Sep 14, 2026 · 27 min · 10 segments
An "I do" between husband and wife comes with many promises, not least of which is to be truthful. So what do you do when your husband comes out as gay? For some women, it's a revelation that…
Yumi StynesHostLaurenGuestKarenGuestAnnieGuest
Not every closeted husband comes from a religious background, but Lauren says there have been studies in the US that link religious trauma and the suppression of sexual identity.
So in the United States it's pretty common for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons, to promote mixed orientation relationships to sort of, like, get the gay out of these guys.
And that's where a lot of the research started.
It's pretty common that there is some religious trauma, but it doesn't absolutely have to be.
There is this expectation of, like, family being so critical to the propagation of the religion and the propagation of your afterlife and things like that.
Do you think it's more common in communities where being gay is not okay and homophobia is rampant for there to be husbands masking and kind of faking their whole lives?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's cultural.
It's familial, right? It's religious.
There's so much internalized homophobia-
... right, like, that we just get from existing in our crappy culture sometimes that I think they're doing it to themselves.
Lauren says that one of the hardest things for many women in this situation is the loss of their identity as a wife.
That is so psychologically damaging, right? Like, there's just, there's so much, yeah, just, like, identity.
There's so much, uh, just about, like, who you are and how you understand the world that gets, you know, really, really ruptured within-
...
the self.
And then they have to take care of this man's children on top of it and make sure they're okay.
Like, it's just so messy on top of something that's already so messy.
[upbeat music]
Not every closeted husband comes from a religious background, but Lauren says there have been studies in the US that link religious trauma and the suppression of sexual identity.
So in the United States it's pretty common for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons, to promote mixed orientation relationships to sort of, like, get the gay out of these guys.
And that's where a lot of the research started.
It's pretty common that there is some religious trauma, but it doesn't absolutely have to be.
There is this expectation of, like, family being so critical to the propagation of the religion and the propagation of your afterlife and things like that.
Do you think it's more common in communities where being gay is not okay and homophobia is rampant for there to be husbands masking and kind of faking their whole lives?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It's cultural.
It's familial, right? It's religious.
There's so much internalized homophobia-
... right, like, that we just get from existing in our crappy culture sometimes that I think they're doing it to themselves.
Lauren says that one of the hardest things for many women in this situation is the loss of their identity as a wife.
That is so psychologically damaging, right? Like, there's just, there's so much, yeah, just, like, identity.
There's so much, uh, just about, like, who you are and how you understand the world that gets, you know, really, really ruptured within-
...
the self.
And then they have to take care of this man's children on top of it and make sure they're okay.
Like, it's just so messy on top of something that's already so messy.
[upbeat music]
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
