About HOW

Our Mission

Husbands Out to Wives (HOW) is a peer support group for gay, bisexual, pan or fluid husbands/partners of women (either married or in a committed relationship), who either have or intend to come out to their wives/partners about their sexuality. Our mission is to support each other as we try to find our individual paths to happiness. HOW members help each other as we redefine our relationships with our spouses, family members, friends, colleagues, even as we may be learning to understand our own real selves.

Our Vision

We seek a brotherhood supportive of diversity, recognizing that we have our individual heritages, values, and cultures, while sharing common human needs. HOW members work towards personal pride and acceptance of our sexual and gender identity first for ourselves, and then by the people we love, and then by the world around us. We recognize that the path to self-realization and to happiness is different for each HOW brother. We work towards a world in which people are valued for their individual humanity, talents, and personality, a world where everyone is entitled to seek happiness in their inter-personal relationships, and to enjoy fulfilling social, sexual and loving relationships.

Our Approach

We host a very active email-style discussion forum, as well as twice-weekly Zoom discussions.   In addition to our online peer support group HOW also has Annual Gatherings around the country where the members can meet in a safe environment for support, friendship and camaraderie. Members also hold regional mini gatherings in locales where there is interest.

We try not to give advice; rather, we share our personal experiences and the ways in which we have handled our own lives.  We support mixed-orientation relationships; we advocate neither for nor against divorce/separation, but we accept that among the many options considered by our members, divorce may be the right path for some. We encourage those who have gone through divorce to remain on the list for the support and understanding they can offer others – both the positives and the negatives of their experiences.

Our subjects or “threads” vary from discussions of our sexuality, our relationships with our wives and children, the process of coming out to family, friends and others, the sharing of humor (it is needed to break depression that may prevail), spiritual discussions, book or movie reviews or discussions, men’s health and sex issues, and anything that helps us support one another.  HOW offers a circle of friendship to individuals who often see that they have had few close male friends in their lives.

We demand civility and a humanistic approach in all we say to each other. HOW is a mostly  unmoderated forum; members post to the group without review or approval by a moderator. Consequently, it’s important for all members to be respectful and sensitive to the feelings of others. Our dialogue here is amazing in its breadth, depth, and value, and we don’t want to discourage or poison it by losing the ability to say what we feel while respecting the often-differing feelings of others. We must be careful in how we disagree, how we express our feelings, and how we interpret what others are expressing.

Members of HOW represent a wide variety of approaches as far as relating their sexuality to their marriages. Some have no M2M (Man-to-Man) physical relationships, while others do so with the support of their wives. The diversity of ways in which couples handle outside relationships or activity, or monogamy, is wide.

Our Values

• We respect human dignity.
• We understand that individuals grow and change.
• We believe in diverse paths to individual happiness.
• We recognize the right to everyone’s own world view, religious beliefs (or non-belief), and opinions.
• We accept each-other where each is, in coming out, in defining our marriages, and in building our own future and sexual and gender identities.

HOW seeks to create and protect a community that is inclusive of diverse identities within our group definition of “husbands out to wives.”  Those diverse identities include but are not limited to nationality, ethnicity, race, age, religion, ability, marital path, gay/bi/pan/fluid orientation, gender identity, gender expression, sexual practice, and political perspective so long as identity expression is civil, inclusive, and supportive of the HOW mission to support members on their various paths in the context of their mixed-orientation relationships.  HOW protects civil inclusive discourse, creates select specialized safe forum spaces, pursues inclusive membership for qualified persons, supports the use of preferred pronouns, seeks inclusive venues for Gatherings, checks and corrects organizational statements for inclusive language, and is open to member feedback for continuous improvement.

Join Us

If you’re a gay, bisexual, pan or fluid husband/partner of a woman, out to or committed to coming out to her, and are interested in joining HOW, contact us for more information or visit our membership page to join.

Member Testimonies