Still married, still gay, still not out

So, reviewing your other thread, it seems like it might be a good idea to mention that you are out to your wife, before you get a lot of advice in that direction. Your wife apparently knows, and still prefers to maintain the marriage? And you can't tell people the truth about yourself, you have to keep it a secret?

Did you take the advice to get counseling for yourself and your wife?

You might want to put your wife specifically in your out status, because knowing that you are out to her will change a lot of the advice you get.

 

BW - I'm starting to come to the same conclusion... I'm 49, accepting the fact that I'm gay, not out at all, including to my wife - and at this point not sure I should throw that all away. My wife is my best friend, and the amount of upheaval I'd create for everyone if I came out seems to be just too high a cost. I'm meeting a therapist to discuss it further, but that's where my thinking is right now... What a tangled web we weave...

Maxx

 

The only thing I'll say is this - don't keep yourself in a situation because you feel obligated to honor a past choice. It may have been right for you then, but that doesn't mean it always will be. If your choice right now is to stay with your wife, then that's fine (especially since she's aware of this). But if, in the future, it becomes more than you can deal with, don't be afraid to be honest with yourself. Honesty all around - including with yourself - is the best way to deal with things, I'd imagine.

(No offense maxx - I realize your situation is different)

 

Im really sorry that you are going through this right now, and though I am young, I can understand the pain you must be going though.

Let me start by saying that coming to terms to the fact that you are gay is a huge step! Thats something to be really happy about! On the other hand you still have the issue of being committed to someone who you love, but are not attracted to. Much of what I see with people that are gay and married is a feeling of obligation. What you might consider is that your misery translates to your wife as something being wrong. If you arent honest to her about what is going on, she, and the people around her are going to start looking at themselves as the issue. She probably feels just as miserable as you do in this marriage, though she may be better at hiding it. Coming out is not just courteous to yourself, but its also courteous to her as well. When everything is out in the open and you are both able to move on Im sure you will actually look back and really appreciate the fact you came out to her. Most of the time I have seen people who come out to their wives as being best of friends.

Maybe your reason for coming out should not just be because you are gay, but also because you want the both of you to be happy and move on.

 

Ah, well, I thought you said she knew, in your other thread.

In that case, you clearly need to come out to her wife. Otherwise, you are unilaterally making choices that affect both of you--the kind of choices that she has a right to participate in as your equal partner.

 

I guess that raises the question - what do you want to happen? Do you want her to know? Do you want to "explore" your homosexuality? Assume every option is on the table - what do YOU want?

Lex

 

It's good that you're concerned about ruining the marriage, as it shows you care about her, but keep in mind that preserving the marriage isn't worth it if it's going to make one or both of you unhappy. It sounds like there's at least a tacit acknowledgement of your situation on her part, so she must be wondering. As Chip pointed out, if the tables were reversed, wouldn't you want to know, especially given how much you care for her?

Starting the conversation is undoubtedly going to be hard. But try to think of it as just that - the start, the not middle, end, or ultimate conclusion. It's just a place to begin the discussion. More important than where it starts is where it goes after that.

You know her best at this point, so what do you think would be a good way to break important news to her? Sit her down and talk to her in private? Do it in writing? Have the talk at home, or somewhere else?

 

My suggestion for telling your wife would be to first of all, find a time when you can talk without being interrupted. Be ready to deal with about anything from anger to crying to shock. In my case, my wife was mostly in a shocked kind of state. She wasn't surprised though.

Write out what you want to say. Start out with I love you. Be sure to tell her that everything in the past was real and that you meant it when you said I love you in the past to her. Use the written copy as a backup in case you need it. I spent a week refining my letter and I ended up using it as the way to tell my wife. When it was time, I went to her and said I really need to talk to you about something. Then I handed her the letter since I was mentally messed up at that point.

 

Tell your wife. Everything will be okay in the end.

The first time you kiss a man you will feel so much relief, freedom and happiness. You deserve it.

 

In my case, it seemed selfish too. But then I realized that staying with her, not having sex, not showing her the love I should have been showing her, and the constant fighting were not fair to her either. In the end, I opted to give her a chance at true happiness too.

 

It's like the whole thing about 'if you love something enough you need to let it go free'.

By staying quiet about this you're limiting your possible options. You're ensuring that the status quo will be maintained. But how great is the status quo anyway? And will you really be able to maintain it? What I found was that the more this entered into my consciousness, but more miserable and dissatisfied I became. Letting this into your consciousness has opened a pandoras box that can't be closed again. You can't simply 'forget' that you have come to the realization that you're gay. I figured I could maintain the status quo too, but I couldn't. Things got worse.

Maybe both of you will want to see if you can continue to make the marriage work. Maybe only one of you will want that. Maybe, in time, neither of you will want that. Leaving it unspoken means nobody get's to choose.

In the end, I came to believe that my kids were better off having 2 happy and well adjusted divorced parents than having 2 miserable, dysfunctional parents who still lived together. And things were progressively getting worse. While the kids now have 2 homes - which does complicate things - they have 4 parents who love them. Both my wife and I have remarried and we all get along reasonably well. (My ex wife's new husband is somewhat insecure about our strong and amicable relationship - which causes some stress, but generally we get along very well.)

There isn't a good time or a good way to bring it up. Having a time away from the kids allows her the opportunity to react in any way that she needs to in the moment, and then being able to gather herself back together before she needs to see anyone again. Talking about it doesn't mean you want out of the marriage or that you've made any firm decisions. The opposite is true - you want her to be involved in those decisions. But you needed her to have complete information in order to make that decision. Up until now you've been witholding information that would be important for her to base life decisions on.

In the end, I just worry that this will continue to weigh more and more on you, to the point where it isn't the orientation issue that kills your marriage, but it's the anxiety over the orientation that kills it.

 

What great advice. My experience has been staying in my marriage until I realized that I really am gay and want to be genuine to myself.