A post-husband romantic life

In June I put a shout out to hear from witches enjoying queer sex lives and relationships as a second (or third) act after being married to the man they had kids with.

I received many more responses to this than I expected. I had about a half dozen phone conversations, all fascinating and inspiring and an interesting counterpoint to the many moms I know who declare that if their husbands (god forbid) passed away they would be fine closing up the romance shop forever.

The downside with operating in a newsletter model is boiling good things down to be email length so this is going to be part one in a two-part series (including emails and edited and condensed interviews.) The next part will include a few more conversations, including with women who have published books about their experiences, along with a reading list of books witches cited as being informative or inspiring in their later-life coming out journey. Subscribe if you're a new reader; our whole deal is here!

I've been with the same man since my very early 20s. We have one kid, now three, whom we went through hell trying to conceive through years and years of IVF. I have recently embarked on an accidental self-discovery mission (see: therapy, woman-in-her-40s), and I am realizing how much I have been living my life as I'm supposed to instead of how it feels right for me. I quit my demanding office job and went back to school to become a librarian, started going to Pilates, and realized I'm attracted to women.

My husband and I had one super emotional conversation about what happens now and the answer is I don't know. We're busy, he works a lot. It's hard to find the time to deal with this. 

I told him that right now I don't feel the need for anything to change. He obviously might feel differently. I don't want to have to choose between my family, which is functionally great and this aspect, my sexuality. Do I leave my family to explore this thing? I don't want to do that, but also I can't deny that this is a very real thing.

I imagined that there's some third way, and I don't know what that third way is. I don't know if his feelings will change the more he has time to think about it. 

There is part of me that wants to just pretend this isn't happening, but then there's another clearly bigger part of me that wants to shout from the rooftops.

I've been thinking about it in the back of my head, and then I developed this massive crush on a woman and I was like, "Oh, wait a second." I looked back over my life and all these things clicked into place. I do think this has always been simmering and it just took this point in my life and this meeting this person to take the veil off or something.

When I told my husband, I wasn't really exactly ready to tell him, but we went to a wedding of a friend of his, and they're also in their 40s and a heterosexual couple. You go to a wedding and it's all these feelings and the officiant is saying all these lovely things about spending your entire life together. It felt so unfair that I was holding this from him. I had a couple of drinks and before we came home, we were sitting outside and I said, "I need to tell you this." He took it right in stride. He just said, "Okay, we're going to figure this out. I still love you." 

There are a lot of positives in this. I've spent my adult and adolescent life just trying to do the things that are expected of me and following the rules and worrying about what I'm supposed to be doing. In a way there's mourning what life could have been until now if I hadn't been so focused on that. But now there's still, knock on wood, many years of life left. Whew, what a wild ride life is. I feel 98% terrified, 2% liberated. What happens now to this family that I put my mind and body through so much to make?

I am a former heterosexual in Minnesota who divorced my kids' dad five years ago and now only date women. My son just turned 10 and my daughter is almost seven. 

Five years ago I came out and said I wanted a divorce. When I said I wanted to separate, it was because the marriage was terrible. After a few days of thinking about it, I came back to our home and said, "I also came to realize over the weekend that I'm pretty sure I'm gay." Part of my old job was to onboard new people. I was doing the onboarding with a new hire and as soon as the camera clicked on, I was just taken aback by her. It was this moment of like, "Oh my God, I'm very gay." I just knew. 

Because of who he is, my husband felt this sigh of relief of like, "It's not my fault and I'm not a terrible person. She's just gay." I was like, "No. You're still an abusive, manipulative, narcissist, terrible man." 

When I came out to my therapist she was like, "I am so happy to hear you say that. I literally have a list of clients that I'm waiting to come out to me and you were at the top." She was like, "I knew from our first session because nobody is that obsessed with Tegan and Sara. But then you said ‘husband’ and I was like, 'Wait, what?'"

My kids were only four and two at the time. After the therapy session, I came out of the spare bedroom in the basement. My husband was like, "Why are you crying? What's wrong?" He basically bullied me into telling him. The next morning he brought our tiny kids downstairs and was like, "Tell them what you told me," and forced me to tell our tiny children that we were getting divorced.

The first four and a half years after that were really, really hard and the last three months have been okay. We both, without saying it out loud, agreed to start off on a blank slate. It's fine. We are now able to be at the kids' birthday parties together or go to school conferences together. For a while there it was no contact at all and we would only communicate through attorneys.

I came out to my parents, and that did not go very well. My dad pretended nothing happened and my mom cried a bunch. It surprised me because she never had a problem with gay people. We have several family members and friends that are gay, and she's always just been super supportive and understanding and loving towards them. She was like, "It's just different when it's your own kid." Two months after that, my dad was diagnosed with stage four cancer. He passed away in July. Five weeks after that, my mom passed away abruptly in her sleep.

I met my partner the day before my mom passed away. For a long time I felt superstitious and scared that I was going to lose my partner because all of these bad things had already happened to me. Part of me felt guilty or ashamed or of being loud about being gay. I don't want people to not like me because I'm being too loud about being gay, too in their face.

Then I decided to shave my head for a year. That made it pretty obvious.

It has taken a lot of work to just accept that part of me and be like you don't have anything to apologize for and you don't have to hide this about yourself and it's okay to be gay in public. I found out at 39 that I also have ADHD and I'm autistic. That explains a lot of why I didn't even realize I was gay until I was 35 because I was so focused on trying to figure out who I was in a room.

I absolutely think this journey has made me a better mother. The kids are not living in a house with people fighting all the time. They get to see me being my true self and they get to see me really be happy. I get to show them you get to live life however you want to. I had to burn my entire life to the ground to get there. Sometimes I think, was it worth it? But overall, for sure it was. A healed mother is a good mother and that healing yourself is the best thing you can do for your kids. Your kids can tell if you're happy or not because they can read you more than you think.

You should just do the hard thing and live your true life and be honest with yourself and be honest with your friends and your family because not only are you holding yourself back from meeting the person that you're maybe meant to be with, you're also preventing your husband from meeting someone that he could really truly have a wonderful, happy future with.

My mom and her friend were new empty-nesters in their fifties when they realized they had more-than-friendly feelings for one another.

They left their husbands, moved in together, and once it became legal in their state, got married. They have been together for twenty-five years now and they make each other so happy. They are quite yin and yang and complement one another, appreciate one another and celebrate rather than dwell on their differences. I am so happy for my mom and for them both. My stepmom is a wonderful grandma to our kids, and another plus is that I've gained step-siblings (having grown up an only; my kids have also gained an uncle and aunt.)

It took some years for my dad to accept the situation and to speak to my mom again, and he still will avoid my stepmom, but my parents can now both attend important grandkids' events.

I was married to a man for over 20 years but after our legal separation in 2024 I started dating true to my bisexual self, both men and women.

My stint in dating was cut a bit short due to a kidney cancer diagnosis and while currently cancer free, I'm honestly a little too exhausted trying to get my life back on track and get my youngest child (who is on the spectrum) through college. Once she is successfully launched into the world, I might start dating again but not for anything serious, just for fun, friendship and sex. I'm happy with my life now and while I want to share a life with other people, I want to keep my space and my freedom.

My experiences with men on the apps were so insane though (dating apps are truly a wild and lawless place when it comes to men) that I'm not likely to date a man again unless I meet him organically. I would much prefer to date women, there is an ease, comfort and lack of expectation with women. I did find that it was a little difficult then because many women were looking for a long term partner and it's always a little tricky being bisexual because (in my experience) some lesbians don't want to date a woman who dates men as well. Which I get, no judgement for personal preferences.

Incidentally, I have two other middle-aged female friends who are in the same boat. One divorced several years ago and had been dating men since but just came out and is now dating women exclusively. Another who identified as bisexual in her early twenties, but has been married to a man for over 20 years is in the midst of a divorce and is only pursuing women on the dating apps. I also have one other friend who is staying married to a man that she has been married to for over twenty years for reasons of financial security and stability, but has mentioned multiple times that if they weren't still together she would be dating women exclusively. 

All four of us share the same views on keeping our lives our own and establishing only casual romantic relationships and long-term friendship with other women. Also, all four of us happen to have a trans child. 

My divorce was finalized a little over a year ago. My ex husband then passed away suddenly three months later. After being with the same man for over 20 years, I am now dating men and women. I always knew I was bisexual but because I was attracted to men I sort of let the queerness of it all sit on the sidelines. 

Now, I find trying to date women challenging. On Tinder, you like somebody and then you can message them and reach out, and I'm not very forward. I haven't gotten a lot of interest from women. There are 25 men on Tinder for every woman. Men feel like so much work.

I've only connected with one woman so far. We went on a date. I found it lovely from start to finish. The conversation was flowing. It felt very natural. But sometimes I felt a little bit awkward. When the check came, I was like, "Me? You? You? Me? Me? You?" I paid it. I didn't want to stare at it. I don't mind, obviously. But I kind of wanted to check in with her like, "Hey, am I doing okay as a lesbian? Is this working for you?" I feel very unsure of myself.

My ex husband knew I was bi and he enjoyed it. We had had a couple of three-ways, and so I got to play a little bit with women, which was fun. If I wanted to have more of an open marriage with him and date women, I feel like he would've been okay with that but I was concerned that my marriage would not survive me dating outside of it because I was already deeply unhappy. Everything was already so tenuous and stressful, and I just sort of had to bury any physical wants I had. I always was attracted to women, and I had an early exploration phase, slumber parties type thing, but I went to an all-girl high school, and if anyone presented in a queer way, it was not well received.

My 18-year-old, he does know that I date. He was like, "Oh, weird,” but laughed. I don't think it was judgmental, he was just kind of thrown off by it. I just kept it simple. Like, "I'm attracted to men and I'm attracted to women. I am attracted to the person. You're attracted to who you're attracted to."  

One thing there's a whole lot of is men and women looking for a third when you're on lesbian Tinder. I think a lot of women who are solely lesbian sometimes look at bisexuals through the lens of, "Are you here to fetishize or use me as your play thing or are you really here for women?"

My story isn't "I left my husband and now I'm with a woman" but something a little more... confusing? My husband and I have an open marriage (always have except for a short period of time when I was undergoing fertility treatments). We're not poly - jokingly we call ourselves swingers, but the openness of our marriage is very much about sex, not forming emotional bonds with other people. That being said, we both have other partners we see regularly. Literal "friends with benefits."

I am also bisexual. My sex life has always been a 50/50 split on who I am attracted to but I've dated more men than women. As I've gotten older though (I turned 40 last year), I've found myself more attracted to women and seeking out more women sexual partners. My husband and I joke that ever since we got married I've gotten more gay.

I do know 100% that if my husband and I broke up I would not get into a relationship with another man.

The confusingly hilarious aspect of all of this is that my husband has two partners (a woman and a nonbinary woman.). They also date each other. Now I am ALSO seeing his partners, sometimes together, sometimes on my own. We're both dating the same people. If the daycare parents had ANY idea...

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Thanks for reading Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers who are not dead yet, baby. You can read more about the complicated aspects of witchy relationships here.

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One witchy thing

After asking my son to clean up: