Woman who found out husband is gay after 15 years of marriage shares powerful message
Carolyn Hobdey opened up about the “relief” and “anger” she felt when she found out her husband was gay. (Screenshot/Channel 4)
A woman who found out her husband was gay has urged others in her situation to not let their feelings of hurt “destroy” them.
Carolyn Hobdey, from North Yorkshire, opened up about the breakdown of her marriage with her husband on Steph’s Packed Lunch on Channel 4 on 18 January, 2021.
Hobdey first met her husband on a training course, and they tied the knot in 2000. They were “really happy” together and were a “great match”, she told host Steph McGovern.
She had “no inkling whatsoever” that her husband was gay, but noticed that there was a “lack of intimacy” in their relationship.
“I didn’t really realise that anything was missing from my marriage or that anything was wrong – and somebody else walked into my life and that changed a lot for me,” she said.
“I ended up having an affair with that person and I thought that the end of our marriage was entirely my fault. And I took that blame for a really, really long time.
“My ex-husband and I carried on living together during that time because I was just in a really bad place in terms of how I felt about the relationship.”
Six years on, Hobdey noticed that her husband’s behaviour was starting to change, and she later discovered that he was having an affair with a man.
“To start with I felt really relieved because it suddenly made a whole load of things make a whole load of sense in terms of what had gone on in our relationship. So initially I felt relieved,” she said.
“I actually felt quite sad for him that he’d hidden it for all this time. I was actually his second wife, so he’d been going through this for quite some time.”
However, she later felt “really angry” on behalf of her family, and felt that her life had been “stolen” from her.
Woman remained ‘huge friends’ with her gay husband
Despite this, the pair remain “huge friends”, she said.
“I think sometimes you have to make some choices. I’m not saying it was easy, I was really angry.
“But then I just realised that all those things that were great about him, the things that I loved – his sense of humour, his intellect and how well we got on – I had to make a choice about did I just let all of that go, do I lose all those 15 years, or do I take something away from this?”
She continued: “He was still the person that I fell in love with despite what had happened and, while I loved him in a different way than I had when we were together, I still loved him.
“Just keeping that relationship and staying friends seemed more important than any anger or hurt I had.”
Hobdey urged others in her situation to try and see the “bigger picture”.
“You once loved and cared about that person, don’t let your anger and your hurt become the thing that you take forward and destroy you.
“What you have to take forward is that sense of you loved that person and you’re a good person because you loved them and you cared for them.
“That’s who you are, you’re not just the other half of somebody who turned out to be gay.”
