Left Behind -- A special report.; When One Spouse Is Gay And a Marriage Unravels - The New York Times

For 13 years, Linda Selig felt the lack of intimacy slowly snuffing out her marriage, but whenever she brought it up her husband insisted that everything was fine, that he was happy. "The whole time I felt there was something wrong with me: I wasn't pretty enough or smart enough," Ms. Selig said. Three weeks after she moved out, her husband, John R. Selig, told her and their 12-year-old son that he was gay. Far from at last explaining her marital troubles, the revelation plunged her deeper into depression. "All the assumptions I'd made about men, women, family had just gotten blown to hell," Ms. Selig said. She spent days unable to get out of bed, crying 15 hours at a stretch. The Seligs' predicament is one shared by thousands of American couples, an unexpected consequence of the modern era of openly gay life: gay men and lesbians who once felt pressured into marrying are now emboldened to claim their true identity. But as they flee difficult, often sexless and chilly marriages, the im

For 13 years, Linda Selig felt the lack of intimacy slowly snuffing out her marriage, but whenever she brought it up her husband insisted that everything was fine, that he was happy. "The whole time I felt there was something wrong with me: I wasn't pretty enough or smart enough," Ms. Selig said. Three weeks after she moved out, her husband, John R. Selig, told her and their 12-year-old son that he was gay. Far from at last explaining her marital troubles, the revelation plunged her deeper into depression. "All the assumptions I'd made about men, women, family had just gotten blown to hell," M