I feel so sad about this.

[Spideyspidey]

I’m married with young dc, marriage is ok in many ways. We don’t fight and we get along ok most of the time but we are very separate and in recent years have been more so. We have no sex life whatsoever.
I’ve gradually realised as I’ve grown older that I am gay, please don’t say how awful for DH and my DC, I know it’s awful, I feel terrible about it. I just didn’t know, I always half wondered but I really really really didn’t want to be gay and my family would have disapproved so I’ve ignored it and ignored it and suddenly it feels like I cannot ignore it.
I’ve had a range of things that I thought would make me feel ‘normal’ - once I got the job I wanted, once we got the house we wanted, once I got married, once I had dc - and each time I’ve still felt like something is missing.
I really really really don’t want to be gay, so please please don’t make me feel any worse than I already feel about it.
Is it possible that now I know it’ll just go away again? Once I admitted it to myself it felt so obvious and I feel so stupid for not realising earlier.

It sounds to me as though your marriage would have been over anyway even if you were straight. He doesn't sound like a nice man to live with, he doesn't listen to you and you are just existing together. This is no life.
I think you need to separate for you and your children because your marriage isn't working. Further down the line you will settle with someone else, that fact that the someone else is going to be a woman will not be his or his family's business, because you will already be divorced.

Is it possible that you are bisexual?

I used to think maybe so but - and I know it sounds stupid - I think I’ve become more gay. I can’t imagine ever having sex with a man again, j really don’t want to. In the same way I suppose straight people don’t want to sleep with someone the same sex as them. I find the idea of sleeping with a man quite horrifying.

You're only here once OP, and you can't be responsible for other people's happiness, only your own - the exception to this would be your DC, of course, but like any circumstance where a parent is unhappy, it is better for the kids if the parent is happy.

This is part of you, and your identity, you should be proud of yourself for coming to this realisation and acceptance of yourself.

Any hurt caused will be unintentional, and there's a big difference between that and setting out to hurt someone.

Yes, there will be some challenging times ahead, but nothing worthwhile in life comes without them.

Perhaps you could seek some independent legal advice in terms of the custody, and your legal rights, divorce, etc. so you have all the information you need in advance of any decisions and actions you take and make.

Have you a close family member or friend that you can trust and talk to in real life?

Oh OP, sending supportive thoughts your way. In my late teens I was also in a relationship with an older man who wanted to marry me - but mine got violent, so we split up, and I allowed myself to recognise that I'm gay. In retrospect that relationship was a bid to try to make myself straight. You're a similar age to me, and in the late 90s / early 00s women who were gay or bi were thought to be "making a scene," "doing it for attention," "going through a phase," or "hadn't found the right man yet." Small wonder so many of us looked for the "right man" to cure our phase and avoid drawing attention to ourselves

Being miserable in a sexless marriage to an angry man with whom you can't hold a deep conversation is good enough reason to separate, gay or not. You deserve happiness.

Thank you - the kindness is making me cry again.

I wish I’d been braver when younger. I do think if I’d not married so young I might have had time to realise my sexuality and things would have been very different.
My mum was very dismissive of me when I tried to speak to her in my teens, she said all girls has crushes on other girls and I’d meet a nice man and settle down. And crucially I didn’t want to be gay, I felt relief when she said it was normal and all girls felt like i did. Retrospectively I don’t believe this to be true. I assume I know I’m gay in the same way straight people know they are straight.
Compulsory heterosexuality is a thing. It was for me.

I wanted to pick up on a few things you’ve said. Firstly you say about how lovely your DH is but everything that follows says he is homophobic, has anger issues, won’t communicate with you. I think in some ways the feelings of attraction towards other women are a red herring. This doesn’t sound like a happy marriage.

Also when you posted about Philip Schofield....Honestly I think the anger towards him was timing. He came out because he had to, allegedly he’d been having an affair with a much younger man and someone threatened to break that story, so instead he got ahead of it. Also his interview was very ego-centric “Me me me, I feel” even when it came to talking about the impact on his family. Your circumstances are very different and I hope you feel that the posters’ responses here are supportive.

My suggestion would be to get some individual counselling. It sounds like no-one has ever let you express who you really are. Your Mum refused to listen and your husband has shaped your entire adult life. I would agree that if you did plan to leave you could say simply that the marriage isn’t working and you’re miserable. No need to come out immediately. Good luck

@Spideyspidey

I can’t talk to him about anything. There’s a lot of distance between us. I have told him before I was unhappy and he was very angry about it so I shut up again.

I am in a similar situation. I was so unsettled and unhappy I got to a point I had to say something. My family are mixed, some seem to understand and others don’t.

My happiness is irrelevant to material items / nice (almost paid for) house. Do I want to get to retirement and say I had a nice house but I was unhappy? Absolutely not, I have had to be honest and am currently in the process of seperation. Is it difficult? Very. Is it the right decision in the long term? Most definitely.

I am having anxiety attacks and am struggling going though the process but I also know, this is absolutely the right decision long term. I don’t want to feel this lonely anymore.

Stay strong, do what is right for you long term, however difficult that may be in the short term.

This is so sad. You both deserve to be happy. You need to separate out the two issues.
Firstly I think you need to leave your marriage. The reason is because you are not happy in that marriage which is a good enough reason to leave. You don’t need to come out to do that.
Deal with that first. Get a plan, think about hope you will support your children.
Once you have done that Then deal with the gay side of things over the coming months and years. Again you don’t really need to come out if you don’t want to. It’s your private life. It won’t have any bearing on your ability to parent or the amount of time you will have your children.

You need to be kind to yourself and realise you can’t live the rest of your life like this.

I could have ended up like you tbh, I didn’t realise I was gay until I was 23, I knew deep down that I was, but I was brought up to believe being gay was abnormal and that all women had crushes on other women, so I convinced myself I was straight and dated men before something just clicked one day and I finally acknowledged it. Once you accept you’re gay there’s really no turning back, after that I could never be intimate in any way with a man again.

My advice is that your marriage sounds terrible regardless of your sexuality, but also you only have one life and you will be miserable if you stay married to a man. You deserve to be happy and sexually fulfilled, not living life in the closet married to a homophobic man.

I would end the marriage, sort out all the legal side of things and custody then start dating women once the dust has settled.

It’s so confusing when you have magazines as a teen and they talk about thinking about other women as thing that straight women do - or as a thing straight couples do. I am not convinced straight women do that at all.
I didn’t want to be gay, I really really really didn’t, and so I was happy to believe my mom when she said I wasn’t and that it was ‘normal’ to have crushes on women. It also confused me because basically it presented as wanting really close female friendships which were super important to me and zero interest in boys or men - rather than anything sexual.
I kept waiting to meet a man who would make me feel something and all my friends complained about their boyfriends and so I just thought that was how it was. That all the songs and films and poems about love were hyperbole. Now I’m now so sure, they aren’t real life I know, but I’ve never had that head over heels feeling even as a teen. I suspect because I was attempting to make myself go out with men.
Sex has always been what could i make myself do, rather than what I wanted to do. Again, my friends complain about having to have sex with their partners and say they’d sooner not bother so it seemed like it could be normal. But for me it’s always been that way, even at the start.
I just thought everyone felt like that. I really didn’t know.

Spidey- you are not alone in this. If you are into podcasts, listen to the 'Lesbian Chronicles'. Made by women in your situation and 'chronicles' their experiences and their journey towards coming out. But lots of other experiences covered too. Good luck!

@Spideyspidey

Your kindness is making me cry. I watched Philip Scofield come out and lots of people were saying how awful for his wife and dc and it IS awful. My issue is that in allowing myself to be myself I’m probably going to make a lot of people unhappy.

Yeh, but Philip himself said how supportive his wife and kids were and that the wife had known for years anyway and asked for people not to talk about them yet they felt the need to stick their noses in anyway.

People will always judge but it doesn't matter what thehy think.

In the nicest possible way OP, he probably has some inkling.

OP I know a couple of women who have been in your position. They left. And they said it was the best decision, they are so much happier now, in lesbian relationships.

If it would help, get some free legal advice on your divorce. Sometimes getting the practical side sorted helps you process the emotional side.

@Spideyspidey I understand completely, I think biphobia is the root cause of a lot of this tbh, because like you I’m not convinced women who are straight have intense crushes on and sexual thoughts about other women, yet everything I read when I was a teenager told me it was normal and didn’t mean you weren’t straight, and that it was also normal to prefer women’s bodies to men’s and to only ever fantasise about women. I’m just not buying it, the only women I’ve heard say that kind of stuff are women who are bicurious/bisexual and those in denial who later come out.

If I wasn’t constantly told that basically everything that showing me I was gay meant nothing and was “normal for straight women” then I would have realised a lot sooner and saved myself many years of anxiety, stress and confusion. So don’t blame yourself, you’re just a product of a homophobic and biphobic society.

You’ve done nothing wrong. Please stop being ashamed of who you are. Your children aren’t going to suffer because you’re gay.

I don’t personally think you should live a lie any more. You deserve to be happy just like anyone else, right?

I would give yourself time but you need to stop suppressing who you really are. It’s ok to be yourself.

I feel ok about being gay now, I think I would anyway, were I not married with children. That’s where I struggle. That to be myself is going to hurt people I love.

I have found a therapist online who I am going to speak to next week.
I’m finding this really hard and confusing.

Why do you think it will hurt your children?

@Spideyspidey

I have found a therapist online who I am going to speak to next week. I’m finding this really hard and confusing.

That sounds like a really positive step, hopefully it will help you make sense of it all.

Sugarbaby - because their lives would change so dramatically and their standard of living would inevitably take a hit. I earn nowhere near what their dad earns.
I wish it felt less selfish, I really feel whatever I do now has no good answer.