My husband is filing for divorce after coming out as gay, and I’m struggling to process how my life went from what I thought was a happy marriage to completely starting over. We are both in our 20s and have spent nearly 10 years building a life together. We’ve had what I genuinely believed was an incredible relationship and marriage, and we share one young child. A few months ago, my husband came to me and shared that he thought he might have feelings for men. He told me he didn’t want to act on those feelings but wanted to be honest with me about what he was experiencing. He also explained that he didn’t want to be intimate with me while he tried to understand these feelings. As difficult as that was to hear, I loved him and wanted him to feel safe being honest with me. I did my best to be supportive. We started couples counseling shortly afterward to work through everything and hopefully find a way forward together. Some sessions felt productive and gave me hope, while others left me feeling defeated. He frequently shared that he didn’t understand why he felt this way but that he wasn’t currently attracted to me because of what he was experiencing. He wasn’t in a place where he could make an effort toward intimacy, so I tried to respect that while finding other ways to strengthen our marriage. The hardest part was the constant back-and-forth. One day, he seemed committed to working on our marriage, and the next, he seemed ready to walk away. I held on to the hope that we could get through this together. A couple of months into this process, he became increasingly secretive with his phone. He would shield his messages, keep his phone close at all times, and leave the room to take calls. He also started expressing that he felt he needed to act on his feelings for men and that being in our marriage was holding him back. I had a gut feeling something else was going on. One night, I looked through his phone, and he found out. What I discovered was devastating. I found a series of messages and calls with another man, including affectionate messages, “cutie,” “love you,” hearts, and memes. They had also been actively looking for apartments together and making plans to leave me. Some messages referenced needing to hang up because I had walked into the room or being disappointed that I had come along because it meant they couldn’t talk. Discovering all of this while I was still trying to save our relationship was heartbreaking. I understand that my husband is navigating something deeply personal, and I don’t blame him for his sexuality. I want him to be able to live authentically. What hurts is the secrecy, the apparent emotional relationship developing while I was still fighting for our marriage, and the loss of the future I thought we were building together. I know I’m not a perfect spouse, and I have never claimed to be. But I loved my husband deeply, supported him, and genuinely tried to make him happy. He was my best friend for nearly 10 years. Now I’m facing the loss of my marriage, the future I envisioned, and the person I thought I knew in a completely different way. I’m especially heartbroken for our child. We have to navigate co-parenting and a new family dynamic, and I worry about how this will affect our little one. I’m also struggling with trust. I feel guarded in ways I never have before, and the thought of letting someone into my life again feels both exciting and terrifying. I want to be someone’s wife again someday and have a lot of love to give and a lot to offer. I am young, a great mom, have a successful professional career, and am attractive. I worry that being divorced with a child will make dating more difficult or cause potential partners to see me differently. For those who have found love after divorce (especially with kids) what was that experience like? Did you find a relationship that was just as fulfilling, or even better, than the one you lost?   submitted by   /u/Own-Reality2570   to   r/Marriage [link]   [comments]