married with kids and now know I'm gay - struggling with how to deal with it.

LH, it is probably the second biggest thing you will tell someone - for me the biggest after telling my ex was telling my kids - and it is never something that you can just announce and then get on with cooking the supper. Everyone here will be thinking of you and you can come and talk here often and talk through your thoughts (&&&)

My heart goes out to you, and to her as well. My own conversation was identical and so very raw for days and days afterwards.

Now is the time to act with integrity - don't promise things you know you will have no hope of keeping, but if you can make honest promises about what you will or can do, this is the time to think about what those might be. She may be completely lost and think her world has turned upside down. She will be thinking about a whole host of things - what about the house, are you leaving me, what'll happen to the kids, what will her parents (if they are alive) say, it's her fault, why didn't she see it, she will feel stupid and a fool for not seeing it, she'll believe her life with you was a lie or completely wasted, she'll ask if you've slept around, she'll be protective of the children, and so on.

I tried so hard to give her reassurance that I wasn't walking out of the door there and then. That I would not see them turned out into the street, that I would support them and that my first priority was to make sure she and the children were secure and safe. I tried so hard, despite the screaming and fighting and blame, to do that at every stage. When the accusations were being hurled I knew that I would come back with the fact that, yes, I had turned the world upside down, but I was working hard and acting to keep their lives as stable as I possibly could.

Do the right thing for your children and for her, AS FAR AS YOU CAN. That is really important. As far as you can. Don't bankrupt yourself, put yourself into depression or illness as you will be no help to them in either of these situations. Look after yourself and then you can continue to look after them.

Take care.

H2

 

LH

Looks like you were ready to take the large leap. Welcome to the other side.

You will find strength you didn't realize that you had.

(&&&)

 

Hi LH - I'm not sure that congratulations are really in order just yet or what you want to hear - so I offer such yet. But you've definitely taken a big step forward.

Considering counselors - Now that things are out in the open, your wife might also benefit from counseling - or you might consider joint counseling to help walk you through this. Neither of these are an either/or kind of thing - you might consider each seeing someone individually as well as seeing someone together.

Just a thought or two.

Take care,

Todd

 

What you are going through is not fun. Try to recharge as best you can, whether that be exercise or just some alone time. You have time to make major decisions as a couple, so you don't need to rush. Please keep in mind that what you feel is selfish behavior on your part is really healthy - you are asserting what you want from your life. While you are in crisis mode now, eventually you'll begin to pick up the pieces and things will get better. Try to keep an optimistic view of the future, that ultimately you will discover the real you that's you've been hiding from yourself and others.

Here is a list of things you should keep in mind over the next few days.

Communication - Now is the time to keep the lines of communication open, so continue to have the difficult conversations with your wife.

Your affair - I'm unfamiliar with English divorce law, so ideally it would be best for you to understand the legal risks of disclosing/not disclosing your affair on the divorce proceedings before doing so. Regardless of the legal risks, it's likely that she will have more anger during the grieving process if you disclose the affair, so be prepared.

Children - Try to shield your children from adult conversations as much as possible. If you decide to separate, your children will be fine. Children are very resilient and will be better off in two happy homes rather than 1 home filled with tension between spouses.

Therapist - You should try to find an individual and couples therapist with LGBT experience ASAP. You would benefit from a therapist to help you process and understand your feelings. The couples therapist would be beneficial in working through issues and creating a plan. I would suggest that you work with the couples therapist when creating a message for the children regarding a potential divorce and your sexuality. Hopefully your wife has a therapist or trusted friend she can talk with to help her process her feelings.

Grieving process - Your wife needs time to process the news. She will most likely go through the grieving process - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance stages. You'll need to be prepared if her abusive behavior returns. You will need to remain strong and not allow her to use her behavior to get unreasonable concessions from you.

Coming out plan - You may want to have a conversation with your wife about who to tell and when so that you have a controlled coming out plan.

Sex - Given the open communication, it's possible that the two of you may engage in more sex than you have been. This is typical. Keep in mind that at some point she may unconsciously start to use sex as a way to bond and keep you in the marriage. When this happens, it is more humane to stop having sex and discuss it with her, rather than to lead her on.


This phase of coming out is not easy, and there are no magic words to make it easy. Many of us have gone through this before, so you are not alone. We'll be here to help you get through this.

(&&&)

 

You are not alone LonelyHiker. I have just joined EC finding myself in a terrible dark place and desperate not to go under. I have not digested all the words in this thread yet but finding a space where there is mutual support is unbelievably comforting. I have realised that the whole me has been repressed for decades. But I have a daughter and she is great and is ok with me - just came out to her recently. That is a start.

 

I agree completely with SiennaFire, LH. I know exactly what you are going through, as will many others on EC.

This is when you need to be focused on what matters. Your own health, your children's welfare and your wife's (which sounds like it still is for you).

I had the exact same conversation with mine - wanting a father in my kids lives, not wanting them to be associated with a 'broken home', and so on. I know you don't want to cause pain, to any of them. But the simple fact is that you either cause them pain but remain a part of their lives and act with integrity to support them as much as possible, and be the father to your kids and be fully present in their lives, but live apart from them. Or you remain with them and be part of their lives but know what you know about yourself. And your wife know what she now knows about you. I struggled so much with this. I loved my wife, but I realised that I loved myself more and that the feelings I had fought and denied all my life were a part of me. To ignore that and deny that was something I just couldn't do. If I'd tried after telling my wife, it would never have been the same again. Would I have been able to have an active sex life the way it had been? Probably physically, but emotionally for either of us it would have been difficult if not impossible to sustain. Separate rooms was an option, but it felt like we were simply condemning each other to living separate lives under the same roof with no prospect of finding true happiness with another person until the kids had grown up and left home.

Take small steps. Put your kids at the centre of your decisions, but look after yourself too. Be there to lend support to her as she comes to terms with it all. As I discovered it is like a grieving process and she will have had it come out of nowhere to her. If you decide you can stay and re-start your lives together, then that is fine. If not, you need to think about some plans about where you might stay, how you might manage finances, how you can help her with the kids to make sure she doesn't feel like you've abandoned her (which helped me greatly with my ex - she could see by my actions that I wasn't just walking out and leaving her completely alone).

It's still difficult - she still tells me she misses me and misses our old life together even though she has a partner - our connection and bond will never disappear. But it's been hard to keep that and build on it when it could so easily have just been destroyed and life now would be so much more difficult.

---------- Post added 11th Jan 2016 at 09:41 PM ----------

But you don't have to. Giving her a reassurance - if you want to remain a part of her life of course - that you won't just disappear and that you'll always be there in her life, from now until old age, although not what she signed up for will, at least just now, give her a sense that you are still there and still care. The fear that she will lose you completely from her life, and from what you have written you don't want that, is terrifying her.

My ex and I have been on holiday with the kids - we go out for meals together, I visit regularly and we talk like we used to. She still trusts me and confides in me and me likewise, but our relationship has completely altered. I wouldn't have that if I'd let her think I didn't care and didn't act to show her that I still did/do.

 

So, some things to consider re your points above:

a) You told someone you are gay and the universe did not implode. The sun still rose the next day. I'll bet you've heard at least a bit of birdsong since this started. Life goes on. Bear that in mind as you keep coming out. The big terrible secret that would destroy you and everything else if it got out...needn't do so.

You mention being scared now. In past posts you've mentioned being afraid that everyone will hate you. In this kind of situation some apprehension is understandable. However, I'd like to suggest a third option:

Some people will probably react very negatively to your coming out and/or to your marriage ending. But some people will react positively, because they care about you and want you to be happy and be true to yourself. And the same for your wife. And some people will just be neutral about it or may even take the attitude along the lines of 'finally! It was obvious there was major tension between them. Maybe at last they can both move on and find happiness.' Or something like that. Because, maybe you and your wife are amazing actors and have successfully hidden all the negative stuff from all around you. Or not. Very few people are amazing actors.

It need not (and probably won't be) a purely one-sided reaction, one way or the other.

b) Re burying things and trying again - You know that won't work. You can't go back and it would just destroy the both of you if you try.

c) Re ruining your wife's life - That is a possibility, but it is not a given. You and your wife are both comparatively young - or at least so I gather - and have many years ahead of you. It is entirely possible that she might move on to meet someone else - someone straight, who can love her back fully and in all ways - fall in love and go on to have a wonderful life. And whether it's with the guy you've met or someone else, so can you. Ultimately, life is what you make it, and each of you has a choice to make in that regard.

I say this as someone who has had his life blow up more than once over the years - and I've put it back together each time.

In other words: This too shall pass.

Hope this helps,

Todd

 

It's very hard. You're articulating things exactly in my marriage, how I was dismissed and rebuked for being myself, and NOW they want to "work it out" and "be nice to us." Why couldn't they be nice before? Why does it take us almost leaving for them to act right?

I sometimes feel so irritated, like if my spouse would have been an attentive loving spouse all along I never would have found a woman in the first place. I would have been happy at home and still in the bliss of denial.

I also feel the drag to go at the spouses' pace. I try to be compassionate about all that, but it's hard when I'm warned not to leave. I just want to jump start my new life, but I feel like I owe him (months... another year...?) of appearing to "try" to work it out.

It's frustrating how the change in us coming out is almost immediate, our lives are changed forever once it all clicks into place. And our spouses are caught unaware, and nothing inside them changed so they have no motivation to let us go so easy.

 

You've had 30 years to process your feelings about being gay, so you have a bit of a head start on your wife. She needs time to process her own feelings, and it's unrealistic to expect that she'll be understanding and accepting after 5 days. Typically this will take months if not years.

It was clear there was dysfunction in the relationship with your wife before you came out, and this continues in her recent behavior (she's blaming you ('Why are you doing this to the children') and she expects you to hand her all the answers on a silver platter). The grieving process will only amplify all of this. To get to a positive relationship with your wife, you need to get on top of this and learn how to constructively deal with her behavior. Coming out is necessary but not sufficient to get there.

The best thing you can do right now is find a therapist for yourself and a couples therapist for you and your wife, preferably with LGBT experience, to help you work through the issues.

PS - While you are responsible for initiating this crisis in the relationship by coming out as gay, it's not fair for you to take the blame for doing this to the children or ruining your wife's life. Ultimately your wife owns her reaction to this crisis, and if she chooses to let it ruin her life, then that's on her not you. Having said that, since this is a crisis in the relationship you should take some responsibility here and find the couples therapist and try to point her a straight spouse support group.

 

I am in a very similar situation. Came out to my wife on Oct 15. Things were initially somewhat OK with her joking about us being Will & Grace. 10 days in, things went TO HELL. It is very clear that I *cannot* leave because she is entirely too fragile; even the therapist says say. We've since achieved a certain level of equilibrium, almost to the point of "before" because neither of us is pushing the issue. It did somewhat come up again earlier this week because I was looking at cars (yes, I know the pycho-babble... temporary gratification to feed an unfulfilled need) and this text convo took place :

Me : I like the Jeep. It's a dude vehicle.
Her : Compensating ? LOL
Me : With every breath and every blink of my eyes. It's exhausting.
Her : I'm sorry. I'm so blessed sorry.
Me : It's ok. Really.
Her : No it's not. I am sorry. You are trapped with me.

Anyway, I bought the Jeep. It's totally badass.

But I don't know where things end up with us. I really do LOVE her and she loves me. We're textbook co-dependent. It's 9 kinds of fucked up.

 

At an age when you think you are settled in life, it throws you a curve ball. My view is that it's your sub-conscious finally exerting last minute, last ditch attempt to get you to see that your life can be different and to get a balance into it for you. It's hard as hell. For me, if I'd ignored that last ditch attempt, and pushed it away and buried it, I know it would've surfaced much much later on, when I was probably (in my own mind anyway) too old to do anything about it and find the things that made me feel complete in myself. As it is, I am still young and able to explore and enjoy my new life with a man, and not psychologically trap myself in my own mental prison. Would I have been happy with my wife if I hadn't given in to how I felt? Possibly I'd have just carried on with the feelings and just tried to ignore what I'd never known or experienced.

You only life once. Much as it's hard, you only get one shot at life and, within reason, I need to live it for me.

 

Beautifully said, Highlander2. As far as we know, we only get one shot at this life thing. It is just foolish to spend it trapped in a web of guilt and doing things on someone else's timeline, especially if they haven't been good to you.

I spent too many years being emotionally abused and then again too long trying to get myself free of that. Those are years that I will never get back.

 

Oh wow, I just saw this. I don't know how I missed it before. Long thread, I guess.

SiennaFire, you have some of the wisest words I have ever read on this site...or anywhere, for that matter! Everything you say here is true, especially the part about becoming a warrior for yourself and passivity not cutting it. Never accept a bad situation when you are presented with the possibility for something better. We owe it to ourselves to go for that happy life. SO true.

 

H2, you so hit a nerve. That's exactly what I was doing and she's getting upset and angry and so if we carried on like this it would just get worse and maybe to a point where we'd hate each other which couldn't work with kids. And so tonight I told her. It was awful. I've never cried so much. We both did. I can't believe I've said it and now I'm scared or how things will go. She says it's her fault because she's so mean to me. I said that it wasn't but of course that causes frictions. And then she just broke down saying how would she go back to work, I would obviously meet someone and that she always thought we'd grow old together. I feel like such a shit.[/QUOTE]

Wow, I am sure telling her was so hard! I hope you are ok and she and the kids are all ok. I hope you have some peace now just getting it out and letting the truth get out. Happy for you but hope that the pain is starting to ease a bit.