Welcome Prince, 

I'm sorry you are going through this stress right now.  I've been exactly where you are and I know just how awful it is.  I hope we can help you move through this and find happiness and peace again in your life. 

I'd like to help you gain some clarity on this situation. 
You're wife comes from a background that shames homosexuality and she refuses to accept herself under that title.  She has told you verbally that she is sexually attracted to women and not to you.  That took a huge leap for her to do that.  It's the biggest secret in her life x a million.  If she's willing to admit something to you that is ashamed to even admit to herself - you must believe her.  This isn't something she just started thinking about out of the blue last week.  She's known since she was a young teen or even earlier and she's built a life around hiding this secret.  She's not going to change her mind about this.  She would never admit it unless she knew it to be true and knew that it wouldn't change later in her life. 

This doesn't mean you have to get a divorce.  Many people choose to stay in a MOM.  We will support you if that's what you want for your life. 

You are indeed fortunate that your wife was honest with you now.  It would have been nice if she had been before you got married, but now is better than 10 years from now after you have kids and a house and have built a life and are working toward your retirement hopes and dreams (see my life).   You are VERY fortunate she hasn't cheated on you (if this is true).  That will save you a great deal of pain. 

How do you decide what to do????     Good luck my friend.  This is the hardest choice in life.   I love how you've already taken a perspective outside of yourself and thought about what your best friends would tell you.  Love is such a powerful emotion.  It doesn't go away quickly.  While you are in love, the idea of leaving the person you are in love with is monumentally difficult.  It takes a long time for this emotion to subside and other emotions (like anger) to take it's place.  At some point you need to make a decision independent of that emotion.  Consider what your life goals are and think about how your current situation might limit or change what you want for your life. 

 

Daryl - That is the absolute best view of "for better or worse" that I have heard - assumption that there were no secrets being held.  I have always struggled so much with this concept.  This really is clarifying!  

Prince take heed.  Daryl really knows what he's talking about!

It pains me to hear how similar of a situation we both find ourselves in. My wife has not admitted to me in any way shape or form that she's gay. She, too, grew up in a conservative Christian home where her parents openly mocked gay people. They referred to gay people as ones who "have that condition" and then use a limp wrist gesture for emphasis. I know that she would be terrified to come out of the closet in any sort of public way for fear of how her family would treat her.

For Better or Worse... this is the phrase that has haunted me for years. I'm not a quitter. Yet, in all of this, I have had no luck in finding a way to "fix" things. I'm an engineer -- I identify problems, come up with possible solutions, apply them, and see if I have been successful in fixing the problem -- rinse and repeat. Only with this problem, I have had no luck in finding any workable solution.

I have been extremely depressed for over a decade -- to the point that I have to sign a release form to leave the doctors office each time they give me the PHQ-9. I have been on so many cocktails of pharmaceuticals that I can't even remember them all. I have done group therapy, individual cognitive therapy, and my therapists all tried to lead me to the same path... that this just might be something beyond what I can fix. I didn't fully realize it (okay, I think I instinctively knew but I didn't want to believe it and tried to hold on to hope that maybe it was something else...) and found myself bouncing from one therapist's office to the next. Each time one of them suggested separation or divorce my wife would tell me that they just don't understand and tell me to find a different doctor.

My wife said that the reason our marriage was off the rails was due to my depression issues. Now I'm wondering if it was the other way around -- did I become depressed because my marriage went off the rails?

 

Davin, regarding Lily’s point that “I will thank myself later for it”:  I was reading something lately about decision making.  It said that one of the ways to make a better decision is to imagine our future selves.  What would my future self have wanted me to do in this situation?

Regarding this idea that our spouses blame the marriage problems on our depression:my husband has commented on this in me, and although I know now that he ALWAYS knew about his sexuality, I am not sure he accepts responsibility for how this made me feel—for him to always be disappointed in me and me not know why.  Although  I did have some post partum depression, most of my sadness at other times was about my relationship with my husband—not depressed in general.  Or, I would be anxious or sad knowing that he was unhappy with me about something I could not control or not do well enough.

He has told me that he married me because he thought I was strong and independent, and that he would not have to give me emotional connection.  And I can tell you that anytime i expressed emotion—even over a broken bone or if I was sick—this annoyed the heck out of him.  Maybe on some warped level he felt I was breaking our contract or something. 

So For spouses in the closet, yes they knew that about themselves .  But  I think because they love their closet, they projected onto us:  if they could convince themselves we were the problem, then they did not have to face their own truth.

I think similar to narcissists, people do not like to admit being a bad person.  It's much easier to blame someone else, even for ridiculous things, than to accept responsibility for how they may have hurt another person.  Our egos desperately want to see ourselves as a good person, so it clings to any narrative that supports that. 

But as you said, it doesn't really matter what they claim their narrative to be.  It doesn't change the truth of what happened or our story of what we experienced.  I was bothered by her narrative of painting me as a horrible husband until my therapist clarified to me that she probably was just lashing out at me in anger as a coping mechanism to get over the breakup, and since we have broken up, I shouldn't care about that.

I found my way out of the Limbo state of what to do by re-evaluating what I expect and want from a relationship.  After being frozen out a relationship with my ex, I realized that my paper marriage felt completely like a fake marriage/relationship to me, and I knew I had to file for divorce because I knew I couldn't live another moment in such a fake relationship.  You can try to generalize the re-evaluation with "what do I want in a marriage with anyone" if you're concerned that your lingering feelings of love for her may bias your answer.