If you were married or in a serious relationship (hetero) when you came out...

Before my wife and I were married we were friends and we still are (keeping my fingers crossed).

 

My ex-husband and i are roommates and most days we get along. He is accepting and no he wasn't surprised.

 

My wife is adjusting. She claims to want very much to be friends once the whole process is over, and despite some rough days, I believe that's true. I'm just not entirely sure it's realistic. What attracted me to her in the first place was how different out personalities were in many respects, but we never meshed all that well (for many reasons, not just the fact that I was in the closet). We have a 25-year history, though, so it's worth a try.

 

4 months in... I am still married. My wife is deeply hurt and grieving, as the knowledge I am gay changes the nature of our relationship. Nevertheless, she is more understanding than I am. She accepts me and loves me as I am. We have always been best friends, the good part of coming out is that she says I am so much more like the me she knew when we first met, that I have more life and vitality. Something was lost along the way, but something is being gained.

 

My wife said she was accepting of me, but things are way to complicated now.

She is a woman scorned

 

My situation is somewhat similar. Regardless of whether or not I'm gay, we wouldn't have remained married. We have very little in common. We get along, but I don't think friends is a possibility. He wants to maintain a friendship, but I don't because of our lack of common interests. I don't have other friends like that, all of my friends I can relate to. And in addition to that, I want to discover who I am. I'm in a transition phase and kind of want to leave the past in the past. We live together, so we need to get along, but friends, I'm not sure if that's possible.

 

I was in a pretty serious (there was talk of marriage) straight relationship of ~2 years (I had longer relationships with men before that, but whatever) when I came out and broke it off.

We were friends for a while, but we aren't really now. The reason being that he still had very strong romantic and sexual feelings for me and I didn't share those feelings. He couldn't let go of that without distance from me and I owed it to him to let him have that distance. We no longer speak, but if we bumped into each other it wouldn't probably be that big of a deal. (We would hug and say 'how have you been?' and catch up a few minutes and then go about our lives)

It's my belief that if one person has really strong feelings that the other person does not share, those feeling stand in the way of being actual friends. It's only if you can work through and let go of those feelings that true friendship is possible. And that can take time. And it can take distance. And sometimes it just doesn't work out at all. Which is okay. That's normal.

 

Hi The Haunted

When I came out to my wife just over a year ago we had been married just under 25 years and I wanted to get things out in the open before our anniversary. I was very deeply depressed but I had to tell her the truth no matter what the consequences. She was surprised, had no clue, and very supportive preferring a gay husband to one that had committed suicide.

We decided to stay together and she said she would be ok with me seeing guys for friendship and fun but not a LTR. This has yet to be put to the test, up to now I have wanted to give her time to get used to the idea of a gay husband so have chosen to openly meet guys in real life. I also decided not to go behind her back even though she said she was ok with it because that would feel like cheating. My wife has insisted that I tell no one else, not even our gay next door neighbours (they know already), it’s as though she is ashamed to be married to a gay guy which I find very hurtful.

Sometimes when we are out, or she sees someone on TV, she will occasionally ask me if I think someone’s gay and we will have a discussion. If were out together she doesn’t like me checking out guys, she says “I know you’re gay but please don’t check out guys when your with me”, which I suppose is fair enough except the guys she thinks I’m looking at are not my type, and she has never caught me looking at my dream guys.

We have just come back from holiday and she remarked that she had never seen so many gay guys and girls before so either she is becoming more aware of gay folk or is miss-identifying 2 same sex straight friends.

I feel that after a year it’s time for me to go out meeting folk in real life because my depression has come back with vengeance and to be honest it’s more like she has stepped into my closet rather than me coming out of it. So I’m about to start attending an ice breakers group at my local LGBT centre in Manchester shortly followed by meeting some of my online friends. I think this is really going to be the test of our new open relationship because up to now it’s just been theoretical.

Sale Gay Guy

 

Hi,

It is amazing how a little truth, which goes against the lie/s of society, can change things.

So many of us suffer the guilt of finally telling our spouse the truth.

Sadly, the society we live in is grounded in lies and people demanding to believe them...

Politics
Religion
Relationships
Morality
Justice

People conform to the lies to be accepted, to be loved, because truth is pricey in the face of a society based in lies.

Tom

 

I have remained on good terms with my ex wife. She was surprised, but after the initial hurt she came to accept me. She essentially wanted to make the best of the situation for the sake of our daughters - and I do too.

So we get along fairly well. Her new husband makes that difficult - because he seems to be super insecure - and doesn't like the fact that we get along. But my husband and I attended their wedding, and they attended ours, so I'd say we get along as well as we could. We just don't socialize any more because of her new husband.

 

I came out to my wife a little over a month ago, after she caught me in an affair. We have been married for 19 years, and have two children age 13 & 14. She's been incredibly understanding given the situation. The fact that I was caught cheating on her with a guy, and not a woman, has bizarrely helped the situation. To me, cheating is cheating, and I am ashamed of having done it, even though my emotional needs were not being met in our marriage for some time, and I have been under treatment for depression for the last 10 years. I feel like it was a cowardly way to deal with both the shortcomings in my marriage, and my sexual identity. But, my wife, kids, and everyone has been amazing in their support and understanding.

For now we are separated, but co-parenting. Will most likel get divorced as she is devout Catholic, and any type of open-marriage arrangement is out of the question. I've explained to her that I identify as Bi-sexual, being attracted to both men and women, so it remains to be seen what the future holds. I hope we can remain close friends, and work together in parenting. Despite the short comings in our relationship, and my gender situation, we have always been a great team at raising the kids.

 

Yup! Broke up with my boyfriend of 5 years back in January after finally realising I'm gay and we're now actually on better terms than we were when we were dating. It was a tough few months after the breakup but we kept in touch and he was incredibly understanding. We now talk almost as much and argue way less. ^-^ But we do have plenty in common, so I think that helps.

 

After the initial shock of everything wore off, we've mostly been able to get along well. We both really want that to be the case.

I think we've got all the business hammered out. And then we can hopefully move on from there as good friends. We've always been really good friends.

 

No. The reason we are not friends is not about me being gay. Once one truth came out, others did too. Losing his friendship broke my heart but I will never regret coming out.