Paths, Potholes, and Pitfalls: how heterosexual spouses in traditional marriages
cope when their husbands or wives come out. *
Amity Buxton, Ph.D.
When a husband or wife comes out to his or her heterosexual spouse, disclosure becomes
more than an individual event. It is a family matter, affecting the spouse, the
relationship, and if they are parents, their children. Attention more often focuses on the
spouse who came out in the face of possible rejection and after much turmoil. The
heterosexual spouse, though inextricably part of the coming out experience and its
consequences, is usually overlooked in the excitement. Without factoring in the
heterosexual spouse’s experience, the post-disclosure work of both spouses can be more
painful and destructive than necessary.
Much has been written about the GLB spouse’s struggle to acknowledge and disclose
sexual orientation and integrate it with being married (and often a parent). Scant
literature exists about the heterosexual spouses, and little understanding of their unique
issues is found among family & friends. The experience of husbands of lesbian or
bisexual wives is outstandingly lacking, as are reports of couples who maintain their
marriages after one comes out. Without readily available information, a straight
spouse’s discovery of being married to a gay, lesbian, bisexual person is difficult to
comprehend, much less accept. Thus, many remain isolated.
It is estimated that up to two million gay, lesbian, or bisexual person have been or are
married. Many have come out. Others will. Still others may never. Since 1986, more
than seven thousand gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual spouses in such marriages
have shared feelings, concerns, and coping strategies with me through telephone calls,
mail, and email correspondence, individual consultation, participation in Internet lists and
support groups, audience responses at my workshops and gatherings, and direction to the
Straight Spouse Network. Each spouse told a different story of working through
disclosure issues within his or her particular familial and societal context. There were as
many paths as there were spouses. However, common to all were issues uniquely related
to the spouse’s disclosure and typical stages of dealing with those issues. This
progression of realizations and reactions traced the straight spouse’s journeys as they
slowly acknowledged, accepted, and integrated their partner’s orientation into their lives.
Common also was a pattern of pitfalls, waiting like potholes along their ways, where a
number of them became stuck.
The cumulative evidence from these self-reports confirmed and expanded my first
reporting of straight spouses’ experience in The Other Side of the Closet: The ComingOut Crisis for Straight Spouses (Buxton, 1991) and its expanded revision with more
examples of spouses in bisexual-heterosexual marriages and of children of such
marriages (Buxton, 1994).
As the pattern of their coping became clearer, so also a complexity of reactions,
understandings, and adaptive behaviors became more apparent, especially through my
recent study of the post-disclosure work of couples (2001) or wife (2003). Sharing this
knowledge with spouses and couples appears to have made post-disclosure events less
hurtful and more productive for everyone involved, whether or not the couple stayed
married. Knowing that they are not alone in facing these issues and knowing about the
successive stages have helped many spouses move through them more confidently, and
helped others in their lives refrain from pressuring them to move more quickly toward
resolution or to make a particular decision, such as immediate divorce.
Now, honed through continued study and work with spouses, this picture of stages
through which straight spouses deal with common issues is ready to be shared with a
wider audience. What better audience than the readers of this book? My hope is that
such information may assist professionals as they guide a spouse and/or couple in dealing
with the disclosure, so that both can make appropriate decisions about their relationship;
and if they decide to separate, with their future relationships as well.

This is an excerpt from the article of the same name in the Journal of Couple &
Relationship Therapy, Haworth Press, Inc.,Vol.3 numbers 2/3, 2004