When Husbands Come Out of the Closet (Haworth Series on Women: No. 1) [Paperback]

Jean Gochros (Author), Bonnie Domrose Stone (Author), Ellen Cole (Author), Esther D Rothblum (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0918393612 | ISBN-13: 978-0918393616 | Publication Date: May 11, 1989

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (May 11, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0918393612
• ISBN-13: 978-0918393616
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,180,806 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful support for wives, March 6, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: When Husbands Come Out of the Closet (Haworth Series on Women: No. 1) (Paperback)

This book has been wonderful. It opened up communciations between myself and my husband. He told me and we read this together. I don't know if we'll end up divorced or still married. But this book gives me a degree of hope. And it can help you stay the best of friends in a most difficult time. It really does state my feelings. I am not the only one and this is a real issue. It's unfortunate that wives like us are left with so little help and understanding. Our husbands have support systems, but we need them too. I hope this book helps others. It has helped me see how I feel and that I'm not alone. I just currently don't know the outcome yet...

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT, SANITY-SAVING!!, December 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: When Husbands Come Out of the Closet (Haworth Series on Women: No. 1) (Paperback)

After 16 years of marriage, the last few of which have been virtually celibate, I read this book with a suspicion but no proof of my husband's orientation. Everything in it seemed to confirm what was going on but my husband was not ready to acknowledge it himself. He finally came out to me and this book has been a lifeline. We're working things through and it's been ENORMOUSLY helpful to know others have been through this and survived. The book is clear and well-written, peppered with a wide variety of real-life cases, and it's my best friend right now. Thank you!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hopeful and helpful but realistic., June 30, 2008

By 

M. Croucher (New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Husbands Come Out of the Closet (Haworth Series on Women: No. 1) (Paperback)

This book is a scholarly yet warm account of a therapist-academic's research into the experiences of straight women married to gay men who had 'come out'. I review it as a gay man and academic mental health worker who has been married. Although over 100 women's stories were sampled for the author's study, only around 30 were interviewed and studied in depth. This needs to be remembered in terms of the findings' generalisability.

The cultural context of the book is its most important limitation in my view, as it is embedded in a large-city American culture of the 80s in which support groups and personal therapy were perfectly normal and generally available, and gay married men and their straight wives were part of a different age and cultural cohort than current generations. However, it is not surprising that the stories of these people, faithfully and sensitively recorded by the author, ring true despite the book's publication nearly twenty years ago in 1989. Rather than being distracted by some of the specific advice in the book, if one can listen to these stories and to the author's perceptions that have emerged from her experience of providing therapy for people then the messages in the book are more timeless.

Some will find the scholarly tone difficult to read but the language itself is clear. More ruthless editing would have made the book more accessible to less confident readers but if you bite off single chapters or parts of chapters and digest them more slowly the whole book is still palatable.

People with a moral viewpoint that precludes any open marital arrangement will be disappointed that no stories of enduring and strong marriages between straight women and 'out' but not homosexually active gay men are reported. Perhaps this is because such arrangements are not ultimately successful in most instances. Rather than criticising the author for this, I think we should remember that this was a convenience sample of wives and their marriages. It would appear that if there are significant numbers of marriages that stay together with the gay man remaining sexually faithful, such people do not come forward to participate in studies like this, at least in the America of the 80s.

What this book does best is to provide a support for coping and for understanding the traumas of husbands coming out in a hetero marriage, based upon thoughtful clinical practice and ultimately on the stories of the women involved in the study. As such, I thought it was hopeful and helpful for both women and men to read. It is not a guide to making your marriage succesful, still less a guide to successful separation. However, it may help you to move along either path more confidently or to support someone else who is travelling this difficult journey.