How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous!
Dear How to Do It,
A year and a half ago, my wife came out as a lesbian. While losing her this way was painful, I agreed to end the marriage because I didn’t want her to have to live a lie. We’ve stayed in touch, which has been nice, but I recently heard something that made me really mad.
It turns out that she and her wife sometimes have threesomes in which they include a guy. Now a part of me feels like she ended our marriage under false pretenses and I feel betrayed. Did she deceive me?
—I Thought She Didn’t Go For That
Dear I Thought She Didn’t Go For That,
Your ex-wife may have deceived you. Maybe when she told you she was a lesbian, she had lingering doubt or even full knowledge that she still had sexual attraction to men. Maybe she thought it would be too complicated to explain this, that other present issues with your relationship (including the sexual aspect of it) were too much to get into so that “I’m gay” was the most efficient explanation. I’m not in her head and neither are you, so while it is reasonable to mull these possibilities, we can’t say for sure if they are real.
There are many other potential explanations. Maybe your ex-wife realized that she is homoromantic (that is, only interested in romantic relationships with women) but bisexual. Maybe she doesn’t subscribe to these labels at all and is just feeling her way through. Maybe when she came out to you, she thought she’d only have sex with women for the rest of her life but discussions with her wife and/or other surfaced feelings have caused her to reconsider. All of these things are valid if true. Sexuality evolves. Life is a journey. Her truth a year and a half ago may not be what it is today.
She moved on from you rather quickly, it seems—in a year and a half, she came out, left you, and managed to remarry. That must have been difficult and it seems that it is still difficult. While reasons can give us some sense of comfort in their promise of closure, the truth is that life is complex. Not every decision people make has ironclad rationale, or rationale that can be verbalized with clarity. Despite recent evidence, it seems fair to continue believing your wife that her sexuality was a key factor in your divorce. The bigger picture is that regardless of sexuality, she knew that your relationship wasn’t right for her. It’s sad—devastating, even—but these things happen. I think most people would agree that someone should not be in a relationship that isn’t working for them. In that sense, her reasons and explanations are immaterial.
—Rich
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