‘The devastating day my husband told me he was gay’
Phillip Schofield has been called brave for coming out, but Ruth McElroy says we mustn’t forget his wife
I asked myself whether our marriage had been a sham
When Phillip Schofield came out as gay on Friday morning, following what he described as “heartbreaking conversations” with his wife of
27 years, my mind was immediately pulled back to a bleak afternoon more than 20 years ago, when my husband of 16 years told me the same news.
I was at our home in Marple, Greater Manchester planning our next holiday, when I realised that I would rather go away with my sister or mother than my husband. Our marriage had been rocky for months, but he always said, “Oh, it’s not you, it’s me.”
That day, Clive returned home from church – where he worked as an Anglican priest – to find me in tears. I told him: “I just don’t want to be with you any more.” He replied, “Are you ready for this? I’m gay.”
I have no idea of the words that have been exchanged between
Schofield and his wife, Stephanie Lowe. But if her experience has been anything like mine, I could cry for her.
The This Morning host, who has two grown-up daughters with Lowe, has been swept along by a wave of praise since announcing the news live on TV. BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire applauded his approach as “open, honest, dignified”; comedian Matt Lucas said: “That cannot have been an easy statement to make”; pop star Peter Andre shared a photograph of Schofield with the caption, “Just when I thought I couldn’t love this person more.”
And it is all deserved – even in the progressive climate of 2020, coming out as gay is no small feat, especially if you are a public figure whose love life is sure to be picked apart by the tabloids.
But often in these cases, the wives lie abandoned and forgotten.
I actually screamed when Clive told me about his sexuality on January 13 2000. My feelings in those early weeks ranged from seething rage to denial, and profound sadness. The pain felt like a tumour – a massive lump that you can’t process. I wondered whether he had ever loved me, and asked myself whether our marriage had been a sham.
During the first week, I spent hours on the phone to Changing Attitude, a charity for LGBT members of the Church of England, which reassured me that I had not “turned” him. In fact, I later discovered he had been having gay thoughts since he was 10, but his religious upbringing had forced him to suppress them.
Like Clive, I was raised in an evangelical Christian household. We met on a Christian beach mission on the Isle of Man when I was 22. We married in Liverpool just a few months later, had two beautiful girls and settled into vicarage life.
Looking back, I had a few inklings over his sexuality over the years, the details of which I cannot share here. But that made it no less of a shock when he revealed his secret. I could not tell my religious, 80-year-old mother and there was no chance we could share the news with anybody in the Church: at that time, a gay vicar would have been a scandal. Telling friends was far from easy. One, who had been my GP, was very supportive and understanding, but others were profoundly upset.
There was no blueprint for what I was going through. And that might explain why I remained in the marital home for 18 months. My first inclination was to leave, but my job as a veterinary ophthalmologist meant that moving would have required me to hire a nanny, so I decided to stay put until I’d worked things out.
Telling our daughters was another complication. I eventually moved, with them, to a house about half an hour away. We explained that we were getting divorced but that we still loved them – all the usual stuff. I wanted them to have a normal relationship with their father.
But at one point, Clive got in a very low, grumpy mood and my older daughter, then aged 10, became alarmed. I explained to Clive that it was time to tell her the truth; she was very understanding. My younger daughter found out some years later.
Over the years, Clive and I have remained friends. In 2016, he resigned as the resident vicar at St Agnes Church, near Stockport, to hold a commitment ceremony to his long-term partner, John. I attended happily, and our two daughters walked him down the aisle.
I bear him no ill will. But I do hope that, following Schofield’s dramatic announcement, we bear his wife’s feelings in mind, too.