Hey, newbie here looking for support more than anything. To start, I’m a 29 year old, married, mother of 2. My 2 daughters are from a previous relationship I had years before I met my husband. My husband and I have been together for 3 years, but we just recently got legally married in December 2020 and are currently in the process of planning our big wedding ceremony for June 2021. I’ve questioned my sexuality just about all my life, but I’ve always shoved those feelings aside and strictly dated men (for many different reasons). To no surprise those relationships have never lasted and I’ve never truly felt happy or like myself in any relationship, even now. After being in such a toxic relationship with my children’s biological father, and then meeting my husband who was/is absolutely amazing with my children and treated me so well, I didn’t hesitate to say yes when he asked me to marry him. Even though deep inside I knew he didn’t make me feel complete.... I’ve always felt something was missing In any relationship I’ve had. I’ve NEVER enjoyed being intimate with a man, and always found myself counting down waiting for the moment to be over. My entire relationship with my husband I always find myself making excuses when ever he tries to initiate sex. And when we do actually have sex, it’s only after I’ve had a few glasses of wine and I’m pretty intoxicated. If I’m not, I feel disgusted and I just can’t convince myself to go through with it. Now that I am coming to a point of truly acknowledging my feelings and accepting that I am only attracted to women and not men at all, I find myself stuck and confused on what to do now. My husband truly is an amazing man and my kids LOVE him. Not many people would be able to step into this role and treat kids that are not biologically their own, as theirs. From day one he has loved them and supported them as if he is their biological dad and I truly appreciate him for that. Oh and did I mention we just RECENTLY got married and are in the middle of planning our ceremony. I can’t see myself ending our marriage anytime soon and causing so much confusion and heartache for him, my children, and our family and friends....but I also feel like I’m dying inside as each day passes and I continue to play the role of happy wife and mother. I want to be happy and live life as the authentic me, but I can’t currently see a way out of my situation. And honestly ever since I’ve accepted my true feelings towards women, it feels like there’s no closing that door ever again.
Welcome to EC. Sadly I do not think that there is an easy answer for you. Staying with the relationship in order to "not rock the boat" will only make you miserable and in the end it will be bad for everyone. I have experience with something similar to this. My experience is not due to my orientation but due to me not being able to live within my birth assignment, I am a woman who was assigned male at birth. I allowed myself to be put through conversion "therapy" to try to keep myself in the closet and satisfy my parents, church and society. I was able to find a woman who saw something she liked in me but required a heteronormative marriage and we got married after our first child was born I could not keep it in and restarted hormone therapy but continued to live in the closet. We had 3 children total but in the end the relationship could not stand the pressure of me not being my true self and it ended in a disaster. It would have been better had I been honest with myself and everyone else and either never got into the marriage (no longer an option for you) or had ended it before it did and sooner would have been better than later. I am sad that you feel as if you are dying inside. As I noted, playing a role in the end only hurts everyone (not just you) more than living the truth would. Ripping the bandage off fast hurts but it hurts less than going slow. I hope that you can find a way to live your truth.
My heart just aches for you, and I certainly understand your feelings. Sadly, the only real way out is... well, out. I do want to welcome you to EC, and I'm glad you got brave enough to share your first post with us. And the fact that you are able to be so honest in what you wrote tells me that you have been doing much thinking about all of this. You have lots of good reasons for wanting to stay in your marriage and stay in the closet. They make a lot of sense from the perspective of keeping everything the same, not upsetting anyone, being safe and not having to own up to who you are. But I think it's also important to see different sides too, so I'd like to share a few thoughts: - Your husband deserves to be with a woman who desires him sexually. If he only gets sex when he asks for it, isn't that a rather unfair burden to place on your husband? Do you think it's not obvious to him that you avoid it as much as possible? Doesn't he deserve a sexually fulfilling life? You should consider whether you are dooming him to a life of sexual frustration. Will he eventually seek sex elsewhere? Would you want that? - Your husband deserves to know the truth before embarking on a long-term marriage with you. The longer you stay closeted to him, the harder it will be when he finally does find out. Imagine how he might feel after many years of marriage. If you end your marriage now, he could be angry. If you end your marriage 10 years from now, he could be angry, and also feel that you wasted 10 years of his life. - A happy and harmonious home cannot happen with an unhappy mom and wife. In your efforts to "protect" everyone from your secret, you will ultimately be hurting them even more by being unhappy, sexually unfulfilled, and depressed. - I don't know how old your kids are. No matter their age, though, your kids deserve to know their mom - all of her. - These issues were easier to push aside when you were still in denial and closeted to yourself. Now that you have come out to yourself, as you said, there's no closing that door ever again, this will only get more and more difficult. You are already feeling trapped, especially because the wedding is coming soon, and I think this will only get worse for you as time goes on. I think maybe you're looking for reasons to come out? You came here because deep down you know that you need to get out of this. But there's fear. And shame. Guilt. Embarrassment. I am on the other side of this journey, coming out in 2016 at 47 with two kids after a 20 year marriage. Once I had finally accepted myself internally, it set me on a course that ultimately led me to do the one thing I had believed I would never do - admit to everyone that I was gay. In order to get there, though, I had to come to a place in my mind where I had to accept that I was going to be talked about, whispered about, maybe even rejected by some - if that's what it will take for me to be free, then so be it. This is the hardest part. Perhaps you could find a way to end your marriage but have him continue to be a father figure to your kids. But keeping your husband trapped in your mixed-orientation marriage without his knowledge is also using him too. I've given you a lot to think about, and I apologize for the length, but I do sometimes wish that someone had talked to me and given me a dose of reality before I spent 20 years in marriage to a woman. You still have a chance to set this right. Reasons to Come Out: 1. Freedom to be yourself 2. Freedom to find love, the one you've been avoiding 3. Your kids will know the real you 4. Your family will know the real you 5. You can finally look at yourself in the mirror
Hi @Ph0eNiX21 Welcome to EC. I’m sorry that you’re in this situation, but you are certainly not alone. Except for the marriage part, I have been in a similar situation myself. As you seem to have realised, staying in this type of situation only gets harder with time rather than easier. It will likely have an impact on your mental health, which will have a knock on impact on your children and relationship. It’s really easy to focus on the impact of leaving and forget that staying also has consequences. As they say, you can’t fill a cup from an empty jug, so you need to look after yourself too in order to look after your children. With regards to your husband, is it really fair to proceed when you know this relationship can’t last and that you’re not suited to each other? Don’t beat yourself up about the past though, as we can only make the best decision possible with the information that we had at the time. I’m not suggesting leaving is easy and nothing needs to happen right away. Take some time to think it through if you need to. It took my three years from the time I joined EC to separate from my (now) ex. I do understand why it feels impossible to leave as it felt impossible to me too, but the only thing I really regret now is not doing it sooner. Things did start to feel better as soon as I took some action towards leaving. I felt more in control of this situation. Break it down into smaller steps too, as thinking about it all at once can be overwhelming. Take care.
Take it from me, as the years roll by it will get harder and harder to deal with. I have been married for 25 years, fortunately, I have come out to my wife years ago. While it's not a traditional marriage, it works..I do my thing and she does hers...it's a partnership. I tried for many years to push it down and each time when those desires and needs came back they came back harder and more pronounced. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I think I would have done things much different. I wish you luck and happiness.
I can tell from my experience your gay feelings will not go away. They will continue to gain momentum until they start to consume all your thoughts. You both will be miserable. Free him and yourself to find your true happiness. As many have said breaking away is not easy but for most of us it is the only real answer.
Hi QuietPeace, Thank you for sharing your story and offering some advice. I really appreciate it and agree that as hard as it may be, ripping the bandage off now will be better in the long run. IT's just one of those things that much easier said than done but I also know that I can't continue on like this for much longer.
Hi and thank you for your advice. I really needed this and it certainly gave me a lot to think about and consider. - You are absolutely correct. He definitely deserves to have a woman who desires him, the way that he does me. It makes me feel selfish in a way that I’m holding this secret from him out of fear of well…. breaking his heart….but also not able to give him a sexually fulfilling life. I think continuing in the way we have been will inevitably lead to a truly miserable marriage. - I would like to be honest and tell my husband the truth about me. But I don’t even know how to approach the subject, especially since the majority of our conversations these days have been around planning our wedding and our future (what he assumes to be the rest of our lives) together. How do I go from that…..to opening up about wanting to be with a woman?? I think this conversation and the ripple effect it will have is what causes me the most fear and anxiety. To add another layer to this, in the beginning of our relationship about a yr into dating I ended the relationship to pursue living as my authentic self and date women, however this break up caused my husband (my then bf) to go into a deep spiral and depression and he just lost any sense of happiness and began self medicating among other things. Knowing how he reacted then I would be lying if I didn’t say that I fear telling him the truth now and ending our marriage would cause him to fall back into this place, if not worse….. - I would love for my husband to still be a part of my children’s lives, but I fear leaving him will cause him to cut them off completely also. And that’s his choice but doesn’t make it any easier to accept or even think about.
Hi @LostInDaydreams Thank you for your response. As each day passes it definitely feels as though it is getting harder and harder to keep this to myself. I can tell it’s having an impact on my relationship as I seem more distant than usual. I agree that it’s not truly fair to stay in this marriage, especially with my husband in the dark about my feelings. I just can’t seem to find a way to bring it up to him or to even begin discussing this while we’re in the middle of planning a wedding. On one hand I know that I need to but on the other hand I don’t know how…… it’s all very overwhelming.
I'm sorry you're having to go through this, though I agree with the others that it's best to deal with the situation now. I'd suggest talking to a therapist, as this is a fairly complicated situation.
I understand that it’s hard, but it will still be hard if you wait until after the wedding. It might even be harder as you’ll feel that you have to justify going through with the wedding. There’s never going to be a right or an easy time to discuss this. How long are you going to wait after the wedding? Six months? A year? As @ShyBirdy suggests, speaking to a therapist might be helpful. You could also consider couples therapy - they can support with ending relationships too.
Hi Ph0eNiX21 - I am new here to, and probably not qualified to give to much advice as I am still trying to work out my own story. However, I know the kind of situation you are in as I was there some 10 years ago. Only I was married to my children's birth mother. I have always know that the traditional romantic ideal of a hetro couple was not who I was and over the years we were together it grew. Our relationship eventually turned toxic and the sex virtually stopped. I finally went and got some expert counselling from a good therapist, and then split with my wife. It was difficult for the first four or five years and I worked hard to just keep going. Eventually it began to get better and now my kids and I have the best life I could imagine. It takes work and a lot of heartbreak either way you are going to carry the weight of your decision. So find a good support network, friends/family therapists. Like I say I am not that qualified to talk, all I can say is you need to do the right thing not the easy thing. Good luck with it all, and if you think I can help at all please get in touch. Paul x
Thank you for sharing a piece of your story. It makes me feel a little better knowing I’m not the only one who has gone through this type of situation. After reading everyone’s advice I decided to speak with a therapist. I have my first session tomorrow afternoon. I’m extremely nervous but also really hoping this is the first step that will lead me to life of true happiness and peace.
Ph0eNiX21 that is awesome, well done you for having the courage to take that step. This is really scary stuff as it effects not only you but your children and family too. Good luck with it and as I said before always here to listen if you need it. Paul x
Well done. The first step is sometimes one of the hardest. I was so nervous before my first therapy appointment. I nearly backed out completely, but I’m glad I went through with it. I hope it goes well for you.
