Catches Husband W/a Man Feels Guilty She Outed Him to Fundamentalist Mom
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| Stock image. A woman explained in a Reddit post that she caught her soon-to-be ex-husband cheating on her with a man. She said he lied to them about the reason for the breakup and she felt no other option than to tell his family the real reason was that he was secretly gay. | ISTOCK |
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newsweek.com
A woman took to Reddit asking if she was wrong for outing her soon-to-be ex-husband as gay to his fundamentalist mother.
Under the username u/life_after_love, the woman shared her story to the "Am I The A**hole" forum in a post that received more than 19,600 votes since Wednesday.
In the post, the woman, 25, explained that her now-ex, 28, was gay and hid it from her. She said it wasn't until she found him cheating with another man that she discovered what happened.
"He as much as admitted that he knew he wasn't attracted to me that way, but he wanted kids and a 'normal' life," u/life_after_love's post read. "I don't care that he's gay, but I will never forgive him for leading me on so he could use me to have kids, so it's over, end of story.”
"His family doesn't believe in divorce," u/life_after_love explained. "So under the guise of picking up some paperwork and other items I had found that were my ex's, she [the mother-in-law, or MIL] cornered me about how I'm being childish and marriage is about commitment, forgiveness, and working through problems, etc. It became apparent that my ex didn't tell his family that he cheated, he told his mom that I was divorcing him because we weren't having sex often enough for me."
u/life_after_love wrote that she tried to be patient and explained to her MIL that the reason for the divorce was actually because of her ex's cheating. But she said she didn't want to explain that he was with a man because she felt that it was not her place to out him to his family.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, "outing" is the act of exposing someone's "lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender or gender non-binary identity to others without their permission." The process of outing someone's identity can lead to severe repercussions on personal safety as well as the person's familial relationships.
In some instances, the act of outing an individual is actually considered illegal due to the violation of privacy and risk of hostility or rejection. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), it is against the law for school officials to disclose information about a student's sexual identity or gender expression to parents or other school staff for these reasons.
In the now-viral Reddit post, u/life_after_love explained that she was already having a tough day and lost it when her MIL told her that if she wanted to have more sex, she would have to make herself "more attractive" and "be a better wife" so he wouldn't "stray."
"I lost the plot completely. It had been a sad and hard day already and that was the last straw," the Redditor wrote. "Here's where I might be the AH: I told her that the only thing that would make me more attractive to my ex would be a sex change operation and that I hoped he and his boyfriend adopted her some grandchildren so she could finally shut the hell up about it. Not my finest moment, but she just hit the worst and rawest nerve she could have and I exploded."
u/life_after_love wrote that her ex's family blew up the situation and that he's "probably going to be disowned." She said the ex called her crying and said she ruined his life out of spite. She said she felt bad that the situation ended up the way it did, but that she believed her ex "made his own bed" too.
In an update, u/life_after_love explained that after she caught her ex cheating, she found out he had a boyfriend that he had been seeing since six months before he met her. She told Newsweek that she met her ex four years ago and that they had been married for almost two.
"He literally set this up so he could have the nice Mormon family on the surface to keep his family happy," u/life_after_love wrote. "That's it. He never loved me at all, I was just the first girl to express a sustained interest."
A woman explained in a Reddit post that she caught her soon-to-be ex-husband cheating on her with a man. She said he lied to them about the reason for the breakup and she felt no other option than to tell his family the real reason was that he was secretly gay.
Of the more than 1,000 comments, many believed u/life_after_love was actually not in the wrong for outing her ex because she was left with few options in the situation.
"You got pushed into a corner and blamed for the demise of the relationship which was ultimately bc of his dishonesty," one user commented. "You didn't do it maliciously."
Others mentioned that if the woman's ex hadn't lied about the situation to his family in the first place, she would not have been left with the option of outing him.
"Speaking as someone who is queer, who has been forcibly outed in the past, who's been tormented, made homeless, fired from jobs for not being straight--yeah, OP [the orginal poster] is 100% NTA here," one person wrote. "He knew from the start and used her – if he wanted to not be outed, he should have made it very clear to his family that the breakup was his fault, and he should have told them that he is the one who caused it."
"Queer myself and firmly in the 'never ever out someone else without their consent ever' camp," another wrote. "But this is a rather extreme circumstance and OP was desperate. NTA."
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