My mum came out as lesbian after 20 years of marriage

[Anonymous2003]

That's it really. She came out a year ago, my parents separated and she has been dating a much younger woman. I still live at home, with my dad. My whole family is still struggling massively but it sometimes seems like my mum feels like she has no remorse. I am just so down and angry and wanted to get this off my chest somewhere.

I doubt she aimed to upset you, but why should she stay married to a man she didn't like any more? Perhaps you need some space away from your parents.

bump

If she duped your dad for twenty years then that's horrendous.

But what's done is done and you have to decide whether to move past the hurt and accept your mother has a new partner and decide how much involvement you want with them.

It happens. In the past and to some extent even now it can be very difficult to accept a non-heterosexual sexuality in oneself. Also it can be an extremely slow process of discovery to even find out.
She's a whole person, she was never just a wife and mother.
Give yourself time to heal. See what happens next.

No remorse? But she hasn’t committed a crime. She’s probably feeling a huge weight off her shoulders after living a life that never felt right. I understand that you’re all dealing with the aftermath, but surely you can also understand that she wasn’t happy in her marriage and needed to be honest to herself.

It’s really difficult to witness your parents relationship break down. It’s also painful to think you didn’t really know someone so important to you. And horrible to watch your father question his reality and deal with the rejection.

I hope your mum has some understanding as to the feelings of the loved ones she’s left behind.

I was duped for 23 years OP and it is one of the shittiest things anyone can do to you. You completely miss out on the chance of having a family with someone who actually loves you. It's fine to not accept you're gay - but don't drag and other people into your mess/pretence.

My OH had little empathy or remorse either. I'd say stick with your dad and leave your selfish mother to it. Consider getting some counselling to help you deal with it and to just talk about it all if you can. I'm sorry your family is going through this.

She is still your mother. All that love she has for you is still there but would you want her to keep living a lie?

Would you be as bothered if she'd left for another man?

This must be incredibly hard for you. Just be aware, people can be incredibly heartless to the children and spouses impacted by these scenarios. MN might not be the best place to get support for this particular issue.

Sorry but I have 0 sympathy for someone who lives a lie for years, even to the point of having children and then leaves for another man/woman. If you’re gay then who cares. But no-one has the right to hurt others as part of that.

No-one wakes up one morning and decides they’re gay, she will absolutely have known while deceiving her husband and marrying him and having children with him under false pretences.

And if this was a man who had left for another woman nobody would be telling the OP to accept it.

Also, given she’s now decided to admit she’s gay my thinking would be that she’s probably been shagging around with other women for the duration of her marriage.

There have been plenty of posters on here whose husbands have come out as gay and who it turns out have been seeing other men for the duration of their marriages.

She doesn’t need to be remorseful over the fact she’s gay, she absolutely should feel remorse for the way in which she’s treated her family.

If my parent left for someone else, be that man or woman, the fuck would I accept it, and would have nothing to do with them possibly ever again. I certainly wouldn’t want anything to do with their new partner. And I say that regardless of their sexuality.

I’m trying to imagine how all this has rolled out for her. Lots of people would never have considered if they are gay or not but with time, and society changing, and life experiences, come to realise. Millions of people marry when they are less than sure about their partner in a million different ways. Your dad has a right to be angry but at the same time she may well not deserve that anger.

I think I’d be mad that she has broken the family whether to be with a man or woman. And I can imagine that it’s difficult to say and be ‘sorry’ about doing that when she is taking such a huge leap to be there.

I don’t know. But I think she does have my sympathy for her situation. And you and are DDad have my sympathy for the impact it’s had on you.

Who says he was duped?

I've got two friends who were in long marriages with men, had kids, fell out of love with their husbands. Split up, dated some other men. Ended up in relationships with women a few years later. Nobody was duped.

Just because she came out as gay years later doesn’t mean she duped anyone. It’s not as clear cut as that.

I married 30 years ago. It never occurred to me that I might be gay. Or that anyone else was. It really was a different world. Actors weren’t ‘out’ as it affected their roles. Pop stars the same. There were a very few who were and they looked very different. Think, Boy George.

Default straight is a thing.

It's hard when your parents split up and even harder when they expect you to feel the same way as they do. BTDT.

It must have taken a lot of courage for her to do that. So well done Anonymous's mum and I hope you'll be very happy and that your family will eventually be happy for you too.

I don't in any way dismiss the pain caused. What I think is worth remembering is how lesbians and indeed gay men were viewed 20-25 years ago. I know of at least one woman and several men who were married in the 1990s and are now in same sex relationships, though none have had children.

Remorse is a strange word to use. Why do you think that she should be remorseful?

Why duped though?
The OP’s mum might be bisexual rather than lesbian.

It would seem much more logical to me.
But somehow it seems that both het and gay people have a major issue with bi.
Never quite understood why.
Even though it explains why it’s never mentioned as a possibility.

People are saying well done to the mother, because she’s left her marriage for another woman rather than a for man.

I can’t imagine how you feel. I don’t know if you watched Eastenders tonight but there’s a storyline about Linda’s late Dad being gay and the man he was openly cheating with for the duration of their marriage turning up in Linda’s mums pub.

There was so much sympathy shown for what the men went through, but less so for Linda/Linda’s mum although they did show it from Linda’s mum point of view a bit.

Well, it took me an embarrassing number of years to realise that as I was attracted to both some men and rather more women, I was bisexual (and a bit dim).

It then took me some further years to say this to DH, whose reaction was he 'had always kind of thought so.'

Shall I get the sackcloth out in advance or only if we ever split up?

I don’t think she duped him. When she met your dad she probably did love him. But as things do - she fell out of love and met some one else.

I do think sexuality is different for men and women. I know women who were always straight - and enjoyed male partners - then later on met a woman. And yes it’s a shock and would leave you second guessing everything.

What don’t she showing remorse for?

Leaving your dad?
Leaving you?
Getting a new partner?
Getting with a woman?

Being gay doesn't automatically make you the victim in this kind of scenario