Wives Living Two Lives

After years of suppressing her sexuality, Chris decided to come out to her husband, Joe. She planned to tell him that she was a lesbian over dinner, but she says she "chickened out." The truth eventually came out while they were sitting on a curb outside a bookstore.

"I said, 'Joe, I think after lots of soul searching and lots of reading and lots of praying I do believe that I'm a lesbian,'" she says. "It was very painful to do."

Initially, Joe was very supportive of his wife's decision. "He says, 'It's going to be okay. I love you. We'll get through it,'" Chris says. "And I thought, 'I don't know if he heard me.'"

From that day forward, Chris slept in a spare bedroom...and things began to get more difficult at home. "[Joe] went from very understanding to angry as we do [when] we go through the feelings of grief," she says.

Though Chris and Joe were living as "best friends" instead of husband and wife, she says her decision to come out of the closet had nothing to do with sex. "It was about my personal connection with another person," she says. "When I thought about how I wanted to have an intimacy with another person...I knew it couldn't be with Joe anymore."