Married friends coming out?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm on the other side of this man whose wife has come out. It hurts. And for some reason, people think I'm not supposed to hurt. They think I should be happy because "it's not me", and "at least she didn't cheat". All those times she didn't want to sleep with me or complained about what I was doing, weren't really about me. That's great, right? It doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel great to know that the life you built with someone was a total lie. It doesn't feel great to know that the person you love, never loved you in the way you thougt they did. But I'm selfish for thinking this way. I wonder if she just used me to have kids. I'm supposed to be happy she's brave enough to live her truth and find her happiness. Maybe someday I will get there, but right now I resent her a lot and find it hard to be around her except when I have to be because of our kids. Thankfully the kids are young enough that none of this seems to be affecting them. So great for your friends, OP I hope your friend's husbands are doing better than I am.

Do you think she really knew the whole time? And when she started to know, did she fully know right away?
As the wife in this, I can assure you that if she was lying to you, she was also lying to herself, and probably had to over and over again.
I definitely had to gaslight myself, many times over, while I processed.

Understandable that you don’t feel good about this, of course. You are using a lot of your energy to resent her that you could use elsewhere to try to understand the circumstances that led to what happened and maybe find peace. In other ways, try to hate her less, and instead hate the things that got in the way of her finding this out before getting married.

I’m guessing that like myself, she entered the marriage in good faith and just didn’t know. She also likely did love you on some level and just didn’t know that it was supposed to feel different for her.

Lack of sexual experience, low self confidence, and having seen my parents and family react very negatively to other family members who came out, all got in the way of me figuring things out prior to marriage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

When the issue is mixed orientation, there is no betrayal of the straight spouse.

Oh, there most definitely is. The entire relationship is a betrayal. I'm the PP whose husband was cheating with men. I feel similarly to the PP before me whose wife left him and came out. My ex robbed me of 22 years of my life -- the prime years that set your course. It is most definitely a betrayal that he didn't (and still doesn't!) have the strength to be honest with himself and me by extension.

If he was actively cheating with men during the marriage, then yeah.
That isn’t necessarily what happened in these other cases.
When I told my husband I wanted to leave, I had not yet actually been with a woman.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the pandemic made people realize life is short and there are no guarantees.

You’re guaranteed death and taxes. You have to die but you don’t have to pay taxes….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm on the other side of this man whose wife has come out. It hurts. And for some reason, people think I'm not supposed to hurt. They think I should be happy because "it's not me", and "at least she didn't cheat". All those times she didn't want to sleep with me or complained about what I was doing, weren't really about me. That's great, right? It doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel great to know that the life you built with someone was a total lie. It doesn't feel great to know that the person you love, never loved you in the way you thougt they did. But I'm selfish for thinking this way. I wonder if she just used me to have kids. I'm supposed to be happy she's brave enough to live her truth and find her happiness. Maybe someday I will get there, but right now I resent her a lot and find it hard to be around her except when I have to be because of our kids. Thankfully the kids are young enough that none of this seems to be affecting them. So great for your friends, OP I hope your friend's husbands are doing better than I am.

Do you think she really knew the whole time? And when she started to know, did she fully know right away?
As the wife in this, I can assure you that if she was lying to you, she was also lying to herself, and probably had to over and over again.
I definitely had to gaslight myself, many times over, while I processed.

Understandable that you don’t feel good about this, of course. You are using a lot of your energy to resent her that you could use elsewhere to try to understand the circumstances that led to what happened and maybe find peace. In other ways, try to hate her less, and instead hate the things that got in the way of her finding this out before getting married.

I’m guessing that like myself, she entered the marriage in good faith and just didn’t know. She also likely did love you on some level and just didn’t know that it was supposed to feel different for her.

Lack of sexual experience, low self confidence, and having seen my parents and family react very negatively to other family members who came out, all got in the way of me figuring things out prior to marriage.

Lots of people have those issues or worse and still manage to come out before marrying someone under false pretenses and messing up that person's life. The "things that got in the way", for people who came of age in the 2000s and later, outside of specific religious cultures which push adolescent marriage and where coming out truly does mean and end to life as you know it, include a level of self-deception and lack of self-awareness which are thankfully rare. (And that's the best-case scenario where they truly didn't realize it.) That doesn't mean you're supposed to punish yourself for the rest of your life for it or stay in that marriage, but if you don't realize that your actions caused someone to suffer in significant ways and that their anger is justified, that's really not great. They were lied to and betrayed by their spouse, who in a set of circumstances where most people don't lie to themselves and get involved in these kinds of marriages, made a series of choices to do that. T

[Anonymous]

I only know one person in real life who did this. Left her husband for a woman. Girlfriend turned out to be jealous, possessive and emotionally (and possibly physically) abusive—it was bad. Now she’s back with a man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm on the other side of this man whose wife has come out. It hurts. And for some reason, people think I'm not supposed to hurt. They think I should be happy because "it's not me", and "at least she didn't cheat". All those times she didn't want to sleep with me or complained about what I was doing, weren't really about me. That's great, right? It doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel great to know that the life you built with someone was a total lie. It doesn't feel great to know that the person you love, never loved you in the way you thougt they did. But I'm selfish for thinking this way. I wonder if she just used me to have kids. I'm supposed to be happy she's brave enough to live her truth and find her happiness. Maybe someday I will get there, but right now I resent her a lot and find it hard to be around her except when I have to be because of our kids. Thankfully the kids are young enough that none of this seems to be affecting them. So great for your friends, OP I hope your friend's husbands are doing better than I am.

Do you think she really knew the whole time? And when she started to know, did she fully know right away?
As the wife in this, I can assure you that if she was lying to you, she was also lying to herself, and probably had to over and over again.
I definitely had to gaslight myself, many times over, while I processed.

Understandable that you don’t feel good about this, of course. You are using a lot of your energy to resent her that you could use elsewhere to try to understand the circumstances that led to what happened and maybe find peace. In other ways, try to hate her less, and instead hate the things that got in the way of her finding this out before getting married.

I’m guessing that like myself, she entered the marriage in good faith and just didn’t know. She also likely did love you on some level and just didn’t know that it was supposed to feel different for her.

Lack of sexual experience, low self confidence, and having seen my parents and family react very negatively to other family members who came out, all got in the way of me figuring things out prior to marriage.

Way to make it all about you lady! Could you possibly be anymore self absorbed? He's hurt and upset, and guess what he has every right to be! You want people to empathize with you try having some first

[Anonymous]

Do you think she really knew the whole time? And when she started to know, did she fully know right away?
As the wife in this, I can assure you that if she was lying to you, she was also lying to herself, and probably had to over and over again.
I definitely had to gaslight myself, many times over, while I processed.

The term "gaslighting" comes from a movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslight_(1944_film)) about a husband who tries to manipulate his wife into thinking she is crazy. As applied in everyday use, it means one person trying to convince another the other person is crazy by manipulating them.

You may have deluded yourself (and you definitely deceived your husband), but cannot gaslight yourself.

Watch the movie. Learn something.

[Anonymous]

Actually I was promoted very quickly without getting extra schooling so it did not take that long.

How long did it take? Did your husband know you were planning to leave him once you reached a certain economic point during this time?

“Living student loan”? Wtf are you talking about? The entire time we were married, we were either both working, or I was at home taking care of babies and young kids, or I was working and had kids in daycare and was doing drop offs and pick up. We BOTH benefitted from living in the same house. How great would it have been for him if we were supporting two households while kids were in daycare?

The real question is "How great would it have been for him if had a wife that loved him and was not plotting to leave him for someone else?"

At least try to think things through before being such a jerk.

I wish you were smart enough to see the irony in that remark. You cannot take the pounding you are getting on DCUM because, at some level, you know that the way you treat your family was horrible.

[Anonymous]

A male friend just did it, but after divorcing his wife. Funny thing is that when I first met him I thought he was gay. Then he introduced me to his wife. Funny how first impressions are...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

When the issue is mixed orientation, there is no betrayal of the straight spouse.

Oh, there most definitely is. The entire relationship is a betrayal. I'm the PP whose husband was cheating with men. I feel similarly to the PP before me whose wife left him and came out. My ex robbed me of 22 years of my life -- the prime years that set your course. It is most definitely a betrayal that he didn't (and still doesn't!) have the strength to be honest with himself and me by extension.

If he was actively cheating with men during the marriage, then yeah.
That isn’t necessarily what happened in these other cases.
When I told my husband I wanted to leave, I had not yet actually been with a woman.

NP, I disagree, I find it shameful that someone knows and then repressed their true self for whatever reason then basically traps another human into a commitment that WILL fail not because of anything real but because of the repressed orientation.

[Anonymous]

I know I shouldn’t let the MRA poster get to me so much, but it is infuriating having someone make wild assumptions and accusations, who has absolutely no understanding of what women of limited means in unhappy marriages have to go through and put up with in order to get out. He keeps talking as if he loved a woman who left him for someone else. Clearly he is not my ex.

Your EXDH has every reason to call you out on the one issue you will not face. You deceived him and then blamed society, your parents, etc. for not letting you be who you are.

This poster pops up from time to time and it is always the same. I never hear this type of vitriol from them when a woman decides to leave her husband for any other reason - only the reason in the scenario that this thread is about.
The only explanation I can think of is homophobia and misogyny.

The explanation you need is you are being called out on your deception. Plenty of posters, me included, have called out both men and women when they deceived their families prior to leaving them to date or for someone else.

Sadly, you use the term "homophobia" to cloak your defense of plotting to leave your DH to play the field. The fact that you plotted to leave to date women is not the issue. The fact that you hid your plot from your husband is.

[Anonymous]

I think as each day passes, non-cis gender identity and non-het sexuality are becoming more and more widely accepted and understood. As the space of acceptance opens wider, people feel more confident in their identities and more comfortable coming out. Possibly the pandemic and emotional turmoil of 2020 catalyzed this for many because they realized what they may be sacrificing/losing/wasting by being in a relationship that doesn’t fulfill their identity.

To the PP who suggests women are simply tired of men — what a narrow — and patriarchal — view of bi and female homosexuality. How presumptuous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm on the other side of this man whose wife has come out. It hurts. And for some reason, people think I'm not supposed to hurt. They think I should be happy because "it's not me", and "at least she didn't cheat". All those times she didn't want to sleep with me or complained about what I was doing, weren't really about me. That's great, right? It doesn't feel great. It doesn't feel great to know that the life you built with someone was a total lie. It doesn't feel great to know that the person you love, never loved you in the way you thougt they did. But I'm selfish for thinking this way. I wonder if she just used me to have kids. I'm supposed to be happy she's brave enough to live her truth and find her happiness. Maybe someday I will get there, but right now I resent her a lot and find it hard to be around her except when I have to be because of our kids. Thankfully the kids are young enough that none of this seems to be affecting them. So great for your friends, OP I hope your friend's husbands are doing better than I am.

That sucks. It’s brutal that you have been so hurt and everyone is going to tell your wife how great she is for what she is doing. She stole years from you. But, if your kids are still young, you, too, are still young enough to bounce back, and I can almost assure you that you are going to be much happier with a partner that is sexually compatible with you. Don’t waste any time looking in the rear-view mirror on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the last 6 months I’ve had 3 married, adult friends come out as lesbians. All are/were married to men and 2/3 have children. Is this a pandemic thing (as in, something they discovered during the pandemic)? Anyone else experienced this? It just seems like a lot at once having never happened before!

They should be ashamed. This should have been thought about before they committed to having kids, and to a husband. I'm tired of the unstable people who don't think about their kids, or grand-kids or others they made commitments to. They are selfish Fs which I would put in the recycle bin as in no longer a friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I know I shouldn’t let the MRA poster get to me so much, but it is infuriating having someone make wild assumptions and accusations, who has absolutely no understanding of what women of limited means in unhappy marriages have to go through and put up with in order to get out. He keeps talking as if he loved a woman who left him for someone else. Clearly he is not my ex.

Your EXDH has every reason to call you out on the one issue you will not face. You deceived him and then blamed society, your parents, etc. for not letting you be who you are.

This poster pops up from time to time and it is always the same. I never hear this type of vitriol from them when a woman decides to leave her husband for any other reason - only the reason in the scenario that this thread is about.
The only explanation I can think of is homophobia and misogyny.

The explanation you need is you are being called out on your deception. Plenty of posters, me included, have called out both men and women when they deceived their families prior to leaving them to date or for someone else.

Sadly, you use the term "homophobia" to cloak your defense of plotting to leave your DH to play the field. The fact that you plotted to leave to date women is not the issue. The fact that you hid your plot from your husband is.

What difference does it make what reason someone had to leave their marriage, when they start making plans to leave?
The outcome is the same. The totality of my “plot” was going back to work in order to be able to stand on my own two feet, which BENEFITS HIM because he does not have to foot the entire bill of raising the kids, nor does he pay alimony.
Same as any other woman unhappy in a marriage for any other reason.
You NEVER answered my question about what you think these women should do.