The day after New Year’s when he went back to work after having been away for a week, he found out his best friend Rob was let go from his job. My husband was very upset. He told me he was more upset than Rob was about it. They gave him two weeks notice. His last day would be Friday, January 12.
My husband was even quieter than usual coming home after work during those two weeks leading up to January 12. He said it was just a really busy week at work. During this time, I was emailing him at work with various options for our cruise vacation. He told me he had a big project coming up and now not sure if he could get away in February as he has originally wanted.
On Friday night, January 12, (incidentally it was also my husband’s “best friend” Rob’s last day at work), while I was putting our son to bed, my husband called out and asked if he could go to the mall. I assumed he was going to make an exchange for something. I said fine as I couldn’t ask him more questions since I was reading a bedtime story to our son. After coming out of our son’s bedroom and smelling my husband’s cologne in our bedroom, I found it strange that he would put cologne on just to go to the mall. I was also getting ready and preparing food for my husband’s Mom’s and our son’s joint birthday celebration the next day. I thought it was odd that he chose that night to go to the mall (something he rarely does) when he should be helping me prepare for the party the next day.
I decided to call him on his cell phone and asked why he was out when we had a party to get ready for and when he was going to be home. He told me he didn’t know what time he would be home. Then I pressed, “What is going on?” That’s when he dropped the bomb and said “I am filing for divorce next week!” I was shocked!!! What? I had no idea and did not see it coming at all! He said we could talk about it when he got home and hung up. Two hours passed by and I called him again inquiring when he was coming home so we could talk. He said he didn’t know. Two additional hours went by, and this time he wasn’t answering his cell phone.
Needless to say, I sat in disbelief just waiting for him to come home, anticipating an explanation. He finally walked in at midnight. When I inquired where he was, he said it was no longer any of my concern and that there was nothing to talk about. He said he had taken his wedding ring off for two weeks, and I never even noticed. I asked him if there was someone else and he said “NO!” Right at that moment when I looked into his eyes, that’s when I KNEW there was someone else, AND THAT IT WAS ANOTHER MAN!
He slept on the couch that night. I didn’t sleep at all that night. Finally at
5 a.m., I knew my son would be getting up soon, so I went to the living room and asked him, “Are you GAY or Bisexual? How could this have happened? We have a child together!” All these questions I had, but he would not say a word or answer me. All he said was “I’ve been lying to you. I’ve been pretending. I only acted like I was having a good time when we just had a dinner party the week before.” He also told me he went to see a therapist three times that week, and that he couldn’t eat and was throwing up. I do believe that was the week he admitted to himself that he is in fact gay.
The next day, he packed a duffle bag of clothes and left. Each time he came back to see our son, he would take carloads of his clothes, and now he has pretty much taken all his clothes and personal belonging. Two weeks later, on the weekend of our son’s fifth birthday, he served me with divorce papers.
Denial
That “Bomb Drop” was about five months ago. To this day, he still has not come out to admit that he is gay. I have repeatedly begged him to please be honest with me for the sake of us being able to work together to co-parent our son. He won’t. He is a coward, a man with absolutely no integrity, and I have lost all respect of him for how he has handled this situation.
The Truth
At first, I thought his relationship was with Rob, but during these past five months, I found out he has been living with Adam, his gay instructor. He took Adam to San Francisco during Spring Break Week. Adam was still in school at the time studying to be a nurse but just graduated this month. My husband has become quite the Sugar Daddy. He is 42 years old, and his boyfriend just turned 30. My husband makes a very good salary, and we have had a very good standard of living. Since he left us, he spends all his money on Adam and won’t even provide my son and me money for food and necessities. Our divorce pre-trial is coming up in two weeks.
My husband has bought a whole new wardrobe since he left, with styles of clothing that he never wore in the 12 years that I knew him. He has lost about 25 pounds and dropped down two sizes from his normal Large or XL to now a Small in size. He also has a new hairstyle. He used to wear his hair super short and cut it every 6 weeks, but now he leaves it curly and longer at the top. He has trimmed down in size and wears clothes that look very homosexual to me, not feminine but just boyish like.
The Blame Game
I have to say one of the worst parts of dealing with my husband being gay is the blame thing. He honestly believes that I am the blame for everything! It saddens me that he twists things to make me out to be a horrible person, and that I was a bad wife that didn’t work with him or loved him. He tells me I am the reason why he had to divorce me, and that I had control issues.
I begged him to be honest with me, to come clean and explain to me what happened to him so that I can have closure and to be able to better deal with him and to co-parent with him for our son in the future. He won’t. Instead, he talks to me belligerently, full of anger, blames me for everything and treats me with such hostility.
I walked on eggshells around him for many years with the silent treatment, and he always snapped at me. I couldn’t make him happy no matter what I did. He would complain how long it took me to do grocery shopping. I would race home when I thought I’d been gone longer than one hour, speeding through red lights just to get home so he wouldn’t be angry with me. He complained I talked too long on the phone with my best friends from my home state, even though I would do it after he and my son went to bed so it wasn’t during our family time. I stopped talking to my friends all together. I lived like a prisoner in my own home. Even though I was a successful professional woman when I worked before my son was born, I lost all of my self-esteem from all his years of criticizing me. He became a non-loving and non-supportive husband. His betrayal is horrendous and unimaginable.
He said to me “You have been so controlling of me, and so unsupportive of me as a husband that I really don't know why I did not do this earlier. He said I was manipulative and that I drove him away! He told me he finally made the choice of being happy and not continue to fake a loving relationship that was so one-sided. He is even claiming that the love was his side! He said I was not a partner in our marriage. “If I had really felt that we were a mutually contributing couple then maybe I would still be with you today.”
This is an excerpt form an email he sent me after he filed for divorce. “The counselors said you were controlling and that if you did not change you will lose your husband. Guess what -you lost me. You ask what I have become. Really it's a happy person. I feel so bad about having to leave our son but I am so sure that this is the right thing. Granted there are two sides to this but if you could have been a better "partner" this would not have had to happen.
“ He went as far to say, “If I am gay, bi or whatever, it has nothing to do with me filing for divorce no matter what you may think.”
Self-discovery
Through therapy, I learned that even if I did everything the way he wanted, he still wouldn’t have been happy with me because he is gay. I learned that I didn’t make him gay and I didn’t drive him away to be a homosexual. I am still struggling with how he could be so angry with me. I do honestly believe that he didn’t know he was gay when he met me, fell in love, and married me. I believe he realized how comfortable and happy he was once he met Adam in the past two years and came to realize that’s who he is and who he would rather be with. I always thought he was a great dad and he does love his son, but his need to be with another man far outweighs his love for his only child.