What if you are a wife or a girlfriend?

You are the wife or girlfriend of a man with whom you have lived, and have been in love with, for a long time, perhaps 10, 20 years or 30 years or more. You might have been aware that things have not been as good in the relationship as they used to be. He is less communicative than he used to be. He is less inclined to have sex with you, some give up completely. He is spending more time away from home, or at the computer keyboard than he used to, rather than being with you.

You enter into the room where he is working on the computer, and the computer screen changes immediately....

But you still trust him and might think nothing of it at the time; it is part of the gradual process of a relationship maturing or even tiring.....

Or is it?

It could be exactly what you think it is. Or it could be due to some other reason.

Many men do find the need to recognize and come to terms with their true selves in different ways, but we will concentrate on sexuality here. Elsewhere on this site, we talk about triggers. But what if, unknown to you as a wife, the man decides to recognize that he has homosexual tendencies, or indeed is gay? This could have come about as a result of a trigger.

For you, who could be blissfully unaware of this, the revelation of his true sexuality by whatever means, can be traumatic, especially if he is the man that you have always loved and always trusted. Suddenly, whether he tells you, or whether you discover for yourself, he is someone who has been "lying" to you since the day you met. Or at least, he has not been totally honest with you.  He is not the man you thought you knew.

If in addition to the revelation of his sexuality, he confesses to having followed through his sexuality with other men during the marriage, what is your reaction?

The thing that men in such a position fear most is that they will lose their wife and their family. Divorce - that is, not unnaturally, the knee jerk reaction of many wives.

But some wives can react quite surprisingly under such circumstances, and whereas they will never condone what has happened or what their husband might do in the future, they are prepared to find ways of saving the relationship (often for the sake of the children), by working it through with the husband.

So if this happens to you, do not give up hope immediately, but fight for what you think that you can accept.

Although I know of no statistics to prove it, I suspect that this type situation applies to far more relationships than anyone realizes - it is just not talked about.

Footnote

Remember that in the situation where the husband is gay or bisexual, the one person that a wife or girlfriend should not blame is herself. The "If onlys...." don't work here. "If only I had made myself more attractive to him......" would work if he was going after women. But if he is homosexual, there is little that you could do to stop it.