Coming out when older

[Anonymous]

A question for those of you who were married and in a hetero relationship but decided later that you are gay. How do you feel/describe your relationship with your former spouse ?

[Anonymous]

She won't speak to me and I suspect she never will. She feels that I lied to her and misled her for decades because I knew I was gay since I was about 11, but never chose to act on it until much later in life. Just at the point in our lives where we had planned to retire to a water-view property, travel together, and spend time with our children and grandchildren, I left her completely alone and went off to be happy with someone else. I don't think the gender of that someone else mattered all that much, but it didn't help. The kids understand but are loyal to their mother when it comes to visits and time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She won't speak to me and I suspect she never will. She feels that I lied to her and misled her for decades because I knew I was gay since I was about 11, but never chose to act on it until much later in life. Just at the point in our lives where we had planned to retire to a water-view property, travel together, and spend time with our children and grandchildren, I left her completely alone and went off to be happy with someone else. I don't think the gender of that someone else mattered all that much, but it didn't help. The kids understand but are loyal to their mother when it comes to visits and time.

Well you did decieve her and leave her for another person? Surely you can take some blame for that!

[Anonymous]

9:07 here. I am actually the wife ... I just wrote in what happened in our case since OP has gotten no responses. I purposely left out how ex feels about the outcome, since only he could provide such insight.

[Anonymous]

I am a women who had been married/together with my husband for 15 years
Our marriage started falling apart, he was not nice to me at all, I checked out to avoid the emotional abuse
Fell in love with a women, opened up a life's worth of feelings and realizations that yes I am a lesbian
Currently getting divorced and dealing with the aftermath of divorce with small children
I would not have wished this on myself.....but realizing it now I'm glad I can live my life as I want to and not live a lie and pretend to be happy for theater of my life

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She won't speak to me and I suspect she never will. She feels that I lied to her and misled her for decades because I knew I was gay since I was about 11, but never chose to act on it until much later in life. Just at the point in our lives where we had planned to retire to a water-view property, travel together, and spend time with our children and grandchildren, I left her completely alone and went off to be happy with someone else. I don't think the gender of that someone else mattered all that much, but it didn't help. The kids understand but are loyal to their mother when it comes to visits and time.

Well you did decieve her and leave her for another person? Surely you can take some blame for that!

If he was a she you would offer hugs.

[Anonymous]

I have never seen someone take the liberty of answering for the OP. That is odd. I am sure it was coming from a good place but maybe 9:07 should have just shared her own experience and not pretended to be OP? It would be less confusing.

[Anonymous]

I recently came out, within the past year, to my husband. It has not been great....getting divorced with two small children is hard. We have had a very hard year and I have times where I hate him and he has been just nasty to me....but then again he has to deal with his wife coming out as a lesbian and leaving the marriage.
I was drowning in my marriage, came to a breaking point and then after I didn't give a shit about it any more I came to realize over time I was gay. He does not understand and will probably never understand.
We had many years of being in love and having great sex, but after experiencing sex with a women I realized that's what I've been searching for my whole life...it was eye opening, like wow this is what sex is supposed to be like....
Very difficult to realize this at this point in my life and act apon it

[Anonymous]

OP here: Thanks to those who responded. My partner came out and I am devastated.

[Anonymous]

So sorry, OP. Go check out the straight spouse network for some much needed support.

http://straightspouse.boardhost.com/index.php

There are also a lot of us in the same situation at chumplady.com.

Your friends and family mean well, but they won't really understand the complexity of emotions you are experiencing. How could they? Find support from those who truly understand.

[Anonymous]

Not sure why those coming out later in life think they deserve a medal for doing so.

(and no, they don't deserve to get beaten up, harassed under the guise of "religious freedom", etc.)

00:01 is a case in point. She'd been straight enough to have self-described "great sex" and have two kids with her DH, but then had an affair where the sex was wonderful and decided to ditch her husband. If she'd done so for her mentor/boss/hot poolboy/etc. she'd be called a liar, whore, etc.

Does it somehow cause less pain to know you left your spouse for someone of the same sex as opposed to that cute 25-year-old Power Point jockey or 45-year-old alpha male?