For women in committed heterosexual relationships or marriages, questions about a spouse’s hidden sexual orientation – the many variations on “is he gay?” – are a unique and terrible kind of trap. It can feel like you are forever on the edge of discovering some life changing betrayal, one that you imagine will make you question everything that came before it in your relationship. Some women live on that edge for months, years, or decades.
This is the part that can feel like a trap.
But it’s a trap because while you believe there is an answer to your problem, and once you have that answer everything will become clear, the truth is often much more complicated. The trap, or trick, of the situation is that it seems like this is a question that comes at the end, when often it’s just the beginning.
If you’re hoping to find an article or expert who can tell you if your spouse is gay, I recommend you stop looking. It’s not that there aren’t people out there willing to give you an answer. There are. But whether or not you can trust those answers, and even if you do trust them, whether or not you should base a major life decision on someone elses assessment is another story. Online tests are usually based on inaccurate and simplistic stereotypes (often with homophobic undertones) about what being gay looks like. Being gay doesn’t ever look like one thing. And while scientists continue to search for a “gay gene” (a debatable concept to begin with) it is unlikely that such a search will ever produce a test that is meaningful in real life.
In the end, the only person who can answer this question is your spouse, and he’s only going to be able to answer it if he feels like he can. Few of us are able to be honest and vulnerable in a situation where we feel pressured, attacked, judged, even hated.
Because these issues are so complicated and emotionally overwhelming seeking support from a qualified therapist or couples counselor is one highly recommended route to take. There are also support organizations, like the Straight Spouse Network that offer online and real life support groups. There are lots of times in our lives when we simply can’t figure things out on our own. We need help. And while your access to help will depend on who you are, where you live, and how much money you have, most of us can find some help if we look for it.
If you are asking the same questions over and over again another thing that might help is to try asking yourself some different questions. The goal is not to distract yourself or argue yourself out of how you are feeling, but instead to try and get out of rigid ways of thinking and to shift some of the focus away from a question that you can’t answer and toward questions you can.
Why Are You Asking?
Your first answer to this question might be about his behavior: you found a certain kind of pornography in his browser history; he likes certain kinds of sex and not others; other people in your life tell you they think he’s gay. But it’s worth asking yourself what, if anything, is missing for you in the relationship? If, for example, he only likes sex in certain positions, or he only likes certain sexual activities, how do you feel about that? What do those positions, activities, fantasies mean to you? Are there things you aren’t getting to explore or express that you’d like to? Sexual behavior does not correlate neatly with sexual orientation. You can’t tell if someone is gay based on the things they like to do or don’t like to do in bed. One way to think about this is that our sexual orientation is about who we go to bed with, not what we do there.
While it may be very painful, it can actually be easier to make this about his possible secret orientation, than about something else that’s going on in the relationship, or going on for you. Are there other areas of your relationship where you find yourself wondering about his orientation? Does it come up in the way you communicate? The way you interact with each other in public, with friends, family members, kids? Again, whether or not he is gay, taking note of when the questions come up, particularly outside of your sex life, can offer a good place to start exploring what asking this question means to you. And whether or not he is gay, being able to think through these questions will help you in the long run whether that’s working toward reconciliation or taking care of yourself through the ending of the relationship, or something in between.
What Do You Mean By Gay?
The reason no test exists and no easy answer is available is that gay isn’t one thing. So when you worry that your spouse is gay, it’s worth getting more specific about what you mean by that. There’s the element of being gay that has to do with sexual behavior. Do you wonder if he wants to have sex with other men? Do you wonder if he would prefer to have sex with other men? Do you wonder if he doesn’t want to have sex with you at all?
But being gay also has to do with emotions. Do you wonder if he’s happy with you, a woman, as an intimate partner? Do you wonder if when he’s intimate with you he is imagining being intimate with a man? Do you wonder how he would be different as a spouse if you were a man, and what your relationship would look like?
Being gay is also an identity, it’s a word that for many describes not just what they do or think or feel, but who they are. Are your questions about orientation actually about that larger piece?
To make things even fuzzier, orientation questions aren’t the same for every man. For some men sexual orientation is very clear. They know they are gay or straight or bisexual, they’ve always known (or at least they’ve known for as long as they can remember) and they feel like one label or another fits them well. For other men the few choices offered (straight, bisexual, gay) don’t feel like they fit. That experience of “not fitting” isn’t the same thing as saying they are hiding their “true” orientation. The problem is that for some people the question of whether you are gay can’t be answered with a yes or no. Sometimes the best answer they can come up with is maybe. Or I don’t know.
It’s also worth taking time to unpack for yourself what you mean by gay. Whether or not he is gay, it’s possible that what is throwing you off is not just about his self-identified orientation but is also about what you think straight or heterosexual looks like on a man. If you think that straight men, for example, always want sex, and always want sex in one position, you are mistaken. And if you think that gay men always want sex and always want it in some other position, you are again mistaken. Not all straight men are insensitive brutes and not all gay men are neat and good at expressing their emotions. These are stereotypes that run deep into our psyches, but you need to deal with the man in front of you, not a series of stereotypes you are seeing in him.
Asking yourself what you mean by gay shouldn’t be about further analysis of your spouse. Instead make the questions about you, not him.
What Else Could It Be?
Regardless of your spouse’s orientation, when it comes time to talk with him about it, it will likely be better to be able to talk about your relationship as a whole and what you see happening in it and not only zero in on this question of his orientation. To this end, can you think a bit about other things that are happening in your lives (separately and as a couple and family) that have brought you to a place where you are questioning who he is and whether or not this is the right relationship for the two of you. Ongoing stress, neglecting your relationship, falling out of love with each other, focusing on work or family, past experiences of violence or trauma, all of these and more may contribute to the dissolution of a loving relationship. They may also be a part of feeling like your spouse has changed. He isn’t who he once was, or who he said he was.
Everything that happens in your relationship happens between you and your spouse, and both of you are responsible in different ways for the relationship. One of the dangerous parts of the question “is he gay?” is that it sets up a situation where all the difficulties in your relationship become not about the relationship or the two of you, but about him. Of course if he is gay, and closeted to himself or hiding his sexual identity from you, that is his responsibility to deal with and eventually talk to you about. You can’t make a spouse disclose something, and you can’t change who they are. But there’s a difference between making an accusation that is only about him, and being able to talk about you, your feelings, and what has brought you to a place where this is not only a question you have, but a fear that is getting in the way of you enjoying your relationship.
The Bottom Line
Asking if someone is secretly gay isn’t like asking if someone is secretly a bank robber. That should be an easy question to answer. For some men this might be an easy question to answer. For a lot of men it isn’t.
A better analogy would be that it’s like asking someone if they are spiritual. Being spiritual is something that a person has to define for themselves. It’s not just about how often you go to a house of worship, or what your upbringing was like. It is usually thought of as being a core part of a person, but a part that is also private and can only be shared, not always identified. For some people being gay isn’t private at all. It’s public and clear, it’s a part of who they are that they can articulate and celebrate. For other people it’s not like that at all. This is what makes the question, for some, such a difficult one to answer.
For his part, answering it honestly requires trust. For your part, being able to hear and accept an answer requires trust. If you are at a point in your relationship where there is no trust, it can feel like a completely intractable problem. But it isn’t. It may take time, and it will probably be easier with support and help (from trusted friends, family, and community). If you suspect that your spouse may be gay it’s worth knowing that many couples find happiness in what are called mixed orientation relationships (where the partners don’t have the same orientation). That may be a fact that doesn’t feel real to you at this moment, like something that would never be possible if in fact your spouse is gay, but I share it as something that is true and as a possibility to consider in the future.
