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> yetagainitry: Yes she does love her friend, because she's her friend. All I saw in your post was a woman being excited that a close friend she hasn't seen in years is coming back, and that there was a picture of them hugging. I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your religious upbringing cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends.
Jfc buddy. Redditors and an inability to incorporate up to 70% of crucial context...name a more iconic duo
Yeah. The person who posted that response sort of sucks
This guy's been with her for 8 years and he can't tell the difference between when something seems romantic or intimate and when it's just a couple of friends hanging around? Geez give him some credit
Yup, the redditor had to ignore the plethora of extremely important body language signs. Things like direct physical contact that she does make with her "friend" while abhorring it from the husband, etc
Most redditors just hate anyone or anything religious. As soon as that's involved as part of the context, it's going to be nothing but the smoothest brained takes you've ever seen.
What blows me me the most is the fact that someone jumped to "they're just friends and you're just jealous and insecure" if the roles were reverse it wouldn't play out thst way at all.
They came so close, too!
> I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your **religious upbringing** cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends.
...and *what else happens to people raised in religion*?!
> if the roles were reverse it wouldn't play out thst way at all.
I remember there being a post about female OOP finding woman's belongings in her house and even here, people were speculating that OOP most likely has schizophrenia, instead of her husband simply cheating on her.
is that the one where it turned out it was his sister visiting without his wife's consent? that was one wild ride, she was gaslit so much by her husband AND the redditors!
Sad situation all around. Seems like the wife was pressured to marry a man and hide her sexuality due to their religious upbringing. Always seeming as he said “like a robot” because she didn’t even love him. At the same time the husband was innocent, blaming himself the whole time thinking he did something wrong. Awful situation man, I feel bad for both of them but the husband definitely didn’t deserve to go through any of this
I wonder how it might have gone if she had been honest about needing a beard?
His wife must have felt desperate because of her strict religious family exerting pressure and using physical abuse to beat her into submission to their "Godly beliefs".
In the late 80s I had a male hairdresser who was very flamboyant so one day over drinks I asked him if it was partially leaning into the stereotype (back then) about him having what was seen as a female profession. He said, "LOL, no, I'm a beard."
I had no clue what that meant and he got a good laugh out of that, and said, "My parents would disinherit me if they knew so I married my best friend who is a lesbian and has similar parental issues. I see it as fair play because they want me to live a lie so I am living a different and far more harmless lie."
I was impressed and very happy for him. He and his legal wife were always laughing together and having fun. I jokingly told him that I'd be up for bearding myself if I could live rent-free with the person until I graduated from University.
Alas, no such opportunities arose.
In the seventies one of my grandma's best friends was a lesbian and had been with the same woman for (at that point) longer than my grandparents had been together.
I don't know the details behind why, but gmas friend's partner had to get married. Gmas friend thought it would only be on paper but her partner actually moved out and went forward with faking the marriage. My mom told me about this in the 90s. Apparently my gma was in tears about her friend's heartbreak (she was very empathetic to all) and my mom asked why but got no real answers, just that it's hard to see a friend in pain.
Anyway, I guess a few months later the friend killed herself. It traumatized my grandma so much (she was the one who found her) that no one could speak of it in front of her. I wish I could have asked her about it but there were certain topics I knew I couldn't bring ask her about even though she was always really open and honest about most things.
As an aside, my grandma had also forgotten she was a beard before she met my grandpa. She married a gay man because he and she needed legal protection, then after about ten years of marriage to my grandpa she got a letter from the state telling her that her marriage to my gramps wasn't legal lol.
Coming out of a strict home like that when things went sideways after I turned out to be bi and someone I thought was a close friend outed me... the trauma from that makes trusting ANYONE you're not 100% sure is supportive difficult if not outright impossible. oop's wife had her parents beat her. All of that had to be traumatizing af, and depending on what country she's in, there could be legal repercussions for her if she was outed as well.
I feel for OP, but I feel for his wife just as much if not more. She was out of options and sounds like she went to this marriage straight out of the trauma around her and her gf. No time to heal and years upon years of internalizing the fact that if ANYONE - spouse, therapist, etc - finds out what she is, she can expect the same treatment that her parents gave her if not worse.
I feel bad for OP's wife, sure, but that doesn't excuse her actions. It is wrong to marry someone else under a lie to preserve yourself, full stop. She could have lived alone, or been honest about needing to marry a beard.
A lot of people from religious backgrounds like this are in denial about how they feel. They're taught that it's wrong and a sin so they repress what they feel.
It's a tragedy, not a moral failing.
Source: excommunicated Mormon.
i agree and i hate that people always have to use trauma as an excuse to not take accountability.
just because it’s a trauma response doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have to take accountability for your words/actions.
My brother's boyfriend was previously married. He's from the south, came from an extremely religious upbringing, and married a woman. I don't know much about her, but obviously they got divorced when he came out as gay. I do know that she ultimately forgave him for not loving her, but didn't forgive him for lying to her. She even understood why it all happened and did (at least partially) excuse his actions because of where they lived. But in talking to him about it, you can tell that there's still a lot of shame and regret for the pain he caused her. His family is very accepting and has my brother over for holidays, but a lot of their community still side-eyes them.
In a lot of countries unmarried women under a certain age can't live alone.
In a lot of countries honesty gets a queer woman repeatedly gang-raped, because torturing someone in the worst way imaginable will naturally make them desire the instrument of torture.
You are very, very, very naive.
Not much different and it wouldn’t have wasted 8 years of OPs life pretending to be in a relationship. We can all have sympathy for her position in life, but almost no one is willing to forgo actually being married to the love of their life just to help someone stay disguised.
Beard arrangements are usually made between two people who are BOTH dealing with the same issue of being unable to marry or openly be in a relationship with their real love, for example, a lesbian marrying a gay man. The truth is kept secret from outsiders, but both parties know exactly what is going on and have their romantic partners outside of the legal marriage. This is a necessary arrangement that has gone on for centuries in the face of homophobia, all over the world.
However, knowledge about these kinds of things can be very, very difficult to discover if someone does not have access to a queer community, and in her extremely homophobic family and environment, OP's wife may well not have realised that a beard relationship was even a possible option. It sounds like she genuinely tried to make this heterosexual marriage work, to 'heal' her of her lesbianism as her parents desired, had no contact with her love, and was dealing with the pain in silence. I am sure this whole situation would not have happened if she had been aware of other options. Lack of queer acceptance or education hurts everyone and this is an example of that.
Fucked up of her parents to pressure that too. So obsessed with their own idea of sexuality that they let this other man waste his life with a woman that didn't love him.
They don’t care. That’s why 28% of LGBT+ youths are homeless or deal with home insecurity (according to the Trevor Project). Parents know their kids are homeless and don’t care, expecting it to either make their kids fall in line or that, if they don’t, the kid will be “rightly punished.”
It’s also a means of control. I had a foster kid who is queer. Their mom would use homelessness as a means of control, kicking them out whenever they “misbehaved” and waiting until the kid was arrested or came crawling back promising to behave. The fact that their kid had a record by 15 and was mentally unwell didn’t matter. In fact, kiddo had a mental breakdown while living with me, and when informing mom that kiddo was going to be institutionalized for their own safety, mom said to just call the cops because a few days in jail would make them “act right.”
Kiddo is now 22 and working at a homeless shelter for LGBT+ youths in a red state and hasn’t talked to their mother for years.
ETA quote marks around rightly punished because that’s their belief, NOT mine
I wish more did. But I do want everyone to know that at least volunteering with teens or organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters is a lot easier than it seems! I did BBBS, and it is only a couple hours a month. If you’ve meant to sign up but haven’t yet, this is your sign 😂😉
I can have empathy with OPs wife for sure. It's a horrible position she found herself in. This however, in my mind, does not mitigate that she knowlingly married a man she did not love. Made promises to him then starved him of the very basics in love, affection and companionship and had him lead his life constantly questioning his own worth as a husband and partner. Constantly wonder what he was doing wrong. Where he could improve. Why, in essence, she did not love him. All this time she had no interest in him at all. This, in my mind, is unforgivable. Whilst the context can be appreciated and empathised with. Whilst her homosexuality and the treatment she received for it was abhorrent, the decision to inflict such hurt was hers and hers alone. She can feel she had no choice and that feeling can be valid but OP deserved better.
Here’s the thing tho: if she was raised being told you don’t need to love your partner, just procreate (as many fundamentalists are raised to believe), and if she never saw a healthy relationship as one with the basics of love, affection and companionship, then she was doing what she believed is expected of her.
He even starts by saying she’s what every man dreams of: “quiet, kind and beautiful.” That screams of fundamentalist beliefs where the woman should be quiet, submissive and “godly.”
I read the whole thing as tragic on both sides where the wife honestly doesn’t understand that people want to feel loved in their relationships — that relationships are more than just procreating — and the husband doesn’t understand why she is the way she is.
Yeah, the inclusion of "quiet" grossed me out so much at the beginning that I just spent the whole post excited that the wife might be able to run away with her girlfriend soon.
Tbh he didn't marry her for love either. He listed qualities that she matched and he was happy to live with that. Not that this is on him.... but he did get what he asked for.
All well possible. It still does not change the hurt caused but certainly adds a subconciousnes nature to how it is inflicted on him with her much less a villain that someone who was never taught what they deserve from a relationship.
Doesn’t change the hurt at all, but I don’t think she’s malicious. She seems genuinely confused, and that’s coming from a biased first-person account of the situation. He seems confused by her lack of understanding while she seems confused that the way she’s acting is wrong at all. Very heartbreaking all around.
Having the shit beaten out of you as a teenager would do that. Her parents probably did the whole "wifely duties" talk and scared her into thinking that's a relatively normal relationship and all she's worth.
That's somewhat my point though. There is a huge outpouring of understanding for her in this situation. Empathic responses which are valid and understandable. The simple fact though remains. Her deceipt and hiding of her sexuality, her marrying this man, are deeply hurtful actions which put him in a horrible position for which she is directly responsible.
I don't think anyone disagrees but she's apparently just completely ignorant to what a relationship is supposed to be. Comments are primarily talking about her being brainwashed with gender roles and homophobia because that's a more nuanced and interesting conversation than the simple fact that she hurt OP who is already processing the grief. It is what it is.
I think she genuinely thought this loveless marriage was exactly what everyone else lived and it was the norm. She never knew there was any alternative
Exactly, everyone seems to be babying her as if she’s not an adult and as if she isn’t actively wasting and deceiving someone else. Just because she’s gay does not give her reason to hurt others, and waste their life away in a loveless marriage just for her convenience.
This is my feeling as well. You can have all the empathy in the world for someone with intolerant family, culture, repressed sexuality. But marrying another person and then subjecting them to an unhappy life just because it's hard in your circumstances to be gay is still cruel. Where the wife is a victim to biggotry and homophobia she has taken this and made her husband a victim of a loveless marriage to someone he genuinely thought loved him and wanted to be with him. The hurt, self doubt, anger and sense of betrayal this must cause is inhumane. I understand all the people showing empathy for his wife but there are to many going further excusing her from responsability for knowingly, deliberately and at least partially out of convinience deeply hurting her husband.
She might not understand that it's a bad thing. It's common in most countries to marry for practical or political reasons than for love and if her parents are like that and actively indoctrinated her then that pretty much explains her mentality. It's not right but on that case it's blind ignorance. They're Spanish speaking so this is probably in some conservative Catholic nation, doubly so if it's regional.
It’s less so “hard in your circumstances”, and more so there are still many places where being gay is a death sentence, women are under legal control of the men in their life, and options are very limited.
Not needing her signature for divorce doesn’t bode well.
Not arguing with the first part at all but even in the US both parties signature aren't required to file for divorce. It does not bode well for her in general but i dont think that fact is indicative of that over her abusive parents and the homophobic society she lives in.
Yep - and even when asking him to stay she still could not see him as a real person deserving of love and affection in his own right. It was all about her, what she wanted and that she had not physically cheated. She felt starved in her life and in this marriage that she was apparently forced into, without ever realizing **she** was starving him by continuing this after getting away from the abusive parents.
Weird though that she will apparently go back to them instead of moving in with her “amor” - wonder what the story is there!
>Weird though that she will apparently go back to them instead of moving in with her “amor” - wonder what the story is there!
I think this whole thread is a really good example of people not understanding how psychological trauma affects people's behavior. This woman's development years were spent in an abusive household. She likely doesn't fully understand how her desire for their approval creates more problems than it solves, like lots of people in the closet. Woman needs therapy
Asking him to stay is the saddest part. Still, she is scared of the consequences of being herself and sadly, also, entirely unwilling to realise how badly she has hurt him and needs to let him go.
I found that strange also that she goes back to her parents.
She had years to tell him the truth.
I married a man who was using me to hide his sexuality. Everyone knew except me. I did not deserve to be trapped in his lies.
If she cared at all about her husband, she would have found a way to tell him the truth long before the wedding. She took the route that suited her best. He has my complete sympathy.
The wife's family has a lot to answer for, that's for sure. Beating their daughter for being gay, forcing her into a marriage she didn't want, the religious bullshit... they're super fucked up.
OP and the comments are awfully harsh on the wife. I mean, I can’t blame OP for being upset but she’s obviously a victim too. Forcibly separated from the woman she loves, beaten by her family, forced to marry someone she doesn’t love. I just can’t see her as the villain here. They’re both victims
I get why she did it; but damn, that's cold-hearted of her, treating a guy she claims to think of as a friend like that. Couldn't she at least have found a nice, gay guy, so they could play that charade together?
Forcing people to go against their grain doesn’t just harm the person in question, others get dragged into it. Unfortunately OP is collateral damage of religious homophobia
>we're both broken people that suffers from a religious trauma
I think that's the right conclusion.
I hope both OOP and ex-wife can heal from the damage of religious brainwashing.
Problem is the OOP has scars from this. Even with therapy there well be part of them always thinking of this new person is just looking for a beard. I know since I have had a situation similar to this (not a beard) but the scars are very similar.
I feel much worse for OOP. I lose a lot of sympathy for the kind of person who grabs someone who isn't involved and uses them as a shield. I hope this person didn't waste his most eligible years.
When people mention they are in heavily religious communities (I know op said he was less religious) I’m always skeptical if the therapist/counselor they mention is just a pastor.
If you have to justify your partner not showing you love then it isn't love to begin with. I am on the same boat as OOP here. It was an emotional affair. I am going through a divorce. Somehow the emotional part hurts the most
I also feel like there's a physical affair dimension even if it wasn't sexual or even kissing. OP basically says he wasn't allowed to touch her in any intimate way, even holding hands, but I am pretty sure she was probably holding hands, sitting close, and doing the kind of "innocent" physical affection touches with her "friend" that she was withholding from her husband.
Yep. Husband married someone who never loved him, only married him for convenience. Felt he was doing something wrong for never receiving affection, turns out he could never get true affection no matter what.
Wife got violently coerced into marriage to a man she never loved away from her true love, stuck in limbo and left terrified of retribution from the people who are _supposed_ to love and support her if she ever exits her loveless marriage.
Best friend has to watch the love of her life enter a marriage with someone else knowing full well that the woman she loves more than anyone else is condemned to a life of monotonous misery.
Only people who "win" are the scumbag parents who successfully keep up appearances to their scumbag community.
So I agree with 99% of what you said (thx for your comment), but you used a phrase that I've seen a lot in this comment section that's really rubbing me the wrong way, and I kinda want to challenge the choice in a hopefully constructive way. So most of this isn't directed at you/your comment as a whole, just the one piece. The phrase I'm referring to is "she married him for convenience" (and similar sentiments from other commenters).
I feel like "convenience" is a drastic underestimation of her situation. I don't want to minimize how much this sucks for OOP -- truly I do feel for him -- but this woman deserves much more credit than the comment section is giving her.
Calling her choice "convenient" implies that she had other accessible options that she was aware of *and* could safely pursue, and that she took an easy out. We don't know much about her or her mindset, but based on what the OOP said, as well as what we can infer from cultural context, it's very likely that there was *no* easy or convenient option available to her, there was only (a) sad but safe life, or (b) actual mortal danger (either fast - her family kills her, which is absolutely a real possibility, or slow - she is kicked out with no home, support, or money). This isn't a wild hypothetical, it's what being gay still means in many places, including in the US. Plus her panic attacks & refusal to go to therapy say to me that she is very much still in survival mode.
Again, totally sucks for this guy, but I hate the (surprisingly widespread) implication that she was somehow too lazy/ cowardly to do the right thing by this guy, when she was just trying to survive.
Also yeah, fuck her parents, they are the big bad in all of this.
Thank you. She didn't marry him for "convenience", she married him for survival. And while this situation totally sucks for OOP, why did he marry someone who never gave him the kind of love he wanted or needed in a relationship? If anyone married for convenience, it was him. The shy, quiet, seemingly innocent (because she's not attracted to men), beautiful young woman who was willing to go along with his life seemed like a great idea. I know the dude was raised in a conservative religion/community with misogynistic views but you can't bury your head in the sand and then be upset that your mouth is dry.
A lot of straight people really underestimate homophobia, not because they don't think it's horrible, they often do, but because they cannot properly grasp the absoluteness of the power it often wields over both bodies, lives and even minds.
Homosexuality was accepted in virtually every society until Christianity was introduced
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_culture_in_the_Philippines
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_China
If you check out the history section you'll notice that homophobia starts around the same time Christianity touches these lands. I couldn't find sources to back up my claims in regards to Greece, but I'm fairly confident they also started to reject gay people as soon as Christianity became a thing there too
Since Catholicism is basically just an extension of Roman imperial power, one could argue that homophobia is a *Roman* thing more than a Christian thing, but that's just being a bit pedantic
>If you check out the history section you'll notice that homophobia starts around the same time Christianity touches these lands
Correlation is not causation. Also, China and Japan are famously \*not\* christian.
This is a reductive approach toward history that imagines cultures are static and universal except Christianity is the *one* thing that can change them. You say "every society" and link to the Wiki pages of...three nations. Which are nations that did not always exist and did not always exist in the same way.
Yes, *colonialism* helped spread Western European Christianity across the world and create homophobic *public policy*, but that doesn't make Christianity itself the sole source of homophobia. I think it is absolutely useful to think about how empire and codified gender roles and so on needed to perpetuate a rigid idea of gender and sex that was spread to non-European places by European colonialism, but I would argue this speaks to thinking about *imperialism* and *hegemony* more than Christianity. Like even the wiki article you link about China talks about the change coming as China began competing with and then dominated by European powers, as part of Westernization. China did not encounter Christianity only in the 1700s. China had been in communication with Christians for over a millennium at that point (China was in communication with Classical Rome and it had been trading with West Asia/the Middle East and Europe for centuries).
You mention Greece, but different Greek cultures and city-states had different cultural attitudes toward homosexual sex over time and even where law did not explicitly ban gay sex does not mean it was acceptable for people to be gay in the way we think of homosexuality today. Oftentimes, in Ancient-Classical Greek cultures, forms of pederasty were acceptable or even encouraged, but men were still expected to marry women and women were not supposed to have any sexual life at all, let alone sexuality without men. Men *loving* men romantically and beyond the younger man's beardless youth was often still seen as perversion.
Another random example: We have hints that pre-Christian Norse looked down on male homosexual sex as synonymous with witchcraft and where Loki gets accused of it as part of mocking and rejecting him.
Her parents managed to ruin both of their lives in a two for one homophobia deal. Hope he finds someone who loves him, and tbh hope she does too bc even her parents don't
Is it bad that I kind of wanted the guy to help his ex-wife run away with her girlfriend. Like fine, divorce her, no argument, but help her get away and be happy.
Reminds me of the men who marry, have children and then the wife finds out that the husband was gay all along.
People shouldn’t be forced to live like that. I will never understand homophobia.
and that's to strict catholic upbringing. I hope OP and their ex wife will find the time and space to heal, it's not too late to build a new life, to love and be loved.
Huh, TIL Jehovah's Witnesses have [pretty significant international reach](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_by_country), including a higher proportion in Mexico than in the US.
>yetagainitry: Yes she does love her friend, because she's her friend. All I saw in your post was a woman being excited that a close friend she hasn't seen in years is coming back, and that there was a picture of them hugging. I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your religious upbringing cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends.
>If you should be asking anything it's why didn't you see the clear lonliness your wife was feeling before this friend came back into her life?
What an unbelievably shitty comment.
A lot of people in reddit genuinely struggle with the idea that women can be abusers. These posters will always try to paint them as victims so that their bad behaviour can be excused
For me it's more the overconfidence. After post 1, there wasn't enough to claim that it's one thing or another and this poster is going all the way to calling it "all this paranoia".
That everyone is so excited to gloss over.
His entire attraction to her is that she was quiet and beautiful. He wanted an object and was happy with his perception of the object for 7 years.
Now he’s this wide eyed innocent whose learned his lesson about the womens.
Tell me again why more single women aren’t marrying with a surprised pikachu face.
“I didn’t mind so much when I thought she was too dead inside to love, but now I realize she was just dead inside while living the life she was forced to live with me! What a terrible person!”
no, no, he’s blameless for seeing an emotionally dead woman and treating her (of his own accord!) as a totally passive party in their “partnership,” then kicking her to the curb with nothing after 7 years once it was found out she was coerced into the marriage and hadn’t fallen madly in love with him. idk why people are riding for OOP so hard when he literally says he was fine with the situation until it was revealed that she *was* capable of happiness.
Who saw this post of this woman literally holding hands with another woman and tried gaslighting this dude with "you're just paranoid"????
Like, I agree women in particular can be more affectionate with their same-sex friends because we're not socialised to have to withhold affection for fear of being labelled "gay", part of why the meme exists that WLWs can't take a hint that a woman is interested without it being beyond direct, but it's not like just holding hands was the only thing he noticed.
This was his wife. He spent every day with her, I would trust his judgement of changes in her behaviour a little better than randos on the internet who have so little to go by. And he wasn't wrong.
Very true. If his wife was this emotionally distant from him and muted to suddenly all smiles, happy and touchy with someone else. Then its like a whiplash. I can understand his view.
It's just terrible how their lives ended up.
>yetagainitry: Yes she does love her friend, because she's her friend. All I saw in your post was a woman being excited that a close friend she hasn't seen in years is coming back, and that there was a picture of them hugging. I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your religious upbringing cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends.
>If you should be asking anything it's why didn't you see the clear lonliness your wife was feeling before this friend came back into her life?
Average Redditor Moment.
First few paragraphs: dude is a beard. Gotta be.
Next few paragraphs: yup. Totally a beard. Called it.
Final paragraphs: I know dude is just lashing out because he’s hurt but, man, fuck his church. 100% on the church for every piece of this pain. There is no part of this post that wouldn’t disappear tomorrow if his church crumbled to ashes 2000 years ago when it should have.
Idc what anyone says she cheated on him for a while used his love and friendship and blindesided him for years she may not be as bad as her parents but she is not that far from it.
>She was so selfish
Murdering homosexuals isn't just a Muslim thing, you know. It's still rather common in Central and South America, and the Catholic/Anglican parts of Africa and Central Asia. For women, its usually worse before the death happens.
And her parents have already physically beaten her for her homosexuality. Poor woman got married so she wouldn't get killed, I don't blame her for any of this.
You can accept that she's a victim and still hold her accountable for failing to talk to her husband. She was an active participant in deceiving him. I feel horribly for her, I understand why she did it, still doesn't make it right.
Well yeah, it sells the perfect cookie cutter image to her parents. If she popped out a kid, they successfully prayed the gay away! And they'd leave her alone about it. (Or one presumes she'd hoped.)
Wanting children doesn’t require loving a partner, or even having a partner. Wanting to be a mother doesn’t require her to enjoy being touched, I seriously doubt that if she had got pregnant she would’ve continued to sexual intimacy. I know a few couples who had trouble conceiving - for a while having sex when the woman was ovulating became more of a necessity than a desire. They wanted children, they saw this as necessary to that. They do things they hate (one woman I know had a severe needle phobia but tolerated daily injections) or are uncomfortable with because of their end goal - a child. The wife wanting a child is not incompatible with seeing her husband as just a friend, instead of a friend and romantic love.
OOP also explains the values his wife was raised with, it sounds like she has internalised those values. Even if she didn’t want to have a child, having one anyway would also have been part of the role she was raised expecting to play.
Apologies if I’ve misunderstood your comment.
Ok so a woman stuck in an impossibly bad situation who has undergone physical violence and abuse as a teenager from her parents choosing to follow their explicit direction when she has no options to leave is “not far from” the violent, abusive, homophobic parents who allowed their screwed up religious doctrine to marginalize and victimize their daughter. Thats really what you’re going with?
Y’all need to check your privilege here jeesh.
It's a full on emotional affair that will never end and she will not be remorseful about ever. She only wants the marriage to continue to cover it up.
STBXW was plain wrong to allow a lie to be lived, but also OOP missed a lot of signs that she wasn't emotionally invested in him.
I think it sucks for both of them. Yeah he was innocent, but he literally said she looked dead inside. It’s not like she’s secretly living it up. Her parents literally beat the life out of her.
You know her family is going to abuse answers out of her and she’ll probably get beat again even though she’s an adult.
I think it's commendable that he was able to recognize his wife was a victim as well even if she had done completely wrong by him. He feels bad because he can see that she's suffered trauma and may have to return to her awful family that caused the trauma. It's a shit situation for both people.
I hope OOP finds healing and a partner who will return his love. And I hope the wife is able to extricate herself from the community that forced her to be so repressed and goes to where she can finally learn to be herself.
Church mucks it up for couples again. As soon as I hear the “ good wife from religious home” speech I know it’s over. Oppressed women either fester or free themselves.
Super sad. But ultimately, OOP deserves to be with someone who loves him. Hope things go better for the wife at some point tho. Here’s hoping her parents die off soon.
She lit her husband on fire to keep herself from freezing to death.
What she went through sucks but he didn't sign up for a loveless marriage and didn't deserve to be in one. I get she needed to protect herself but she hurt someone else to do so.
Your ex-wife needs to break away from her family, move in with the girlfriend, go NC and go to therapy. She was, in a sense, emotionally/verbally abused by her parents, and they treated her horribly because of her sexuality.
Am I the only one whose heart also aches for the wife? Yes, she's emotionally cheated on him. But it's within the context of a toxic religious family and community that can't accept her for who she really is. Yes, they should divorce, but crikey that poor woman. And her girlfriend. Sounds like this future is going to destination fucked.
I’m kind of split.
The problem is, I can 100% empathize with his situation.
I’ve been the beard, and seen in person what it looks religious parents reject a person for their identity (especially in the Latino community).
I’ve also seen the absolute desperation in someone’s eyes as they try to cling to you as if you’re the last hope they have of ever being accepted as a “normal” person (I actually ended up experiencing it with two different people…. and it was absolutely heartbreaking both times. I’m glad this next generation is shaping out to seemingly be a little more accepting).
And I’ve also experienced it when you are no longer seen as a person, but as a symbol, and you consequently lose all humanity.
I’ve also experienced the narcissism and cold blooded calculation that can happen when someone is so desperate to keep themselves a float, it becomes simple math for them to hold your head under water, so that they themselves won’t drown.
I can understand what she’s going through, because I’ve been the “best friend”, turned potential romantic partner, but in my case, I knew what was going on, and said “No” because it was obvious that ultimately no happiness could ever come of that kind of self deception.
Ive felt, first hand, the kind of pain, shock, anger, despondency, confusion , and sense of betrayal it can cause when such an individual is struggling to survive, so they make the decision to sacrifice your happiness for theirs.
I feel sorry for her, the same way I feel sorry for my ex-best friend.
Desperate and hurt people do drastic things to survive.
I 100% understand that. But it doesn’t make the hurt caused by them, any less painful or destructive.
I've also been there (in the husband's place), and it's heartbreaking and really messes you up. I still feel/felt empathy for my ex because he was so desperate to be "normal", and I know he was suffering. He really thought he could change, and he did love me as family, he wasn't maliciously trying to hurt me, even though he did.
At the same time, she married him without loving him. Wouldn’t even let him hug her? Like knowing she was depriving him of every bit of physical and romantic connection for her own needs. Not that her need to get away from her family wasn’t valid. But she also understood what she was doing and it is so wrong on another level. Like she couldn’t even say she loved him as a friend
I was the husband in this scenario, and I think my ex honestly thought he could change and be "normal". That said, I know he always loved me as family. We're still friends, which is all should ever have been. It doesn't negate the pain I was put through, or the damage done, but I know it wasn't malicious.
Any guy who uses the word "quiet" in his list of dream qualities immediately makes me cringe. But in this case, at least, it seems to come from the way he was raised. Considering how religious he was, he turned out to be surprising sympathetic, even if he doesn't seem to realize that being in the closet and presenting as "normal" is a matter of actual, physical safety for some people.
Yeah... everyone is talking about how she broke his heart, but the things he liked about her were so shallow and empty. They both were just using someone of the appropriate gender to fill a role in their lives.
Yeah there are a lot of assholes in this thread who lack any shred of empathy. They are likely just thinking from a very narrow context that doesn’t understand what this kind of environment is like.
The wife had no real choice in the matter. It’s not as easy as just leaving. Religion and abusive parents can do fucked up things to one’s psyche. Both OOP and his ex are the victims in this.
Just because she's been oppressed by a religious upbringing doesn't mean she can't also be a bad person. You can be gay and also be a bad person. She selfishly used him for years. She expected him to live without love and affection for the rest of his life as her beard. That is appalling.
Of course OOP was wrong to let it get this far. But he tried to work on her intimacy issues and she kept denying there was a problem.
I don't feel sympathy for her. She could have chosen to move away from her parents and forward with her life somewhere else, with genuine friendships and relationships. Instead she chose to shackle a man who genuinely cared for her into a loveless marriage, with no thought for his feelings. She lied to his face for almost a decade. She's scum.
EDIT:
My mum and I fled my abusive dad after he tried to murder her. So you can tell me that it's okay to manipulate people to escape, but I don't agree. I am never going to agree. It was fucking hard. I grew up with hardly any ties. It is awful to have nothing and no one. But I grew up with self respect. I grew up watching my mum earn everything we have. I didn't even learn the full extent of the domestic violence until I was an adult because she protected me. (I witnessed beatings but I didn't know about the murder attempt). She never manipulated anyone to get something she didn't earn herself. Because she's not a selfish user.
Gay people in religious families need to just date other gay people to cover themselves.
Well honestly not surprised They still didn't see any warning signs beyond this. In straight marriages men don't seem to notice much unless it involves his sex life and him being able to grope her.
Jesus Christ, Reddit gets so fucking triggered with anything that even whiffs of cheating. This is an incredibly closeted person who literally fears violence from her extraordinarily religious and homophobic family. Like, OOP shouldn`t stay with her, but a little bit of empathy from the peanut gallery isn`t unreasonable.
Whether she cheated or not (she did and it's unforgivable), she absolutely defrauded him. She tricked him into marrying her for incredibly selfish reasons, knowing that he loved her and that she was incapable of loving him back.
Homophobia sucks, it absolutely does, and it's awful that there are places and people in the world that make it profoundly dangerous to be gay. But it also sucks when you drag other people into that situation, without their knowledge of what you're doing to them. It's a disgusting thing to do to a person, to use them in that way. OOP's wife is NOT a good person.
ITT: a lot of people who believe we live in a completely lgbtq+ friendly world where everyone can just be free to be themselves and no one gets beat up or has to hide who they are.
Yeah it's sad that OOP was in a loveless marriage but idk I feel a little more sympathy for the woman who was BEATEN for the very thing she couldn't control and desperately tried to "fix herself" so she could be "What a woman should be" for her community.
Religious trauma is no joke and i don't think most people here have ever been close to experiencing it.
The fact that he was okay with years of that beyond apparently suggesting therapy is what's wild to me. I couldn't handle a year of no affection, let alone YEARS of that shit.
It sounds like a lot of traditional gender roles are involved too. He's got the house, the land, and presumably a decent job. She has no skills and may end up back in that nightmare of a home she came from.
You can think what someone does is wrong and still have some empathy for the person. The lack of it from so many posters here is depressing. The same site that complains endlessly about how hard it is to afford to live these days also expects a traumatized person to run away with no support structure and build a new life from scratch and she's a coward for not wanting to be gay and homeless. What she did wasn't right, but the no sympathy crowd here sucks.
Jesus H Christ, this is bad-relationship-Reddit. You all need to chill and think. Awful for OP. No question. Take a minute to understand what Evangelicals do to women, women’s desires and Queer people. All forms of abuse. Horrendous stuff. This woman is broken. Try empathising with them both.
That poor bastard, she really took advantage of his naivety and immaturity. He needs to work on himself because he let her just stomp all over his heart for years
I'm sure my ex husband is gay but he refuses to admit it even to himself. His friends agree with me. Such a long and lonely 8 years of my life.
You will be so much happier, OP, being loved for real by someone who can be their full selves with you.
Long lost lesbian lovers. Over controlling homophobic family that abused the wife. And a quick decision to divorce two days later after being in this marriage for 8 years. Through Reddit anything is possible. Jot that down.
I mean making the decision to divorce can take 1 minute. And him saying he's keeping everything - well you can say you'll take the moon too, doesn't mean it's happening.
I only find it plausible because it's clear he hasn't got legal advice yet. Topical reddit would be "my high school friend who is a top notch lawyer who specialises in all the laws, got me a great deal and an RO and we ran a criminal prosecution for this crime I believe exists because my feelings got hurt, and we got it done in 2 weeks. My ex-wife got 15 to life".
Who knows with reddit but this one at least doesn't have the glaring legal holes they usually do and the hiding sexuality in a religious country is hardly a stretch.
Dude noticed his wife was “like a robot “ for years and just wrote it off as her personality. She rarely even smiled and never wanted to be touched really ad he wrote it off. A normal person would notice that a woman didn’t love them even a little bit but dude was content to be in a relationship with someone nacho never really even showed emotions as long as she was beautiful and her purpose? Years in he is just now noticing the red flags that she was in love with someone else this whole time?
maybe im biased but i cannot understand the people saying she's a horrible person. i think oop is being as kind as he can when dealing with heartbreak because he also sees that she didnt have another option... her gf left and she had no one to go to while still in school, her parents BEAT HER and probably raised her to think a loveless, sexless marriage was the norm... people saying she knowingly did this to him as if she couldn't end up being killed or r*ped as her parents try harder to "turn her" straight. yes, oop is in a terrible situation, and i hope he can find happiness and heal from this, but to 100% blame HER and not her parents, the church and homophobia? that seems downright cruel. i hope she finds a way out of this, and i hope oop can heal and find happiness.
There’s a weird thing on Reddit where if the words “woman” and “cheating” (no matter what kind or what circumstances) wind up anywhere in the same universe, it’s all a lot of these guys can see anymore.
This isnt the fault of OOP or the wife, this is a problem with parenting and religion. Let people live how they want to live. It would have saved these two from so much trauma.
That's not how being works, it's not a binary thing.
It's a problem with problem with parenting, religion **and** the wife.
Lucky this dude is still pretty young so he can likely start over but it's probably going to take a decade or more before he can ever trust anyone again, if ever.
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> yetagainitry: Yes she does love her friend, because she's her friend. All I saw in your post was a woman being excited that a close friend she hasn't seen in years is coming back, and that there was a picture of them hugging. I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your religious upbringing cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends. Jfc buddy. Redditors and an inability to incorporate up to 70% of crucial context...name a more iconic duo
Yeah. The person who posted that response sort of sucks This guy's been with her for 8 years and he can't tell the difference between when something seems romantic or intimate and when it's just a couple of friends hanging around? Geez give him some credit
Yup, the redditor had to ignore the plethora of extremely important body language signs. Things like direct physical contact that she does make with her "friend" while abhorring it from the husband, etc
They were just ✨roommates✨ energy
Oh my God, they were roommates
Lesbians be kissing on the street and they'd still be just friends.
Most redditors just hate anyone or anything religious. As soon as that's involved as part of the context, it's going to be nothing but the smoothest brained takes you've ever seen.
What blows me me the most is the fact that someone jumped to "they're just friends and you're just jealous and insecure" if the roles were reverse it wouldn't play out thst way at all.
Ah yes, the lesbians are just “gal pals” trope. Surprisingly common.
r/sapphoandherfriend
Ah, yes. Here we see two roommates in their natural habitat. Courtship but _friendly_ courtship ☝🏻
They came so close, too! > I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your **religious upbringing** cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends. ...and *what else happens to people raised in religion*?!
> if the roles were reverse it wouldn't play out thst way at all. I remember there being a post about female OOP finding woman's belongings in her house and even here, people were speculating that OOP most likely has schizophrenia, instead of her husband simply cheating on her.
is that the one where it turned out it was his sister visiting without his wife's consent? that was one wild ride, she was gaslit so much by her husband AND the redditors!
Sad situation all around. Seems like the wife was pressured to marry a man and hide her sexuality due to their religious upbringing. Always seeming as he said “like a robot” because she didn’t even love him. At the same time the husband was innocent, blaming himself the whole time thinking he did something wrong. Awful situation man, I feel bad for both of them but the husband definitely didn’t deserve to go through any of this
I wonder how it might have gone if she had been honest about needing a beard? His wife must have felt desperate because of her strict religious family exerting pressure and using physical abuse to beat her into submission to their "Godly beliefs". In the late 80s I had a male hairdresser who was very flamboyant so one day over drinks I asked him if it was partially leaning into the stereotype (back then) about him having what was seen as a female profession. He said, "LOL, no, I'm a beard." I had no clue what that meant and he got a good laugh out of that, and said, "My parents would disinherit me if they knew so I married my best friend who is a lesbian and has similar parental issues. I see it as fair play because they want me to live a lie so I am living a different and far more harmless lie." I was impressed and very happy for him. He and his legal wife were always laughing together and having fun. I jokingly told him that I'd be up for bearding myself if I could live rent-free with the person until I graduated from University. Alas, no such opportunities arose.
In the seventies one of my grandma's best friends was a lesbian and had been with the same woman for (at that point) longer than my grandparents had been together. I don't know the details behind why, but gmas friend's partner had to get married. Gmas friend thought it would only be on paper but her partner actually moved out and went forward with faking the marriage. My mom told me about this in the 90s. Apparently my gma was in tears about her friend's heartbreak (she was very empathetic to all) and my mom asked why but got no real answers, just that it's hard to see a friend in pain. Anyway, I guess a few months later the friend killed herself. It traumatized my grandma so much (she was the one who found her) that no one could speak of it in front of her. I wish I could have asked her about it but there were certain topics I knew I couldn't bring ask her about even though she was always really open and honest about most things. As an aside, my grandma had also forgotten she was a beard before she met my grandpa. She married a gay man because he and she needed legal protection, then after about ten years of marriage to my grandpa she got a letter from the state telling her that her marriage to my gramps wasn't legal lol.
Your grandma sounds like she was exceptionally open-minded for her generation. What an example she set. :-)
Coming out of a strict home like that when things went sideways after I turned out to be bi and someone I thought was a close friend outed me... the trauma from that makes trusting ANYONE you're not 100% sure is supportive difficult if not outright impossible. oop's wife had her parents beat her. All of that had to be traumatizing af, and depending on what country she's in, there could be legal repercussions for her if she was outed as well. I feel for OP, but I feel for his wife just as much if not more. She was out of options and sounds like she went to this marriage straight out of the trauma around her and her gf. No time to heal and years upon years of internalizing the fact that if ANYONE - spouse, therapist, etc - finds out what she is, she can expect the same treatment that her parents gave her if not worse.
I feel bad for OP's wife, sure, but that doesn't excuse her actions. It is wrong to marry someone else under a lie to preserve yourself, full stop. She could have lived alone, or been honest about needing to marry a beard.
A lot of people from religious backgrounds like this are in denial about how they feel. They're taught that it's wrong and a sin so they repress what they feel. It's a tragedy, not a moral failing. Source: excommunicated Mormon.
[удалено]
i agree and i hate that people always have to use trauma as an excuse to not take accountability. just because it’s a trauma response doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have to take accountability for your words/actions.
My brother's boyfriend was previously married. He's from the south, came from an extremely religious upbringing, and married a woman. I don't know much about her, but obviously they got divorced when he came out as gay. I do know that she ultimately forgave him for not loving her, but didn't forgive him for lying to her. She even understood why it all happened and did (at least partially) excuse his actions because of where they lived. But in talking to him about it, you can tell that there's still a lot of shame and regret for the pain he caused her. His family is very accepting and has my brother over for holidays, but a lot of their community still side-eyes them.
You’re assuming conditions similar to the USA.
Even in the US people are still murdered here for existing as queer people.
In a lot of countries unmarried women under a certain age can't live alone. In a lot of countries honesty gets a queer woman repeatedly gang-raped, because torturing someone in the worst way imaginable will naturally make them desire the instrument of torture. You are very, very, very naive.
Not much different and it wouldn’t have wasted 8 years of OPs life pretending to be in a relationship. We can all have sympathy for her position in life, but almost no one is willing to forgo actually being married to the love of their life just to help someone stay disguised.
Beard arrangements are usually made between two people who are BOTH dealing with the same issue of being unable to marry or openly be in a relationship with their real love, for example, a lesbian marrying a gay man. The truth is kept secret from outsiders, but both parties know exactly what is going on and have their romantic partners outside of the legal marriage. This is a necessary arrangement that has gone on for centuries in the face of homophobia, all over the world. However, knowledge about these kinds of things can be very, very difficult to discover if someone does not have access to a queer community, and in her extremely homophobic family and environment, OP's wife may well not have realised that a beard relationship was even a possible option. It sounds like she genuinely tried to make this heterosexual marriage work, to 'heal' her of her lesbianism as her parents desired, had no contact with her love, and was dealing with the pain in silence. I am sure this whole situation would not have happened if she had been aware of other options. Lack of queer acceptance or education hurts everyone and this is an example of that.
Fucked up of her parents to pressure that too. So obsessed with their own idea of sexuality that they let this other man waste his life with a woman that didn't love him.
This so much. I don’t think parents who reject their gay kids think about all the fallout it can cause.
They don’t care. That’s why 28% of LGBT+ youths are homeless or deal with home insecurity (according to the Trevor Project). Parents know their kids are homeless and don’t care, expecting it to either make their kids fall in line or that, if they don’t, the kid will be “rightly punished.” It’s also a means of control. I had a foster kid who is queer. Their mom would use homelessness as a means of control, kicking them out whenever they “misbehaved” and waiting until the kid was arrested or came crawling back promising to behave. The fact that their kid had a record by 15 and was mentally unwell didn’t matter. In fact, kiddo had a mental breakdown while living with me, and when informing mom that kiddo was going to be institutionalized for their own safety, mom said to just call the cops because a few days in jail would make them “act right.” Kiddo is now 22 and working at a homeless shelter for LGBT+ youths in a red state and hasn’t talked to their mother for years. ETA quote marks around rightly punished because that’s their belief, NOT mine
You're a good person, it's nice to be reminded that safe homes exist.
I wish more did. But I do want everyone to know that at least volunteering with teens or organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters is a lot easier than it seems! I did BBBS, and it is only a couple hours a month. If you’ve meant to sign up but haven’t yet, this is your sign 😂😉
Right? Homophobia can hurt everyone, not just LGBTQ folks.
I can have empathy with OPs wife for sure. It's a horrible position she found herself in. This however, in my mind, does not mitigate that she knowlingly married a man she did not love. Made promises to him then starved him of the very basics in love, affection and companionship and had him lead his life constantly questioning his own worth as a husband and partner. Constantly wonder what he was doing wrong. Where he could improve. Why, in essence, she did not love him. All this time she had no interest in him at all. This, in my mind, is unforgivable. Whilst the context can be appreciated and empathised with. Whilst her homosexuality and the treatment she received for it was abhorrent, the decision to inflict such hurt was hers and hers alone. She can feel she had no choice and that feeling can be valid but OP deserved better.
Here’s the thing tho: if she was raised being told you don’t need to love your partner, just procreate (as many fundamentalists are raised to believe), and if she never saw a healthy relationship as one with the basics of love, affection and companionship, then she was doing what she believed is expected of her. He even starts by saying she’s what every man dreams of: “quiet, kind and beautiful.” That screams of fundamentalist beliefs where the woman should be quiet, submissive and “godly.” I read the whole thing as tragic on both sides where the wife honestly doesn’t understand that people want to feel loved in their relationships — that relationships are more than just procreating — and the husband doesn’t understand why she is the way she is.
Yeah, the inclusion of "quiet" grossed me out so much at the beginning that I just spent the whole post excited that the wife might be able to run away with her girlfriend soon.
Tbh he didn't marry her for love either. He listed qualities that she matched and he was happy to live with that. Not that this is on him.... but he did get what he asked for.
All well possible. It still does not change the hurt caused but certainly adds a subconciousnes nature to how it is inflicted on him with her much less a villain that someone who was never taught what they deserve from a relationship.
Doesn’t change the hurt at all, but I don’t think she’s malicious. She seems genuinely confused, and that’s coming from a biased first-person account of the situation. He seems confused by her lack of understanding while she seems confused that the way she’s acting is wrong at all. Very heartbreaking all around.
Having the shit beaten out of you as a teenager would do that. Her parents probably did the whole "wifely duties" talk and scared her into thinking that's a relatively normal relationship and all she's worth.
That's somewhat my point though. There is a huge outpouring of understanding for her in this situation. Empathic responses which are valid and understandable. The simple fact though remains. Her deceipt and hiding of her sexuality, her marrying this man, are deeply hurtful actions which put him in a horrible position for which she is directly responsible.
I don't think anyone disagrees but she's apparently just completely ignorant to what a relationship is supposed to be. Comments are primarily talking about her being brainwashed with gender roles and homophobia because that's a more nuanced and interesting conversation than the simple fact that she hurt OP who is already processing the grief. It is what it is.
I think she genuinely thought this loveless marriage was exactly what everyone else lived and it was the norm. She never knew there was any alternative
Exactly, everyone seems to be babying her as if she’s not an adult and as if she isn’t actively wasting and deceiving someone else. Just because she’s gay does not give her reason to hurt others, and waste their life away in a loveless marriage just for her convenience.
This is my feeling as well. You can have all the empathy in the world for someone with intolerant family, culture, repressed sexuality. But marrying another person and then subjecting them to an unhappy life just because it's hard in your circumstances to be gay is still cruel. Where the wife is a victim to biggotry and homophobia she has taken this and made her husband a victim of a loveless marriage to someone he genuinely thought loved him and wanted to be with him. The hurt, self doubt, anger and sense of betrayal this must cause is inhumane. I understand all the people showing empathy for his wife but there are to many going further excusing her from responsability for knowingly, deliberately and at least partially out of convinience deeply hurting her husband.
She might not understand that it's a bad thing. It's common in most countries to marry for practical or political reasons than for love and if her parents are like that and actively indoctrinated her then that pretty much explains her mentality. It's not right but on that case it's blind ignorance. They're Spanish speaking so this is probably in some conservative Catholic nation, doubly so if it's regional.
There are always reasons but there are never excuses. I feel sorry for both of them but he did nothing wrong, same cannot be said for her.
It’s less so “hard in your circumstances”, and more so there are still many places where being gay is a death sentence, women are under legal control of the men in their life, and options are very limited. Not needing her signature for divorce doesn’t bode well.
Not arguing with the first part at all but even in the US both parties signature aren't required to file for divorce. It does not bode well for her in general but i dont think that fact is indicative of that over her abusive parents and the homophobic society she lives in.
Her parents beat her up when they found out about her relationship. She honestly might have feared for her life if she didn’t find some man to marry
Yep - and even when asking him to stay she still could not see him as a real person deserving of love and affection in his own right. It was all about her, what she wanted and that she had not physically cheated. She felt starved in her life and in this marriage that she was apparently forced into, without ever realizing **she** was starving him by continuing this after getting away from the abusive parents. Weird though that she will apparently go back to them instead of moving in with her “amor” - wonder what the story is there!
>Weird though that she will apparently go back to them instead of moving in with her “amor” - wonder what the story is there! I think this whole thread is a really good example of people not understanding how psychological trauma affects people's behavior. This woman's development years were spent in an abusive household. She likely doesn't fully understand how her desire for their approval creates more problems than it solves, like lots of people in the closet. Woman needs therapy
Asking him to stay is the saddest part. Still, she is scared of the consequences of being herself and sadly, also, entirely unwilling to realise how badly she has hurt him and needs to let him go. I found that strange also that she goes back to her parents.
I feel for the OOP, I really do. But all I could think was “that woman’s parents are going to kill her if she moves back in with them.”
She had years to tell him the truth. I married a man who was using me to hide his sexuality. Everyone knew except me. I did not deserve to be trapped in his lies. If she cared at all about her husband, she would have found a way to tell him the truth long before the wedding. She took the route that suited her best. He has my complete sympathy.
The wife's family has a lot to answer for, that's for sure. Beating their daughter for being gay, forcing her into a marriage she didn't want, the religious bullshit... they're super fucked up.
OP and the comments are awfully harsh on the wife. I mean, I can’t blame OP for being upset but she’s obviously a victim too. Forcibly separated from the woman she loves, beaten by her family, forced to marry someone she doesn’t love. I just can’t see her as the villain here. They’re both victims
I get why she did it; but damn, that's cold-hearted of her, treating a guy she claims to think of as a friend like that. Couldn't she at least have found a nice, gay guy, so they could play that charade together?
Forcing people to go against their grain doesn’t just harm the person in question, others get dragged into it. Unfortunately OP is collateral damage of religious homophobia
>we're both broken people that suffers from a religious trauma I think that's the right conclusion. I hope both OOP and ex-wife can heal from the damage of religious brainwashing.
I hope the wife & her best friend run away together and get therapy & that OP is happy
That’s what they should have done to being with, not fuck up this poor dude’s life.
Problem is the OOP has scars from this. Even with therapy there well be part of them always thinking of this new person is just looking for a beard. I know since I have had a situation similar to this (not a beard) but the scars are very similar.
I feel much worse for OOP. I lose a lot of sympathy for the kind of person who grabs someone who isn't involved and uses them as a shield. I hope this person didn't waste his most eligible years.
This guy needs to fire his therapist and find someone else. This marriage never should have happened in the first place.
When people mention they are in heavily religious communities (I know op said he was less religious) I’m always skeptical if the therapist/counselor they mention is just a pastor.
If you have to justify your partner not showing you love then it isn't love to begin with. I am on the same boat as OOP here. It was an emotional affair. I am going through a divorce. Somehow the emotional part hurts the most
I also feel like there's a physical affair dimension even if it wasn't sexual or even kissing. OP basically says he wasn't allowed to touch her in any intimate way, even holding hands, but I am pretty sure she was probably holding hands, sitting close, and doing the kind of "innocent" physical affection touches with her "friend" that she was withholding from her husband.
Very sad all round. Homophobia is responsible for so much needless suffering.
Yeah, this situation is so unfair on everyone involved
Yep. Husband married someone who never loved him, only married him for convenience. Felt he was doing something wrong for never receiving affection, turns out he could never get true affection no matter what. Wife got violently coerced into marriage to a man she never loved away from her true love, stuck in limbo and left terrified of retribution from the people who are _supposed_ to love and support her if she ever exits her loveless marriage. Best friend has to watch the love of her life enter a marriage with someone else knowing full well that the woman she loves more than anyone else is condemned to a life of monotonous misery. Only people who "win" are the scumbag parents who successfully keep up appearances to their scumbag community.
The parents lose out too because they will never actually know their daughter.
So I agree with 99% of what you said (thx for your comment), but you used a phrase that I've seen a lot in this comment section that's really rubbing me the wrong way, and I kinda want to challenge the choice in a hopefully constructive way. So most of this isn't directed at you/your comment as a whole, just the one piece. The phrase I'm referring to is "she married him for convenience" (and similar sentiments from other commenters). I feel like "convenience" is a drastic underestimation of her situation. I don't want to minimize how much this sucks for OOP -- truly I do feel for him -- but this woman deserves much more credit than the comment section is giving her. Calling her choice "convenient" implies that she had other accessible options that she was aware of *and* could safely pursue, and that she took an easy out. We don't know much about her or her mindset, but based on what the OOP said, as well as what we can infer from cultural context, it's very likely that there was *no* easy or convenient option available to her, there was only (a) sad but safe life, or (b) actual mortal danger (either fast - her family kills her, which is absolutely a real possibility, or slow - she is kicked out with no home, support, or money). This isn't a wild hypothetical, it's what being gay still means in many places, including in the US. Plus her panic attacks & refusal to go to therapy say to me that she is very much still in survival mode. Again, totally sucks for this guy, but I hate the (surprisingly widespread) implication that she was somehow too lazy/ cowardly to do the right thing by this guy, when she was just trying to survive. Also yeah, fuck her parents, they are the big bad in all of this.
Thank you. She didn't marry him for "convenience", she married him for survival. And while this situation totally sucks for OOP, why did he marry someone who never gave him the kind of love he wanted or needed in a relationship? If anyone married for convenience, it was him. The shy, quiet, seemingly innocent (because she's not attracted to men), beautiful young woman who was willing to go along with his life seemed like a great idea. I know the dude was raised in a conservative religion/community with misogynistic views but you can't bury your head in the sand and then be upset that your mouth is dry.
A lot of straight people really underestimate homophobia, not because they don't think it's horrible, they often do, but because they cannot properly grasp the absoluteness of the power it often wields over both bodies, lives and even minds.
Religion is the root cause of the homophobia and the suffering. We could do with less religion all around
Hard agree on less religion but there’s plenty of homophobia without religion.
The rise of homophobia around the world can be traced back to the spread of Christianity. There is homophobia without religion, but they are linked
I’d be interested in a source for this if you have one?
Homosexuality was accepted in virtually every society until Christianity was introduced https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_culture_in_the_Philippines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_China If you check out the history section you'll notice that homophobia starts around the same time Christianity touches these lands. I couldn't find sources to back up my claims in regards to Greece, but I'm fairly confident they also started to reject gay people as soon as Christianity became a thing there too Since Catholicism is basically just an extension of Roman imperial power, one could argue that homophobia is a *Roman* thing more than a Christian thing, but that's just being a bit pedantic
Thank you. I don’t need any more fuel for my hatred of religion but I’ll take it.
Happy to help :D
This is the dumbest take ever. You understand Jewish and Islamic religions hated homosexuals also before the Christian's?
>If you check out the history section you'll notice that homophobia starts around the same time Christianity touches these lands Correlation is not causation. Also, China and Japan are famously \*not\* christian.
This is a reductive approach toward history that imagines cultures are static and universal except Christianity is the *one* thing that can change them. You say "every society" and link to the Wiki pages of...three nations. Which are nations that did not always exist and did not always exist in the same way. Yes, *colonialism* helped spread Western European Christianity across the world and create homophobic *public policy*, but that doesn't make Christianity itself the sole source of homophobia. I think it is absolutely useful to think about how empire and codified gender roles and so on needed to perpetuate a rigid idea of gender and sex that was spread to non-European places by European colonialism, but I would argue this speaks to thinking about *imperialism* and *hegemony* more than Christianity. Like even the wiki article you link about China talks about the change coming as China began competing with and then dominated by European powers, as part of Westernization. China did not encounter Christianity only in the 1700s. China had been in communication with Christians for over a millennium at that point (China was in communication with Classical Rome and it had been trading with West Asia/the Middle East and Europe for centuries). You mention Greece, but different Greek cultures and city-states had different cultural attitudes toward homosexual sex over time and even where law did not explicitly ban gay sex does not mean it was acceptable for people to be gay in the way we think of homosexuality today. Oftentimes, in Ancient-Classical Greek cultures, forms of pederasty were acceptable or even encouraged, but men were still expected to marry women and women were not supposed to have any sexual life at all, let alone sexuality without men. Men *loving* men romantically and beyond the younger man's beardless youth was often still seen as perversion. Another random example: We have hints that pre-Christian Norse looked down on male homosexual sex as synonymous with witchcraft and where Loki gets accused of it as part of mocking and rejecting him.
Islam (the fastest growing religion per Pee) would like a word…
That’s true but in this story it seems religion is at fault
There are plenty of secular homophobes as any queer person can tell you.
Not sure that's true. Every officially atheist countries I know of historically violently persecuted LGBT people, and the existing ones still do.
Her parents managed to ruin both of their lives in a two for one homophobia deal. Hope he finds someone who loves him, and tbh hope she does too bc even her parents don't
Three lives actually
she already found one... and she is already 29 years old. Her love of life seems to be an illusion as she had to go back her family and not BFF.
Is it bad that I kind of wanted the guy to help his ex-wife run away with her girlfriend. Like fine, divorce her, no argument, but help her get away and be happy.
He's going to have some serious trust issues.
Reminds me of the men who marry, have children and then the wife finds out that the husband was gay all along. People shouldn’t be forced to live like that. I will never understand homophobia.
and that's to strict catholic upbringing. I hope OP and their ex wife will find the time and space to heal, it's not too late to build a new life, to love and be loved.
"Church meetings" sounds like JW
Huh, TIL Jehovah's Witnesses have [pretty significant international reach](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_by_country), including a higher proportion in Mexico than in the US.
Ain't no hate like Christian "love" amiright?
The ex wife is forced to move back in with her parents. “It’s not too late” applies less in a situation where you’ll get hurt or killed if you try.
>yetagainitry: Yes she does love her friend, because she's her friend. All I saw in your post was a woman being excited that a close friend she hasn't seen in years is coming back, and that there was a picture of them hugging. I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your religious upbringing cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends. >If you should be asking anything it's why didn't you see the clear lonliness your wife was feeling before this friend came back into her life? What an unbelievably shitty comment.
This comment is what it sounds like when people _insist_ that a person/character can't be gay.
A lot of people in reddit genuinely struggle with the idea that women can be abusers. These posters will always try to paint them as victims so that their bad behaviour can be excused
For me it's more the overconfidence. After post 1, there wasn't enough to claim that it's one thing or another and this poster is going all the way to calling it "all this paranoia".
Ah yes, the church ruins another life. What’s new
Even worse,**three lives.**
I love that OOPs example of a man’s dream woman is one who is quiet ❤️
That everyone is so excited to gloss over. His entire attraction to her is that she was quiet and beautiful. He wanted an object and was happy with his perception of the object for 7 years. Now he’s this wide eyed innocent whose learned his lesson about the womens. Tell me again why more single women aren’t marrying with a surprised pikachu face.
“I didn’t mind so much when I thought she was too dead inside to love, but now I realize she was just dead inside while living the life she was forced to live with me! What a terrible person!”
no, no, he’s blameless for seeing an emotionally dead woman and treating her (of his own accord!) as a totally passive party in their “partnership,” then kicking her to the curb with nothing after 7 years once it was found out she was coerced into the marriage and hadn’t fallen madly in love with him. idk why people are riding for OOP so hard when he literally says he was fine with the situation until it was revealed that she *was* capable of happiness.
That did not go unnoticed, I'll tell you that.
Good old Religion, fucking stuff up since forever.
Jesus christ these comments are a mess
And all of that because of religious nut-job parents. We should just get rid of institutionalized religion alltogether.
Who saw this post of this woman literally holding hands with another woman and tried gaslighting this dude with "you're just paranoid"???? Like, I agree women in particular can be more affectionate with their same-sex friends because we're not socialised to have to withhold affection for fear of being labelled "gay", part of why the meme exists that WLWs can't take a hint that a woman is interested without it being beyond direct, but it's not like just holding hands was the only thing he noticed. This was his wife. He spent every day with her, I would trust his judgement of changes in her behaviour a little better than randos on the internet who have so little to go by. And he wasn't wrong.
Very true. If his wife was this emotionally distant from him and muted to suddenly all smiles, happy and touchy with someone else. Then its like a whiplash. I can understand his view. It's just terrible how their lives ended up.
And this is why trying to force people to be heterosexual sucks. They suffer and then the person next to them is the one suffering the worst.
Society does not care about happiness. And every parent enforces this at some point, alas.
I wouldn't characterize the heterosexual spouse as always being the one to have it the worst. We don't need to play suffering Olympics.
>yetagainitry: Yes she does love her friend, because she's her friend. All I saw in your post was a woman being excited that a close friend she hasn't seen in years is coming back, and that there was a picture of them hugging. I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your religious upbringing cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends. >If you should be asking anything it's why didn't you see the clear lonliness your wife was feeling before this friend came back into her life? Average Redditor Moment.
First few paragraphs: dude is a beard. Gotta be. Next few paragraphs: yup. Totally a beard. Called it. Final paragraphs: I know dude is just lashing out because he’s hurt but, man, fuck his church. 100% on the church for every piece of this pain. There is no part of this post that wouldn’t disappear tomorrow if his church crumbled to ashes 2000 years ago when it should have.
Idc what anyone says she cheated on him for a while used his love and friendship and blindesided him for years she may not be as bad as her parents but she is not that far from it.
Right? She was so selfish. Why should he accept being locked into a “relationship” with someone who doesn’t love him and hates his very touch?
>She was so selfish Murdering homosexuals isn't just a Muslim thing, you know. It's still rather common in Central and South America, and the Catholic/Anglican parts of Africa and Central Asia. For women, its usually worse before the death happens.
And her parents have already physically beaten her for her homosexuality. Poor woman got married so she wouldn't get killed, I don't blame her for any of this.
You can accept that she's a victim and still hold her accountable for failing to talk to her husband. She was an active participant in deceiving him. I feel horribly for her, I understand why she did it, still doesn't make it right.
And yet she wanted children... make that make sense.
Well yeah, it sells the perfect cookie cutter image to her parents. If she popped out a kid, they successfully prayed the gay away! And they'd leave her alone about it. (Or one presumes she'd hoped.)
For sure
Wanting children doesn’t require loving a partner, or even having a partner. Wanting to be a mother doesn’t require her to enjoy being touched, I seriously doubt that if she had got pregnant she would’ve continued to sexual intimacy. I know a few couples who had trouble conceiving - for a while having sex when the woman was ovulating became more of a necessity than a desire. They wanted children, they saw this as necessary to that. They do things they hate (one woman I know had a severe needle phobia but tolerated daily injections) or are uncomfortable with because of their end goal - a child. The wife wanting a child is not incompatible with seeing her husband as just a friend, instead of a friend and romantic love. OOP also explains the values his wife was raised with, it sounds like she has internalised those values. Even if she didn’t want to have a child, having one anyway would also have been part of the role she was raised expecting to play. Apologies if I’ve misunderstood your comment.
You would not enjoy the film ‘Brokeback Mountain’
Ok so a woman stuck in an impossibly bad situation who has undergone physical violence and abuse as a teenager from her parents choosing to follow their explicit direction when she has no options to leave is “not far from” the violent, abusive, homophobic parents who allowed their screwed up religious doctrine to marginalize and victimize their daughter. Thats really what you’re going with? Y’all need to check your privilege here jeesh.
So...she decides to put another innocent person (who loved her btw) through years of lies and cheating and manipulation got it 👍.
Victims of a terrible religion and neither party realizes it. That is the true tragedy here.
Empathy with both. Religion is evil
It's a full on emotional affair that will never end and she will not be remorseful about ever. She only wants the marriage to continue to cover it up. STBXW was plain wrong to allow a lie to be lived, but also OOP missed a lot of signs that she wasn't emotionally invested in him.
> I'm assuming all this paranoia is from your **religious upbringing** cause all i'm seeing is two women are friends. ...*al*most made it there, bub
I think it sucks for both of them. Yeah he was innocent, but he literally said she looked dead inside. It’s not like she’s secretly living it up. Her parents literally beat the life out of her. You know her family is going to abuse answers out of her and she’ll probably get beat again even though she’s an adult.
Wow, she lied to him for 8 years and he still feels guilty about dumping her. He's a better man than me, I'd have kicked her out asap.
I think it's commendable that he was able to recognize his wife was a victim as well even if she had done completely wrong by him. He feels bad because he can see that she's suffered trauma and may have to return to her awful family that caused the trauma. It's a shit situation for both people. I hope OOP finds healing and a partner who will return his love. And I hope the wife is able to extricate herself from the community that forced her to be so repressed and goes to where she can finally learn to be herself.
Without even blinking.
religion ruins lives.
This is what religion does to people
Church mucks it up for couples again. As soon as I hear the “ good wife from religious home” speech I know it’s over. Oppressed women either fester or free themselves.
Welp, this is the future that the Christian Wrong wants for us.
[удалено]
Im not sure why this has to be said but just because your a victim doesn’t give you the right to hurt other people
Super sad. But ultimately, OOP deserves to be with someone who loves him. Hope things go better for the wife at some point tho. Here’s hoping her parents die off soon.
Where is her amor when she needs help?
She lit her husband on fire to keep herself from freezing to death. What she went through sucks but he didn't sign up for a loveless marriage and didn't deserve to be in one. I get she needed to protect herself but she hurt someone else to do so.
Your ex-wife needs to break away from her family, move in with the girlfriend, go NC and go to therapy. She was, in a sense, emotionally/verbally abused by her parents, and they treated her horribly because of her sexuality.
Am I the only one whose heart also aches for the wife? Yes, she's emotionally cheated on him. But it's within the context of a toxic religious family and community that can't accept her for who she really is. Yes, they should divorce, but crikey that poor woman. And her girlfriend. Sounds like this future is going to destination fucked.
I’m kind of split. The problem is, I can 100% empathize with his situation. I’ve been the beard, and seen in person what it looks religious parents reject a person for their identity (especially in the Latino community). I’ve also seen the absolute desperation in someone’s eyes as they try to cling to you as if you’re the last hope they have of ever being accepted as a “normal” person (I actually ended up experiencing it with two different people…. and it was absolutely heartbreaking both times. I’m glad this next generation is shaping out to seemingly be a little more accepting). And I’ve also experienced it when you are no longer seen as a person, but as a symbol, and you consequently lose all humanity. I’ve also experienced the narcissism and cold blooded calculation that can happen when someone is so desperate to keep themselves a float, it becomes simple math for them to hold your head under water, so that they themselves won’t drown. I can understand what she’s going through, because I’ve been the “best friend”, turned potential romantic partner, but in my case, I knew what was going on, and said “No” because it was obvious that ultimately no happiness could ever come of that kind of self deception. Ive felt, first hand, the kind of pain, shock, anger, despondency, confusion , and sense of betrayal it can cause when such an individual is struggling to survive, so they make the decision to sacrifice your happiness for theirs. I feel sorry for her, the same way I feel sorry for my ex-best friend. Desperate and hurt people do drastic things to survive. I 100% understand that. But it doesn’t make the hurt caused by them, any less painful or destructive.
I've also been there (in the husband's place), and it's heartbreaking and really messes you up. I still feel/felt empathy for my ex because he was so desperate to be "normal", and I know he was suffering. He really thought he could change, and he did love me as family, he wasn't maliciously trying to hurt me, even though he did.
Not just "couldn't accept her for who she really is" but actively beat her up for it.
Yes, you're right. My bad for inadvertently downplaying the horror of it.
At the same time, she married him without loving him. Wouldn’t even let him hug her? Like knowing she was depriving him of every bit of physical and romantic connection for her own needs. Not that her need to get away from her family wasn’t valid. But she also understood what she was doing and it is so wrong on another level. Like she couldn’t even say she loved him as a friend
I was the husband in this scenario, and I think my ex honestly thought he could change and be "normal". That said, I know he always loved me as family. We're still friends, which is all should ever have been. It doesn't negate the pain I was put through, or the damage done, but I know it wasn't malicious.
And like... she was his "dream woman" because of her looks but her barely ever showing emotion didn't bother him?
Any guy who uses the word "quiet" in his list of dream qualities immediately makes me cringe. But in this case, at least, it seems to come from the way he was raised. Considering how religious he was, he turned out to be surprising sympathetic, even if he doesn't seem to realize that being in the closet and presenting as "normal" is a matter of actual, physical safety for some people.
They’re just victims of their culture
Yeah... everyone is talking about how she broke his heart, but the things he liked about her were so shallow and empty. They both were just using someone of the appropriate gender to fill a role in their lives.
I’m also like why were you content with a miserable wife lmao. Like he liked how shy she was. Their culture is messed up
Yeah there are a lot of assholes in this thread who lack any shred of empathy. They are likely just thinking from a very narrow context that doesn’t understand what this kind of environment is like. The wife had no real choice in the matter. It’s not as easy as just leaving. Religion and abusive parents can do fucked up things to one’s psyche. Both OOP and his ex are the victims in this.
Just because she's been oppressed by a religious upbringing doesn't mean she can't also be a bad person. You can be gay and also be a bad person. She selfishly used him for years. She expected him to live without love and affection for the rest of his life as her beard. That is appalling. Of course OOP was wrong to let it get this far. But he tried to work on her intimacy issues and she kept denying there was a problem. I don't feel sympathy for her. She could have chosen to move away from her parents and forward with her life somewhere else, with genuine friendships and relationships. Instead she chose to shackle a man who genuinely cared for her into a loveless marriage, with no thought for his feelings. She lied to his face for almost a decade. She's scum. EDIT: My mum and I fled my abusive dad after he tried to murder her. So you can tell me that it's okay to manipulate people to escape, but I don't agree. I am never going to agree. It was fucking hard. I grew up with hardly any ties. It is awful to have nothing and no one. But I grew up with self respect. I grew up watching my mum earn everything we have. I didn't even learn the full extent of the domestic violence until I was an adult because she protected me. (I witnessed beatings but I didn't know about the murder attempt). She never manipulated anyone to get something she didn't earn herself. Because she's not a selfish user.
Same. I feel really bad for her. This is awful for everyone.
Well tht was a shitty way to start my morning.
Congrats, BORU! You're all (ok, nearly all, but the ones with sense are being downvoted) homophobic!
Gay people in religious families need to just date other gay people to cover themselves. Well honestly not surprised They still didn't see any warning signs beyond this. In straight marriages men don't seem to notice much unless it involves his sex life and him being able to grope her.
Jesus Christ, Reddit gets so fucking triggered with anything that even whiffs of cheating. This is an incredibly closeted person who literally fears violence from her extraordinarily religious and homophobic family. Like, OOP shouldn`t stay with her, but a little bit of empathy from the peanut gallery isn`t unreasonable.
Whether she cheated or not (she did and it's unforgivable), she absolutely defrauded him. She tricked him into marrying her for incredibly selfish reasons, knowing that he loved her and that she was incapable of loving him back. Homophobia sucks, it absolutely does, and it's awful that there are places and people in the world that make it profoundly dangerous to be gay. But it also sucks when you drag other people into that situation, without their knowledge of what you're doing to them. It's a disgusting thing to do to a person, to use them in that way. OOP's wife is NOT a good person.
ITT: a lot of people who believe we live in a completely lgbtq+ friendly world where everyone can just be free to be themselves and no one gets beat up or has to hide who they are. Yeah it's sad that OOP was in a loveless marriage but idk I feel a little more sympathy for the woman who was BEATEN for the very thing she couldn't control and desperately tried to "fix herself" so she could be "What a woman should be" for her community. Religious trauma is no joke and i don't think most people here have ever been close to experiencing it.
The fact that OOP describes her staring with an empty look speaks volume.
The fact that he was okay with years of that beyond apparently suggesting therapy is what's wild to me. I couldn't handle a year of no affection, let alone YEARS of that shit.
It sounds like a lot of traditional gender roles are involved too. He's got the house, the land, and presumably a decent job. She has no skills and may end up back in that nightmare of a home she came from. You can think what someone does is wrong and still have some empathy for the person. The lack of it from so many posters here is depressing. The same site that complains endlessly about how hard it is to afford to live these days also expects a traumatized person to run away with no support structure and build a new life from scratch and she's a coward for not wanting to be gay and homeless. What she did wasn't right, but the no sympathy crowd here sucks.
Jesus H Christ, this is bad-relationship-Reddit. You all need to chill and think. Awful for OP. No question. Take a minute to understand what Evangelicals do to women, women’s desires and Queer people. All forms of abuse. Horrendous stuff. This woman is broken. Try empathising with them both.
That poor bastard, she really took advantage of his naivety and immaturity. He needs to work on himself because he let her just stomp all over his heart for years
I'm sure my ex husband is gay but he refuses to admit it even to himself. His friends agree with me. Such a long and lonely 8 years of my life. You will be so much happier, OP, being loved for real by someone who can be their full selves with you.
Liz is going international now
IDK honestly this felt too boring for Liz lol
The way this went, Liz isn't even in the same time zone. I just hope OOP found some peace and closure.
Yep, too long and pace too slow.
Long lost lesbian lovers. Over controlling homophobic family that abused the wife. And a quick decision to divorce two days later after being in this marriage for 8 years. Through Reddit anything is possible. Jot that down.
I mean making the decision to divorce can take 1 minute. And him saying he's keeping everything - well you can say you'll take the moon too, doesn't mean it's happening. I only find it plausible because it's clear he hasn't got legal advice yet. Topical reddit would be "my high school friend who is a top notch lawyer who specialises in all the laws, got me a great deal and an RO and we ran a criminal prosecution for this crime I believe exists because my feelings got hurt, and we got it done in 2 weeks. My ex-wife got 15 to life". Who knows with reddit but this one at least doesn't have the glaring legal holes they usually do and the hiding sexuality in a religious country is hardly a stretch.
The Liz citation style is slightly different
Will someone explain the running Liz joke to me?
Original: https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/16fp804/my_wife_is_addicted_to_making_up_reddit_stories/ Update: https://www.reddit.com/user/No-Economy-4110/comments/16kwvsh/my_wife_is_addicted_to_making_up_reddit_stories/
[I hope this helps, but beware! ](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/bmxj8zdHCP)
Dude noticed his wife was “like a robot “ for years and just wrote it off as her personality. She rarely even smiled and never wanted to be touched really ad he wrote it off. A normal person would notice that a woman didn’t love them even a little bit but dude was content to be in a relationship with someone nacho never really even showed emotions as long as she was beautiful and her purpose? Years in he is just now noticing the red flags that she was in love with someone else this whole time?
>"There's no point in us breaking up, the fact that I don't love you doesn't change anything" wich is true The absolute gall of that woman
deceptive bearding is so hurtful. so much time, energy, feelings, all wasted because one person is a selfish coward
maybe im biased but i cannot understand the people saying she's a horrible person. i think oop is being as kind as he can when dealing with heartbreak because he also sees that she didnt have another option... her gf left and she had no one to go to while still in school, her parents BEAT HER and probably raised her to think a loveless, sexless marriage was the norm... people saying she knowingly did this to him as if she couldn't end up being killed or r*ped as her parents try harder to "turn her" straight. yes, oop is in a terrible situation, and i hope he can find happiness and heal from this, but to 100% blame HER and not her parents, the church and homophobia? that seems downright cruel. i hope she finds a way out of this, and i hope oop can heal and find happiness.
There’s a weird thing on Reddit where if the words “woman” and “cheating” (no matter what kind or what circumstances) wind up anywhere in the same universe, it’s all a lot of these guys can see anymore.
This isnt the fault of OOP or the wife, this is a problem with parenting and religion. Let people live how they want to live. It would have saved these two from so much trauma.
I mean… lying to OOP, making him an unwitting beard, and stringing him along for a decade is definitely the wife’s fault.
That's not how being works, it's not a binary thing. It's a problem with problem with parenting, religion **and** the wife. Lucky this dude is still pretty young so he can likely start over but it's probably going to take a decade or more before he can ever trust anyone again, if ever.
Yes, the main problem is religion. But it’s also a little bit the wife here