My husband and I have been together for almost 20 years. We met when I was a late teen and him early 20's. We now have two beautiful young children. Our relationship has always been pretty lackluster, we don't fight or argue really. Anyway, it never occurred to me that my husband might be gay. It always seemed like I needed to work on myself to make any change in our relationship. I tried reading some marriage books and they all said the one saying there's a problem is the one that needs to do the most changing so I have always just tried working on myself instead of trying to make it about my spouse.

About a year ago a "relationship" developed between my husband and a male co-worker who he calls "gay (insert name)". It started out with my husband talking about this "game" him and the gay guys at work would play. They had a penis shaped sucker they would hide in each others things. My husband would talk about this game with me and act like it was funny and he acted pretty proud that he was willing to play this game and the other guys wouldn't because he's "confident in his sexuality". I thought this was weird but didn't put much weight on it. 

I should mention during all of this he had been secretly drinking everyday and started chewing. His gay friend at work chewed also. I confronted him about this and as far as I know he did quit doing both.

As time went on he started talking more about this co-workers relationship with his husband and how his husband thought my husband was the hottest guy on their crew. My husband seemed pretty proud of this. Then it turned into how this guy was getting a divorce and he would talk all about how his soon to be ex was treating him so poorly yada yada yada. I thought his investment in all of this was pretty odd, especially how happy he seemed talking about all of this co-worker stuff. 

Then we went on vacation during this "flirtatious" period and part of the vacation was in an area without any cell reception so it was just my husband, the kids and me in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. He acted like he didn't want to be there, he was angry most of the time and it just felt like you could cut the tension with a knife. While on vacation there was a flamboyant guy working in the little store nearby and my husband really chatted him up. We were trying to go and the kids were going crazy but he was so into talking to this guy. Again, I thought it was weird but stuffed it down.

I ended up looking through my husbands phone and found some texts between him and this co-worker. One was a photo of my husband from behind. It looked like the co-worker took the photo while they were walking to lunch and my husband was looking backward at him. I don't remember what the text said now and am kicking myself for deleting the photos I took but it was definately the feeling of "look how sexy you look" and it's true, my husband looked pretty sexy in the pic. I also found in these texts a nude from the co-worker to my husband. It was a photo of the co-worker from the back fully nude with a comment about his "sunburn". Again, I thought this was weird and at the time the thought ran through my head that he's having an emotional affair with this guy. But I justified it all away and figured I had the wrong idea, guys can be gross and weird and this had to be totally normal between friends. I also thought if it's true, I deserved it because of the previous emotional affair I had. So, I deleted the photos I took of the texts and stuffed it down and pushed it away. Until recently...

Recently, we were at my kids swim lessons. The youngests lessons wer a parent/child class where the parent is basically telling the child what to do based on the instructors directions. I noticed the instructor was pretty flamboyant and I thought to myself, watch my husband chat this guy up. Low and behold he starts chatting him up while my youngest starts walking away in the shallow kids pool. My husband and the instructor don't notice but I do. I'm watching this whole thing unfold in disbelief. My child moves across the whole pool, climbs out and walks all the way over to the big pool where my oldest is. I end up walking over and sending my youngest back to class before my husband even notices. Then it was like a switch flipped for him and he stopped chatting with the instructor. This is when my light bulb went off and I was like there's something wrong here, this isn't something I caused.

I'd like to say I'm confident in my findings and I feel like this is proof but I don't think it is. I feel like i need something more. I asked him if he has ever been attracted to a guy and he told me about how his gay co-worker asked him how he knew he wasn't gay and he told him basically that he's never been attracted to a guy like he has been to a woman. He doesn't feel like he's attracted. Then he went on to say that he used to tell himself as a kid "I hope i'm not gay". I mean I can understand this excuse as maybe an OCD/Anxiety type thought. So again, I can justify this all away. I then told him that I thought his co-worker had a crush on him from the way he would talk about him. My husband just said "I don't know, I guess he might've".

There's also a variety of other things and some of which can point to a bad marriage in general and not necessarily being gay. Over the early years our sex life died off, at first he blamed it on my drinking and saying he didn't want me when I was drunk. So, I quit drinking and then he told me that I was less sexual sober. That day I vowed to never deny him sex. I should also note during my drinking days I had an emotional affair with someone so I was able to justify the lack of sex as my fault due to hurting him.

After conceiving our first child he told me he had never been more attracted to me. But that quickly went away and he made the decision on his own to start sleeping on the couch a few weeks after our first was born. He avoided the conversation when I tried to talk about it. Sex was few and far between at this point going 6 months to a couple years between sex. I was often denied for various reasons including him having hemorrhoids until I stopped trying. 

During this time I again thought the more I work on myself and make myself happy the better things will be so I got really healthy. My sex drive was at a peak once I did that and I seduced him by giving him a back massage and this one time in the couple years of no sex at all we conceived our second. During this time he was not really interested in me and I would try to get him to rub my hips because they hurt and he'd poke me a few times with his fingers and be done. After our child was born he wasn't into me like he was right after our first, I was pretty disappointed. 

When we do have sex there's rarely ever any foreplay and he hasn't gone down on me in years. I kind of justified this because the last time I remember him doing it he made a comment seeming a little annoyed that was like "do you even enjoy this?". I don't remember what I said, we were in the middle of the act and I felt bad that I wasn't performing how I should be so maybe he thinks I just don't like it.

After the thing with his co-worker kind of died down and he got a boyfriend my husband seemed to want to work on things with us. We started having sex again but there wasn't any foreplay and he hasn't gone down on me in years. I was mostly initiating during this time, sometimes he did but it kind of died down again and I thought OK this is what happens in long term relationships. So, I waited for him to initiate and it took a couple months. I feel like he initiated after I asked him about being into guys. Almost like he's trying to prove something to himself. For the first time in a really long time he fingered me and the next time he told me that what felt good to me was what's important. I thought this was so bizarre, it's never been about me, why now!?

Some other things to note. When I lost weight and was getting really healthy my husbands best friend was telling him how great I looked and that he needed to tell me. So, my husband told me his friend told him to tell me how great I look. Then nothing, he rarely comments on my appearance, I don't catch him checking me out, he doesn't try to peek at me when I ask him to bring me a towel in the shower. He's also on his phone all the time. Like from the time he gets home until he goes to bed. He will hardly look up at the kids when they want his attention. If I say something he gets cranky about it or he'll stop for a few minutes but then he's right back at it.

One time I was watching a show with a pretty hot and heavy gay sex scene while he was standing in the kitchen. He heard it and came running over to look at the TV saying all excited like "I hope that's not two men". After our sexless time we talked about spicing things up with some toys. I picked out a wearable vibrator with a remote he could control. He thought it was for him! I just said, I guess if you want to try it you can. He never did try it but we never did try it together anyway. He also comments on how good looking guys are. The last one I can remember was a famous person he was describing to me, he couldn't remember the name. He said "you know the really really good looking guy". I had no idea who he was talking about and when he told me it turned out to be a gay guy that looks really feminine.

He's generally disgruntled and frustrated, we moved homes because he thought our house was too small it couldn't stay clean enough etc. and that was hurting him psychologically. We moved and things didn't improve. I always felt like I was contributing to his frustration, constantly walking on egg shells. Until one day after a lot of working on myself I realized it's not me! I might have faults and issues and problems but I'm not the reason he's not happy. That was such a weight lifted. 

After the sports incident with my children I felt pretty confident I knew what was going on but the more time goes by and the fact he's initiating sex again I'm so confused. I don't know if these are valid things, if maybe we just need to work on our relationship more with a counselor or if I'm totally blowing everything out of proportion? What I do know though is that I don't want to be married to a gay man or a gay man in denial.

I don't think my husband knows he's gay, if he's gay I think he's in denial. I don't know if he would ever admit it and I don't know how I would ever divorce him if he doesn't admit it. I'm not sure what kind of proof would be enough actually without an admission. I thought it would be finding more gay photos or porn but I just listed to a book about gay husbands that talks about that kind of thing and I feel like I could justify it away again.

He never has trouble getting hard, I know he watches straight porn. I haven't found gay porn but I also haven't looked on his phone in a long time. I read a lot of other peoples posts in here and they have solid evidence of affairs and I just have a photo and conversations... I'm not sure what to think.

I have an appointment scheduled for myself with a therapist soon. I'm going to lay it all out on the table, maybe speaking it out loud will help me figure things out. Any thoughts or advice is welcome. I'm not sure what a therapist would make of my story. I wonder if they would tell me it's all just speculation, these are problems of a normal marriage and I'm at fault for half of it or, if I would get validation. I'm not sure what I'm looking for with therapy. Any thoughts are welcome, thank you for reading.

 

Last edited by lookingforanswers123 (Yesterday 9:37 pm)