name but also have her privacy protected.

Very excited.

Like her a lot.

Going to continue to get to know one another, I've got a number of questions.

She texts, hooray!

What's it say? (edited to protect identities, etc.)

"Hey Smye,

So.. I think I need to cancel our get together next Sunday. I’ve decided that I need ...

http://bit.ly/1n6VsaA

[gowalking 10,790]

My timing sucks...

Getting ready for Date #3 with the woman from OKCupid 6. I'll call her The Actress, she should have a name but also have her privacy protected.

Very excited.

Like her a lot.

Going to continue to get to know one another, I've got a number of questions.

She texts, hooray!

What's it say? (edited to protect identities, etc.)

"Hey Smye,

So.. I think I need to cancel our get together next Sunday. I’ve decided that I need ...

http://bit.ly/1n6VsaA

That's actually one of the nicest blow offs I've seen. Most of the time, you just stop hearing from them and you are left to wonder what happened. I'm not trying to make light of this, just letting you know that it happens all the time. You really need a thick skin to be doing this dating thing. I got really lucky and found a man I enjoy being exclusive with and have been off the dating sites after looking for about a year and a half. It's nice not to be going through that but I also know that if things go south with this guy, I'll be kicking him to the curb and back looking once again. It's the only way I know to hopefully meet someone. Good luck Smye...and hang in there.

[Smye 694]

@@gowalking, thanks and congratulations! And I agree - The Actress is pretty awesome and I greatly appreciate her kindness in the letdown... however... maybe it's not quite the letdown I thought it was...

This morning I woke up to a new text from The Actress - one that I was both surprised and gratified to read:

"Hi Smye,

Sorry for not responding to your message right away. I really appreciate your understanding and for being so supportive of my need to take a step back. Honestly, I just... http://bit.ly/1OC7kIQ

So perhaps there's hope with her yet...

Now if only I could get Chumbawumba's Tubthumping out of my head...

[Smye 694]

Seriously? My life is starting to read like a poorly written, overly-indulgent teen romance novel...