Help! I’ve just come out to my husband of 10yrs

[StrawberryTeddybear]

Married for 10 together for 18yr have 3DC.

relationship has been strained for a while. We have been very distant with busy lives/kids and DH lost his dad a few years ago.

I have been in therapy to explore childhood trauma and felt I have been “reset” to my original self and Been through lots of other mental health challenges and had a difficult time over past 10 years or so. I’ve always liked women more than men, openly so but recently it’s been so strong I can’t ignore it anymore, the desire to be intimate with my husband got less and less and it became another area we were drifting apart.

Once I had the light bulb moment that I might actually be gay or bi it felt so right and I needed to tell my DH, but I was naive and he’s very upset and wants to make an ‘exit plan’ to leave me sooner than later.

I naively hoped he would understand that this is so big for me and I am scared and relieved of my truths, I hoped he would be supportive of me but this is not the case.

Not sure where to turn. Anyone experienced this? Or have some kid words to share - feel lost.

My children are young all under 15 so I don’t plan on telling them details.

Ever? They’re going to find out if you date women. And if your DH wants to tell them he’s moving out because you’ve told him you are a lesbian, that’s up to him.

This all seems so rambling and self-indulgent, with absolutely no real thought as to how this was going to pan out in the real world.

How is it something to explore, when you’ve told him you’re gay? Being in a relationship for most people means sex, and you’ve just told him that’s off the table. Is he supposed to be celibate? Are you? Do you want the freedom to shag elsewhere? Does he get that freedom?

As to “I’m hurting that I hurt him” I actually have no words for how self absorbed that is.

And I’m bi so no judgment on your sexuality per se from me.

How would you have responded if your husband had come out to you?
Think about that seriously. How would you feel, honestly?

You sound incredibly self absorbed and selfish, with an astounding lack of self awareness.

If my husband and father of my children decided to announce after all that time that he was gay or bi, I would be devastated.

What do you want him to do with your revelation?

Thankfully he’s got the strength to make plans to leave.

She means "Meeeeeeeeee!!!! Meeeeeeee!!!! More Meeeeeee!!!!! Pay attention to Meeeeee!!!! And never say a negative word about me, no matter what I do to you".

There is some rampant bi-phobia and a complete lack of knowledge of why some people might have to initially hide or not accept/understand that they might be gay or bisexual.

I don't think but that's the case. Its more the ' I want us to explore this together' bullshit. If someone has discovered late in life they are gay or bi they can't expect other people to stay in relationships with them. It would be more honest of OP to leave the relationship and separate amicably for the sake of the children, which it seems the OPs husband wants to do. She expects him to sit there and listen to how liberated she feels about her sexuality. Is like men who decide they are trans x and expect their wives to be in 'lesbian' relationships. I dont think so.

Perhaps you should RTFT then, because you obviously haven’t grasped why posters are not giving her the responses she’d like.

Nobody (or hardly anyone; I could have missed the odd post) is suggesting that she stay in a marriage she’s not happy with, or that she pretends to be heterosexual just to keep someone else happy. She didn’t realise her sexuality previously? That’s understandable, people grow. She doesn’t want to sleep with her husband anymore and has realised that her new found sexuality is the reason she wasn’t wanting to? That’s an awful situation for all concerned but she is who she is and she can’t force herself to pretend just to avoid hurting someone.

What people have got the hump about is that she’s expecting her husband to ignore his pain that his marriage is over and carry on with an sham of a marriage until she’s ready to leave it, and that he supports her and celebrates her new found sexuality while she’s doing that, and continues attending completely pointless marriage guidance sessions with her, even though she’s already decided she never wants to have sex with him again. And she’s refusing to even consider that that might just be a tiny bit selfish and unrealistic.

How would you feel about that if you were the husband in this scenario?

Poor bloke. You shatter his whole marriage, life and family and then wonder why he’s not being more supportive of you? Does it get much more selfish than that?

Right. None of us give a single shit that she fancies women as well as men. Absolutely couldn't care less. Not even fussed that she's decided to leave her husband.

It's this garbage where she thinks he should crush his feelings down into a ball in his chest and support her blowing his whole fucking world up and pretending to be shocked he no longer wants to be married to a person who is a completely different person to the one who married, despite the fact that she no longer even fancies him.

She's unbelievably self absorbed.

I am confused about my sexuality because I did/do find my DH attractive for many years. I love him deeply and I am hurting that I’ve hurt him. I guess I thought my confession would be something to explore, I knew it would have been impacting our relationship.

You’re literally saying you don’t know what label you should slap on yourself and make yourself look significant.

You either love him or you don’t. You find him attractive or your don’t. You either want to be with him or you don’t. Decide THAT first

Why are you so obsessed with putting yourself in a box.

I think your therapy has helped you - but the final sessions have, perhaps, missed out help in how to tell others around you? How to deal with the inevitable fall out.

The problem with coming out is that it can't be done gently - it's like an on/off switch. Once the cat is out of the bag that's it - you can't back pedal, say you only half mean it etc.

However gently you said it your husband will likely see it as some sort of betrayal. Whether its a fiery betrayal or a smouldering betrayal its a big change for him - even if he half suspected it.

He's been thrown into couples therapy - not necessarily against his will but he probably wasn't expecting it. Big changes for him ahead.

You were right to come out and not live a lie - but naive to expect that everything would move on smoothly. You have formally announced quite a bombshell of a new situation into your relationship.

How are your friends, relations, siblings and parents reacting?

I think your best hope is probably an amicable separation and divorce with shared and cooperative parenting.

Edit - spelling + clarity.

You have basically told your husband that your relationship has been a lie. Finding out your partner is gay must be incredibly painful and it's unbelievably selfish to expect him to support you when his world has been turned upside down by your 'realisation'.

I've no doubt that being closeted has been hard for you and you do deserve support... but not from him. He needs support to come to terms with finding out the marriage he thought he had never existed.

I’ve experienced exactly the same as your husband OP-literally down to the number of years. It’s ruined my life quite honestly. Broken my heart irreparably and completely destroyed my mental health. Everything I thought was real was based on a lie. You can’t possibly understand what he’s going through and you never will. You should have been honest with him from the outset not 18years down the line, he is not your plaything. If you do care about him in the slightest, let him go right now and stop emotionally bombarding him with your troubles. He is 💯 not the person for that.
You’ve really wronged him OP here by not being honest from the outset.

OP - it reads like you didn’t realise saying you are bi or possibly gay would be an immediate end to your marriage. This is why you are getting these responses because of course saying you are sexually attracted to women - and even more so if you are saying gay and therefore exclusively sexually attracted to women - would be heard as “marriage is over.”

It reads like even though by your statement you ended your relationship, you want to have a slow gentle end while your dh supports you until you are ready to leave, but he heard a sentence that ends his marriage and doesn’t want to support you until you are ready to leave him, he might not want his marriage to end, but if it’s ending, then he doesn’t want to spend months/years emotionally supporting you until you are ready to walk away.

Saying you are gay (when in a straight marriage) is like announcing you’ve been sleeping with someone else, while some couples can work though it, for most it’s the end of the marriage at that point. I do wish you’d asked advice before talking to him and realised what you were doing/risking and delaying until you were ready.

Have you started making practical steps to leave? Book to see a solicitor ASAP.

Sorry, I misread your OP and missed the part where you said gay or bi...

If you are bi then I think that changes things because you haven't lied to him about your feelings towards him.

You should really figure this out before speaking to him though. He needs to know where you stand.

Do you love him? If you're bi this doesn't mean you can't stay in a monogamous relationship with a man that you love. If you don't love him, it doesn't matter whether you want a relationship with a man or woman in the future, he just needs to know that you're relationship is over.

Another thing for you to think about OP, this is no longer just your news. Until you told him, you were someone in a straight marriage who realised you are gay. Now you have told him, he is a man in a straight marriage whose wife has just told him she’s gay. This is now his news, and you can ask him nicely to limit who he tells, but you can not expect him to keep it a secret for you until you are ready to come out.

If there’s anyone you want to be able to tell yourself, you might want to aim to talk to them about it sooner rather than later.

This is a very contradictory post .
Of course things change in 18years .
It seems for your dh he was willing to try and get the marriage and closeness back on track but now he is facing reality .
He will be thinking there is no point as you don’t like men . If you can’t stay in a relationship anymore for those reasons why can’t he leave ? Were you expecting to get the option to leave first?

Oh dear, this is where therapists fall down I think - they are so busy centering everything on you the client that they forget about the other people in your life, and so do you. It must be a wonderful thing to feel like you know where your life is going now, but your DH has had that taken from him. I hope you can work it out amicably.

There is some rampant bi-phobia and a complete lack of knowledge of why some people might have to initially hide or not accept/understand that they might be gay or bisexual

What are you talking about? No there isn’t! Nobody has even hinted that she should stay with a man she doesn’t want to have sex with, or that she should squash her sexuality, or that she’s being unreasonable to want to explore that side of herself or to even just leave a generally unhappy marriage. Nobody is suggesting that she’s being selfish for not being heterosexual. And she’s only just realised her sexuality herself; she never had to hide her sexuality or deny it or pretend she was anything other than who she was. She says she told her husband straight away, as soon as she realised it. Why are you pretending that this is biphobia, rather than a case of treating her spouse very badly? Pointing that out is not any type of phobic. Do you really believe that he should just shut up, put his own future on hold indefinitely and support her unconditionally until she knows who she is and is ready to go off and explore that side of herself? Because that level of missing empathy for her husband is shocking.

I can't believe I'm about to say this, because I usually come on these threads to put the straight partner's perspective because posters are applauding the OP's authenticity.

I don't disagree with most of the comments here (your DH is probably having a really miserable time), but I think people are being quite harsh in how they're expressing them.

I've been on the other side of this. My XH ended our marriage to come out as gay. He'd first said he was bi, and just wanted to acknowledge that and work on our marriage. The bi period lasted less than a year. Then he said he was gay (and then denied he'd said that).

We'd been together 18 years and married 13 when he first said he thought he might be bi but it wouldn't change anything. Although I wanted to believe him, I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that it spelled doom for us. Why wait 18 years to tell me?

I've spoken to a lot of other people who have been through this as the straight partner, and most of us do start off trying to be supportive. In fact, I worked much harder than XH at trying to find ways to acknowledge his bisexuality that felt safe for our marriage. However, often, being supportive of the LGBTQ person means that the focus is much more on them. When I stopped to think about my experience of the relationship - lack of affection, lots of criticism - I started to realise that XH had never loved me the way I loved him. I now think he was always critical because he was trying to persuade himself that my faults were the reason he didn't feel attracted to me (nothing to do with him, not his fault, my fault our marriage wasn't amazing).

When I talk to other straight partners, it's not our partners being bi/gay/trans that upsets us the most, it's the lies, deceit and lack of respect and consideration as the truth comes out (they've been thinking about it for ages but it's a shock to us, they've been watching porn or had an affair, they start dating really quickly, start going out to gay clubs to 'find' themselves and leave us keeping family life going). The support tends to fade due to other behaviours.

It's been seven years now since my marriage ended. XH never apologised to me for the hurt he caused or acknowledged that his sexuality was the reason our marriage ended. He maintained right the way through his bi "phase" until we agreed to separate (in relationship counselling) that his sexuality was a distraction. He said that I was the only woman he could ever be with, but he couldn't be with me anymore because I was such a difficult person. I still feel angry about this at times - if there were issues between us,why not work through them? We couldn't! Because no amount of working on faults on either side could change the fact he's gay! I think it was cowardly of him not to just own that.

OP, if you've said anything to suggest that you're gay rather than bi, your DH has probably skipped the "we can make this work" stage and gone straight to "that explains a lot, our marriage is over". He probably feels stupid, unattractive, probably wonders if he is attractive to women or if there's something about him that isn't attractive to straight women. He probably wonders if you only married him because you needed a sperm donor. If you are going to take his children away. And so on.

I would also like to say that, in my experience, children cope much better if they're told an age appropriate version of the truth. It took my XH two years to tell both DC. They found it much easier to understand and accept our separation once they knew (both still in primary school at the time, now mid teens). Neither of them had any difficulty accepting his sexuality or his boyfriend and DC2 is a fierce LGBTQ ally and goes to their school's LGBTQ society meetings.

What does 'explore' mean to you? That you fuck women and then come home to him because you love him, really? That he gets to see you in bed with a woman?

All this is your truth, as you say. Own it fully and respect that he has told you that he wants out.

Boot on the other foot! I got pregnant in the 60s at 18, naive,there was things, but I had no life experience to gauge by. You got married then,end of story. I don't want to go into intimate specifics,2 men one my old boss, definitely anti gay and a friends boyfriend bi, asked if ex H had ever been with a man. He was all macho,hairy chest,"real men don't use deodorant" etc etc. he didn't drink alcohol at all,got very drunk one night, told me I was his only female sexual partner. He married me as a nice respectable front for his middle class family. I was furious.

Same here. He knows I've chosen him above not only all the men in the world but all the women too.
If it was the other way around and I didn't say anything until much later how on earth is it not a total rejection of who he is and the whole marriage?

You seem to think he is only there to support you and there is nothing the other way. It all seems a bit Philip Schofield-level of self indulgence.

I mean, I read all the OP's posts which is what shaped my opinion, I'm not sure how reading other people's thoughts would change my view. I do feel for the husband, it must be a massive shock to say the least, but I still don't understand the flack she's getting.

This.

Mumsnet is not a forum to seek advice in your circumstances. My concern is not hide who you are from your children. Too often as mothers, we want to protect our children from difficult issues affecting parents (as individuals) and the effect in their home life. Unfortunately and also too often, it leads giving them a false interpretation of reality leading to adult problems because they never knew that reality. Children are incredibly resilient and understanding, as long as parents are honest with them.