Personal Stories
Some women enter a relationship knowing of their partner's sexual attraction to other men or being aware that her partner has been sexually active with men in the past. These couples may have negotiated an agreement around this issue. Sometimes however these agreements can break down over time.
Other women have no knowledge of their partner's sexual practices or attraction to other men. When a women discovers this, she may experience a range of reactions that can range from shock, disbelief, confusion, betrayal and stress.
This is how some women describe their reactions...
'I was shocked to discover a whole side of my husband that I had previously known nothing about.'
'I felt completely alone and thought that no-one else would understand.'
'It's such a relief to finally discover the real reason for our relationship problems.'
'For a while I felt completely stripped of my own sexuality.'
'I felt very angry to think I might have been used to hide his sexuality.'
'At first I blamed myself for what had happened; how could I not have known?'
'I feel confused about what this means for me and our future, or whether we even have a future together.'
'Should I have known? He'd been homosexually active in the past, but assured me this was just experimental and would never happen again.'
'What about the children? How, what and when should I tell them? How will they react?'
'It helped me a lot to attend a support group and link up with other women who really understood what I was going through.'
No two situations are the same. Some women ask their male partner to leave the relationship, other men will initiate the leaving and other couples try to stay together and renegotiate a new form of relationship - with or without the acceptance of their partner's same sex desires and activities.
Many women try to make the relationship work, in some form or other, after finding out about their male partner's same sex attraction. Many women try to work at the relationship for one to a few years. For women this often involves thinking through the issues, getting in touch with their needs and wants and, ideally, finding support for themselves.
'It took some time before I could confide in some family members, and to this day (9 and a half years on) there are still friends I have not told why he left me except to say he left me for a different lifestyle.'
'My biggest issue now is that my husband has been, and will probably continue to have sex outside the marriage, and with men he doesn't seem to know. He has said he won't again but he still has unexplained absences and there have been days when I get home I could swear the house isn't as I left it...'
36 years, married 5 years
'I had urinary tract infections that didn't seem to end, then I caught crabs and discovered what he was doing - it felt like the sky fell in for our family. It was a long hard road of trying to understand, getting the children to accept their father's sexuality, and eventually we separated. The children are now on good terms with their father - which took a lot of work from him and me; I'm with a new man - something I wouldn't have considered 6 years ago....'
47 years, 12 year relationship
'Over the past two years we have been renegotiating our relationship. Not in any structured or formal way - we deal with things as they come up. He has regular tests for sexually transmitted infections and has occasional gay sex with protection. Our sexuality is not an unspoken taboo topic and we are not pretending to be a normal heterosexual couple. We continue to love each other and our relationship is evolving.'
25 years plus relationship, two teenage children
The Women Partners Service has published a book of women's experiences living with, finding out, negotiating their way through their male partner's same sex attraction. 'His Secret, Her Story' the first comprehensive Australian publication detailing the stories of Australian women in their own words.
To order your copy of this remarkable book go to publications on this website.
