The Day I Found Out My Husband Was Gay
I thought I had a bad thrush infection. I used to get thrush all the time, but this case was way more painful than usual, so I went to the GP. He took a look and said to me, “Do you know what genital herpes are?” He asked me if I’d been with someone other than my husband. When I said I hadn’t, he said, “You need to have a discussion with your husband.”
I knew there was no way he would have been with someone else. It was so far from the sort of person he was, what he stood for. It wasn’t possible. I didn’t think about it again until a couple of days later when the kids wanted money for the school canteen. I didn’t have any money so I went to his work bag, where I knew he always had coins. I reached into the pocket where kept his coins and scooped out a condom with a gel sachet. It stopped me in my tracks.
I asked, “Are you having sex with someone else?” He was at the stove cooking spaghetti bolognese – I haven’t been able to eat spaghetti bolognese since. He turned off the stove, put his back to the cooktop and said, “Yes, I am.” He told me he wasn’t sleeping with women, he was sleeping with men, that he’d been doing it since before we got married, and that it didn’t mean anything. Those words are still burnt into my brain.
My world ended there. It wasn’t just the infidelity that shocked me – it was the deceit, the lies. I realised I didn’t know the man I had been sharing my life with for more than 20 years.
We had been married 18 years and I was convinced I’d gotten the last good guy on earth. He was kind, considerate, family-oriented. A lot of our friends said we were the couple they looked up to, the ones that still held hands, that did everything together every weekend. He didn’t go to the pub after work on Friday – he’d come home and cook dinner. He said from when he finished work on Friday until Monday morning was family time.
We stayed together for another 18 months. We saw a number of counsellors. I was trying to understand what he did because I wanted to fix it. I asked loads of questions – if I could go back in time I’d tell myself, don’t go there. He told me he’d been having sex with four or five different men a week, going to beats and gay saunas. Because we had our own business and he was out on jobs all day, he had the freedom to come and go on his own schedule.
I started to see a lot of things in a different light. Whenever we had people over, he used to take all the kids down to the park instead of chilling with the other husbands, which made all the other wives love him. In counselling he admitted the reason he did that was because he was very poor at reading signals and would sometimes wonder if one of the husbands was giving him the eye. He decided it was best to keep right out of it and take the kids to the park.
I offered to do whatever he needed. I asked if I needed to consider anal sex. He said that he didn’t want to do that with me. He said our sex was amazing, he didn’t want to ruin it with the down and dirty. He said he wanted to keep the down and dirty for the people he didn’t respect. He said he wasn’t gay, he was bisexual. But he only ever slept with other men.
I tried for two years to understand. I did it for the children. I said, I’ll forgive you this just the one time. You don’t get a second chance. Then he gave me a second STI. That was the end.
He was my best friend, my soul mate. I lost my husband, I lost my future, I lost my past. I couldn’t even have family photos on display any more, because I now doubted the happy moments in those photos.
A lot of our friends didn’t know who to support. Some people I thought were really good friends said moronic things like, “Can’t you let him have his little bit on the side?” Others said, “You must have known that he was gay”. Some said, “It must have been really hard for him keeping that secret.” They didn’t get that he cheated on me, he lied to me, he gaslighted me. It’s a story that’s very common. In our peer-to-peer support group, you keep hearing the same stories over and over again.
““There’s a real imbalance in empathy when this happens. It’s like our husbands come out of the closet, and we go into it.””
I was really proud of how our children reacted. My son, who was in the second last year of high school, said, “Dad, I love you forever, I’m fine with your sexuality, but what I cannot ever forgive you for is that you lied to my mum for over 18 years, cheated on her and broke her heart, and now my sister and I have to pick up the pieces.” I remember thinking, “Who are you? Who took my son away and brought back this grown-up person?”
My daughter was actually excited when he came out. She said, “That’s so cool – gay people dress so well.” A little while later she was really disappointed. He had always been a daggy dresser; she thought he’d get a bit of style about him. She was expecting him to go really flamboyant, like Joel Creasey, but he still dresses the same way.
I tried to keep things amicable between us. I wanted our children to feel they were still part of a family, even if it was spread across two separate houses. I told them their father was still a good person, even though he’d done some bad things. But he’s ruined his relationships with both of them, because of the way he’s treated them. My daughter in particular is angry with him – and with me. She said, “Why weren’t you more angry with him?” I said, “You’ve got no idea the level of my anger. It runs so deep and so hot, if I let it out it would scorch the earth for miles around.”
He started another relationship very quickly. It was one of his regulars at one of the gay spas he went to. This man had always wanted to take it further so when the marriage ended, they started dating. I knew about him because the children would go over a couple of times a week and they mentioned him all the time. I told my husband, “If he’s going to be there with the kids, I want to meet him.” He was actually the most beautiful soul; I really loved him. They broke up after a year because of the way my husband treated him.
I love the fact that the world is more accepting of people who are gays or lesbians or trans, but there’s a real imbalance in empathy when this happens. It’s like our husbands come out of the closet, and we go into it. We’re the people who had our hearts ripped out when our partners find the guts to be who they want to be – but no-one wants to hear our side of the story. People are so happy for our former partners when they are beginning their new lives, but have no time for us as we try and pick up the pieces of our own. There’s no acknowledgement of how devastating it is to find out your entire life has been a lie.
I’ve been surprised at how many people go through this. I’m part of an online peer-to-peer support group, Healing Beyond Discovery, and we get 60 to 70 visits to our website every month. So many people in our group have had irreparable harm done to them. For some, it changes everything, it defines who they are. Others are able to start a new life. I just got an email from one member of our peer-to-peer support group who has found someone new. She said, thank you for all the help and companionship, but I’m moving on.
I feel so jealous of anyone who can find love and companionship again. I’m 62 and I don’t think I’ll ever have another relationship. Every time I meet someone I think, “What am I going to find out about you down the line?”
For more, visit healingbeyonddiscovery.org
Our interviewee chose to remain anonymous.