“Am I Wrong to Resent My Wife’s Bisexuality?”
- This topic has 10 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 1 year ago by
.
-
Posts
-
TW: Rape and childhood sexual abuse.
“So I keep questioning things and I could use a moment of clarity from someone else outside my situation. All of my family has never dealt with a situation like what I have. My wife is bisexual. I’ve known about it since she started dating me years ago before marriage was even on the table. We are monogamous and committed to that. Let me preface this by saying she went through a very terrible childhood. I won’t spill too many details but let’s put it at this: her mom’s boyfriend while she was growing up would rape her and her little sister continuously, use them sexually to pay off his debts to other people, and forced her to watch pornography almost every day from the time she was 7 to almost 17 when she was able to leave home. In my opinion, he was brain-washing her to become some sort of a sex maniac, which she still struggles to deal with on some levels. She has problems maintaining levels of intimacy with me that don’t sometimes become sexually violent sometimes because that’s what she was trained to see as normal, and she and I have begun addressing this lately. Psychologists have told her some of the things she struggles with are because of the traumatic lifestyle she grew up in. Among all this, she decided she was bisexual when she was young, mostly because she became disgusted with men for a long time by her own admission. She still identifies as bisexual, but we have a loving and communicative relationship together otherwise and I never saw it as a problem. I’ve never tried to be jealous or offensive to people, men or women, who like her because I love her and she is exceptionally beautiful so to me it makes sense others would see that too. It usually only happens when she gets tipsy or drunk but she tends to say and do things, mostly to do with other women she doesn’t know, that hurt my feelings and this has led me to begin questioning my worth as her husband. She has assured me that our marriage is never something she would give up, nor would she ever want to involve anyone but ourselves in the bedroom from her own past experiences, but especially when she gets drunk she becomes much more open about liking women and will be very flirtatious, sometimes outright verbally sexual, with women she likes in the bars and it makes me resent her bisexual identity. I’ve told her some of the things she says hurts my feelings, and she has apologized and said she would try to watch what she says more often. She has been better about it since then, but I still wonder if maybe I’m not enough for her sexually because she continues to have episodes like these and it hurts me to think maybe I’m having trouble accepting her identity because of them. I mean, the saying goes that drunk people only speak the truth. What if her truth is she wants to be with a woman again, but won’t because she is married to me? I’m not really ready to ask or accept the answer to that question because she tells me on occasion that she looks up lesbian porn, coming from a woman who says she hates porn with a passion because of her past, and that only strengthens my questions…
Am I right for feeling the way I feel? Is it normal to feel like this? I’ve never dealt with a situation like this and all the conventional methods of communication about the problems have been covered, but I still feel this aching pain that makes me wonder if I’m just not enough, or not really what she wants. I want her to be happy, but I don’t want to lose my wife. What do you think?
Married But Wondering…”
I don’t think you have a problem with your wife’s sexuality so much as a problem with her openly flirting with other people in front of you. That would hurt and upset a lot of spouses, myself included. If you’ve explicitly told her how much this upsets you and it’s still going on then it’s a serious problem. Maybe your wife feels more strongly about women than she’d like to admit, I don’t know. This is something for a couples counselor to help you work through, and if your wife isn’t in counseling on her own as well she should start going. I think it’s reasonable to set pretty strict boundaries around the open flirting – of the “the next time you do that in front of me I’m going to immediately leave the situation and take a few days apart from you” variety, but you need the couples counseling to address the root of why this is happening. It’s not fair to either of you for her to stay in a marriage that isn’t working for her, if that is indeed the case.
You say that her behavior bothers you, but it only happens when she’s drunk. It sounds like alcohol is a big part of the problem. You and she should try to deal with that. She says she wants monogamy. Does she fully understand that this doesn’t mean she gets to choose you from column A and a woman from column B. Her flirting very strongly with another woman has the same significance as if you strongly flirted with another woman in front of her. You say psychologists have explained her behavior to her. Is she still in therapy? She should be. Her past trauma is beyond your and her abilities to deal with on your own.
I think you need to go to marriage counseling together.
Once you are ready to really communicate with the therapist, her you love her and want her to be happy but you are concerned she has more than just mild interest in women.
As other have said, it’s really not her sexuality you are resenting, it’s the flirtatious way she behaves with women (while she’s been drinking or not makes no difference, although maybe it makes it easier to imagine) You’re diluting the message when you bring up the bisexuality. It has nothing to do with that, you find her behavior while she’s drinking disrespectful. That’s what has made this question in your mind not go away, that she keeps acting out, even when you tell her you’re upset. And you want to go to therapy together to address it.
I don’t believe that trauma affects your sexuality. Maybe it does? I’m not an expert, just a traumatized woman. I’ve been through a lot and I still am attracted to men as a hetero woman, so. She needs therapy, but it could help your marriage or to actual have clarity for yourself if you go with her as a couple.
If you are both drinking heavily often, I’d be concerned what type of relationship you and she have with alcohol. She should be in therapy with the type of intense trauma she’s had, not getting wasted often. Substances are often used by trauma victims to numb themselves and all their memories which makes me think she could be struggling. If you don’t think she’s being honest with you about her attraction and sexuality, you have major issues to deal with in couples co7 seeing or therapy.
The fact that she is violent towards you during sex is also not something that you should accept.
I don’t think you are wrong. As others have pointed out I think it would bother most people seeing their partner flirt with other people.
So… My wife and I aren’t exceptionally heavy drinkers. We aren’t going out and getting wasted, nor is this situation with the flirting or the drinking a very common occasion, nor is it even every time she drinks. It’s more like she’ll get enough alcohol in her system on a weekend we decide to go out to make her act out of character. And it’s not that all she does is look at other women when she drinks. She pays a lot of attention to me as well, but I’m the kind of man who doesn’t really look at other women regardless of what I’m doing. It’s just how I operate and I don’t know if that’s the part that bothers me or what. Also, she doesn’t act violently toward me during sex. Because of her lack of ability to intimately connect sometimes because of her past trauma, she tends to want to be used more like a slave/master relationship so she wants to be choked or enjoys being rough all the time and I’m not complaining about our sex life in any way, but I just wonder if that’s good for her given that sometimes she ends up getting hurt from it, like she inadvertently broke two lower ribs during one of these sessions of ours. I like the sex but not hurting her if that makes sense. I’m straight so sometimes I feel like I’m still struggling to adjust to how much more open my wife is now about her sexuality versus before when it wasn’t really brought up at all. And I think part of it is the fact that it’s women. I’m not an exceptionally jealous man. My wife can handle her business and she’s never let anyone, man or woman, cross the line before, even when we drink. I guess the fact is if it were a man she was flirting with and he tried something, my wife would either shut it down or I could drag them to the parking lot and duke it out. I can’t exactly do that with a woman so I feel defenseless in that particular situation. I guess maybe it’s a fear that one day she won’t stop them from crossing the line. I don’t know. This whole situation makes me woozy most time I really trying to think about it.
