Dear Therapist,
I have been married to my husband for a year, and we dated for three years before that. He had been married for more than 20 years to his ex-wife, and they have a kid together. I have heard about many of his former girlfriends before his first marriage, and I know he had one girlfriend after his marriage ended and prior to dating me.
He also has a best friend, a man who lives next door to us. A few weeks after our wedding, I was looking for a place in the filing cabinet to stash some papers I’d brought from my prior home, and I saw a paper stuck in the roller wheel. It said “[name of his best friend] loves [my husband’s name].” I wanted to find out what this was about, so I invaded his privacy. I found many cards and love notes from this friend to my husband dated about 12 years prior to our wedding.
I cried and was in shock. I spoke with my husband, and he said that after his divorce from his wife of two decades, he was hurt. He didn’t want a woman but wanted a companion. I found out that he spoke with several men during that time frame—about four years—until he fought to overcome his feelings. He made his best friend move out of his house, but the friend still lives next door to us, on my husband’s family’s property. I have to be reminded every day of what went on between them. They had sex when they were together, and now when I look at the two of them, that’s all I can envision.
I know it was about 10 years before I came into the picture, but I’m bitter. My husband says he has no romantic feelings for his friend at all anymore. My husband is an only child, and he says this best friend is like a brother.
This all bothers me so much. It’s been over a year since I found out, and I still can’t seem to accept my husband. What can I do to get over this? My husband is loving and kind to everyone. He is good to me and my daughter and loves family, both his and mine. But I keep seeing his past mistake. He says it’s his past, and happened before I came along. Still, being reminded daily is hard.
Anonymous
Dear Anonymous,
One of the most jarring experiences in a relationship is learning that something is not as it seemed. The discovery of a secret can leave you reevaluating everything you thought you knew about your partner, and make you question both your sense of reality and the trust you thought you shared.
For you, there’s the added layer that two secrets were revealed at once. First, that your husband’s closest friend is also his ex. Second, that your husband has had relationships with men. And although both facts have left you feeling confused and betrayed, it will be important for you to consider your reaction to each of these discoveries separately in order to figure out how to move forward and heal from these deceptions.
On the first point, your husband had a romantic relationship with the person you knew only as his best friend, and you’re reeling from a lie of omission. Putting gender aside for a moment (because we’ll discuss that next), you weren’t told that someone very close to him and present in both of your lives as your next-door neighbor has a sexual history with your husband. This isn’t a “Whoops, I forgot to mention it” oversight, but a deliberate attempt to prevent you from finding out. I say that gender isn’t the issue here because even if this person were a woman, I imagine you would feel betrayed had you not been told that his closest friend who also lives on your shared property is also his ex.
It makes sense that you feel bitter after your trust has been breached. And although you had a conversation about what you discovered and your husband came clean about his history, more has to be done to repair the damage from his dishonesty. For instance, has he shared with you why he didn’t tell you about his romantic involvement with his best friend, and what steps he will take to be honest in the future? Has he taken full responsibility for keeping this from you, regardless of his reason? (There’s a difference between “Yes, I lied, but it was because of X” and “I lied because of X, but regardless, I never should have lied, and I’m committed to being honest with you in the future.”) Have you shared with him how untethered his holding of this secret makes you feel as you begin your marriage together, and what your expectations are, going forward, regarding honesty?
When you have conversations like this, you’ll need to listen from a place of curiosity and compassion, which doesn’t mean that you aren’t holding him accountable for deceiving you. Instead, you’re creating an environment that can incubate more trust between you. He might, for example, say that he was afraid to tell you because he believed you would feel threatened by the daily presence of an ex and want him to end a friendship that’s very important to him, and he felt stuck between disclosure and losing his best friend. He might say he was worried that if you knew he was attracted to men, you might reject him or even leave him (and given your reaction, he could have been right). In turn, you might tell him that his hiding relevant information about an ex with whom he interacts regularly has left you wondering what else he might be hiding, and questioning whether you can trust him: Has he shared the full extent of their past and current relationship? Are there other secrets unrelated to this person that he’s still hiding?
As you talk, make sure you’re being completely honest not just with him, but also with yourself. You will need to reflect on what will make you feel safe in the years ahead and communicate that to him. This might include a full accounting of his relationship with his best friend so that more aspects of the story don’t come out later, his sharing any outstanding lies of omission with you now so there are no more surprises (you might frame this as “If there’s anything that I will want to know, now is the time to tell me, because telling me later will likely make it impossible for me to trust you again or stay with you”), and going to couples therapy to work through this together. These are just suggestions—you will have to decide what you truly need, and ask for that.
You might also discuss your feelings about the current living arrangements. What might not have been a problem had there been no secret to begin with could be a problem now, because your trust has been fractured. Perhaps you’re comfortable with their continuing friendship but would prefer that the ex not live next door, or maybe you’re fine with this proximity given how long ago they were romantically involved. Something to think about as you answer this question is what you mean when you say that “being reminded daily” of your husband’s ex is hard. Which reminder is hard for you: that he had a romantic past with an ex who’s in your lives, that he deceived you about it, or that the ex is a man?
This brings me to the second secret—your husband’s attraction to men—which seems more complicated for both of you. Neither you nor your husband appears comfortable with his sexuality. You say “he fought to overcome his feelings” after dating the ex and talking with several men over a four-year period, which indicates shame or denial on his part, and your disapproval and judgment come across in your calling his dating a man “his past mistake”—something you don’t say about any of his former girlfriends. You each seem reluctant to acknowledge that your husband has been attracted to both men and women, and you’ll need to examine what your husband’s sexuality brings up for both of you so that these feelings don’t contribute to more secrecy.
You might start by exploring why you “can’t seem to accept” him and clarifying any misconceptions or assumptions you have about bisexuality. Maybe you believe that it means he will always miss being with men and therefore might cheat on you—which is not how sexual attraction works. Just as you will always be attracted to other people, so will he; the key is that neither of you will act on those desires if you both choose to be in a monogamous relationship. You can ask him to share with you what his experience is as someone attracted to both men and women so that he can clarify what his sexuality means for him. You can talk about your respective histories with cultural or family stigma regarding same-sex partnerships, and how those views might evolve so that there’s space for your husband to be loved fully by you as his authentic self—a man who seems to be attracted to both men and women, and who is in a monogamous marriage. If you force his authentic self into hiding, you will be encouraging more secrecy and causing your husband to feel shame for who he is. You might need to spend some time trying to understand (perhaps with the help of a therapist) how it is that the man you love and are attracted to becomes someone else in your mind—someone you view with aversion—because he has a history with partners of his own gender.
Sometimes we don’t talk about the very thing we need to discuss most, because once a truth is acknowledged, we can’t un-acknowledge it. Right now you’re both acting as if your husband isn’t attracted to men, and wasn’t even when he was having sex with one (instead, you write that he wanted “a companion” while reeling from a divorce). If you want a marriage based on honesty, avoiding the truth won’t be helpful.
Here’s that truth: Your husband’s romantic past is part of who he is, just as yours is part of who you are. We all want to bring our full self into a marriage, and to be loved and accepted for who we really are. Now that the secrets are out, instead of denying what they mean about the person you married, embrace the truth together, in all of its complexity and discomfort, so that you can build this new marriage with the trust and openness you desire.
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental-health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it—in part or in full—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.