We told our children about a week ago that we were separating. I chose not to divulge the reason for our split for two reasons. One is that what is happening between my husband and myself is between us. The other is that as my husband has not accepted the fact that he is gay, I didn't want to set off an emotional breakdown for him. It's not my call as to when he should come out. I have recommended therapy for him and he is considering it. If the time comes that he is finally ready to come out, I will be there with him when he tells our children. 

My kids are slightly younger than yours...15, 17, and 19. They mostly want to know how our separation will affect them. That is what we talked about with them. I have worked very hard to put my anger aside so that we can effectively co-parent our children. It is all so very new for us and things might change but we are working hard to make sure there are no "bad" guys in this and so that our children know they do not have to choose between us. We have even gone so far as to say if they want to do something with both of us it can be done. All of this has helped my kids to deal with it pretty well so far. I know we're going to face challenges but so far it's going as well as can be expected. That's my long winded way of saying I don't think the "experts" can make a hard fast rule about something like this.

Walkbymyself, I am so thrilled you started this thread, because I am really struggling with this. I started to respond but realized I still have so many conflicted feelings, I will need to think more about it before really adding my full two cents.

For now, son knows some information, but not all. He had just turned 14 when I kicked STBX out, and is 15.5 now. I can better explain all the factors another time, but I started down this path a bit by accident, because I wasn't sure how things were going to unfold. STBX admitted he was bringing anonymous male sex partners to our home going back six years. My immediate concerns were to get him out of the house and change the locks. I had a dear gay friend from college who was murdered in 1998 by an anonymous sex partner that he met on vacation. Every news report, like the one listed above by Walkbymyself and the one just this week about the Toronto serial killer's confession, puts me right back in a feeling of fear and pain and panic. I could never have gone on living in the same house with my STBX after he told me that. My STBX also knew my friend who was killed--he said he wasn't too surprised that I reacted the way I did--he knows full well that what he does is dangerous on many levels (disease, etc.) and it may be that the danger and self-destructive aspect makes it all the more attractive to him. (And he may possibly take sadistic pleasure in causing me pain? Not clear, but he knew full well this history and event and how it affected me and our friends.) STBX is in total denial and has been really erratic and sometimes abusive since the separation. I told son I no longer trusted dad and dad had friends around the house that I didn't know and didn't trust, and therefore we were going to be safe and set this new boundary.

So--the fear of what's next is real--and all the variations of what might happen next are many, and the only positive one--that my husband gets healthy and comes out--seems remote. I can explain more another time but for now, we are still in the middle limbo, and I am mainly focused on getting out of the marriage safely and keeping things as routine and stable as possible for my son. Our therapists support and recommend that middle ground, but also advised to work toward full disclosure as the situation changes/warrants, and as my son becomes an adult (closer to 18).

I should say, I really struggled with questions of whether there might be a way to tell my daughter "half" the truth, or "three-quarters" of the truth, because at a certain point it seemed impossible to find a place to draw the line and say "we can stop here and not tell her more than this."  In our situation, that was really difficult because there were things that directly involved my daughter -- before I made the discovery, for example, she had come home from college and found a condom wrapper in her bed.  I blamed some contractors who had been doing the floors, but it always bothered me that I didn't think it was really plausible that they'd have had the opportunity to carry this off in our house, which had so many people in it at the time.  The contractors in turn blamed my daughter, and my husband just stood by and allowed her to be wrongfully accused.

That's one of the incidents that I'm talking about when I say this involved her.  I initially felt like this was between me and my husband, but I've come more around to my daughter's way of thinking, that it's her origin story, too.  I was gaslighted for over half my life, but at least the first half of my life was grounded in reality.  For her, the gaslighting affected the entirety of her life, from birth.  As she sees it, it's far more directly impacting her than me.

Last edited by walkbymyself (February 1, 2019 5:33 pm)

walkby,
 on the main straight spouse page there's a link for children, and if you click it, you'll see that one such child has created a website for other children.  One section of it is Q and A, where the children post their responses to a series of questions.  There is no question about "knowing or not knowing," but the replies to the existing questions are enlightening, and perhaps the site's creator would be open to posing that question about whether it's better to know the truth.

On My Own Two Feet,
   I understand your dilemma of not wanting to derail your children.  I felt the same when my ex disclosed to me back in March of 2015 that he had decided he was transgendered and was planning to transition (he later decided to stay in the closet and have his man cake out in the world and eat it at home while wearing women's lingerie).  Our son, who had had a rocky 10 years starting at 15, was just beginning to move ahead in a more stable way, and I was afraid of derailing him.  At the time, I kept asking my then husband, "What about XXX [our son]?"  and he would simply ignore the question as an inconvenience to his plan.  
   As I related earlier, I still haven't told our son, who is now living a fully adult life and making good choices.  He does know, that we divorced because of something to do with his father, and I suspect he believes his father had an affair (he did actually have what I consider an emotional affair with a former student with whom his relationship had long crossed the line, and was "exploring" whether he might be trans with her, while keeping it all a secret from me).  I have actually been surprised at how my son's and my relationship has changed now that I am no longer married to his father, and at what he has revealed he thought about our relationship.  He's become protective of me, for one thing, which is quite a shift in the parent-child dynamic!  For another, although I was always considered to be "anti-social," I've made an effort to have a full social life since I've been on my own, and my son, seeing my calendar one day, said, "For what it's worth, Mom, I never considered you the anti-social one." 
    I tell you this, OnMyOwn, because you might be pleasantly surprised by how your sons handle the news.  And it might be the best thing for your relationship with them to tell them the truth, and for them to see that you were not simply a "sad person" but were struggling along bearing the burden of your husband's decisions and his closeted life.  Honesty and transparency are important values to impart to your sons.  You are exactly right that you cannot shield them from the consequences of their father's choices, and you shouldn't shield their father from the consequences of his choices, either.  It is not our job to suffer their consequences.