"As soon as I gave birth to my son, my husband stopped having sex with me," says Kathy, who runs a small PR company. "At first, I thought he was considerate about my well-being after giving birth and I figured he was tired because of financial pressure."
Reared by a conservative single mother, she was too shy to ask for sex and didn't get suspicious until a year later when she finally talked to a girlfriend who said it was normal not to have sex. She quoted her friend as saying, "You are married and have a child, you're not passionate love birds - it's pretty common."
This is also a story about lack of common-sense sex education. Kathy waited six more months before she asked her mother, who suspected a mistress and helped her investigate by checking his cell phone and e-mails. It was revealed that the "mistress" was indeed a man.
Some wives of gay men never complain or get suspicious about lack of sex for many years. One 52-year-old woman told an online group that she had no sex for nearly 20 years and wasn't bothered until one day her daughter asked her about intimacy. She was too embarrassed to consult anyone and had thought it was normal - after being married for many years, sex is not a necessity, she had told her skeptical daughter.
Kathy, who never met any openly gay man, was overwhelmed by the truth.
She has plenty of company in distraught wives.
Last summer in Sichuan Province, Luo Hongling, a college teacher and recent bride in her 20s, jumped from the 13th floor of her apartment building when she discovered that her new husband was gay.
The news drew a great deal of attention to the tong qi community and Luo's parents filed suit against her husband, accusing him of deception in marriage and demanding compensation.
In January, a court ruled that lawsuit had no legal basis.
"You can't sue a man for being gay, nor should the law allow that," Shanghai divorce lawyer Mike Liang tells Shanghai Daily. "You can sue him for having other relationships during the marriage, but that's difficult to prove legally, especially when the other relationship is with a man."
He says the legal situation "has definitely improved" and judges are more enlightened today, adding that in the past there were cases in big cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou where judges ruled in favor of compensation for women seeking divorce from homosexual husbands.
Liang notes that many women prefer not to reveal that their husbands are homosexual, which weakens their case for alienation and incompatibility.
The Bund turns into beach as the temperature reaches high
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