“I thought he was having an affair, and created a big fight to get it out of him,” she says. If I had a dollar for everyone who asked: are you sure you didn’t know?” she says, sighing.Įight weeks after their daughter Lucy was born, the relationship nosedived.
“We had a pretty normal healthy sex life, it’s not like it was once a year. “I grew up with real Aussie blokes – this was something I’d never experienced.”Īfter their wedding, when the couple were living in Hong Kong for work, Steven pushed her to have a baby, even though she wasn’t entirely happy in the relationship. “It was OTT but I was swept away,” Megan says. After their first date, he sent four dozen roses to her work. He first met Megan, his second wife, when she was 22 and he was 26. Steven, Megan’s husband, had been a high-flying, jet-setting schmoozer who rose from a socially conservative family in Sydney’s western suburbs to be a financial director on a seven-figure salary. “If I didn’t have our daughter, Lucy, I can understand how you’d be suicidal after that level of deception,” she says. She suffered a nervous breakdown after discovering her husband’s secret. Megan says a service like this would have been a “lifesaver”. And yes, some women say the group saved their lives they were suicidal when they contacted us.” “Some women found out because they were diagnosed with HIV or another STI. “Some women contact the service before their husband is even aware they know he’s gay,” she says. She says women present with depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, high blood pressure, eating issues and fears their children will be bullied. Daily she hears “heartbreaking stories” like Megan’s. Roxanne McMurray has been running the support service for 19 years. “So I was extremely grateful for the group.”
“A few times I was in foetal position bawling and had drank too much wine,” she says. One woman, Annabel, flies to Sydney from Melbourne fortnightly especially for the peer group sessions. One hundred women of all ages and backgrounds use the service, comprising group support and specialised individual counselling. To mark its 25th anniversary, the service is releasing a new book, There’s Something I Have To Tell You, featuring 20 stories from the women’s perspective. It’s believed to be one of the only government-funded services of its kind in the world. Just one service in Australia specifically exists to help these women: the Women Partners of Bisexual Men service, run by the Leichhardt Women’s Centre in Sydney. Then there’s the judgment of others who, sometimes openly, say surely she must have suspected – how naive can a person be? Occasionally she is blamed for being the person holding the man back from who he truly is or wants to be.
She has had to face her marriage breakdown and potential infidelity and wrestle with feelings that her relationship was a sham. Often entirely missing from this narrative is the woman’s voice. They express gratitude we live in more enlightened times.
They marvel at how he came through it and celebrate that he can finally be himself. When a married man comes out later in life, positive reactions can be heartening. As countries such as Australia and Britain progress towards LGBTQI equality, it’s a social phenomenon that could vaporise within a generation. Megan is one of a potentially dying breed of women: those who married closeted gay men. As her dad pulled up she opened her purse, fat with notes, and pushed them all into the bewildered man’s hands before being whisked home. She softened it was the first tender moment she’d experienced in a period of terrifying isolation. Megan Holgate and Steven on their wedding day.