Hello Megmock: Well... the first thing I wonder about is what all of this phone checking is about. Perhaps it's just me. I grew up in a household where you simply didn't read anyone else's mail. It was my father's rule. (There were no personal computers or smart phones back then.) And this has carried over into my life as a adult. I have my computer & my wife has hers. (We don't own smart phones.) She doesn't look through my computer & I don't look through hers. I expect her to respect my privacy. And I respect hers.

As I'm understanding the situation, based on what you wrote, you happened on a message where someone asked your husband: "since when is he gay?" So now you've concluded that he is a "closet" gay man & your world is crumbling before your eyes as you put it. So now you're wondering what you should do. (By the way, just for reference, I'll mention I'm an older man who has waged a life-long struggle with gender identity disorder, among other things. My wife & I have been married for 38 years. And I only poked my head out of the closet, so to speak, for the first time a handful of years ago now. It's a long story & I'll spare you the details.)

Anyway... from my perspective... this is a difficult situation. It would, from my perspective, have been better had you not been checking your husband's phones to begin with. But you did. And you can't "un-see" what you saw. Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, I don't think it's appropriate to confront your husband about the possibility of his being gay on the basis of what you read on his phone. You can, of course, do that. What that may, or may not, unleash you cannot know ahead of time. But you may live to regret it afterward. On the other hand, keeping what you read to yourself is going to mean, from the sound of it, that it's going to eat at you for who knows how long? So in a sense this is a "damned if you do & damned if you don't" sort of situation, I fear.

One important question here I personally think is, assuming your husband is gay, does it appear he's actually doing anything about it. And if not, does it matter? In other words do you suspect he's hooking up with other men? Does it appear he's spending hours-on-end watching gay porn on the internet? It's certainly possible that your husband may have been struggling with homosexual feelings for many years without ever actually doing anything overtly about it. It's possible he's not even certain himself how he feels about all of this. Perhaps, in reality, he's not gay strictly speaking. Perhaps he's bisexual... or something else. Of course, I'm just throwing out possibilities here. I obviously don't know at all. But the thing that I do know or at least believe is that confronting your husband with questions regarding his sexual orientation, based on a phrase you read while you were checking his phone, may potentially disturb a bee's nest that, in retrospect, you may wish you had left undisturbed. But then, of course, what that means is that you must figure out what to do with the apparent knowledge you have stumbled across. I don't know what the answer to that is. It's a difficult situation. Perhaps some individual counseling or therapy for yourself might help you to sort out how you feel about all of this. You obviously know your husband better than I do. So perhaps you have some sense of how he's likely to react if you take some kind of action to try to force him "out of the closet", as they say. If you do decide to confront him with what you believe you've learned, I think the only way to go about it is to tell him what you read, & how you found it, & then ask him... straight out... are you gay? From my perspective I see no purpose in beating around the bush or trying to figure out some delicate way of sugar-coating what has arisen.

I see this is your first post here on PC. So... to PsychCentral… from the Skeezyks! May the time you spend here be of benefit.

PsychCentral is a great place to get information as well as support for mental health issues. The more you post, & reply to other members’ posts, the more a part of the community you will become. Plus there are social groups you can join & chat rooms where you’ll be able to connect with other PC members in real time (once your first 5 posts have been reviewed & approved.) Lots of great stuff! So please keep posting!