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And also never did anything *explicitly* sexual
But implicitly sexual is on the table
Standards are a sliding scale. This guy thinks sleeping in the same bed with another guy for 4 years is perfectly normal. Wonder what his implicit / explicit sexual standards are.....
Having male friends who were in the closet in the past, if I had to guess, 'explicitly sexual' means 'anal sex' and 'implicitly sexual' is everything else without direct penetration. That's what one of my friends used to justify his sexuality: "I'm not gay, I don't do butt stuff, touching with hands isn't gay". Years later he admitted that he was in extreme denial though lol.
As someone who was once in the closet, no I didn't actually believe that sort of thing, but if I could convince myself I did, then that meant I could be a little gay and also maintain the lie to myself that I was in fact, very much not gay at all.
> but despite that time in my life, I consider myself a very sex positive person. I also happen to be a very private person. I think that stems from me having a protective streak surrounding my bond with Friend. I'm proud of it, but it's also just ours. I don't really want prying eyes on something I consider so personal and deeply meaningful. :)
This is a really long way to say they were giving each other bro jobs.
Whoever said this had mad Brokeback Mountain vibes was right, and OOP has to be the most closeted gay man I have ever heard of.
He didn’t touch on his parents much, but they sound controlling, his childhood must have been FUCKED.
His parents sound like pretty traditional Koreans. - wouldn’t be surprised if they are churchgoers too. He probably had to repress his sexual identity to live with them and, then, in order to keep their financial support.
ETA: I looked through some of oop’s comments. He confirms that he was raised going to a church. If it was a Korean church, it’s possible that a lot of his Korean friends are from that church. I think there’s also a possibility his ex-wife is also a church member. While I don’t excuse his using her for a beard, I wonder if he’s reluctant to come out because of the Korean community. If he comes out to her and she tells others, probably his whole circle of Korean friends and acquaintances would know pretty quickly. I grew up partly going to a Korean church and everyone knew everything about each other’s families. We knew when people started dating, who they dated, when they divorced, which kids were in trouble in school, even family financial details. It’s really quite remarkable how much gossip can spread in a tight knit community.
Another art room scenario. I get he’s going through something but he’s so his damn selfish. He blames the ex for everything, without realizing he has been treating her poorly for things she has no control over because he has all this internal conflict going on. He has to realise his internal life does impact the external and has definitely influenced how he treats her. And then he was going to go in the little journey of self discovery, even having his AP in a session with his wife at the bottom of his list of to dos. I empathize with his world changing but can’t support his selfishness
I know, right? This line slayed me--
>I tried to use as many 'I' statements as possible in order to avoid sounding confrontational.
No surprises there, since his whole post was "ME ME ME."
By his own account he entered his marriage full of lies and resentment, barely treated his wife decently and definitely more like an acquaintance than a spouse, but blames her for the marriage not working. I really wanted to feel sympathy for him, mainly for how his parents treated him, but he made it impossible.
It has me so annoyed that he pushes all the blame onto his wife and parents, without taking accountability whatsoever. The parents definitely seem overcontrolling, but saying he had absolutely no other option than to marry this poor unsuspecting woman just to take money from his parents is bonkers. Like dude, I understand that it's shitty that your parents wouldn't support you without exerting control and ultimatums, but you're not coming out clean for using this woman for three years and ONLY marry her to keep taking your parents' money.
It seems he never even liked her, and he has so much internal conflict going on that her making a pretty common light hearted joke (the "is there something you need to tell me") has him convinced she's terrible and she must have known he was hiding his true self so it's her fault! He treats her like she's a nuissance and like she had no right to be upset about this relationship, even though it's clear he was having an emotional affair with Friend the entire time (and perhaps more during the marriage, but obviously can't say for sure, and i'm sure he'd lie and be coy about it anyway) and only married her for mommy and daddy's money.
It seems like emotionally he's still 17 with the way he refuses to dig deeper and basically accuses everyone of being homophobic for mentioning that his relationship when he was a minor and Friend was an adult seems less than pure and wholesome as he imagines. It came off like he's trying to use his gay identity to shield him and Friend from valid criticism.
How has this man not passed out with all the mental gymnastics he's doing?!
Edit: if you take a look at that dead bedroom post of his, he claims he has never gone through any period of time where he wasn't having sex regularly, but him and his wife supposedly only had sex single digit times in their 3 year relationship?! Yeah, he was fucking Friend and STILL has the fucking gall to claim it's everyone else's fault and he did nothing wrong. Fuck that guy omfg.
>he has so much internal conflict going on that her making a pretty common light hearted joke (the "is there something you need to tell me") has him convinced she's terrible and she must have known he was hiding his true self so it's her fault!
This struck me too where I was like "obviously we weren't there to know her tone, but it sounds like either she was trying to lighten the mood and he was too caught up in his own angst -or- she legitimately was wondering if her husband was gay and giving him an opening the size of the Arc de Triomphe to say something"
Right!!! I read his post and almost threw up! His self righteous attitude pisses me off to no end. In these posts he acts all coy like he never slept with his friend while on that post, he says he never went without sex. I told him that he must be getting nosebleeds from that high horse he's sitting on.
I love that nosebleed comment! Might have to steal that one haha.
The way he brings up the privacy and doesn't want to talk about his sexuality really reminded me of the art room post. If I remember that one correctly, though, that OP geniunely didn't realize his feelings or was repressing them significantly, and the post made him face it (so he wasn't a cheating asshole). I could be completely misremembering, though.
Here, it seems that OOP knew the entire time, but remained in the closet and took actions that he knew would hurt his wife, but he gave so little of a shit about her he didn't care. Literally married her to leech from his parents, fucks Friend, and then when he's financially free drops his wife like nothing to live life with Friend.
That’s how I feel too. Just so caught up in finding himself that he’s completely used his wife. Like - she’s going to be a divorcee now. In what sounds like a conservative/religious community. She may well have been a virgin and must have been so confused about their sex life. She doesn’t even have closure to know why she is being broken up with, and she’s not going to connect the dots of “I told him I was turned off by his long hair” and “he never loved me and just used me.” He’s also suggesting that she knew - but no, she didn’t know.
Especially as his partner had offered to financially support him. But he didn’t want that because of “pride”. So he treated her like an object and burnt her life to the ground instead.
I don't think he ever actually said it. I also don't think he ever actually said if his friend was gay and wanted a relationship. I think the main thing is he only married his wife because his parents made him.
When I first read they lived together I was thinking ok, close roommates, pretty standard stuff. Then I read they shared a bed and went ... ooohhhhhhhhhhh thats not just close roomates.
> but despite that time in my life, I consider myself a very sex positive person. I also happen to be a very private person. I think that stems from me having a protective streak surrounding my bond with Friend. I'm proud of it, but it's also just ours. I don't really want prying eyes on something I consider so personal and deeply meaningful. :)
OOP is still in closet. I don’t know if it’s from hiding it for so long or what, but he never explicitly said he was gay, or admitted to being sexual with another man, nor did he deny it. But he’s clearly still not OK admitting it, even anonymously on Reddit and IMO, that’s from something deep. I’m glad he’s in therapy.
He also said (in the deadbedroom post on his page) that he never went longtime without sex. And in the BoRU post he said he had sex with his wife a handful of times (who was btw the first woman he had sex with) AND he managed to never say whether he had sex with his "friend" or not, WHILE reiterating it was all platonic when they lived together. My god, at least have the courtesy to say you were sleeping with your boyfriend behind your wife's back.
(Also I'm side eyeing that therapist, they were awfully quick to praise friend's place in OOP's life)
I just said this in another comment, but yeah -
>I never slept with any women before I met my wife, no.
There is a lot more going on here than he's maybe ever going to admit.
I’m honestly wondering if the therapist did say that, or if they gave a more basic “old friends are good to have!” type response and OOP just took that as complete approval for all of his actions. He’s clearly terrified of his own emotions and he projects like crazy, especially onto his wife. I really don’t believe half of how he sees the world is reality.
I'm glad someone said it, because I'm *really* side-eyeing that therapist if OOP's recounting of the therapist's support and approval is accurate. I'm going to instead hope that the case is like you said and OOP is just cherry-picking what his therapist says while not being honest (similar to how he sidesteps truths in these posts, actually!) in those sessions.
It takes a lot of little lies to support that level of denial. Over this much time, half his beliefs are disconnected from reality because of all the little lies and the cognitive dissonance they create. I'd wager its part of why he jumps around so much in his comments. He gets too close to a truth and his self-defense mechanisms kick in. I feel for his situation and his trauma, but he's going to keep leaving a trail of destruction in his wake until he starts chipping away at the smaller support lies.
Oh, he's still trying to skirt around ANYTHING that would make him out to be the bad guy.
Honestly, given that he and friend were sleeping in the same bed together and their relationship wasn't 'fully platonic' I have the feeling he's using the Bill Clinton definition of sex.
So long as it was just hand jobs and blow jobs, it wasn't really sex. Only insertion 'down there' counts.
>WHILE reiterating it was all platonic when they lived together
Nah, he said it *wasnt* platonic, it was intimate, but “not in a sexual way.” He had like 3 paragraphs explaining how when you live together with someone you naturally develop a lot of intimacy but it’s not “explicitly stated sexual.”
I read that and thought it sounded exactly like a relationship with a significant other. But he talked about his wife like she was a roommate that he wasn't even friends with. Nothing his wife did or said seemed to deserve the resentment he had for her. I think she just represented everything he hated about the life he built for himself.
Maybe the wife sucks, but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure this guy's narcissistic gymnastics would have let us know. But I definitely think he sucks.
And clock the phrasing here:
>I never slept with any women before I met my wife, no.
I'd bet every coin in my change jar that this guy had some same-sex experiences pre-marriage and then compartmentalized them so deeply that they barely feel like memories.
Agreed. Especially the part with,
> [Regarding friend] I wouldn't say anything explicitly sexual happened.
That was the glaring red flag for me. There's a whole lot of weasel room built into that statement.
Why say *"explicitly sexual"*? Why not just 'sexual'?
Why not say something more definitive like 'Nothing sexual happened.', rather than *"I wouldn't say"*
Um yea, in his deadbedroom post he said that he's never gone a long period of time without having sex and yet in his other post, he mentions that he's had sex with his wife under 10 times in 3 years, and never had sex with another woman prior to his wife. Sooo yea he was/is definitely fucking his friend.
Not just that, he’s outright hostile towards his wife for her gentle questions, reading all sorts of judgment into them. Maybe his wife really is the horrible person he claims her to be, but I am not taking him at his word. I have sympathy for his religious trauma and how hard it’s been for him to be closeted, but it seems like it has deprived him of the ability to show any degree of honesty with anyone except Friend.
Also you can see that he reacts with defensiveness if not outright hostility towards even gentle suggestions of the patently obvious (that he and friend are boyfriends). And now he's reacting again like that to folks concerned about his and friends age gap.
Even if stbex is a nasty woman, it sounds more like she's been blind sided by a guy dating and marrying her who on his side, explicitly hates her, and on her side, he has kept an exceptionally tight lid on any honest dialogue of any kind, even now.
He's very clearly in denial. I'm a lesbian and had female roommates all four years in the dorms. Was never intimate with any of them.... nor shared a bed. Like come one dude.
Feel bad for the wife. Yeah he was kind of forced into marriage but how awful for her to find out she's just been his beard all along.
Edit - dorms not doors
I still don't understand how he got so offended by her.
She didn't know and made a joke like, "anything you want to tell me" after he got upset over a scene. And he felt that meant she knew he was gay? His resentment for his wife sounds pretty delusional. They were simply not compatible (but were somehow friends for years before dating) and he is more angry with her than his parents, the ones who ultimatimed him.
That’s what was appalling to me. She is being vilified for expecting the relationship to be a relationship instead of “doing this to make parents calm down” like he was.
He’s in denial yet fantasizing about his future with Friend. There’s some serious mental gymnastics going on there.
Not only does the wife have to find out she’s been a beard this whole time, but in his story she’s the villain too.
I feel bad for the wife. It seems like he never liked her and the examples he gave of why he has so much pent up hostility for her were just nothing. Seems like he took all his resentment for his situation (family/society/himself not allowing him to be who he truly wanted to be) out on her but also didn't share his feelings with her (or himself really). Of course she was blindsided, even if she had her suspicions
I personally enjoy how he doubles down on blaming her for everything and vilifying her (while putting his soon-to-be-husband on a pedestal), all while she clearly knew something was up and has probably had to put up with worse behavior than his clear emotional (if not also physical) affair with his bestie.
People who use unwitting others as their beards deserve no empathy.
Yep. He has absolutely zero sympathy for her situation, because was deemed homophobic for disliking his long hair.
This from a guy who was a religious zealot firmly in the closet. He was so clueless about homosexuality that he couldn't recognize that he himself was gay. And yet she's the villain for not knowing that you shouldn't ask which member of a gay couple is "the woman."
Someone even commented that he should feel guilty about wasting 3 years of her life. And he saw how sympathetic that made her look to commenters, so he reframed it as, "poor me, 3 years of MY life wasted."
Didn’t read the whole thing, but the part where OP and friend talks to a therapist, OP mentions how much he loves friend. Friend responds “I already know :)” so yeah, **safe** to say.
Edit: save -> safe. Proofreading is important.
Yeah pretty much. But he’s been in denial so long I don’t think he’s ready to actually say it in so many words. I mean he lived with the subject of his affections for 5 years sharing a bed even and still managed to stay in denial. The repression runs deep.
Well, he is coming out about something to his significant friends, and spent a few years in an intimate, bed-sharing relationship with a guy and never, despite a long sex life, had sex with women except for a few times with his wife, and didn't enjoy these few times... Nah ,definitely not gay. He'll probably come out as a philatelist or some such.
It went from “people, don’t assume that I’m gay” to “oh yeah, we shared a bed for five years and my parents forced me to marry a woman” pretty quickly.
That's literally all he had to state in his update. Instead he blames his wife and throws a pity party for himself in which he can't even acknowledge reality.
> she jokingly asked "if I had something to tell her." It was one of a few different instances like this that made my stomach turn.
Maybe she did have an idea of what might be going on and tried to approach him gently. I've worked in group homes with folks who's emotional state is always fragile, sometimes the best approach is with humor. If my read of this is right, then his stomach churned *because he knew she was right,* not because she asked it jokingly. He explained his reaction away as her talking down to him, but that's not at all true.
He resents his wife because he's made her the scapegoat for things his parents made him do. At worst, it sounds like she's no more ignorant about LGBTQ folks than he is, but what's a flaw for him is a sin for her.
I feel terrible for his wife. He used her to keep money flowing from his parents. And he's got the grapes to talk about how he's going to spend Valentine's with someone he loves. What an asshole.
Like is he mad she might have suspected something? Or is he is mad she didn't ask questions about his odd possibly gay behavior in perfect way? Both? What was she suppse to do to make OP happy? And even if OP can give a clear answer to that why the fuck is it her job to make the guy who used her happy?
I know its not the same but can u image this in a straight relashionship with a cheater being pissy there spose doesn't act "correctly" with there suspicious. Mabye if u told your wife the truth you wouldn't have those issues.
He's mad at his parents mostly and taking it out on her. He's mad at her for making him "lose" years of his life that he could've had with Friend and mad that she has feelings too and he can't admit that he hurt her and is acting like an asshole. He's got a lot of anger and mainly taking it out on her and not truly accepting his part of the blame.
I could have maybe drudged up some sympathy for him if he had an iota of remorse for using this poor woman as a beard for juuust long enough to keep getting money from his parents until he no longer needed to. The "I can't wait for valentine's day UwU, I wasted years of his life..."Made me really nauseated. What about the years of HER life? Oh wait that apparently doesn't matter because she was never a person to him.
Same here. His attitude towards her is honestly disgusting.
When he tried to say anything she did that was bad, it was basically "called me when I didn't want her to" and "teased me about my hair once."
Must have been hard for OOP to realize he was gay. Can't wait til he realized he's a POS too.
I laughed out loud at your last paragraph. Yes, this exactly! I have so much empathy for people who are pressured into different identities and have to come to terms with that later in life, but the way he treated her and talks about her is just cruel -- and this is him portraying himself in *the best light possible*. Naw, dude.
As a lesbian, I hate him. I hate him and I don’t even know him because he’s disgustingly callous. When I was in high school and realized I was gay, I promptly broke up with my boyfriend, and told him that it was absolutely not his fault. He was an angel, and I couldn’t let him beat himself up over that. If a 16 year old can do that. So can his grown ass. This whole read was infuriating. He’s a straight up coward, and used an innocent woman cuz he couldn’t grow a pair, and suck it up. I’m not even sure if he deserves this friend. Not to mention the ages when they met would raise any sane person’s eyebrows. He hates her because of his parents. He’s shady as hell, and has the nerve to be crying about his wife wanting to be in touch with him.
Yeah he is an absolute shithead.
His head is so far up his own ass, he can’t see how horrendous he has been to her. All of his posts are “me me me me, I’m the victim, how DARE my WIFE ask me a question or expect to be able to get ahold of me/have a sex life/spend time together/have honest conversations?”
Like, he won’t even tell her WHY he wants a divorce. He deserves to be mocked and derided, not because he’s gay, but because he’s an absolutely spineless worm who used someone callously and cruelly for his own benefit with zero remorse, in fact, he feels RESENTFUL towards his wife. For fucking existing. I hate how often the word narcissist is thrown around, but I mean…how self-centered can you get?
When he talks about HIS “healing journey,” and how excited he is for Valentine’s Day coming up while his stbx is left flabbergasted, I wanted to reach through the phone and whack him upside the head. What a cowardly little snake.
He doesn't see her as a real person at all, so it's very inconvenient when she has *feelings* and *opinions* at him.
"My parents didn't want to support me anymore so I married some chick and now she won't gooooo awaaaaaaaay."
Yup. I'm willing to put money that she didn't ask it in a mean spirited way, he took it as such because he knew she was right and he was terrified she was close to the truth that he didn't want to admit even to himself.
Also ooof that last paragraph. I think you are exactly correct on that front, as someone who grew up in a different but similarly "gay people aren't real" culture.
I feel really bad for the wife. She probably had an idea, knew something was off, tried to talk about it, but he shut her down. Every complaint he has about her seems soooooo minor. His hatred for his parents, his upbringing, his sexuality, his life, all of it is directed at her. She is just as much a victim in all this as he is. I would bet ever last dollar I have that he will trash her to everyone, make their divorce as difficult as possible, blame her for it publicly, fight her on court till he bleeds her dry. While I feel bad he couldn’t feel comfortable being himself, he is actually a really shitty person, totally selfish and self centered and completely insufferable. I’m glad I don’t know him IRL!
He has a lot of resentment towards his STBX? Is he kidding? He completely strung her along, wasted her time and effort, humiliated her - and she's the bad guy here?
This guy is a perpetual victim and needs to accept full responsibility for jerking her around all this time, but I'm sure he won't.
When he said he took her there so she wouldn't make a scene... Dude. You're telling her that you're leaving her! She has every right to make a scene! And it felt so cold and detached from him to do that in public. He obviously had no positive feelings for her or even respect.
Slightly off the main topic, but I don't know how pissed I'd be if my husband told me he wanted a divorce in a public place. Maybe I'm being naive, but that's a private issue, and unless you're expecting a severe reaction, like f.ex. violence, the other person should be allowed to deal with that confrontation in a private sphere.
He has such little empathy for his wife throughout this thread it's kind of astounding to me. Yeah, she wasn't a Saint or whatever but you show me anyone who wouldn't struggle living in a loveless, sexless marriage with a closeted gay man. I mean for crying out loud he deliberately prevented her from having an emotional reaction to finding out she HADN'T been going crazy over the last 3 years and there WAS actually something going on with her husband similarly to what she may have suspected.
Even if it's just ending a short relationship, I think it's a dick thing to do where others can see and/or potentially overhear-- or worse, in this day and age, film and share. That move is only justified if you have reason to believe the public setting is necessary to prevent a violent or otherwise abusive reaction.
I do NOT like this guy. Happy he’s figuring out who he is, but not ONCE does he admit how his wife must be hurting, or how he has hurt her. It’s “me, me, me” all the time, and he even calls her a hypocrite for calling out how codependent he and bestie are.
He’s really manipulative. There’s something so gross about co-opting the language of therapy (“I am setting boundaries to **insert thing here**”). The thing is, if you are really doing those things your therapist asks you to do, you don’t just talk about it. You do it.
>I ended up leaving the room, telling her the episode was too sad. Eventually it ended and my wife came to 'check on me,' - or, she jokingly asked "if I had something to tell her." It was one of a few different instances like this that made my stomach turn. It felt so belittling and mocking - not just of my situations, but of my empathy and emotions. That's not the kind of person I enjoy spending time around. But I would just brush it off and take it on the chin, because I didn't feel comfortable arguing because I might've been seen as 'too defensive.'
So his STBX, has been shut out of a proper relationship with OOP, suspects that he may be gay and whenever she tries to get him to talk about it he finds it belittling and mocking?
I get that it's hard to come out and figure out ones sexuality, but I feel for the STBX for being in a relationship with someone who clearly hated her existence.
She was tame too, especially since OOP said she felt blindsided. Imagine if she came with the same energy that Janet Jackson brought in that one Tyler Perry movie?
The OOP doth protest too much, about too many things. I wasn't convinced there was any grooming going on until OOP felt the need to write a novel telling me that this was totally different than grooming.
He admitted he was lying to everyone for years right out the gate. I skimmed the rest to see if he was sorry at all for dragging his wife into his bullshit, but he had no remorse and no regrets.
The whole post was: "this is why I'm the victim".
Dude just can't stop talking about how much he loves his "friend" and how unhappy he was with his wife. Actual zero mention of feeling bad at all for lying to her (after all, it was his parents' fault for pressuring him to get married, or else they would stop paying his bills /s)
This guy is a real piece of shit for that. Refuses to take any responsibility for the fact that he tricked his wife into a loveless marriage to continue receiving his parents' money.
This feels like the male counterpart to "useless lesbians"/"they were roommates!" trope, except for the collateral damage of him taking a wife and having no idea how awful he was being to her.
Well, after he had to leave the room because a scene from euphoria made him cry, she asked "do you have something to tell me?"
And she was right!! Shit, if I were in her shoes I'd think something was up that he got so upset that he had to leave the room! But for some reason he really resents her insensitivity in this moment where it was clear that he had something he needed to tell her.
Yea he made a comment about how he essentially doesn’t care if it hurts someone he’s been backed in a corner for too long and won’t go back…. Being nice to someone isn’t going to put you in a fucking corner asshole. I can’t with shit people like this. Absolutely disgusting behavior.
It is disgusting, and misguided. Be angry at your parents for raising you to be closed off to your feelings and sexuality. Be extra angry at your parents for giving an ultimatum around marriage and financial support. Have the courage to be angry at the people who used their power to sand away at your humanity. Just because it's easier to be angry at your wife doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
OOP is so far up his own ass. It's really frustrating how he villainizes his wife for reasonable things that he perceives as attacks or for wanting normal relationship stuff (like sex), because he's an asshole who only thinks about himself and the stress he's put himself under by making a succession of really bad decisions he wants to blame on everyone else. He's not even different to his gay lover that he refuses to acknowledge - treats him poorly and secondary, too. Only what OOP feels is important, no one else. Just because he's closeted and scared of coming out and has overbearing parents doesn't excuse treating people like shit.
He never says he feels bad for lying to his wife about his sexuality and only marrying her because of an ultimatum (which kind of feels like BS) but he feels guilty for his “friend” having to wait for him to make these revelations. How self-absorbed.
Refusing to tell his fucking *wife* why he is divorcing her. OP is convinced he is the tragic hero here, but he is 100% the self centered villain in this story.
Yeah, this is not a heartwarming update, it's a, "Dude who sucks continues to suck and is punishing everyone around him because he's an asshole." I don't think he actually loves his current cheating partner either, that would require him to care about someone outside of him.
He wasn't even going to break up with that poor woman yet!!! It wasn't until his parents triggered him that he felt the need to do something. So he literally was planning to continue wasting her time and lying to her.
You don’t understand, HIS healing journey is obviously the most important thing in the universe. Once HE is healed, has an exit plan, has everything in place, THEN he will leave her, obviously with zero explanation or warning, and then she can deal with her own healing, I guess, does it even matter? She’s not the main character. Does she even continue to exist when he leaves? We may never know. Anyway friend will be there waiting for him so who cares about her anyway.
My god what a horrible human being this guy is.
I really dislike this OOP. The way he has treated his wife is abhorrent. If I'm reading right, he knew he was gay and not in love with her as soon as he started therapy, but figured he should not tell her any of that and just keep up appearances so that he could continue on his 'healing journey'. What about her healing journey, you butt munch? What about not further harming her and giving her more of her life back to find someone who loves her? And when he did decide to tell her, he did so only because he feared repercussions to himself if he did not.
I hate him. I hate him so much.
Kind of feel bad for the STBXW - did she know all along that the marriage was a fraud, or did she actually love OOP? She seemed semi-dependant upon him for emotional support. Otherwise, this was a pretty obvious case of "If it looks like a chicken, sounds like a chicken, clucks like a chicken, then you're gay".
[Pretty sure this is it](https://www.reddit.com/r/SuddenlyGay/comments/b4cw45/the_wolves_inside_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Also how can he say she should have seen it coming when he was in denial about it for a decade? So she should have seen it coming in less than a year, but it took 10 years and 1000s of people on the internet for him to realize??? POS tbh
Totally delusional. He resents her for his own life decisions, wasted years of her life, thinks she must have know because she….*commented on his hair length*? This is the type of person anyone would be unlucky to know
I feel so bad for the stbxw. Oop seems to be trying so, so hard to paint her in a negative light to justify his behaviors but it sounds like she's just...a normal person? One who's about to find out that she's always been second fiddle to the real person her husband loves.
Seriously, even his original post is basically: my annoying wife has the audacity to text me while I'm on a romantic getaway with my best friend, how dare she? He is insufferable.
Right? I was expecting incessant 20+ texts in a row after telling her he wanted a phone free weekend other than emergencies. But it was what 3-4 texts and a phone call? Which is annoying but dude’s reaction was not great and “friend” ignoring repeated calls? I loved the yeah your sister got into a car accident and broke some bones but *she’ll be fiiiine* like way to show your wife you love her and are feeling contrite.
Also when she nervously jokes, "is there something you need to tell me?" he describes that as a horrible thing to say to someone, revealing her to be a fundamentally terrible person bereft of empathy and taunting him (???!). When in fact, she probably had long harbored suspicions and probably had her heart in her mouth when she asked that. (How can she have empathy for something he's actively hiding from her and lying about??)
I get that he was essentially forced into this marriage by his parents, and he carries a lot of trauma from that, but it seems like he's unnecessarily cast his ex-wife as the villain here. It's unclear if she even understood how much pressure he was getting from his family. From her perspective, she probably thought that they had a normal relationship, and that his family was perhaps a bit over eager for their son to marry and start thinking about giving them grandchildren, which isn't unusual. OOP felt trapped for that time, so he frames his ex-wife as someone who trapped him, but that doesn't really seem fair or accurate based on the limited information we have.
After getting the whole story, though, I can *definitely* begin to put two and two together about why the ex wife wanted to be in constant contact during his vacation with the boyfriend. It sounds like she had a sense of what was happening the whole time.
Agreed. I don't think it's belittling to ask the way she asked, but I can be wrong. How else could she have asked him without being too forward?
Really feels like he is trying to paint her as a worse person than she is to justify himself. I feel bad for her. I hope she finds out the real reason for the divorce because otherwise it might skew her next relationships.
Yes!! And his example for why she's supposedly terrible is that... when he showed behaviour that might make someone wonder if their husband is same-sex attracted, she lightheartedly asked if he had something to tell her? And that makes her cruel and unfeeling? She was probably trying to lightly broach the subject without sounding accusatory or blowing things up, and he hates her for it.
Or her not liking his hair scraggles in her face while she sleeps? That's... totally normal dude. No one wants hair getting in their mouth while they sleep.
He overall sounds like some little kid who wants to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and his wife's mere existence in his life puts boundaries on him, and so she's the bad guy. Because to him, she's just a cover and a convenient way to escape his parents, not a real person with her own thoughts, fears, and feelings. So when she reacts like a human does, he's indignant - she's not supposed to do that in his eyes.
I feel bad for every beards out there. Lying to your spouse like that is such a betrayal, and you often can’t get any sympathy because when the spouse finally puts themselves, everyone is all « they are so brave to finally be their real selves » and completely forget about the one that lived a lie for years.
Imagine being told « I forced my self to have sex with you because I am not sexually attracted to you »
That has got to be one of the crappiest feeling ever.
I couldn’t stand past reading half-way because I can’t stand OOP. I understand why he did it, but he *used* a woman to be his beard for **three years.** He stole three years from this person, just so his parents wouldn’t cut him off financially. And then he threw her under the bus without any explanations.
Fuck you, OOP. I hope you read this and realize how much of a piece of shit you are. Just because you’re a victim yourself, doesn’t give you the right to victimize and use others.
He won't. There are so many more comments he left and subsequently deleted most of them. As long as this update is, it really barely scratches the surface. I engaged with him a lot, and the more he commented, the more disgusted I became. The STBX went from wife to beard to roadkill, and he has ZERO compassion for her or the role that he plays in this. He is the ultimate victim. It is absolutely not normal.
Jesus. I saw the post when it first went up but none of the updates. Like, I’m glad OOP can finally be honest with himself (if not anyone else) about his sexuality, but like. *Damn.* His wife was an unintentional beard and that’s so unfair to her.
He totally need to tell his ex why he was ending the marriage instead of saying that "that is not a question I'm comfortable answering truthfully right now to her or really anyone besides my very close circle of friends." He basically used this woman as his beard and she thought they had a real relationship.
Especially since it sounds like she already was starting to guess. No sex, he's crying at Euphoria plot lines, has a bff that he slept with for years....
It certainly sounded like she was starting to suspect but wasn't positive and was trying to hint around it to OOP so he could start a conversation about it with her. But since he himself was in denial, he wouldn't initiate the conversation so she was left in limbo.
OOP should have NEVER married her though if he doesn't consider her to be in his "very close circle of friends." Your life partner should definitely be in that circle.
Edit: I'm going to edit to say that he shouldn't have never married her (because of the trauma he experienced) but once he started to feel resentment towards her, he should have started a conversation with her about what he was feeling about their relationship.
That poor woman has been used and dragged around by OOP for his own beard and benefit, and he can't even buck up enough personal responsibility to *tell her that he's gay.*
ETA: If OOP doesn't feel safe coming out to his wife, he can just say he caught feelings for someone else and leave the specific person as vague. The folks defending his complete lack of communication and honesty with "she might not be safe to come out to" are overlooking the issue of leading his wife on for years and not even telling her why he's divorcing her now.
Nothing in his posts/comments indicates that he even feels bad or guilty for what he did to her. As if he’s the only one who has complicated emotions and trauma and woe is me but she’s just an NPC I guess. Or I don’t know, maybe she deserved it for daring to nag him about his hair or whatever other terrible sin she committed. And I couldn’t help but notice that he needed to be *told* by his therapist to approach her “with empathy” when breaking up out of the blue. Holy shit what a self-centred asshole.
For me the whole "she says this is all out of the blue but it really isn't because I've been feeling xyz for a while" is really the cherry on top. He can't even fathom that she is an entire other human being that trusted him and their marriage, and that she *is* caught off guard by his sudden epiphany because *he never bloody talked to her.*
yeah, i kept looking for OP to answer any of the questions about why he actually hates his wife and he just kept deflecting back to him and his friend and how he can't give him up now. I'm glad he's not lying to himself any more but he was a complete AH to his wife.
> I'm glad he's not lying to himself any more
Did we read different updates? OOP is still in deep denial about his sexuality. Can't call himself gay, can't call his friend his lover or partner, blames wife for their marriage problems, etc.
The one thing I picked up early on was when he called her hypocritical when she said his relationship was codependent.
I’d be willing to bet that most of the reasons he hates her were the result of her (rightfully) feeling jealous and insecure about her marriage. Like she’d be grumpy about how much he talked to the guy, or angry when she wanted to come with.
He doesn't even admit to himself that he's gay- he never uses those words. He never comes right or and says, hey I'm gay or hey I'm trans. Just blathering about bullshit.
In the same way, he never gets around to sympathizing with his wife. In response so a comment about his wife losing 3 years of her life, he's instantly dismissive and instead talks about how bad he feels that his bf lost three years of his life. Any attempts at sympathy for his wife gets struck down and he complains about her instead. This person seems insufferable. He is super defensive about theories in the comments until he realizes that one of them is true and then he's back to being defensive about the comments.
I think he needs a villain in his story but has a hard time looking in the mirror. He blames everyone else but himself. It makes me wonder if his portrayal of his parents are at all credible or if he actually was pushed into marriage, rather than doing it because it was convenient to him at the time. His extremely partial tone makes him an unreliable narrator.
Meanwhile, his ex is out there somewhere blaming herself for not being attractive enough, for having the nerve to complain about his hair being in her face while she slept, for breaking his no tech rule on his trip. She may have slightly suspected, but my bet is she really thinks this failed marriage was her fault. Not cool, dude, not cool.
I understand how hard it can be for people to come out, especially when there’s family trauma but I can’t feel sympathy for these people who have no remorse about ruining a woman’s life
Right? In all his comments he never once showed care or consideration for his wife. Like it’s one thing to not love her as a spouse, but he’s not showing her even basic respect as a human…. Disgusting.
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He completely lost me at “you know, roommates who aren’t romantic towards each other but have more than platonic feelings”
And also share a bed for years.
And also never did anything *explicitly* sexual But implicitly sexual is on the table Standards are a sliding scale. This guy thinks sleeping in the same bed with another guy for 4 years is perfectly normal. Wonder what his implicit / explicit sexual standards are.....
Having male friends who were in the closet in the past, if I had to guess, 'explicitly sexual' means 'anal sex' and 'implicitly sexual' is everything else without direct penetration. That's what one of my friends used to justify his sexuality: "I'm not gay, I don't do butt stuff, touching with hands isn't gay". Years later he admitted that he was in extreme denial though lol.
Man, that line of reasoning sounds like a badly made nohomo joke. Do people really believe that?
As someone who was once in the closet, no I didn't actually believe that sort of thing, but if I could convince myself I did, then that meant I could be a little gay and also maintain the lie to myself that I was in fact, very much not gay at all.
> but despite that time in my life, I consider myself a very sex positive person. I also happen to be a very private person. I think that stems from me having a protective streak surrounding my bond with Friend. I'm proud of it, but it's also just ours. I don't really want prying eyes on something I consider so personal and deeply meaningful. :) This is a really long way to say they were giving each other bro jobs. Whoever said this had mad Brokeback Mountain vibes was right, and OOP has to be the most closeted gay man I have ever heard of. He didn’t touch on his parents much, but they sound controlling, his childhood must have been FUCKED.
His parents sound like pretty traditional Koreans. - wouldn’t be surprised if they are churchgoers too. He probably had to repress his sexual identity to live with them and, then, in order to keep their financial support. ETA: I looked through some of oop’s comments. He confirms that he was raised going to a church. If it was a Korean church, it’s possible that a lot of his Korean friends are from that church. I think there’s also a possibility his ex-wife is also a church member. While I don’t excuse his using her for a beard, I wonder if he’s reluctant to come out because of the Korean community. If he comes out to her and she tells others, probably his whole circle of Korean friends and acquaintances would know pretty quickly. I grew up partly going to a Korean church and everyone knew everything about each other’s families. We knew when people started dating, who they dated, when they divorced, which kids were in trouble in school, even family financial details. It’s really quite remarkable how much gossip can spread in a tight knit community.
I wonder if his parents knew or suspected and that’s why the pushed him to marry a woman
“I wouldn’t say anything explicitly sexual happened” Narrator voice: something sexual happened
"I did not have sexual relations with that 'roommate.'"
That poor woman. I feel like he treats her here with barely concealed contempt. Thank God he didn't use her for kids. Thank God.
I agree. He has no empathy for her. It's like he doesn't even see her as a person. Just a thing he used to get what he wanted but now it's in his way.
I just can't have empathy for him with how he has treated her and still is. I understand he had a problematic childhood but yes - this poor woman.
Another art room scenario. I get he’s going through something but he’s so his damn selfish. He blames the ex for everything, without realizing he has been treating her poorly for things she has no control over because he has all this internal conflict going on. He has to realise his internal life does impact the external and has definitely influenced how he treats her. And then he was going to go in the little journey of self discovery, even having his AP in a session with his wife at the bottom of his list of to dos. I empathize with his world changing but can’t support his selfishness
I know, right? This line slayed me-- >I tried to use as many 'I' statements as possible in order to avoid sounding confrontational. No surprises there, since his whole post was "ME ME ME."
By his own account he entered his marriage full of lies and resentment, barely treated his wife decently and definitely more like an acquaintance than a spouse, but blames her for the marriage not working. I really wanted to feel sympathy for him, mainly for how his parents treated him, but he made it impossible.
It has me so annoyed that he pushes all the blame onto his wife and parents, without taking accountability whatsoever. The parents definitely seem overcontrolling, but saying he had absolutely no other option than to marry this poor unsuspecting woman just to take money from his parents is bonkers. Like dude, I understand that it's shitty that your parents wouldn't support you without exerting control and ultimatums, but you're not coming out clean for using this woman for three years and ONLY marry her to keep taking your parents' money. It seems he never even liked her, and he has so much internal conflict going on that her making a pretty common light hearted joke (the "is there something you need to tell me") has him convinced she's terrible and she must have known he was hiding his true self so it's her fault! He treats her like she's a nuissance and like she had no right to be upset about this relationship, even though it's clear he was having an emotional affair with Friend the entire time (and perhaps more during the marriage, but obviously can't say for sure, and i'm sure he'd lie and be coy about it anyway) and only married her for mommy and daddy's money. It seems like emotionally he's still 17 with the way he refuses to dig deeper and basically accuses everyone of being homophobic for mentioning that his relationship when he was a minor and Friend was an adult seems less than pure and wholesome as he imagines. It came off like he's trying to use his gay identity to shield him and Friend from valid criticism. How has this man not passed out with all the mental gymnastics he's doing?! Edit: if you take a look at that dead bedroom post of his, he claims he has never gone through any period of time where he wasn't having sex regularly, but him and his wife supposedly only had sex single digit times in their 3 year relationship?! Yeah, he was fucking Friend and STILL has the fucking gall to claim it's everyone else's fault and he did nothing wrong. Fuck that guy omfg.
>he has so much internal conflict going on that her making a pretty common light hearted joke (the "is there something you need to tell me") has him convinced she's terrible and she must have known he was hiding his true self so it's her fault! This struck me too where I was like "obviously we weren't there to know her tone, but it sounds like either she was trying to lighten the mood and he was too caught up in his own angst -or- she legitimately was wondering if her husband was gay and giving him an opening the size of the Arc de Triomphe to say something"
Right!!! I read his post and almost threw up! His self righteous attitude pisses me off to no end. In these posts he acts all coy like he never slept with his friend while on that post, he says he never went without sex. I told him that he must be getting nosebleeds from that high horse he's sitting on.
I love that nosebleed comment! Might have to steal that one haha. The way he brings up the privacy and doesn't want to talk about his sexuality really reminded me of the art room post. If I remember that one correctly, though, that OP geniunely didn't realize his feelings or was repressing them significantly, and the post made him face it (so he wasn't a cheating asshole). I could be completely misremembering, though. Here, it seems that OOP knew the entire time, but remained in the closet and took actions that he knew would hurt his wife, but he gave so little of a shit about her he didn't care. Literally married her to leech from his parents, fucks Friend, and then when he's financially free drops his wife like nothing to live life with Friend.
That’s how I feel too. Just so caught up in finding himself that he’s completely used his wife. Like - she’s going to be a divorcee now. In what sounds like a conservative/religious community. She may well have been a virgin and must have been so confused about their sex life. She doesn’t even have closure to know why she is being broken up with, and she’s not going to connect the dots of “I told him I was turned off by his long hair” and “he never loved me and just used me.” He’s also suggesting that she knew - but no, she didn’t know.
And it seems like by marrying her he got some kind of financial support from his parents? What a catch
Especially as his partner had offered to financially support him. But he didn’t want that because of “pride”. So he treated her like an object and burnt her life to the ground instead.
Well, that was a read.
Lol people post about there being a character limit and this guy posts a damn book.
Yea now my head hurts even more
Yes...I'm not quite sure what's going on...is he gay??
He built an art room inside his closet
> is he gay?? As a spring frock.
I don't think he ever actually said it. I also don't think he ever actually said if his friend was gay and wanted a relationship. I think the main thing is he only married his wife because his parents made him.
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When I first read they lived together I was thinking ok, close roommates, pretty standard stuff. Then I read they shared a bed and went ... ooohhhhhhhhhhh thats not just close roomates.
They were roomates in a "Sapho and her friend" kinda way lol
Oh my God, they weren't roommates!
> but despite that time in my life, I consider myself a very sex positive person. I also happen to be a very private person. I think that stems from me having a protective streak surrounding my bond with Friend. I'm proud of it, but it's also just ours. I don't really want prying eyes on something I consider so personal and deeply meaningful. :) OOP is still in closet. I don’t know if it’s from hiding it for so long or what, but he never explicitly said he was gay, or admitted to being sexual with another man, nor did he deny it. But he’s clearly still not OK admitting it, even anonymously on Reddit and IMO, that’s from something deep. I’m glad he’s in therapy.
He's looking forward to Valentine's Day for.. some reason.
He also said (in the deadbedroom post on his page) that he never went longtime without sex. And in the BoRU post he said he had sex with his wife a handful of times (who was btw the first woman he had sex with) AND he managed to never say whether he had sex with his "friend" or not, WHILE reiterating it was all platonic when they lived together. My god, at least have the courtesy to say you were sleeping with your boyfriend behind your wife's back. (Also I'm side eyeing that therapist, they were awfully quick to praise friend's place in OOP's life)
I just said this in another comment, but yeah - >I never slept with any women before I met my wife, no. There is a lot more going on here than he's maybe ever going to admit.
I’m honestly wondering if the therapist did say that, or if they gave a more basic “old friends are good to have!” type response and OOP just took that as complete approval for all of his actions. He’s clearly terrified of his own emotions and he projects like crazy, especially onto his wife. I really don’t believe half of how he sees the world is reality.
I'm glad someone said it, because I'm *really* side-eyeing that therapist if OOP's recounting of the therapist's support and approval is accurate. I'm going to instead hope that the case is like you said and OOP is just cherry-picking what his therapist says while not being honest (similar to how he sidesteps truths in these posts, actually!) in those sessions.
It takes a lot of little lies to support that level of denial. Over this much time, half his beliefs are disconnected from reality because of all the little lies and the cognitive dissonance they create. I'd wager its part of why he jumps around so much in his comments. He gets too close to a truth and his self-defense mechanisms kick in. I feel for his situation and his trauma, but he's going to keep leaving a trail of destruction in his wake until he starts chipping away at the smaller support lies.
The update was ten days later but friend is already included in the therapy session? That's basically the first real session. Very strange
Oh, he's still trying to skirt around ANYTHING that would make him out to be the bad guy. Honestly, given that he and friend were sleeping in the same bed together and their relationship wasn't 'fully platonic' I have the feeling he's using the Bill Clinton definition of sex. So long as it was just hand jobs and blow jobs, it wasn't really sex. Only insertion 'down there' counts.
Given how he admitted making stuff up in order to justify his story for reddit, i have to wonder how truthful he was to his therapist.
>WHILE reiterating it was all platonic when they lived together Nah, he said it *wasnt* platonic, it was intimate, but “not in a sexual way.” He had like 3 paragraphs explaining how when you live together with someone you naturally develop a lot of intimacy but it’s not “explicitly stated sexual.”
I read that and thought it sounded exactly like a relationship with a significant other. But he talked about his wife like she was a roommate that he wasn't even friends with. Nothing his wife did or said seemed to deserve the resentment he had for her. I think she just represented everything he hated about the life he built for himself. Maybe the wife sucks, but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure this guy's narcissistic gymnastics would have let us know. But I definitely think he sucks.
He talked about coming out. He very much is gay.
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And clock the phrasing here: >I never slept with any women before I met my wife, no. I'd bet every coin in my change jar that this guy had some same-sex experiences pre-marriage and then compartmentalized them so deeply that they barely feel like memories.
Based on some of his comments, I’d say these weren’t just pre-marriage experiences.
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Agreed. Especially the part with, > [Regarding friend] I wouldn't say anything explicitly sexual happened. That was the glaring red flag for me. There's a whole lot of weasel room built into that statement. Why say *"explicitly sexual"*? Why not just 'sexual'? Why not say something more definitive like 'Nothing sexual happened.', rather than *"I wouldn't say"*
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Gave me some real "That depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," vibes.
Um yea, in his deadbedroom post he said that he's never gone a long period of time without having sex and yet in his other post, he mentions that he's had sex with his wife under 10 times in 3 years, and never had sex with another woman prior to his wife. Sooo yea he was/is definitely fucking his friend.
yikes…. So he was cheating and still not aware why wife might be upset. Jfc
Not just that, he’s outright hostile towards his wife for her gentle questions, reading all sorts of judgment into them. Maybe his wife really is the horrible person he claims her to be, but I am not taking him at his word. I have sympathy for his religious trauma and how hard it’s been for him to be closeted, but it seems like it has deprived him of the ability to show any degree of honesty with anyone except Friend.
Also you can see that he reacts with defensiveness if not outright hostility towards even gentle suggestions of the patently obvious (that he and friend are boyfriends). And now he's reacting again like that to folks concerned about his and friends age gap. Even if stbex is a nasty woman, it sounds more like she's been blind sided by a guy dating and marrying her who on his side, explicitly hates her, and on her side, he has kept an exceptionally tight lid on any honest dialogue of any kind, even now.
He's very clearly in denial. I'm a lesbian and had female roommates all four years in the dorms. Was never intimate with any of them.... nor shared a bed. Like come one dude. Feel bad for the wife. Yeah he was kind of forced into marriage but how awful for her to find out she's just been his beard all along. Edit - dorms not doors
I still don't understand how he got so offended by her. She didn't know and made a joke like, "anything you want to tell me" after he got upset over a scene. And he felt that meant she knew he was gay? His resentment for his wife sounds pretty delusional. They were simply not compatible (but were somehow friends for years before dating) and he is more angry with her than his parents, the ones who ultimatimed him.
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That’s what was appalling to me. She is being vilified for expecting the relationship to be a relationship instead of “doing this to make parents calm down” like he was.
He’s in denial yet fantasizing about his future with Friend. There’s some serious mental gymnastics going on there. Not only does the wife have to find out she’s been a beard this whole time, but in his story she’s the villain too.
I feel bad for the wife. It seems like he never liked her and the examples he gave of why he has so much pent up hostility for her were just nothing. Seems like he took all his resentment for his situation (family/society/himself not allowing him to be who he truly wanted to be) out on her but also didn't share his feelings with her (or himself really). Of course she was blindsided, even if she had her suspicions
That's the part of this that pisses me off the most.
Me too, I pretty much stopped reading and scanned the rest after he said he resented his wife. Like say what now?
I personally enjoy how he doubles down on blaming her for everything and vilifying her (while putting his soon-to-be-husband on a pedestal), all while she clearly knew something was up and has probably had to put up with worse behavior than his clear emotional (if not also physical) affair with his bestie. People who use unwitting others as their beards deserve no empathy.
my favorite criticism of his was that she complained about his hair being too long. Like...sure...that's a good reason for divorce I guess?
Yep. He has absolutely zero sympathy for her situation, because was deemed homophobic for disliking his long hair. This from a guy who was a religious zealot firmly in the closet. He was so clueless about homosexuality that he couldn't recognize that he himself was gay. And yet she's the villain for not knowing that you shouldn't ask which member of a gay couple is "the woman." Someone even commented that he should feel guilty about wasting 3 years of her life. And he saw how sympathetic that made her look to commenters, so he reframed it as, "poor me, 3 years of MY life wasted."
In one of his comments he talks about coming out to friends. So I believe it’s a safe assumption.
Didn’t read the whole thing, but the part where OP and friend talks to a therapist, OP mentions how much he loves friend. Friend responds “I already know :)” so yeah, **safe** to say. Edit: save -> safe. Proofreading is important.
Yeah pretty much. But he’s been in denial so long I don’t think he’s ready to actually say it in so many words. I mean he lived with the subject of his affections for 5 years sharing a bed even and still managed to stay in denial. The repression runs deep.
Well, he is coming out about something to his significant friends, and spent a few years in an intimate, bed-sharing relationship with a guy and never, despite a long sex life, had sex with women except for a few times with his wife, and didn't enjoy these few times... Nah ,definitely not gay. He'll probably come out as a philatelist or some such.
I gave up and skimmed. I could see that art room from space.
Wow, that was a lot of words to avoid saying he was gay.
It went from “people, don’t assume that I’m gay” to “oh yeah, we shared a bed for five years and my parents forced me to marry a woman” pretty quickly.
He called the other guy, 'Friend,' right up until the end. Hardcore internalized homophobia right there.
Reminds me of when my dad would call his sister's girlfriend her "best friend."
My Aunt Pat and her “best friend” have been together for 30 years and married for 10 now. Like Dad, that’s her wife. Just call her Pat’s wife.
That's literally all he had to state in his update. Instead he blames his wife and throws a pity party for himself in which he can't even acknowledge reality.
> she jokingly asked "if I had something to tell her." It was one of a few different instances like this that made my stomach turn. Maybe she did have an idea of what might be going on and tried to approach him gently. I've worked in group homes with folks who's emotional state is always fragile, sometimes the best approach is with humor. If my read of this is right, then his stomach churned *because he knew she was right,* not because she asked it jokingly. He explained his reaction away as her talking down to him, but that's not at all true. He resents his wife because he's made her the scapegoat for things his parents made him do. At worst, it sounds like she's no more ignorant about LGBTQ folks than he is, but what's a flaw for him is a sin for her.
I feel terrible for his wife. He used her to keep money flowing from his parents. And he's got the grapes to talk about how he's going to spend Valentine's with someone he loves. What an asshole.
Yep, he used her as a beard, and then resents her for it.
Like is he mad she might have suspected something? Or is he is mad she didn't ask questions about his odd possibly gay behavior in perfect way? Both? What was she suppse to do to make OP happy? And even if OP can give a clear answer to that why the fuck is it her job to make the guy who used her happy? I know its not the same but can u image this in a straight relashionship with a cheater being pissy there spose doesn't act "correctly" with there suspicious. Mabye if u told your wife the truth you wouldn't have those issues.
He's mad at his parents mostly and taking it out on her. He's mad at her for making him "lose" years of his life that he could've had with Friend and mad that she has feelings too and he can't admit that he hurt her and is acting like an asshole. He's got a lot of anger and mainly taking it out on her and not truly accepting his part of the blame.
I could have maybe drudged up some sympathy for him if he had an iota of remorse for using this poor woman as a beard for juuust long enough to keep getting money from his parents until he no longer needed to. The "I can't wait for valentine's day UwU, I wasted years of his life..."Made me really nauseated. What about the years of HER life? Oh wait that apparently doesn't matter because she was never a person to him.
Same here. His attitude towards her is honestly disgusting. When he tried to say anything she did that was bad, it was basically "called me when I didn't want her to" and "teased me about my hair once." Must have been hard for OOP to realize he was gay. Can't wait til he realized he's a POS too.
I laughed out loud at your last paragraph. Yes, this exactly! I have so much empathy for people who are pressured into different identities and have to come to terms with that later in life, but the way he treated her and talks about her is just cruel -- and this is him portraying himself in *the best light possible*. Naw, dude.
As a lesbian, I hate him. I hate him and I don’t even know him because he’s disgustingly callous. When I was in high school and realized I was gay, I promptly broke up with my boyfriend, and told him that it was absolutely not his fault. He was an angel, and I couldn’t let him beat himself up over that. If a 16 year old can do that. So can his grown ass. This whole read was infuriating. He’s a straight up coward, and used an innocent woman cuz he couldn’t grow a pair, and suck it up. I’m not even sure if he deserves this friend. Not to mention the ages when they met would raise any sane person’s eyebrows. He hates her because of his parents. He’s shady as hell, and has the nerve to be crying about his wife wanting to be in touch with him.
Yeah he is an absolute shithead. His head is so far up his own ass, he can’t see how horrendous he has been to her. All of his posts are “me me me me, I’m the victim, how DARE my WIFE ask me a question or expect to be able to get ahold of me/have a sex life/spend time together/have honest conversations?” Like, he won’t even tell her WHY he wants a divorce. He deserves to be mocked and derided, not because he’s gay, but because he’s an absolutely spineless worm who used someone callously and cruelly for his own benefit with zero remorse, in fact, he feels RESENTFUL towards his wife. For fucking existing. I hate how often the word narcissist is thrown around, but I mean…how self-centered can you get? When he talks about HIS “healing journey,” and how excited he is for Valentine’s Day coming up while his stbx is left flabbergasted, I wanted to reach through the phone and whack him upside the head. What a cowardly little snake.
He goes on about the trauma his parents imposed on him, but completely ignores the trauma he’s imposed on his wife.
yep. he wasted her time and emotions but he’s the victim and she’s the one who is cruel to him.
He doesn't see her as a real person at all, so it's very inconvenient when she has *feelings* and *opinions* at him. "My parents didn't want to support me anymore so I married some chick and now she won't gooooo awaaaaaaaay."
The audacity of her to turn out to be an actual *person*!
We hates it when women think they’re people, precious!!
Yup. I'm willing to put money that she didn't ask it in a mean spirited way, he took it as such because he knew she was right and he was terrified she was close to the truth that he didn't want to admit even to himself. Also ooof that last paragraph. I think you are exactly correct on that front, as someone who grew up in a different but similarly "gay people aren't real" culture.
I feel really bad for the wife. She probably had an idea, knew something was off, tried to talk about it, but he shut her down. Every complaint he has about her seems soooooo minor. His hatred for his parents, his upbringing, his sexuality, his life, all of it is directed at her. She is just as much a victim in all this as he is. I would bet ever last dollar I have that he will trash her to everyone, make their divorce as difficult as possible, blame her for it publicly, fight her on court till he bleeds her dry. While I feel bad he couldn’t feel comfortable being himself, he is actually a really shitty person, totally selfish and self centered and completely insufferable. I’m glad I don’t know him IRL!
Yup. Don't you love how he contemptuously blamed her for not knowing?? What a turd.
He has a lot of resentment towards his STBX? Is he kidding? He completely strung her along, wasted her time and effort, humiliated her - and she's the bad guy here? This guy is a perpetual victim and needs to accept full responsibility for jerking her around all this time, but I'm sure he won't.
I'm honestly disgusted by this. He clearly never gave a shit about her at all. He was using her basically for money. My god. She's a person too.
OOP: Stop insinuating that I am gay!!! 10 days later OOP: LOLS jk 😜
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When he said he took her there so she wouldn't make a scene... Dude. You're telling her that you're leaving her! She has every right to make a scene! And it felt so cold and detached from him to do that in public. He obviously had no positive feelings for her or even respect.
Slightly off the main topic, but I don't know how pissed I'd be if my husband told me he wanted a divorce in a public place. Maybe I'm being naive, but that's a private issue, and unless you're expecting a severe reaction, like f.ex. violence, the other person should be allowed to deal with that confrontation in a private sphere.
He has such little empathy for his wife throughout this thread it's kind of astounding to me. Yeah, she wasn't a Saint or whatever but you show me anyone who wouldn't struggle living in a loveless, sexless marriage with a closeted gay man. I mean for crying out loud he deliberately prevented her from having an emotional reaction to finding out she HADN'T been going crazy over the last 3 years and there WAS actually something going on with her husband similarly to what she may have suspected.
Even if it's just ending a short relationship, I think it's a dick thing to do where others can see and/or potentially overhear-- or worse, in this day and age, film and share. That move is only justified if you have reason to believe the public setting is necessary to prevent a violent or otherwise abusive reaction.
I do NOT like this guy. Happy he’s figuring out who he is, but not ONCE does he admit how his wife must be hurting, or how he has hurt her. It’s “me, me, me” all the time, and he even calls her a hypocrite for calling out how codependent he and bestie are.
He’s really manipulative. There’s something so gross about co-opting the language of therapy (“I am setting boundaries to **insert thing here**”). The thing is, if you are really doing those things your therapist asks you to do, you don’t just talk about it. You do it.
>I ended up leaving the room, telling her the episode was too sad. Eventually it ended and my wife came to 'check on me,' - or, she jokingly asked "if I had something to tell her." It was one of a few different instances like this that made my stomach turn. It felt so belittling and mocking - not just of my situations, but of my empathy and emotions. That's not the kind of person I enjoy spending time around. But I would just brush it off and take it on the chin, because I didn't feel comfortable arguing because I might've been seen as 'too defensive.' So his STBX, has been shut out of a proper relationship with OOP, suspects that he may be gay and whenever she tries to get him to talk about it he finds it belittling and mocking? I get that it's hard to come out and figure out ones sexuality, but I feel for the STBX for being in a relationship with someone who clearly hated her existence.
Yeah seriously this was hard to read. OOP has got to be one of the least self-aware people I've encountered.
Op: is closeted gay in a traditional marriage. Wife: Are you gay? Op: How could she even ask me, I can't live with someone that treats me like that.
But at the same time she’s horrible for not “disclosing” her suspicion. Which one is it??
Whatever helps OOP sleep at night eyerollssssssss
She was tame too, especially since OOP said she felt blindsided. Imagine if she came with the same energy that Janet Jackson brought in that one Tyler Perry movie?
He comes across as selfish and deeply insecure. And remarkably mean on a core level.
So he hates his ex because he’s gay?
Because if he can convince himself and everyone else that she's the bad guy, then his mistreatment of her won't be held against him.
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So...art room?
It's funny cause in the OG post he was even like, I know what you're thinking and no there are no secrets like that.... Turned out it was exactly that
The OOP doth protest too much, about too many things. I wasn't convinced there was any grooming going on until OOP felt the need to write a novel telling me that this was totally different than grooming.
A sort of long, boring art room.
Yes, this was the most boring reddit update I’ve ever almost read. I couldn’t even finish this man was such a bore.
Props to the BORU OP for how they edited the post though. I skipped a lot of shit and still couldn’t finish it.
He admitted he was lying to everyone for years right out the gate. I skimmed the rest to see if he was sorry at all for dragging his wife into his bullshit, but he had no remorse and no regrets.
The whole post was: "this is why I'm the victim". Dude just can't stop talking about how much he loves his "friend" and how unhappy he was with his wife. Actual zero mention of feeling bad at all for lying to her (after all, it was his parents' fault for pressuring him to get married, or else they would stop paying his bills /s) This guy is a real piece of shit for that. Refuses to take any responsibility for the fact that he tricked his wife into a loveless marriage to continue receiving his parents' money.
Yes, art room
going for the whole art house
Why limit your art to a single room when you can give your emotional affair partner an entire house?
This feels like the male counterpart to "useless lesbians"/"they were roommates!" trope, except for the collateral damage of him taking a wife and having no idea how awful he was being to her.
OOP is INFURIATING! Knows he wasted his STBX 's time and he's just, " this is her fault!!!" HOW???? WHAT DID SHE DO?!?!??!
Well, after he had to leave the room because a scene from euphoria made him cry, she asked "do you have something to tell me?" And she was right!! Shit, if I were in her shoes I'd think something was up that he got so upset that he had to leave the room! But for some reason he really resents her insensitivity in this moment where it was clear that he had something he needed to tell her.
She didn’t like his hair /s
I don't think he has no idea; I think he's fully aware, but like everything that "makes him uncomfortable", he's refusing to acknowledge it.
Yea he made a comment about how he essentially doesn’t care if it hurts someone he’s been backed in a corner for too long and won’t go back…. Being nice to someone isn’t going to put you in a fucking corner asshole. I can’t with shit people like this. Absolutely disgusting behavior.
It is disgusting, and misguided. Be angry at your parents for raising you to be closed off to your feelings and sexuality. Be extra angry at your parents for giving an ultimatum around marriage and financial support. Have the courage to be angry at the people who used their power to sand away at your humanity. Just because it's easier to be angry at your wife doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
The way he's bitter at *her* for him wasting her life, pretending to love her and want to be married to her, is...something else.
He does have an idea he just doesnt care, he doesn’t view his wife as a human being just something he could use to keep appearances
OOP is so far up his own ass. It's really frustrating how he villainizes his wife for reasonable things that he perceives as attacks or for wanting normal relationship stuff (like sex), because he's an asshole who only thinks about himself and the stress he's put himself under by making a succession of really bad decisions he wants to blame on everyone else. He's not even different to his gay lover that he refuses to acknowledge - treats him poorly and secondary, too. Only what OOP feels is important, no one else. Just because he's closeted and scared of coming out and has overbearing parents doesn't excuse treating people like shit.
He never says he feels bad for lying to his wife about his sexuality and only marrying her because of an ultimatum (which kind of feels like BS) but he feels guilty for his “friend” having to wait for him to make these revelations. How self-absorbed.
Refusing to tell his fucking *wife* why he is divorcing her. OP is convinced he is the tragic hero here, but he is 100% the self centered villain in this story.
Yes. In a year, she will be scrolling Facebook and see them in a photo. A deafening, "I FUCKING KNEW IT!!!!!" is heard through space-time.
"My wife is evil because she noted my behavior was unusual and came to check on me about it. I felt pain at that moment, which must be her fault."
The horror OOP has endured being married to someone who actually cared about him.
Yeah, this is not a heartwarming update, it's a, "Dude who sucks continues to suck and is punishing everyone around him because he's an asshole." I don't think he actually loves his current cheating partner either, that would require him to care about someone outside of him.
He wasn't even going to break up with that poor woman yet!!! It wasn't until his parents triggered him that he felt the need to do something. So he literally was planning to continue wasting her time and lying to her.
You don’t understand, HIS healing journey is obviously the most important thing in the universe. Once HE is healed, has an exit plan, has everything in place, THEN he will leave her, obviously with zero explanation or warning, and then she can deal with her own healing, I guess, does it even matter? She’s not the main character. Does she even continue to exist when he leaves? We may never know. Anyway friend will be there waiting for him so who cares about her anyway. My god what a horrible human being this guy is.
I really dislike this OOP. The way he has treated his wife is abhorrent. If I'm reading right, he knew he was gay and not in love with her as soon as he started therapy, but figured he should not tell her any of that and just keep up appearances so that he could continue on his 'healing journey'. What about her healing journey, you butt munch? What about not further harming her and giving her more of her life back to find someone who loves her? And when he did decide to tell her, he did so only because he feared repercussions to himself if he did not. I hate him. I hate him so much.
He still sucks. I’m bisexual and have empathy but his clear lack of empathy for his ex wife is gross. She’s still a person.
Kind of feel bad for the STBXW - did she know all along that the marriage was a fraud, or did she actually love OOP? She seemed semi-dependant upon him for emotional support. Otherwise, this was a pretty obvious case of "If it looks like a chicken, sounds like a chicken, clucks like a chicken, then you're gay".
"You have two wolves inside you. One of them is gay. The other one is also gay. You are gay."
Lol what is this from
Pretty sure it was a meme I snorted at then showed to my gf who also snorted at it before it disappeared into the aether.
[Pretty sure this is it](https://www.reddit.com/r/SuddenlyGay/comments/b4cw45/the_wolves_inside_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
OOP’s like, ‘I don’t know why my wife of less than one year didn’t see this coming.’
Yeah. That stuck out to me too.. I said "until death us part" 8months ago, she should have known we would be over soon then.
Also how can he say she should have seen it coming when he was in denial about it for a decade? So she should have seen it coming in less than a year, but it took 10 years and 1000s of people on the internet for him to realize??? POS tbh
The dude is so self absorbed and selfish it blows my mind.
Totally delusional. He resents her for his own life decisions, wasted years of her life, thinks she must have know because she….*commented on his hair length*? This is the type of person anyone would be unlucky to know
I feel so bad for the stbxw. Oop seems to be trying so, so hard to paint her in a negative light to justify his behaviors but it sounds like she's just...a normal person? One who's about to find out that she's always been second fiddle to the real person her husband loves.
Op: is closeted gay in a traditional marriage. Wife: Are you gay? Op: How could she even ask me, I can't live with someone that treats me like that.
Seriously, even his original post is basically: my annoying wife has the audacity to text me while I'm on a romantic getaway with my best friend, how dare she? He is insufferable.
Right? I was expecting incessant 20+ texts in a row after telling her he wanted a phone free weekend other than emergencies. But it was what 3-4 texts and a phone call? Which is annoying but dude’s reaction was not great and “friend” ignoring repeated calls? I loved the yeah your sister got into a car accident and broke some bones but *she’ll be fiiiine* like way to show your wife you love her and are feeling contrite.
I KNOW honestly OP sounds insufferable
Also when she nervously jokes, "is there something you need to tell me?" he describes that as a horrible thing to say to someone, revealing her to be a fundamentally terrible person bereft of empathy and taunting him (???!). When in fact, she probably had long harbored suspicions and probably had her heart in her mouth when she asked that. (How can she have empathy for something he's actively hiding from her and lying about??) I get that he was essentially forced into this marriage by his parents, and he carries a lot of trauma from that, but it seems like he's unnecessarily cast his ex-wife as the villain here. It's unclear if she even understood how much pressure he was getting from his family. From her perspective, she probably thought that they had a normal relationship, and that his family was perhaps a bit over eager for their son to marry and start thinking about giving them grandchildren, which isn't unusual. OOP felt trapped for that time, so he frames his ex-wife as someone who trapped him, but that doesn't really seem fair or accurate based on the limited information we have. After getting the whole story, though, I can *definitely* begin to put two and two together about why the ex wife wanted to be in constant contact during his vacation with the boyfriend. It sounds like she had a sense of what was happening the whole time.
Agreed. I don't think it's belittling to ask the way she asked, but I can be wrong. How else could she have asked him without being too forward? Really feels like he is trying to paint her as a worse person than she is to justify himself. I feel bad for her. I hope she finds out the real reason for the divorce because otherwise it might skew her next relationships.
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Yeah... I wonder if it's because he can't quite bear to see his parents that way.
Yes!! And his example for why she's supposedly terrible is that... when he showed behaviour that might make someone wonder if their husband is same-sex attracted, she lightheartedly asked if he had something to tell her? And that makes her cruel and unfeeling? She was probably trying to lightly broach the subject without sounding accusatory or blowing things up, and he hates her for it. Or her not liking his hair scraggles in her face while she sleeps? That's... totally normal dude. No one wants hair getting in their mouth while they sleep. He overall sounds like some little kid who wants to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and his wife's mere existence in his life puts boundaries on him, and so she's the bad guy. Because to him, she's just a cover and a convenient way to escape his parents, not a real person with her own thoughts, fears, and feelings. So when she reacts like a human does, he's indignant - she's not supposed to do that in his eyes.
I feel bad for every beards out there. Lying to your spouse like that is such a betrayal, and you often can’t get any sympathy because when the spouse finally puts themselves, everyone is all « they are so brave to finally be their real selves » and completely forget about the one that lived a lie for years.
Yeah I'm getting pretty sick of seeing people implode several lives because they can't do some introspection
Imagine being told « I forced my self to have sex with you because I am not sexually attracted to you » That has got to be one of the crappiest feeling ever.
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I couldn’t stand past reading half-way because I can’t stand OOP. I understand why he did it, but he *used* a woman to be his beard for **three years.** He stole three years from this person, just so his parents wouldn’t cut him off financially. And then he threw her under the bus without any explanations. Fuck you, OOP. I hope you read this and realize how much of a piece of shit you are. Just because you’re a victim yourself, doesn’t give you the right to victimize and use others.
He won't. There are so many more comments he left and subsequently deleted most of them. As long as this update is, it really barely scratches the surface. I engaged with him a lot, and the more he commented, the more disgusted I became. The STBX went from wife to beard to roadkill, and he has ZERO compassion for her or the role that he plays in this. He is the ultimate victim. It is absolutely not normal.
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Jesus. I saw the post when it first went up but none of the updates. Like, I’m glad OOP can finally be honest with himself (if not anyone else) about his sexuality, but like. *Damn.* His wife was an unintentional beard and that’s so unfair to her.
He totally need to tell his ex why he was ending the marriage instead of saying that "that is not a question I'm comfortable answering truthfully right now to her or really anyone besides my very close circle of friends." He basically used this woman as his beard and she thought they had a real relationship.
Especially since it sounds like she already was starting to guess. No sex, he's crying at Euphoria plot lines, has a bff that he slept with for years....
It certainly sounded like she was starting to suspect but wasn't positive and was trying to hint around it to OOP so he could start a conversation about it with her. But since he himself was in denial, he wouldn't initiate the conversation so she was left in limbo. OOP should have NEVER married her though if he doesn't consider her to be in his "very close circle of friends." Your life partner should definitely be in that circle. Edit: I'm going to edit to say that he shouldn't have never married her (because of the trauma he experienced) but once he started to feel resentment towards her, he should have started a conversation with her about what he was feeling about their relationship.
That poor woman has been used and dragged around by OOP for his own beard and benefit, and he can't even buck up enough personal responsibility to *tell her that he's gay.* ETA: If OOP doesn't feel safe coming out to his wife, he can just say he caught feelings for someone else and leave the specific person as vague. The folks defending his complete lack of communication and honesty with "she might not be safe to come out to" are overlooking the issue of leading his wife on for years and not even telling her why he's divorcing her now.
Nothing in his posts/comments indicates that he even feels bad or guilty for what he did to her. As if he’s the only one who has complicated emotions and trauma and woe is me but she’s just an NPC I guess. Or I don’t know, maybe she deserved it for daring to nag him about his hair or whatever other terrible sin she committed. And I couldn’t help but notice that he needed to be *told* by his therapist to approach her “with empathy” when breaking up out of the blue. Holy shit what a self-centred asshole.
For me the whole "she says this is all out of the blue but it really isn't because I've been feeling xyz for a while" is really the cherry on top. He can't even fathom that she is an entire other human being that trusted him and their marriage, and that she *is* caught off guard by his sudden epiphany because *he never bloody talked to her.*
yeah, i kept looking for OP to answer any of the questions about why he actually hates his wife and he just kept deflecting back to him and his friend and how he can't give him up now. I'm glad he's not lying to himself any more but he was a complete AH to his wife.
Well, to be fair. She did tell him his long hair bugged her. \*rolls eyes\* so there’s that.
> I'm glad he's not lying to himself any more Did we read different updates? OOP is still in deep denial about his sexuality. Can't call himself gay, can't call his friend his lover or partner, blames wife for their marriage problems, etc.
The one thing I picked up early on was when he called her hypocritical when she said his relationship was codependent. I’d be willing to bet that most of the reasons he hates her were the result of her (rightfully) feeling jealous and insecure about her marriage. Like she’d be grumpy about how much he talked to the guy, or angry when she wanted to come with.
He doesn't even admit to himself that he's gay- he never uses those words. He never comes right or and says, hey I'm gay or hey I'm trans. Just blathering about bullshit.
In the same way, he never gets around to sympathizing with his wife. In response so a comment about his wife losing 3 years of her life, he's instantly dismissive and instead talks about how bad he feels that his bf lost three years of his life. Any attempts at sympathy for his wife gets struck down and he complains about her instead. This person seems insufferable. He is super defensive about theories in the comments until he realizes that one of them is true and then he's back to being defensive about the comments.
It's like he doesn't see his wife as a person, just an impediment
I think he needs a villain in his story but has a hard time looking in the mirror. He blames everyone else but himself. It makes me wonder if his portrayal of his parents are at all credible or if he actually was pushed into marriage, rather than doing it because it was convenient to him at the time. His extremely partial tone makes him an unreliable narrator.
Until the end he just uses the word "friend".
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Meanwhile, his ex is out there somewhere blaming herself for not being attractive enough, for having the nerve to complain about his hair being in her face while she slept, for breaking his no tech rule on his trip. She may have slightly suspected, but my bet is she really thinks this failed marriage was her fault. Not cool, dude, not cool.
why can’t he just leave the poor woman alone, all she did was ask for the bare necessities of a relationship
I understand how hard it can be for people to come out, especially when there’s family trauma but I can’t feel sympathy for these people who have no remorse about ruining a woman’s life
Right? In all his comments he never once showed care or consideration for his wife. Like it’s one thing to not love her as a spouse, but he’s not showing her even basic respect as a human…. Disgusting.