The discovery that one’s husband is gay or bisexual is a surprise for which most women are totally unprepared. With no guidelines and few professionals able to provide adequate help, both partners, but especially the wives, are apt to feel enormous isolation and confusion. When Husbands Come Out of the Closet, based on the results of a landmark study and years of clinical experience, is a poignant and compassionate look at the conflicting emotions experienced by women who learn of their husbands’homosexuality. Focusing on the wives’perspectives, author Jean Schaar Gochros offers support, encouragement, and practical advice for coping with the stigma, fear, and stress experienced by women trying to cope with their husbands’homosexuality. She addresses the often harmful myths surrounding these wives, husbands, and marriages, and questions the quality of help that women usually receive from friends and professionals alike.Combining comprehensive research and personal case histories, she has developed crucial guidelines for helping professionals who counsel such couples. This readable book is informative and fascinating reading for both the professional and lay person.

The discovery that one’s husband is gay or bisexual is a surprise for which most women are totally unprepared. With no guidelines and few professionals able to provide adequate help, both partners, but especially the wives, are apt to feel enormous isolation and confusion. When Husbands Come Out of the Closet, based on the results of a landmark study and years of clinical experience, is a poignant and compassionate look at the conflicting emotions experienced by women who learn of their husbands’homosexuality. Focusing on the wives’perspectives, author Jean Schaar Gochros offers support, encouragement, and practical advice for coping with the stigma, fear, and stress experienced by women trying to cope with their husbands’homosexuality. She addresses the often harmful myths surrounding these wives, husbands, and marriages, and questions the quality of help that women usually receive from friends and professionals alike. Combining comprehensive research and personal case histories, she has developed crucial guidelines for helping professionals who counsel such couples. This readable book is informative and fascinating reading for both the professional and lay person.

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Effective therapeutic self-help techniques for a straight mate’s recovery One of the most traumatic events that can happen in a marriage is discovering your mate is gay. When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual is a comprehensive exploration of the trauma that provides practical steps that successful individuals have taken to keep this event from ruining their future. This guide offers solid therapeutic techniques for self-help and presents poignant true stories that illustrate that the damage is not irreparable. The book examines the various reactions to the coming-out event, the personal challenges and obstacles often experienced, and shares lessons learned and some of the secrets of transformation. When this crisis hits home, isolation, depression, anger, grief, and self-recrimination take root. When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual presents role models, analysis, practices, and activities promoting long-term emotional recovery for heterosexual men and women whose intimate partners are gay. The text includes integrated exercises helpful for class work and student discussion and case studies of people who recount their stories and explain their recovery. Topics in When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual include: different straight spouse responses to the coming out event diverse ways gay mates approach coming out typical stages of coping by straight spouses health risks how to tell the children helping children with the resulting challenges paths toward healing recreating family and more When Your Spouse Comes Out: A Straight Mate’s Recovery Manual offers a self-directed path to recovery which can be used individually or in the context of a support group. This guide is invaluable for straight spouses working alone or in groups, therapists, counselors, group facilitators, librarians, families of gays/lesbians, and their mates.

The discovery that one's husband is gay or bisexual is a surprise for which most women are totally unprepared. With no guidelines and few professionals able to provide adequate help, both partners, but especially the wives, are apt to feel enormous isolation and confusion. When Husbands Come Out of the Closet, based on the results of a landmark study and years of clinical experience, is a poignant and compassionate look at the conflicting emotions experienced by women who learn of their husbands’homosexuality. Focusing on the wives’perspectives, author Jean Schaar Gochros offers support, encouragement, and practical advice for coping with the stigma, fear, and stress experienced by women trying to cope with their husbands’homosexuality. She addresses the often harmful myths surrounding these wives, husbands, and marriages, and questions the quality of help that women usually receive from friends and professionals alike. Combining comprehensive research and personal case histories, she has developed crucial guidelines for helping professionals who counsel such couples. This readable book is informative and fascinating reading for both the professional and lay person.

Jennifer can’t believe it. Just married and pregnant, she discovers that her husband has been meeting Brad for sex. When confronted, Tom doesn’t deny it, but he insists it’s just “a thing” and he isn’t gay. Elsewhere, John’s wife, Karen, discovers that her husband likes to watch gay porn. John doesn’t understand his wife’s reaction. Why does she care what he watches if he’s not unfaithful? In couple’s therapy, Karen and Jennifer raise the same questions: Does this mean my husband is gay? Can my marriage survive? These and other stories illustrate the difficulties inherent when a wife or girlfriend finds out her man has had or wants to have sexual contact with other men. But many times, the man is not gay or even bisexual. Of course, some men with gay sexual interests are gay men in a process of self-discovery; they are “coming out.” These desires may only reflect a different side of a man’s sexuality or some response to childhood trauma or experiences they have not fully processed. Here Joe Kort and Alexander P. Morgan make the distinction between gay men and “straight men with gay interests” clearer to women who want to know how they can overcome these revelations. The authors explain the many reasons why straight men may be drawn to gay sex; how to tell whether a man is gay, straight, or bisexual; and what the various options are for these couples, who can often go on to have very fulfilling marriages. Is My Husband Gay, Straight or Bi? is intended to help couples understand how male sexuality can express itself in ways that may be difficult to understand. Many marriages have been hurriedly terminated when couples (and their therapists) have lacked the information they needed to understand their current situations. This book provides the clarity, describes the choices, and (in many cases) offers hope for relationships and marriages that have been brushed off as doomed.

Candid, compassionate, authoritative--a rich source of insights, information, and practical guidance. "The first major work on the topic." --Gay Community News "A much needed comprehensive study of what happens to husbands, wives, and children during the coming-out crisis. --The Reverend Jane E. Vennard, founder Task Force for Spouses of Gays and Lesbians "The new enlarged edition adds important factors, especially children's reactions to a parent's coming out. Well-researched and insightful." --Fritz Klein, M.D., author of The Bisexual Option "Anybody practicing in this area would be well advised to read this book." --Professor Arthur S. Leonard, New York Law School In two million marriages, one spouse is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Having a spouse or parent disclose his or her same-sex attraction is a shattering experience fraught with pain, confusion, anger, and a profound loss of self-esteem. Amity Pierce Buxton spotlights this exploding phenomenon and reports constructive coping strategies that spouses and children have used to resolve problems of sexual damage, family breakdown, deception, and homophobia. Illustrated throughout by riveting personal narratives, this expanded edition of The Other Side of the Closet traces the family's journey from initial trauma to eventual transformation. This invaluable source of information for spouses, families, and professionals is based on Dr. Buxton's eight years of research, including interviews with 1,000 straight spouses and children, her own personal experience, and her counseling work with spouses of gay, lesbian, and bisexual partners.