I’ve realistically been unwell since the birth of dc2, five years ago. Prior to that I’d never really suffered significant mental ill-health but she was a traumatic birth after a very difficult pregnancy and I had PND and acute anxiety which never really left me. I lost two stones in weight and stopped eating, which is an ongoing issue for me.
I’ve had patches of time where it’s not felt so bad but I’ve never got back to where I was and I often wake in the morning and feel this awful sense of dread.
After dd was born I had some therapy and some EMDR and that helped for a little while but I then realised I was gay. It sounds ridiculous that I have been a straight woman for 37 years and married for 17 of those, with two dc. I always felt like something was missing but I always had a ‘what next.’ I always felt like when I had the job I wanted, the promotion, the dc, the house - the missing would be filled. I always felt restless. DH and I have had a mainly sexless marriage which has seemed to suit him too, he never mentions it and we get along fine but we are more like housemates. However if I ask him he says he loves me and he’s really happy. I am not really happy. I am struggling hard. I have struggled hard for five years and now it’s harder than ever.
I love these dc of mine desperately, I love them enough that it should be an easy thing to stay in my ok marriage and not rock the boat. They are happy, they are excited about the summer and things opening up. The thought of turning their lives upside down fills me with dismay. For DH too tbh. I want to just stay and be ok and ‘unknow’ my sexuality. I don’t understand why it’s been easy to ignore for so long and now it isn’t. I’m having weekly therapy but I’m just going round in circles I make a decision to stay and it doesn’t feel right, I make a decision to leave and it doesn’t feel right. I feel it’s such a selfish thing, realising I’m gay so late on. I married DH young and met him at 19 and I feel like it was too much, too fast, too young. I went from my parents to DH with nothing in the middle. That’s not his fault, that’s mine. He was 29 when we met and in a different place in terms of his career and house and that he’d had his 20s pretty free.
I cannot describe how sad I feel. I feel sad all the time and I feel disconnected all the time. The only time I don’t is when it’s just me and the dc but I also feel guilty a lot of the time too. I wish I’d not had the dc because now they are going to be damaged by this. It has as times over the last twelve months to cause me to feel suicidal, please don’t underestimate how guilty and ashamed I feel even though I know this post is all me me me. I’m aware that if I choose to be selfish it’s going to upend the lives of everyone around me.
I just don’t know where to go from here. I’ve told my mum and she says I just need to have hobbies and read books and it’ll go away. I told her aged 12, aged 14 and aged 18 that I thought I might not be straight and she told me it was normal for women to have crushes on other women and shut me down, hard. I didn’t want to be gay so I took her word and wasn’t gay.
I just feel that’s what everyone will think, that I’ve deliberately mislead DH and purposefully lived a lie. No one will get why I’d throw away a settled life for my dc to be so selfish.
Any advice or suggestions? I want a magic answer and I don’t think there is one.