[Megmock]

Hello everyone I am new bee to this site.Hello I recently discovered that my husband is gay. We are married for 11years and have two beautiful kids. I had my doubts but never really act on it and I knew if I would've asked him he would have denied like all other things. He is always interested in my conversation with my friends and like to check my phone and I never really have any problem with that because I have nothing to hide. I use to occasionally check his work phone (basic old model) too which he didn't mind and he was not concerned either. Since he kept using my phone I thought to gift him a smart phone so he can have his own conversations with his friends specially on WhatsApp. Since he started using his smartphone I never really bothered to check his work phone. He was away last weekend with his friends and he left his work phone home. I thought of checking it and found a msg where someone had asked him 'since when he is gay?' And since I read it my whole world was crumbling in front of my eyes. Everything was making sense. As sad as it sounds I don't want our marriage to end but I am not sure if I can stay with him like this for rest of my life. Please note my family and his family are old fashioned narrow minded. I have had training at work about LGBT and learned that there are some people who are A sexual. I always thought he might be one since he was always turning me down. Also I work very closely with children and I've seen the affect on them when their family break. I want to confront him very sensitively as I know it isn't going to be easy for him too. My concern is how should I break it to him, how will he react to it, I have got the evidence from his phone. I've checked his phone yesterday and everything is wiped out. At first i though he must have left the msg in the inbox on purpose for me to find out but the first question he asked me on his return was if I've looked in his phone, but I denied. Please help me what should I do?

[Skeezyks]

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!

[~Christina]

My husbands previous marriage was 18 years and 3 kids later and decided she was finally going to be true to herself and already had an active relationship with a woman ....needless to say the marriage ended.

The kids were upset of course but they adjusted to her being who she was.

Do you have a Therapist you can talk to about this ?

I'm sorry you're going through this.

((((( hugs ))))))

[Crazy Hitch]

I wouldn't jump to conclusions based on someone's text asking him if he's gay. If you didn't hear it straight from the horse's mouth; then you didn't hear it at all.

What you need is an upfront conversation. You need to tell him you snooped on his phone; saw a text; and it's been bothering you ever since.

If he says he is gay; well; then that's something the two of you can work on moving forward.

[Blanche_deveraux]

That really doesn't seem like damning evidence, talking about someone else being gay. In the words of a famous drag icon, who doesn't love to spill the tea?

[Megmock]

Ok so I might be jumping to the conclusion. I appreciate the comments and support from everyone. But I am going to clear it wit him about it and see what happens.

[5435lonely]

Originally Posted by Megmock

Hello everyone I am new bee to this site.Hello I recently discovered that my husband is gay. We are married for 11years and have two beautiful kids. I had my doubts but never really act on it and I knew if I would've asked him he would have denied like all other things. He is always interested in my conversation with my friends and like to check my phone and I never really have any problem with that because I have nothing to hide. I use to occasionally check his work phone (basic old model) too which he didn't mind and he was not concerned either. Since he kept using my phone I thought to gift him a smart phone so he can have his own conversations with his friends specially on WhatsApp. Since he started using his smartphone I never really bothered to check his work phone. He was away last weekend with his friends and he left his work phone home. I thought of checking it and found a msg where someone had asked him 'since when he is gay?' And since I read it my whole world was crumbling in front of my eyes. Everything was making sense. As sad as it sounds I don't want our marriage to end but I am not sure if I can stay with him like this for rest of my life. Please note my family and his family are old fashioned narrow minded. I have had training at work about LGBT and learned that there are some people who are A sexual. I always thought he might be one since he was always turning me down. Also I work very closely with children and I've seen the affect on them when their family break. I want to confront him very sensitively as I know it isn't going to be easy for him too. My concern is how should I break it to him, how will he react to it, I have got the evidence from his phone. I've checked his phone yesterday and everything is wiped out. At first i though he must have left the msg in the inbox on purpose for me to find out but the first question he asked me on his return was if I've looked in his phone, but I denied. Please help me what should I do?

have a talk with your husband & the 4 of you should remain together in the marital home, for the sake of the children, your 4 parents, etc. , but find a way to have separate bedrooms. divorce is painful for everyone. i don't know that it's a good idea to tell him how you found out, but rather you had a feeling that his sexual orientation has changed.

[Artchic528]

Originally Posted by 5435lonely

have a talk with your husband & the 4 of you should remain together in the marital home, for the sake of the children, your 4 parents, etc. , but find a way to have separate bedrooms. divorce is painful for everyone. i don't know that it's a good idea to tell him how you found out, but rather you had a feeling that his sexual orientation has changed.

I'd just go separate ways if the marriage winds up being annulled. Nothing damages kids more than having their parents live in the same home and are no longer married.

[Erebos]

This rubbish about staying together for the sake of the kids.
Children learn how to have successful relationships based on what they see at home.
Two people living together in eternal misery, or worse still trying to maintain extra martial affairs to fulfill needs, does a lifetime of damage.
My parents stayed together for us kids. You know how utterly soul destroying it is to feel like the cause of your parents unfulfilled relationships and unhappiness.
And if you think they don't know....your wrong. They always know.
I spent ages thinking there was some terrible secret our family were hiding.
The truth would have been much easier to bear.

All the best though OP, I do wish you all the luck, and hope things work out for the best.

[MickeyCheeky]

Talk with him about this; jumping to conclusion can be quite dangerous.