Telling his family

As I mentioned earlier, his parents, (mother and step father) have known since March about my husband being gay. He has 9 siblings, (2 wholes, 2 halfs and 5 steps) none of them knew, with the exception of a whole blood brother, who is also gay. I figured it was not my place to be telling members of his family. My husband was dragging his feet on telling his siblings.

Recently his youngest sister spent the night with us, while his parents were out of town. She knew that we were having problems in our marriage and were going to separate, but did not know the nature of the problems. I am very close to his youngest sister, (his parents and two youngest siblings, half bloods, lived with us for 5 years, but that is ANOTHER story...) I wanted his youngest sister to know that I was ok, and exactly what the situation is. She cried when I told her, but told me she still loves my husband. I assured her that I too still loved him. Her best friend's father is gay and divorced from her best friend's mother. She has spent time with the best friend's dad, so this was not a completely foreign concept to her. I really was the right person to deliver the information to her. Being the youngest she sometimes get treated like a 12 year old and she is almost 18, and very mature, despite being the youngest of 10. I would not have told her if I did not feel it was information she could handle. His youngest brother recently left on a mission and the concusses is that he needs to focus on his mission, and this information can wait two years.

As for the rest of his siblings....this is where it gets dicey..... My husband, me, his siblings, and step siblings all grew up in the same town together. We no longer live in that town, or state for that matter, however my youngest sister lives still lives in that town, and we all have a lot of friends there. My youngest sister decided that my marriage needed to be the topic of gossip and proceeds to tell a friend who happens to be good friends with the youngest of the step siblings. (For the record I, nor my husband, get along with this particular sibling nor his wife, again that is ANOTHER story...) As soon as the step sibling finds out that my husband is gay and we have separated, it spreads like wildfire through the family, not exactly how we wanted to break the news. Pretty much me, my husband, and his parents want to throttle my sister. I know she did not mean for this to happen, but the point is she should not be gossiping about me to some stranger I don't even know. ( I know its ironic considering I am blogging this to all the world)

After this information comes out my husband refuses to call his siblings and speak with them, leaving his parents to do his "dirty work." His sister, a full blood, called him, he see she is calling and lets the call go to voice mail. I ask if he is going to call her back and he respond that he will "email" her. I had to laugh, because this was a prime example of my husbands refusal to be emotionally intimate with anyone. Earlier this year he informed me he does not like talking on the telephone, (which is true, he has never been a big telephone talker, its pretty much say what you have to say and hang up. Very rarely do I have a telephone conversation with him that exceeds 5 minutes) and he prefers to text message, so if I want to talk to him through out the day I needed to text him. Hence I learned how to text. Again can't be emotionally intimate in a text conversation...... However his sister was persistant and kept calling him until eventually he picked up the phone and talked to her. She called me too, which thought was very nice and extremely thoughtful.

None of his other siblings, (all steps) have bothered to call....too scared, don't know what to say, glad its us and not them, bigoted, who knows....Thank goodness I am going out of state for Thanksgiving.