When both of your ex wives wanted to commit suicide

A sort of very rough draft. I interviewed myself instead of writing it out using voice to text. I’ll come back and clean it up.

“I’m in a group that is a support group for men and women who are straight, who are or were married to people who have been in the closet. It is a very large group. I wrote an article on here trying to branch out away from my very narrow niche to post red flags and signs that men have seen over the years to indicate that their female significant other might be a closeted lesbian. And I took these things from various straight spouse support groups that I’m in. And I really felt like there should be more.

But men, as we know, aren’t as likely to join a support group. And also, the type of man who joins a support group is more likely to have a lot of empathy and compassion. They aren’t as likely to name every single thing that they saw the way that women who are with a closeted man are able to just unleash and name every single thing that this person did. These men are, I think, trying to be more kind in a way, which is very wholesome and nice.

But anyway, I went back to this group and I said, here’s my list. There has to be more, you guys. And also, the other part is, when women are talking about the signs of their husband being gay or trans, we have no problem in being extremely detailed to the point of what one person might say is vulgarity in describing what happened sexually. The men, because of the nature of who they are, and also being aware that they don’t want to be seen as being vulgar, they don’t want to be seen as harassing, not harassing, but being provocative, I guess. They’re less likely to share the intimate details of what happened sexually. And I’m not trying to pry into that, but I was just asking, what else is there?

In this discussion, a man said in a roundabout way, we were talking back and forth in this group, that his ex came out as bisexual and then attempted suicide. And if he hadn’t been home at the time when she did this, she would have passed away. And I asked him, you know, what was your experience with that? How did you feel about it, if you don’t mind sharing? And he said, in a way, if she had succeeded, I would have felt I didn’t do enough to protect my wife.

And when I tell you that it changed my brain chemistry, it had me in tears. I had to sit, I almost couldn’t breathe, I had to sit with that for a minute, or two or three or four. And I thought, that’s something that men do? That’s something that men think about? I would have been upset that I did not protect my wife enough.

And I thought, why is this hitting me in the gut, in the heart? What is it? And I realized, in every major love or relationship that I’ve had, I have never felt this from a man. I told him, in fact, thank you so much for sharing, what a normal, healthy, stable person thinks and feels when their spouse attempts suicide. I didn’t even know that was a thing, really. Especially in these situations where there’s this massive betrayal, there’s deception, there’s confusion, you know, on and on and on.

And I told him, I literally tried to take my life in front of my gay, trans, porn-addicted, fetishy ex-husband. His response was to roll his eyes, sigh, and tell me that I needed to go make myself throw up. No concern, no empathy, no compassion.

I said he acted I was inconveniencing him, ruining his night, because I couldn’t make myself throw up, because I was very, very, very, very drunk. And, by the way, I’m a recovering alcoholic now, but I had taken a handful of pain medications that do not mix well with alcohol. I could have died. He didn’t care. He was not concerned. He was concerned with the fact that I was interrupting his night, and that he had to now take me to the ER.

And I remember going to the ER. I remember being very upset that I couldn’t make myself throw up because I regretted it the second I did it. It was one of these, it’s a very long story, but it was just one of these things where it was the perfect storm of about 30 different, 30 different factors in my life that caused that to happen. And one of them was that night, I realized our marriage was over. And deep down, I knew that he was gay and/or trans, and that he had been hiding this from me for six years, and that I was gonna have to go through another divorce. But it’s much more complicated than that, okay?

So, next thing I remember is waking up in the ER on a stretcher with an IV in. And they didn’t feel the need to pump my stomach. But I realized I could have died. This was not me taking, you know, three ibuprofen and having a beer, okay? I could have died.

And I wake up. I go so out of it, I could not, I literally couldn’t open my eyes. And all I can hear is my husband at the time chit-chatting with the hospital staff person who’s called a sitter, whose job is to make sure that I don’t kill myself, chit-chatting with her about the weather. Absolutely no concern, no upset, no compassion, no empathy, no worry at all that I might die. Didn’t care. Doesn’t care. And absolutely no awareness on his part that he might have contributed to this, that he was a part of this, that as my life partner, my husband, he might have had something to do with this.

So I told this man this, not to make him feel sorry for me, but just to say thank you for pointing this out because this is the opposite of that. And I don’t believe that I should have used suicide as a way to manipulate my husband into feeling these things, but I mean, that’s not what I was doing. I really in that moment wanted to die. And he didn’t care. He literally just did not give a shit.

He never asked me, what did I do to contribute to this? Why are you so unhappy? What can we do to help you? Why did you do that? What’s going on? No curiosity. None. Didn’t care. Just, oh, la-dee-da, my wife tried to kill herself right in front of me.

And I end up in the mental hospital for two days, and when he came to see me, again, same attitude of he’s bothered, his day’s been interrupted. And you know what that motherfucker did? I’m literally suffering in the world’s worst mental hospital, okay? After I tried to kill myself, and I literally could have died and wanted to die, he has the fucking gall to send pictures of himself dressed as a woman to my bisexual best friend.

I don’t know what on earth goes through a person’s mind. Oh, my wife is gone in the mental hospital. She tried to kill herself and could have died, but I’m gonna sit here and dress up as a woman and get off on my fetish and send it to her best friend. What is wrong with you?

And it just highlighted to me how I have never in my life had a relationship where both of us felt, not in a codependent way, but that we were both in a way responsible for watching the other person. Are they okay? And if something’s not right, going, what can I do to help you? And if you see your partner struggling, being concerned, being curious.

There was no curiosity. None whatsoever. He never asked me when I got out, are you in therapy? Are you okay? What happened? Do you need help? He still acted put out and pissed off that I inconvenienced him. And that’s part of the reason why I think he is a sociopath. And honestly, I think he would have been happy if I had died.

And here’s the kicker that I just remembered.

I remember that when we were first dating, it was before he told me he was a crossdresser, and he was telling me that his ex-wife, quote unquote, just went crazy one day, and her personality changed out of the blue, and she turned from being this sort of, you know, country farm, you know, stay-at-home mom who was really, you know, just really focused on being a mother, and very churchy, and selling, you know, candlelight, whatever that’s called, selling candles, and frosting cakes, and just, you know.

And I saw the pictures of her, and that’s what she looked like, and mutual friends and family told me that’s what she was. And then one day, he claims, for no reason, she just changed and became a different person. And I had seen this happen with my first ex-husband as well. And that was for a completely different reason, and I’m not going to go into it, but it was a medical thing, it was related to a medical thing. So because this had happened to me, I believed him, because it had happened to me.

But anytime a man, I guess, or a woman, tells you that his ex just suddenly went crazy, no. And now we know online that that’s not a thing, but this was back in 2010, and that wasn’t really a thing going around back then, that, you know, if somebody tells you their ex is crazy, it’s because they either made them crazy or they’re lying and they’re crazy, right?

So one day we were talking, and I was, gosh, maybe she has borderline personality disorder, maybe something traumatic outside of the marriage happened to her. I don’t know, sometimes people just snap, you know? And anyway, he tells me, yeah, one day she told me that she wanted to kill herself.

And I was, yeah, that happened to me too. My ex-husband said he wanted to kill himself, and I called 911. What did you do? And he was, I talked her out of it. And I was, well, good, you know, that’s great.

And he said, I recorded it, do you want to hear? And I thought, this is really strange. I said, why would you record that? And he said, in case I needed it in the future. I said, why would you need that in the future? And he said, in case she told people that she tried to kill herself and I didn’t do anything about it. And I thought, okay.

Well, because I had worked in the mental health field for so long, I kind of did want to hear it, because I wanted to, you know, what the hell, what happened here? So he played me the recording. Now, of course, he only played me part of it. He edited out a lot. And his intention, I think, was to make her look the bad guy and make him look the sane one. But as we know, he was the one that was, quote unquote, crazy.

So in this conversation, she says, it’s got to be either you or me. I can’t live in this world with both of us. Who, okay, first of all, why would you say that? That’s a strange thing to say for someone who just supposedly went crazy one day.

And he was telling her all the things that she had to live for and that she should, you know, stay alive for her son and, you know, all of this. Great. But he also sounded angry and annoyed with her that she was talking this way. And at the time, I thought that he was just being very straight and blunt with her. Look, you have got to stay alive for our children, you know?

I said, now that I look back, it was an edited thing. And I think he was playing it so that he could show me that she was crazy and he was sane. And now I look back and I’m, he did the same shit to her that he did to me. She fits the exact profile of a person who finds out that their husband, and they had been together for 14 years and had two children and were married in the Catholic Church, that her husband was either gay or trans or she must have found his estrogen or his porn or his clothes or his cheating with men. I have no idea.

And she has passed away, unfortunately. God rest her soul. I can’t ask her. Okay? But when you have two wives who want to kill themselves, who is the problem here? And then to get angry about it? How much of a sociopath do you have to fucking be? Right?

And so I was literally crying my eyes out. And I’m still sad about it because I’m, oh, seeing the exact opposite of someone who actually fucking cares about other human beings and who wanted to be an equal partner in raising up each other, supporting each other, making sure that the other person, without being codependent, making sure that each other, you’re okay, and going, I must have had some role in this a little bit, right? What did I do?

There’s none of that with him. No accountability, no responsibility, no idea that maybe you’re the one who’s fucking making women want to fucking kill themselves.

And I just wish I could talk to her, but I can’t without a medium. And I feel like an idiot because I didn’t see all of this. But it makes me sad because I don’t think I’ll ever be in a relationship where there’s equal consideration and equal care of each other and equal love of each other.

I don’t think this man knows how to love. I don’t think he’s capable of loving. And so this is the kind of person who is walking around pretending to be a woman and is the exact epitome of toxic masculinity.”