‘MY HUSBAND WAS SECRETLY GAY'

Anne Lovell tells Woman what it’s like when life as you know it changes overnight – and how she coped

- ANNA MATHESON

When my daughter, Jo, 47, texted me to say that TV presenter Phillip Schofield, 57, had released a statement to say that he was coming out as gay after 27 years of marriage, I thought ‘Good for him!’. This may be an odd reaction from a woman whose own husband came out as gay after years of marriage, but it’s true. The world is very different from when my own ex-husband, David, came out in the 70s, but Phillip has still done something very brave. His wife, Stephanie, and two daughters are just as courageous, for this news is sure to have had a huge emotional effect on them, regardless of how long they have known.

I was 19 years old when I met David at an ice rink in London, in 1964. He was my first love – my first everything – and just 18 months after we met, he proposed. Despite being macho and quite an alpha male, he could be very romantic and gave me a choice of three engagement rings as he wanted to make sure I’d love it.

We married in 1965, and while neither of us wanted children straight away, we had sex regularly. Looking back, it was never the most passionate, but I didn’t know anything else. I thought we were both happy.

Our daughter, Kate, was born in 1971, followed by Jo in 1972, but our relationship changed when both the girls were diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. I gave up work to look after the children, and David worked in his family’s business. Our lives became a constant stream of doctor’s appointments, hospital visits and physiotherapy, and the stress meant the romance and sex we had been having disappeared.

Then, in 1975, while tidying the bedroom, I found some gay magazines under the bed. The pictures of naked men shocked me, I’d never seen anything like it before. And when David arrived home that evening, I held back tears as I asked him about them.