Hi to all, I'm pleased to join you. I'm happily married (without sex for 12 years), we have a son who has his own family. BUT, I've been a closet gay my entire life and want (NEED) to come out at age 65. However, I must save our marriage. We have zero problems, a perfect marriage (although no sex, my choice). Any help, advice, guidance, from anyone who has come out to their wife and maintained their marriage, lifestyle, etc. would be appreciated. "Why?", you ask. FYI - I grew up in a small Canadian town (no gays that I knew of). I was 35 and living in Toronto when I had the nerve to be with a man. In the past 30 years I've been with many men and concluded that I only want men. I want to tell my wife that I'm gay; however, I could not take rejection from my son, I'd rather die.
I came out as bisexual at 35 and then last year at fifty came out as gay. What are your reasons for needing to come out? My reasons were wanting to be more involved and to keep my parents from finding out from someone else. It is a scary and freeing thing to do. Some of the other members can talk about how it affected their marriage and children,
Hello! Welcome to EC!!! It takes a lot of courage to come out at a later age, we all have those scary moments... But coming out gives us peace and freedom... But of course there are circumstances like yours that has to be taken into consideration... Just try to weigh things and reflect on things you wanted the most then take it from there, there's no need to rush things though just take all the time you needed to think about it... Good Luck!!!
Hi :smilewave and Welcome to EC. With the way things going where I live it might take me until I am a lot older before I come out. Good Luck!
Hi RoadRunner, and welcome to the Later-in-Life crowd. I've made a lot of great friends here in the past couple months, so I'm sure you'll feel comfortable here very quickly as you work through how you want to handle this situation. Just a few thoughts on the "why" part of your post. First of all, being honest with yourself is the prerequisite to finding happiness in life. It sounds like you're accepting yourself as a gay man. You sound like the call for personal integrity is ringing in your ears, calling you to be honest with your wife. Remember a marriage is a partnership built on trust, and we lied to our wives for many years. I never cheated on my wife (for me it was a combination of fear of being found out and a sense of loyalty to the relationship, not a religious/moral superiority complex), but withheld that little bit of news about being gay until a month ago. So, your wife may have other ideas about how she wants to move forward once you come clean with her. All you can do is treat her with the respect she deserves; be prepared for her to lash out at you, she is the injured spouse and you are the cause of the injury. It's an ugly truth but we have to embrace it to get past it. Moving on to your son, is there really a reason to assume he would immediately reject you for being gay? Fear of the unknown easily becomes twisted into the worst possible scenario in our minds, especially when under stress. Step back and look at him, look at your relationship with him, look at how you and your wife raised him. Look at how he interacts with the people in his life. What do you see there, what is actual and what was fear in your mind... You are still the same man who raised him and has been there his whole life, none of that has changed. Of course it will be a shock for him to hear and it may take some time for him to come to grips with this reality, but in the end I can't imagine he would ever reject you. -Rick
Thanks to each of you for your comments. I expect my wife would NOT understand, even though we have not been intimate for so long. I don't want to hurt her, just think it is time for her to know the real reason why I've not intimate with her. In a perfect scenario, life would continue as is (as I said, we get along perfectly) and she would realize when I say, "I'm going to play euchre at Frank's", I'm going there to be with him