Wow Lesley, parts of our life stories read like the same book! My ex was probably more bi than gay but he fought against and pretended he wasn't, then he was, then he wasn't. He was ashamed of it, so pretended, I think. He was a serial 'marrier' but I think he was just trying to prove to himself and others that he wasn't gay, so he had to get married over and over again (I was number 4 - yes, what was I thinking!). And there were at least 2 more after me, but I am not sure whether he actually made it legal with either of them or just pretended to be married.
I also left him before I left the cult, but then I didn't really know I had left the cult until years later, and leaving him just made it that much easier for me to disconnect from the whole premie scene anyway. It wasn't until stumbling across the ex-premie forum that I finally realised I had left and was an "ex" premie.
My ex-husband died about 7 years ago and it was an unreal feeling to read about it in the paper - as if my life with him had been a book I had read rather than something I had actually lived through and that chapter was finally closed for good. I felt sorry for his partner at the time of his death because she obviously grieved, whereas I just felt this eerie sense of disconnectedness.
Looking back at our lives is a really weird experience isn't it? Sometimes I wish I had parts of it to do over again, but then perhaps I would do it all the same anyway. Situations and circumstances being what they were, and us being so young back then, well, they say the human brain isn't fully formed until age 25, and I came across the guru at 21. So there's that.
