Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

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

262 replies

StrawberryTeddybear · 03/10/2025 19:49

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.

OP posts:
Whatado · 03/10/2025 22:08

Frequentlyincorrectbut · 03/10/2025 22:03

Let us know how it goes with your kids; maybe they’ll be delighted to support you in ‘your truth’, more than your poor, blindsided husband was

My experience is that many grown-up mature children do accept that their parents are bi or gay if it is handled in a sensible manner. They may be devastated that the family home is broken up and divorce is happening, but once it has happened (and this probably happens to nearly 1 in 2 families) they are often able to see their parents as adults and want them to be happy. The families I know with two women at the helm do just great now and have strong close family bonds, and I also know a male gay couple where one man was married and they all co-parented after he came out. Not nice, not ideal, but not catastrophic, unless you think there is something so unforgiveable about having a gay or bi parent you would never speak to them again.

People change, they get divorced. The OP is naive and has blown everything up but she doesn't deserve these dire judgments. If anything, it's better out in the open now rather than another 10 years of a dead marriage down the line.

Im an adult in my 40s. If either of my parents came out to the other after years of dragging the other through a disconnected disengaged marriage and then dragged them into couples therapy to trash it out to then wonderfully dump on their lap the celebration that actually surprise they are gay I would be disgusted with them.

I wouldnt be celebrating their ability to live their authentic truth. I would also be helping my other parent to get the fuck out of the marriage, into their own therapy and focus on healing the trauma my other parent dumped on them.

I couldn't give a shit if any of my kids are gay/ bi sexual. I would how ever be equally disgusted with them if they acted in the same way.

@StrawberryTeddybear hopefully he will stay in therapy to help guide through a separation for your children. Because co parenting through this has all sorts of risk of going completely left.

And your couples therapist hopefully has at least recommended after that bombshell that you both also get individual therapy.

Frequentlyincorrectbut · 03/10/2025 22:10

Zezet you are right, I don't know your situation. One of my parents behaved shamefully over decades, but I haven't cut them off and that's my choice. Others may choose differently. If you are close with your children, and have a good, open and communicative relationship with them, I don't think being gay or bi will necessarily lead to everything being cut off forever. Children respond in a variety of ways. I don't know of anyone who has cut their parents off though, I really don't. My parents are humans, not perfect people. If they were abusive or nasty or wicked, it would be different, but being gay or bi is not those things and I don't think divorcing is unforgivable myself.

Subwaystop · 03/10/2025 22:10

OP: I’m also surprised by the reactions here. You’d think you’d committed a crime by sharing honestly with your husband, the one person you’ve spent years sharing with! Sometimes Mumsnet commenters can turn into a hive mind, and then all the comments mimic each other like copycats, “selfish, what did you expect, poor bloke, etc etc etc”. They’re feeling sorry for the bloke? Oh, please. They’re just bored, enjoying rubbing salt in the wound, full of self righteous haughtiness, and acting like a bunch of bullies. It’s a women’s forum, yet sometimes you’ll find one responder after another falling over themselves to defend the men. “If a man said this, if a man did that, what would you say then …” blah blah blah. As if there aren’t usually powerful but subtle differences between when men do things and when women do. So tired of the reversal comments which get trotted out a million times as if they are some brilliant original thought.

OP, my advice is don’t take the bullying to heart. Find a more appropriate forum where you’ll actually get ideas and advice instead of a gloating pile-on by people who clearly don’t care.

Jk987 · 03/10/2025 22:10

It probably feels like the whole relationship was based an a lie.

toxicjobrec · 03/10/2025 22:13

jesus, OP. It's your husband who deserves to be helped.

GasperyJacquesRoberts · 03/10/2025 22:14

Subwaystop · 03/10/2025 22:10

OP: I’m also surprised by the reactions here. You’d think you’d committed a crime by sharing honestly with your husband, the one person you’ve spent years sharing with! Sometimes Mumsnet commenters can turn into a hive mind, and then all the comments mimic each other like copycats, “selfish, what did you expect, poor bloke, etc etc etc”. They’re feeling sorry for the bloke? Oh, please. They’re just bored, enjoying rubbing salt in the wound, full of self righteous haughtiness, and acting like a bunch of bullies. It’s a women’s forum, yet sometimes you’ll find one responder after another falling over themselves to defend the men. “If a man said this, if a man did that, what would you say then …” blah blah blah. As if there aren’t usually powerful but subtle differences between when men do things and when women do. So tired of the reversal comments which get trotted out a million times as if they are some brilliant original thought.

OP, my advice is don’t take the bullying to heart. Find a more appropriate forum where you’ll actually get ideas and advice instead of a gloating pile-on by people who clearly don’t care.

Heaven forfend that people feel the slightest bit of empathy with a man who's just had the rug pulled out beneath him.

brunettemic · 03/10/2025 22:14

Hopefully he can move on with his life with someone who doesn’t lie to him for years and then expect it all be ok.

Mt563 · 03/10/2025 22:15

StrawberryTeddybear · 03/10/2025 21:06

Thank you for sharing.

I love him so much and I am sad. It’s as if I just realised why it hasn't been working, we’ve been trying for years, but that was why I felt distant, I don’t know what he was distant with me.

My family will probably disown me as most are homophobic so I doubt it’ll be shouting it from the rooftops sadly.

Show quote history

I'm so sorry your family is homophobic, so's mine. It's hard. I feel like if they weren't, I'd probably have realised my sexuality sooner. Only my husband and a few long time friends know. I've always gone to pride but now feel oddly worried my family will read more into that.

Laura95167 · 03/10/2025 22:17

You told your husband of 10 years, after pushing him away sexually, that you can no longer ignore the urge to be intimate with other people and you dont understand why he wants an exit plan agreed?!?

I think hes being incredibly reasonable. And you are being wildly entitled.

You have to remember, therapy is focused on you, your needs and feelings. And thats good for helping people find peace with themselves. But when you take that out a therapeutic environment you need to accept its not all focused on you anymore, and behave accordingly, balancing your feelings with understanding for other peoples. This likely broke his heart. Theres no coming back from you wanting to sexually pursue women. Its big for him too. Its not a career change, its an ending of your relationship. So why would he put himself through the pain of watching you fall for someone else just because you want to feel supported?

Deebee90 · 03/10/2025 22:17

You’ve just pretty much told your husband it’s over because you want a woman and you expect him to support you?? You’ve been married 10 years and have kids to him that’s been lie. You need to make a plan for leaving and get your kids ready for counselling as they’ll need it.

VoltaireMittyDream · 03/10/2025 22:17

The thing that strikes me as odd about all this, OP, is the idea that you seem to have thought this personal revelation might deepen your relationship with your DH somehow, or make him feel excited for you / supportive of your journey of self-discovery while he also processes the fact that your marriage has been a bit of a sham and you’ve never really fancied him at all.

Nobody‘s asking you to live a lie and pretend you’re not gay - but I don’t see why you’re so completely shocked that this should spell the end of your marriage. Were you expecting him to hang around as your wing man?

It sounds like the relationship hasn’t been great for a while and he might be relieved for the opportunity of an out, rather than wanting to support you through yet more emotional upheavals in the knowledge that once you feel better you’ll be off making up for lost time exploring your sexuality.

NellieElephantine · 03/10/2025 22:18

GasperyJacquesRoberts · 03/10/2025 22:14

Heaven forfend that people feel the slightest bit of empathy with a man who's just had the rug pulled out beneath him.

Show quote history

This. @Subwaystop why is it bullying to not agree just because it's a woman who's fucking people's lives up.in a totally selfish, self absorbed way?

Wheresthebeach · 03/10/2025 22:19

Of course he wants out. Jesus OP a tiny bit of empathy and understanding that you’ve blown his life apart wouldn’t go amiss. The utter selfishness of your attitude is beyond words.

JamDisaster · 03/10/2025 22:21

I know so many women who’ve had this experience. I think men’s midlife crises tend to involve buying a sports car and running off with a 20yo, whereas women’s tend to involve deciding they’re gay and then maybe getting a short haircut. It’s mainly just fear of the grave and the inability to cope with the fact that you only get one life, as far as I can tell, but I don’t think that makes it easier.

OP, I think you’ve been very naive in thinking your husband would be happy about this. I’m not going to tell you that you have to stay in your marriage - that would be ridiculous- but you do need to treat your marriage seriously and that includes ending it seriously if that’s what you want to do. The fact you’re surprised by his reaction suggests that you didn’t really think this through at all, which was unfair. You need to be very clear with him because he’s now in a sort of awful limbo, plus dealing with the feeling that the marriage may have been a sham all along (which I bet it wasn’t, actually).

Frequentlyincorrectbut · 03/10/2025 22:22

The OP has gone about this in a very naive way, but why is it fucking up this guy's life to get divorced from her? They clearly have been very distant for a while and it's probably the best thing to know the current status of her sexuality (which may not have been the same many years ago) and to know that he has a choice to move on, which is probably for the best. The OP is being very unrealistic, but she's been honest and I don't see that as ultimately being a fuck up. Being a fuck up is staying in a distant crappy marriage, knowing this important information, and not sharing it with your own husband and taking away his agency.

CharlieKirkRIP · 03/10/2025 22:23

I feel for a man who has just been told that the ten years he has been married has been based on a lie.

He has had the rug pulled out from him and it’s terribly sad that three children have to suffer their parents splitting up.

Zezet · 03/10/2025 22:24

Frequentlyincorrectbut · 03/10/2025 22:10

Zezet you are right, I don't know your situation. One of my parents behaved shamefully over decades, but I haven't cut them off and that's my choice. Others may choose differently. If you are close with your children, and have a good, open and communicative relationship with them, I don't think being gay or bi will necessarily lead to everything being cut off forever. Children respond in a variety of ways. I don't know of anyone who has cut their parents off though, I really don't. My parents are humans, not perfect people. If they were abusive or nasty or wicked, it would be different, but being gay or bi is not those things and I don't think divorcing is unforgivable myself.

Thank you. It is clearly a topic where I am not sufficiently rational and while I can't help that, I do know it's true.

To be clear, I think it's dreadful that people grow up not realizing they are allowed to be gay or bi. I consider those divorces, including my parents c, the result of homophobia (thus accidentally marrying wrong in the first place), not of homophilia.

BUT I do think there's a major gap between "being bi/gay and dating accordingly" versus "not being attracted to your spouse for whatever reason twenty years and three children in, and breaking up then". I think that's selfish. I just don't think you get to betray your partner like that because you suddenly somehow prefer different sex. Like you would suddenly want BDSM, he doesn't, you get to divorce him? She is not attractive after a mastectomy, he gets to divorce her?

And you fuck up your kids not by being gay (obviously) but because you chose a hypothetical new sex life over the promises you made and the life you built. You suddenly turn up with "your" truths but the fact is your family already had "truths". They thought they build them with you.

And your kids are obviously going to defend you in public. All of us do. Why? Because we don't want our mum to be punished further for being gay, as we are okay with her being gay and we hate the homophobia. But we are not okay, because if the betrayal we got. That's got nothing to do with being homophobic.

ClareBlue · 03/10/2025 22:25

StrawberryTeddybear · 03/10/2025 21:01

Thank you @Mt563 @Wowwee1234 . I need to give him time and when the conversation came up I wasn’t sure where it would end up but I didn’t expect it to just go to ‘ok bye’. There’s lots of things that will come up over the next few weeks I’m sure and I hope we can remain with our therapist to talk it through.

I don’t know why I’m so surprised that so many posters on this thread think that people should stay in relationships that are unhappy to keep pleasing others ffs. a lot can change in 18yrs.

Yes therapy is self centred and that is the whole bloody point, it’s the only time people are actually allowed to talk about themselves without being called selfish and told to just suck it up and get on with it.

i can’t remember the poster who said but thanks for the Reddit suggestion, I’ll try that.

Nobody has said you should stay in the relationship, literally nobody. So you have interpreted posts to support your own self absorbed narrative. Pattern seems to be fairly clear, tbh.

whatwhatwhatisgoingon · 03/10/2025 22:25

Subwaystop · 03/10/2025 22:10

OP: I’m also surprised by the reactions here. You’d think you’d committed a crime by sharing honestly with your husband, the one person you’ve spent years sharing with! Sometimes Mumsnet commenters can turn into a hive mind, and then all the comments mimic each other like copycats, “selfish, what did you expect, poor bloke, etc etc etc”. They’re feeling sorry for the bloke? Oh, please. They’re just bored, enjoying rubbing salt in the wound, full of self righteous haughtiness, and acting like a bunch of bullies. It’s a women’s forum, yet sometimes you’ll find one responder after another falling over themselves to defend the men. “If a man said this, if a man did that, what would you say then …” blah blah blah. As if there aren’t usually powerful but subtle differences between when men do things and when women do. So tired of the reversal comments which get trotted out a million times as if they are some brilliant original thought.

OP, my advice is don’t take the bullying to heart. Find a more appropriate forum where you’ll actually get ideas and advice instead of a gloating pile-on by people who clearly don’t care.

Bored? A bunch of bullies? Total nonsense. It’s called empathy. We all sit here and think about how it would feel if our spouse did and said that. If my DH suddenly announced he was gay, would I delight in the fact he’d been “honest” with me? Would my first thought to be happy that he’d “spoken his truth”. Would it fuck! It’d be utterly livid, furious in fact. What that would hide, is the utter devastation that that revelation would bring. The fear that my whole married life had been a lie, that I’d not been good enough, that I’d done something wrong, some feeling of shame, of failure. Totally normal feelings in that situation. They would be entirely misplaced of course, ops husband hasn’t done ANYTHING wrong but those of us with even an ounce of empathy can imagine how and why he might feel like that. Bullies? You don’t have a clue.

Fiftyandme · 03/10/2025 22:26

Seriously? It’s pretty selfish of you to EXOECT hom to be supportive. Youvd just blown yoir marriage apart.

The only yhink to do is separate. And respect him for wanting to leave instead of expecting him to continue living a lie

You sound incredibly selfish

InOverMyHead84 · 03/10/2025 22:28

Your poor husband.

Celebrating 'your truth' is destroying his and your children's lives.

At least do the decent thing and end the relationship with dignity rather then expect support from those whose lives have been rendered a lie.

HereAreYourOptions · 03/10/2025 22:28

Frequentlyincorrectbut · 03/10/2025 22:22

The OP has gone about this in a very naive way, but why is it fucking up this guy's life to get divorced from her? They clearly have been very distant for a while and it's probably the best thing to know the current status of her sexuality (which may not have been the same many years ago) and to know that he has a choice to move on, which is probably for the best. The OP is being very unrealistic, but she's been honest and I don't see that as ultimately being a fuck up. Being a fuck up is staying in a distant crappy marriage, knowing this important information, and not sharing it with your own husband and taking away his agency.

Staying in a distant crappy marriage when you have three children does not mean you are a fuck up, at least in my eyes.

Fiftyandme · 03/10/2025 22:28

PS - therapy is NOT supposed to turn one into a self centred individual.

GasperyJacquesRoberts · 03/10/2025 22:31

Frequentlyincorrectbut · 03/10/2025 22:22

The OP has gone about this in a very naive way, but why is it fucking up this guy's life to get divorced from her? They clearly have been very distant for a while and it's probably the best thing to know the current status of her sexuality (which may not have been the same many years ago) and to know that he has a choice to move on, which is probably for the best. The OP is being very unrealistic, but she's been honest and I don't see that as ultimately being a fuck up. Being a fuck up is staying in a distant crappy marriage, knowing this important information, and not sharing it with your own husband and taking away his agency.

OP has been with her partner, now husband, for 18 years. That's a long time by any standard. He's been going to couple's counselling with her presumably with the hope that the difficulties they've been having in their relationship can be resolved. He's now been told something about his wife that makes those hopes moot, massively reframes their entire relationship, and will likely seem the obvious reason why their relationship has been floundering for years.

While I absolutely agree that he had the right to know so that he could make an informed decision, it's not surprising that that revelation has left him both devastated and concluding that the marriage is over.

EmeraldShamrock000 · 03/10/2025 22:31

He is in shock, this is life changing, put yourself in his position.
Why was it such a surprise for you, when you were attracted to the same sex?