Triage: Attraction/energy during major medical issues

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  • AngelineAngeline planting seedsCategory Moderator** Posts: 14,501
    edited October 20
    If they were making plans to get together tomorrow, I'm sorry but this sounds like much more than talk. There's also the possibility that he is paying for that kind of servicing. How are you sure that the photos of him in sex acts with other women predates your relationship? Do the women seem to be aware of the camera I'm wondering about criminal behavior here). 

    The desperate scrambling around in the aftermath belies the "just talk" excuse. Are you still in posession of the phone? If so back up the pictures to a Google pictures folder, then copy them to your own secure Google or other online storage (don't just leave them in the connected Google drive or he can erase from his phone). Try to preserve as much as you can (including your screenshots) and figure out how you feel about it later. 

    Regardless of whether the texts about meeting a prostitute tomorrow is true, are you OK with what sounds like photo evidence of multiple instances of sex with prostitutes in the past? No judgment here, people can get past some serious stuff and go on to have happy marriages, but one absolute requirement for that to happen is that they stop the behavior. You don't need to justify to anyone a decision to stay or to leave. But I would book emergency appointments with both your counselor and a lawyer, so you know what yoy are facing legally.

    @Jen_Kay
    "Speak your truth." - Scarlet
    Remember to play!
    Do the right thing, whether anyone is watching or not.
    Be married, until you are not.

    Email address: angeline.greenwood@att.net
  • AngelineAngeline planting seedsCategory Moderator** Posts: 14,501
    edited October 20
    At the very least, cancel his phone service you are paying for.
    "Speak your truth." - Scarlet
    Remember to play!
    Do the right thing, whether anyone is watching or not.
    Be married, until you are not.

    Email address: angeline.greenwood@att.net
  • AngelineAngeline planting seedsCategory Moderator** Posts: 14,501
    Any chance the other guy swings both ways? I'm confused as to what Other Man gets out of it otherwise.
    "Speak your truth." - Scarlet
    Remember to play!
    Do the right thing, whether anyone is watching or not.
    Be married, until you are not.

    Email address: angeline.greenwood@att.net
  • RebornReborn LondonGold Men Posts: 2,987
    edited October 20
    Reading the whole thread, it seems likely that this is at least partly to do with the brain injury. That can often cause poor impulse control. 
    Enneagram type 5 w6. 
    If I offer lots of advice, it's probably really me giving advice to myself. That always seems to happen. 
    giraffeRorschach
  • giraffegiraffe USAMember Posts: 98
    @Angeline, I am so confused by that part.  It is entirely possible he swings both ways, I have no way of knowing, although husband says he himself (husband) does not.  He has always been very firm about that. Husband says he once slept with text guy's (former) girlfriend, with his permission.  That's how they know each other, through the swinger group and "Bambi", supposedly her real name.  According to text records all contact with this guy has been initiated in the beginning by other text guy.

    Text guy seemed to be getting off on telling my husband about his control over this girl on the texts.  "I will make her eat your ass if you're into that." and "She's an ugly bitch but I'll have her ass in the air waiting for you, you won't have to look at her face."

    Most of the crudest stuff did come from other text guy.  But not all of it.  By the end my husband was bringing up some stuff he claims to not be into at all, with me at least - rape fantasies for instance and other things.

    I realized last night when I couldn't sleep that he was talking about just fucking a girl he's never met, never talked to and not even seeking consent from HER, just from some guy he hasn't seen in over a decade!?! This guy could have been setting her up to be assaulted and my husband up to be arrested.  I said as much to him this morning and he visibly blanched because he knows I am right.  This was very stupid.  And he's not stupid.

    I don't know.  I don't freaking know.  I am going to call his neuropsychologist.  That's the best thing I can think of right now.

    Do guys talk like this?  For real?  Is this a thing?  Have men talked about me like this?  


  • giraffegiraffe USAMember Posts: 98
    I need some time, this is too much to digest all at once.  I have normal people things to do today, not my life is not what I thought it was, my husband is a sleazy guy with poor decision making skills and impulse control problems things to do today.

    I just can't right now.  All my sensors and emotions are maxed out.
    RebornJellyBean
  • CallmeCatCallmeCat DownsouthSilver Member Posts: 236
    @giraffe I am sorry you are having to deal with this after all the other stuff on your plate.  Sending you a cyberhug.
  • Husband3point0Husband3point0 Gold Men Posts: 3,294
    giraffe said:
    @Angeline, Not prostitutes.  His ex-wife was in one photo, many years ago when they were married. I recognize the furniture and their old house from other photos so I know it was then. That house was sold in 2002. I know they used to take videos of themselves because I fussed at him about seeing a video title on his computer of them years ago, knowing his kids might find it because kids are curious about stuff.  That's when he put things in a private zone on his computer, a passworded partition or something and started using private mode on his phone.  I should probably tell him to open that partition.  I was on his computer early this week and looked at recently used files looking for something and didn't see anything weird though.

    The rest are in his apartment he lived in when we met, before we moved into our first house together and then moved to this one later.  I recognize his old apartment and 2 or 3 of the girls I've seen before in pitcures from previous relationships, one I even met when we were at a celebration once and ran into her with her kids.  My husband definitely went a little crazy sexually, having a lot of it after the divorce.  He was a virgin when they married and very much not by the time he met me.

    The women did seem to be playing up for the camera, like they were aware it was there. It does not seem like they were in duress.  I'm not saying they couldn't be prostitutes, but we've had long conversations about his sexual history and we have had that conversation.  He did used to be in swingers groups for a while, right after the divorce.  This guy who contacted him IS from that group.  I found his email address in an old swingers email when I searched his inbox.

    I took screenshots of the phone contents and I have those in dropbox, which is just mine.  He has not deleted the conversations, I checked again this morning.  Knowing him, I think he realizes (correctly) that would really piss me off right now.  I have the password to his phone and my fingerprint is one of the unlock prints, I am in his phone all the time right now to confirm kids' schedules, plan medical things...  This was either really stupid, an example of a real memory lapse that I have zero sympathy for or he wanted me to see it.

    I am still in shock today.  Slept poorly, of course, and don't have answers or even thoughts better today than I did last night.  Today I feel MORE bothered about him talking about a woman he's never met, planning to degrade her, calling her ugly... that's not the quality of man I thought he was.  The rest I think I am still digesting.

    I can't stop him if he's going to be skeazy and even if he is going to cheat on me.  But I can leave him. Even saying that I feel numb.
    First, I wish to extend a virtual hand out to you and hope that you know we will be here for you however we can. 

    Second, that being said... damn girl, that ^^^^ is a shitpile of elephants! It might take us a bit to unpack all of that and ask a few extra Qs to make sure we don't steer you into a blind alley by mistake. But, thanks for sharing that because this will help us help you. Definitely. 

    Third, what you describe about the other guy sounds a lot like a certain kind of BDSM pimping. The tops in those scenes typically get off on very high levels of objectification. In that vein, is it possible that he perceives your reluctance to engage in 'home movies' as a CMN of sorts, such that he feels like he's not able to do things he wants?  This isn't meant as accusatory, or to generate guilt in you such that you feel obligated or whatever to do that. But, rather -- is it possible that that is his interpretation?

    Fourth, how much experimentation went on before you met him?  During the 'between marriages' phase, for him? How clear is your picture of his escapades from that era?  Did you meet him through that scene?  I'm not judging you here, but if you guys met each other through fetlife, then just say so. That way we can ask better clarifying questions and get a better understanding of what's going on. If not, then did he settle down a bit before you?  Or, were you guys initially into much wilder stuff and then dial it down over time?

    Lastly, I'm going to leave a really crazy theory here. Feel free to dismiss it, but at least give it a passing thought. Is it possible that his mental condition is such that he's now living in his long-term memory past such that he has now reverted back to who he was during his 'wild' years, as it were?
    CartB4HorseHildaCorners
  • giraffegiraffe USAMember Posts: 98
    edited October 21
    feeling better, had a good day - a normal day as much as I could with just a few thoughts about all this.  I need to shut off my real world from all this to function. There's also not a soul i feel comfortable talking about this to in my real life, except my counselor maybe who I did call today.  My best friends would filet him, my father (who he is close to) would lose his shit and so on.

    Starting from the bottom in order of importance (to me).  

    A lot of experimentation went on before me, sexually and socially.  

    He had a period of one year where he set a goal of dating at least 100 different women because he wanted to work on his social skills, confidence with women etc.  Most of those were first dates with no sex, just literally getting comfortable being around women.  He talks about this time as both challenging (because he's so shy naturally) and very rewarding.  My son is also quite shy and he helps him with dating by talking about these (PG-13) dating experiences.

    He was an amazingly shy young man before his first marriage.  So much so that he was a virgin at 28 when they married.  She was the first girl he ever kissed more than one time or dated more than once.  Think Big Bang Theory geeky guys and their lack of social skills, lack of prowess with women.  He was married long enough to have two kids and an unhappy marriage (about 4 years, the youngest was an infant). Then his wife at the time went hog wild and cheated with his then-boss and two others.  He just wanted the family to stay together so he didn't put up much of a fight beyond trying to reason with her.  

    When she left, he decided he wasn't going to be shy and alone anymore and started dating like crazy.  He went about dating like an experiment.  He would try new parameters and see if they worked.  Then he would come to conclusions and try new techniques on dates, with phone calls etc.  Rinse and repeat.  He still talks about that time in terms of theories, testing theories and evaluating results with women.

    For the between marriage phases I have been told by him that he attended swingers clubs, sometimes with a girl as a date and later, often as a single guy who was invited to attend with the couples.  I do not know about his experience with fetlife, although I am aware of its existence.  He has been in threesomes and foursomes.  He has been the interloper in consensual cuckolding relationships and open relationships.  I probably don't know all of it.  My sexual history is way tamer than his, I know this.

    We did not meet that way or in any way fetish or swinger related.  We met at a work conference, we work in adjacent fields that are very PG.  He struck up a convo with me one day, then the next and then we had dinner that night.  We lived not too far from each other (45 minutes away from each other) and it went from there when we got back to real life.

    I have participated in some home movies at times, at his request.  I am OK with that as long as it's not sitting on a computer's hard drive easily accesible that my or his kids have access to, which is what the fussing was about.  It turns out his oldest viewed one once of him with ex-wife, child told ex-wife who was livid.  So I was correct to fuss (I had thought I saw it open on the screen when his oldest child closed the browser when I walked by.  I got curious, went snooping, saw the title and got worried) and so he decided to lock it up and the rest of his self-made porn collection.  I also don't want our videos posted on the web, which he's been good about.  They are private, he has no issue with that.  He has quite a collection of women on video and most of them have asked them to remain private and he hasn't shared those even with me because they requested that back then.  I have respected that and never had a reason (or want) to go through them.  I just didn't know he was carrying still photos of them on his phone to this day!

    After the wild years he did settle down before me, mostly.  He decided around 3 years before me he was tired of that whole scene and started looking for a more serious relationship.  He dated a girl for a while who turned out to have mental health issues that were pretty serious.  They dated for a little over a year, but it didn't work out.

    He had times when he did not date anyone for a while and others where he hooked up with girls he used to date.  Most of those pictures on his phone look like girls from the slightly before mentally-ill girlfriend time period, based on his age in the photos.

    It is definitely possible he thinks he's not allowed to do what he wants, I'm just not convinced it's me that's holding him back.  But he said to me last night that he doesn't want to do these things to me, because he loves me.  There were things that he has denied wanting to do at all when I have asked, that he specifically asked if this chick would do for him and when I confronted him about that, he said he was being honest both times.  He doesn't want to do that with me, the idea turns him off but he's turned on by the thought of doing it to a stranger.

    I don't know what a wife is supposed to do about that sort of conflict.  Sure, I'll do your fetish but you don't want the fetish with me, only with a strange woman without a name on the internet... (I'm honestly not sure I would do that fetish I'm thinking of that he said, but that's not the point right now).

    Yes, this guy seemed to be pimping her or selling her and trying to titillate others with it all.  I know I don't understand it.  It is a world I've not experienced.

    My sexual history is 4 men, including my husband and my late husband, who was my first.  I had two relationships between my late husband and my current husband.  I have never turned down a request he's made sexually, although perhaps I have needed to warm up to and ease into whatever it was. 


    Husband3point0
  • giraffegiraffe USAMember Posts: 98
    @Husband3point0 I need to think on number 5 about the memory issue.  

    On my list is to re-read all the neurological reports to focus on areas that could indicate deficits in areas that would cause unusual judgment issues, impulse control problems or possibly the type of memory switch that you mention.

    I expect a call back from his neuropsychologist tomorrow. 

  • giraffegiraffe USAMember Posts: 98
    edited October 21
    One last thing that occurred to me today.

    His mother was raped when he was a child.  

    She died while he was a youth and he found out as an adult from relatives about the rape. Many of his fantasies (that he brought up to this guy about doing to this girl) have a rape vibe to them.

    My gut says there's a connection, but I am just not fully understanding it.  

    Edited to add: I also feel really kind of wrong for outing this about him and his family's history.  That is such a personal bit of their family history, that I feel kind of guilty saying it.

    I am in no way suggesting he wants to screw his mother or something wacky.  I more wonder if there's some kind of curiosity about what she experienced.  I know he has sadness and anger about her rape and confusion about not having known something so critical in her life while she was alive.
  • giraffegiraffe USAMember Posts: 98
    Thank you, @JellyBean.

    I go back and forth today between two pretty extreme positions.

    #1 is, as I discussed with my counselor today, I don't think based on this evidence that we share the same concept of love and fidelity as I do.  I am not saying mine is better but it is mine and it is my expectation of him that he be within a certain range of "close to" what I expect.  If I stay with him the chances are high that he will do this again.  And so the question I ask myself is whether or not this is a reason to end the marriage.  

    In this column the most offensive part to me right now is that on the milder end of many of these things he wants with a stranger is what I WANT HIM TO DO WITH ME!  I am struggling with that.  I don't knock the desire he has, but I do object to the partner or situation he prefers in that it's not me.

    #2 position is different.  I do believe there's so much that has happened to him mentally over the last year that it's really hard to believe there's not some factor involved.  His behavior has been so strange at times, even my counselor said today you know, he has had some really unusual behaviors, things he's said and done, this all could be a weird extension of that.

    In counseling prior to this she and I discussed extensively whether or not I should stay with him with all the brain issues.  She was very clear with me and helped me understand that staying is a choice, as would be going.  It helped for her to give me permission to go, even though that's not what you're supposed to do when someone (a spouse) is sick. Whether it's in the vows or not, I get to make a choice when I actually reached that point. And I absolutely have chosen to stay during the medical.  I can't live with myself to not but I also choose to stay because I love him and I want what we have.

    I did not tell the story about his sexual experiences, geekiness etc to excuse away his behaviors as I don't seem them as excusable.  But they do explain the man I know, or think I know until now.  And why his history sexually is acceptable to me.  Nor do I think they are explainable by his mother's rape.  What actually occurred to me today originally was more of an indignant "Why in the world would he fantasize about raping someone when his mother's rape makes him so angry? What a hypocrite."  And then I thought, you know, lately I've had a lot of thoughts about him being a hypocrite.  That's interesting. And then off on another line of thinking.  I was kind of all over the place today.

    I have a family with this man.  My kids don't have a father in their lives, except for him.  This is not a simple decision and it was just over 24 hours I was first exposed to this.  I have not seen anything remotely like this out of him since I've known him. We have plans for retirement and travel and a life together with pets and property, kids about to go to college.  I am not ready to just be done with him.  And I have to ask myself for real if I can accept, even if I don't like, that he has explored these things and may keep doing so.  What, if anything, would be ok and what crosses lines.

    I don't know why but it also felt important to me to explain how we met.  I didn't exist in that world he used to run in and I don't understand a lot of it. I would dare say I feel intimidated by it, so to be asked if we met in some kind of fetish group caught me off guard and I did feel a bit defensive.  for whatever reason.

    CartB4Horse
  • MissDMissD On your leftGold Women Posts: 111
    What are your boundaries?

    (And they are allowed to change you know >:)  )
    JellyBeanCartB4Horse
  • Husband3point0Husband3point0 Gold Men Posts: 3,294
    edited October 21
    To be clear btw, the point of my question wasn't actually to delve further into him, but rather meant to tease out any other hidden elephants. Because for all we knew, those 'wild' years could've included the first year of their relationship together, for example. 

    Many fantasies and nearly all fetishes are ways of the mind healing itself. So, I wouldn't be offended by the fact that he appears to want to do several degrading things to others that he doesn't want to do with you. That's a sign of respect for you, not neglect. 

    Have you been open with him about what it is you are willing to do and what you're not?  Even something as simple as "here's a list of stuff I want to do; here's a list I never want to do; and here's a list of things I'm not sure about..."

    Be clear on what's inside the boundary, what's outside the boundary and what's in the DMZ (for lack of a better term). 
    CartB4Horse
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