My husband announced he's gay. Was our marriage a lie?

Dear A&E,

Two years ago my husband announced he was gay. He’s 59; we have three grown-up daughters and had what I thought was a good marriage. After the initial shock (I had no clue), I was supportive, as it was hard for him. The divorce was amicable and we’re friends, but recently I’ve felt furious. He’s now happy and settled in his new flat while I’m living in our family home, stuck in our old life. I’m fortunate to have financial freedom but I’m not sure what to do now. I feel completely betrayed, as if my life and marriage were a lie. I’m also embarrassed – when I think about parties and dinners we threw, it’s like it wasn’t real. — Betrayed

Dear Betrayed,

Of course you are in pain. Of course you feel all of the feelings you have listed in your letter and many more depending on the minute, the hour, the day. Of course you are confused and furious and lonely. And we must congratulate you on connecting with all these feelings and on being so brave.

Let’s begin with the anger because, two years on from his announcement, you are in a justified towering fury. Remember that it is completely normal for our feelings about a situation or trauma to bubble up a while after the adrenalin spike and coping phase have passed.

You were so supportive to him that you didn’t realise how hard it was for you. It feels like a classically female relocation of distress: sometimes, when everything is going wrong, we feel that we can make it right just by being brilliant. Think of all the beaming wives of badly behaved public figures who stand by their men and later collapse. Your anger is appropriate. Hey, it is healthy. The only thing is to move through it, to see it as a catalyst to propel you on to the next stage of this process. Because it is a process.

SPA (straightpartnersanonymous.com) is an online hub that supports people in situations like yours. The website features an adaptation of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief by Bonnie Kaye, who quotes Dina Hamer about stage two: ‘Anger is a mandatory step towards recovery as it liberates one from the earlier… shock, denial, internalisation and self-blame.’ See? You’re doing everything right.

You no longer need to be marvellous. You can tell him that you are furious and feel betrayed; he’s probably waiting for that. You were there for him and now it is his job to be there for you. He may be able to tell you that the marriage wasn’t a lie – it was as real and true as you believed it to be but, in the end, the story unfolded as it did.

There is a spectrum of sexuality – very few of us are 100 per cent straight or gay and, anyway, it’s not just about who we fancy. It’s also about identity, about finding our place in a prescriptive world. If he’d left you for another woman then you might be feeling a more anticipated grief and anger. But his sexuality was an ‘enemy’ you couldn’t fight.

So he looks all sparkly and ‘speaking his truth’. He appears to be embarking on a new life, but so can you. He has had so much more time to adjust. Presumably he went through much of his agony and uncertainty before he came out. You are still in that limbo and sometimes the person who gets left behind feels that they don’t have a real chance at a new beginning because it wasn’t their choice. But you do. See a therapist. These massive words: ‘betrayal’, ‘lies’, ‘excruciatingly embarrassed’ (all in your full email, which has been condensed here) need unpacking and personalising.

The goal is not to sit in the pain for ever. You have taken a huge hit, but you can and will reset. You will look at your ‘old life’ and examine the bits you want to keep and the bits you want to ditch. You will daydream and you will travel. You will meet new people and you will try new things. But you will still be you. Bruised, changed but, in the end, back in glorious technicolour. Time, work, self-care and maybe a bit of shouting. Then, Betrayed, you’ll be on your way…

Read more from The Midults:

Why do I always date men who need fixing?

I have a good marriage, great kids, a stable career. So why am I unhappy?