To realise im bloody gay at 42 even though im married?

[OhDearLordWTF]

I can’t believe this
Surely you can’t just be gay this late in life

Thanks! You have just proved my point! Actually we have found that in the long term faithfulness brings its own rewards and happiness. People look at us gone out as peculiar when we say we have stuck together through the bad times!

Allow you to be yourself - You, only you will know who you really are inside.
Be honest to yourself, anything else would make you unhappy. You have only one life !
My mum stayed with my dad because she thought she should for yrs longer than needed. It doesn’t send out the right message to the kids.
You’d be teaching them to ignore their true selves, and doing them a real disservice…

Take care in this time of crisis in your life ! 💐

We have a society which believes you must indulge your own urges, irrespective of whether you ruin your own family, kids, loved ones, etc, that your love of self comes before love of others and sacrifice is anathema. I would personally urge you for the sake of your loved ones to make a sacrifice of your own desires. Bless you!

Are you an evangelical Christian by any chance?

I left my H (lots of problems anyway) and have been in a sale sec relationship for 9 years. Ecstatically happy. So glad I did it. Everyone is still alive.

Oh my god will people please stop with the “you don’t need a label” shit. No, not everybody needs a label, but many people feel they do need a label, or a sexual identity, or whatever you want to call it. I like my label thank you very much, and it really bugs me when people say labels aren’t important. Smacks of queer erasure to me.

OP this must be really hard for you. I realised I was gay at 21, had slept with men before that. I have plenty of friends who realised much later in life, including after marriage and kids.

I think you owe it to yourself and your family to be honest. Yes it will be hard for them, but staying in an unhappy marriage (whatever the reason for it being unhappy) would be hard for them too (trust me, my parents stayed together when they should at have).

Only you can make the decision. But don’t beat yourself up for not realising this about yourself until now. You are a similar age to me and it wasn’t easy to come out 20 years ago.

I’ve just seen so many kids destroyed by the whims of these ‘ecstatically happy’ people.

There was a similar thread a while ago, quite full of 'you go girl' 'do it for you' 'if your dh isn't happy for you he's horrible' I think in that thread the op wanted the dh to leave the family home, her to have full custody and get maintenance. Is that the same for you?

This is just a normal family break up situation, regardless of whether one person is gay.

You aren’t completely happy in your relationship. Would you love him enough to stay if you realised you were looking at other men and wishing to be with them? It’s the same situation really. It just happens you are looking at women and wondering “what if”.

Why did you break up for 6 months?
Surely the relationship was over at that point? Don’t go back out of guilt. And that advice would be the same whether you were attracted to men or women.

The gay bit is irrelevant.

It's funny how, every time this scenario comes up, many posters paint the husband as a poor soul who must be placed as the highest priority because he will be "devastated ". The woman shouldn't expect a fair division of assets because she's wronged the chap.

I left my husband at age 35. If he hadn't been a boring bastard I would have stayed in the relationship, as women have done since the beginning of time.

Luckily I didn't and now I'm joyously happy with my wife of 15 years. My ex is still dining out on the sympathy doled out to him but honestly, I'd have died a slow death being with that man. But the fact I'm now with a woman meant he was deemed faultless in the death of the marriage.

Live your life with gusto OP

You could be bisexual and you did not realise it until you met a woman you really liked. Not uncommon.

The thing is your husband also deserves your honesty and to have a chance to be with someone else who genuinely is attracted to him and who will not cheat on him.

So if you have realised you are no longer happy in your relationship and you are no longer attracted to your partner you should not continue to live a lie. Instead be honest with him and with yourself.

It is over-dramatic to suggest that if you separate you will cause harm to your children. it is better fro them to have parents who are separated but live happy lives and are true to themselves rather than a sham family...

If I was with someone I would hate for them to pretend to be attracted to me for the sake of conventions and convenience and then cheat with a same sex partner behind my back. I would prefer that they come clean and that we go our separate way.

There is nothing wrong with being gay...

I’ve just seen so many kids destroyed by the whims of these ‘ecstatically happy’ people.

Do you stick your fingers in your ears when people also talk about how their parents staying together “for the kids” negatively impacted on them because it was clear they were unhappy? You can’t force yourself to feel something you don’t but on balance it’s always better for the kids if the parents are happy. You sound very old fashioned - if you want to confine yourself to a life of misery in the misguided belief that you’re helping your children, be my guest. But here in the 21st century, it’s actually not necessary.

@Malie, my children are not destroyed. I was very mindful of them in all of this but I'm not staying in a shot relationship that is making me ill where my children would not have had any where near the chances and experiences they have now to just "keep the family together".

Agree with @NeedToLeaveNow
Finding the correct label for yoursel won't resolve the problem. You're in a marriage that isn't working hankering after somebody else.
you can't keep pushing water uphill.
If the marriage cannot recover it's better to end it sooner rather than later.

You had a 6 month relationship with your female boss, then 'went back' to your DH, then had counceling, and then realised you are gay?

The relationship with another woman didn't teach you this? .....

Well - anyhooo - is this about leaving your DH or about your sexuality?

I mean, you've left him once for someone else and gone back and want to leave again. If you take the gay/straight handwringing out of it it makes it clear you need to piss or get off the pot. Your DH deserves to find someone in life who wont mess him about, and your kids to settle into a new stability.

Sexuality was not the issue but my dc were saved by breaking up. It is very often the best way to put an end to the tension and stress and the amount of head tilting, catastrophising, shaming, blaming and pity that comes with just two people separating beggars all belief.

I've worked with 3 gay women in relationships who were previously married with a family.

It happens.

I don't have any practical advice sorry.

One of my mates realised that he was gay in his late 30s. He was married with children too.

He now has a great platonic relationship with his ex and is still a brilliant dad to his kids.

I hope you have a similar outcome.

Oh my god will people please stop with the “you don’t need a label” shit. No, not everybody needs a label, but many people feel they do need a label, or a sexual identity, or whatever you want to call it. I like my label thank you very much, and it really bugs me when people say labels aren’t important. Smacks of queer erasure to me.

But @Coldilox context is important here. People aren't saying that LGBT labels should cease to exist, but the fact is that in this situation, right now, a label won't help op because fundamentally the problem is that she's not happy in her relationship and she needs to resolve that rather than focus her energies on sticking a label on herself which won't achieve anything.

im going to completely ruin the lives of my husband and children
You can have an amicable separation and remain on good terms with your husband and children.

I’ve had a 6 week course of therapy and it’s as plain as can be
That's a bit worrying. Steer clear of psychologists - they are the priests of a pseudo scientific cult which has greatly harmed rational thinking for over a century now.

I was thinking that.

If you didn't realize you were gay while having a 6 month affair with a woman, what did you think you were? Bi?

I work with someone who realised this probably in her mid 30s. Had divorced her husband (not for this reason) a few years before.

Yes the 21st century where nothing matters but my feelings. Of course I shut my ears actually research shows that it is better for the kids if parents stay together. I’m not talking about violence or adultery or things like that. But love and faithfulness are things to be worked at and through. You don’t appear to realise that. There are tough times as well as good. Here in the 21st century we have lost sight of that. An elderly lady who had celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary told me frankly there were times she and her hubby could have divorced. But then she smiled and said, ‘But I’m glad we stuck together!’

No edit on this thing. Should read ‘of course I don’t shut my ears’

When I met my ex-DP his much younger wife had left him. He had had his head turned by a younger woman. He had an affair and his first wife divorced him. The girlfriend became pregnant and they married and had another child. She left him when the children were young and eventually married a woman . He wallowed know self pity and told people she only used him to have children. After a number of years I left him as he was a narcissist and also very boring . His ex is very happy with her wife, the children are very close to her and she has been a great step parent and they have a better relationship with her than they do with their father. It can work out OP.

I realised I was bisexual at the age of 44 so don't worry about being late to your own party. It's very common. We grew up in a hetero normative world. My early crushes on girls were never explored as much as my ones on boys because I never spoke about them as I thought they would go no where and was embarrassed by them. I had no role models, saw little even gay relationships portrayed on TV or books and if they were it was always with trauma/prejudice etc. I cried at the lovely heartstopper books/series as it was predominantly such a gentle love story. It was much easier to follow the ones on boys.

The issue view isn't if you're gay or not the issue is do you love your husband?, Do you have a healthy, good relationship with him? Do you want to remain together?
Irrelevant of what comes after, this is more important. Staying in a loveless/bad marriage for any reason is terrible for children. Focus on your marriage. Can it be saved to be positive? If not then leave for everyone's sakes. Not because you're gay but because you don't want to be married to your husband. The affair you are having isn't relevant. This may pass they usually do.

I should add that I am married to a lovely man and hope I am forever. The bisexuality will only be relevant if we split up, and the occasional regret that some of my less enjoyable exes weren't women!