Woman realises she’s gay at 35 so ditches husband, home, and job to travel the world
metro.co.uksupports HTML5 videoLauren, a business coach, from Joshua Tree, California, US, said: ‘I was living a life that I was told would make me happy.‘I had the dream husband, house, dog and career but I started to realise something wasn’t right.‘I saw people on social media talking openly about their sexuality and something started to twig.‘I wanted to travel and work, and my husband wasn’t so keen.‘I went travelling in my van for a couple of weeks and it all clicked – I realised I was gay.’ Lauren had ‘experimented’ with women during her college years, but always dismissed this as ‘just a bit of fun’.
It wasn’t until she started therapy that she realised she was suppressing her true self. A pandemic-triggered bout of depression – along with chronic hives – was a trigger to give her life an overhaul. ‘I was in and out of hospital until my therapist told me I needed to drop something to get better,’ she said. ‘I could hardly get out of bed.‘Matt and I started having marriage therapy and we discussed travelling.‘But all of a sudden he changed his mind and had the confidence to tell me that it wasn’t what he wanted.’Lauren decided that it was something she still wanted to pursue, and she bought a van on Craigslist to travel ‘for a couple of weeks’.Everything ‘clicked’ on that trip.
Lauren shared: ‘I’d been seeing a lot of people of social media taking about their sexuality and I began to realise that I might be bisexual.‘But on the trip it all clicked and I realised I was definitely gay.‘It all made sense.‘I knew I had to go back to my husband and talk about getting a divorce.’In February 2021, Lauren left her husband, Matt, 40, after four years of marriage to travel the West coast of America in a van with her dog, Ted, a.
