My husband and I have been married for 9 years (together for 15yrs). We have three kids together as well. They’re 7, 5 and 2. We’ve just moved into our new house and I’ve been unpacking boxes for the last few days. Today, I found a box inside on of our moving boxes that I’d never seen before. I opened it to see what was inside and figure out where it should go, etc. And inside I found hundreds of letters, pictures (the sexual and non-sexual kind) and other little love tokens. They date back 18 years and there’s a set of tickets from last week (a long with recent pictures) in the box too. They’re all between my husband and his best friend (who was best man at our wedding). There’s obviously a romantic relationship going on between them. I’m one letter (dated the day of our wedding) my husband’s friend writes about how he’s sorry my husband had to marry me and a bunch of stuff like that.

So I’m married to a gay man that has been having a relationship with someone else since before we even met. I’ve been a cover story for 15 years. He asked me out, told me he loved me, asked me to marry him, said I do, had kids with me. Everything. Everything while lying to me. I’m just broken. I feel like my life is over. Everything has been a lie. It’s all a lie. A huge lie that makes everything I’ve done for my family feel like a giant joke. I don’t know what to do. I’m Catholic so divorce isn’t an option- our marriage will have to be annulled (which is very difficult) if I ever want to marry again and start a life with someone that can actually love me the way I thought my husband did. I don’t even know how to do that. Or how to tell my parents or friends. I’m so embarrassed. How could I not know he was gay? Our family has been perfect (with minor, normal ups and downs) up until now and now I get to be a giant joke.

I have a job and am fully capable of supporting myself and my kids without any help at all. So that’s not a concern. But I don’t know how to even walk away at this point. How do you even tell your kids about something like this? I’m so lost.