There is one photograph which perhaps best encapsulates the depths of my husband’s deception.

In it, his arm is around me, and I’m nestled against his 6ft 2in frame, my hand on his chest. We’re both beaming, as we pose against the backdrop of a breathtaking vineyard, perched high on the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast.

That night, we returned to our cruise ship where, exhausted and happy, we had a romantic dinner on what was night four of our nine-day voyage along Italy’s coastline. Part of our conversation was about where we could renew our wedding vows later that year after two decades together. Sardinia, perhaps. Or Nice could be an option. Wherever it was, we concluded, it would be truly special.

Just six weeks after that dinner, however, my husband Chris made a confession which destroyed my world.

He’d lied that evening on the boat, when he said he was staying in the bar for a final nightcap while I went to bed in our cabin. He admitted instead he’d logged in to the gay dating app Grindr to see if there were any prospective male lovers onboard. And when he found one, he went back to that man’s cabin and slept with him.

It wasn't just one night. For the following five nights of our holiday, my husband took any opportunity he could to have sex with this man on board the ship, before coming back to me in our cabin.

Then, when we arrived home in the UK, they kept up their surreptitious relationship for the next month and a half.

There wasn’t the smallest inkling of his infidelity in the following weeks. Until, on that July night in 2023 when we were back in our Cambridgeshire home, out of the blue, Chris confessed.

While on a romantic cruise together, Catriona's husband, Chris, was sleeping with another man on board the ship, before coming back to bed with her

‘I can’t be with you any more.’

And then, the killer blow: ‘I’m gay.’

As he spoke, I remember my throat constricting, my heart rocketing in my chest.

He blundered on, explaining about the man – a Canadian, apparently – and how they had met on the app. Now they were in love.

Somewhere in my spinning mind I latched on to those words: ‘The app.’

‘How long have you been using it?’ I asked, my voice tremulous.

There was a long pause and eventually, after some prevarication, an answer: ‘2014.’

Nine years. My husband had been sleeping with men for nine years.

I peppered him with questions. Yes, other people knew – he had already told friends of ours he was planning to leave me for a man. How many had he told? Eleven was the astonishing reply.

And yes, he’d had male lovers in our home, but he said, as if it made it more palatable, he had never slept with them in our marital bed.

Little wonder, then, that I became hysterical. While Chris went up to our room to bed (later that night, I heard him snoring contentedly) I paced the floors, wondering what had happened to the husband I loved so deeply, the man I had married in a haze of adoration and desire.

I later discovered he’d slept with various men at moments when, surely, no vaguely honourable person would consider being unfaithful: immediately before our 12th wedding anniversary, when my mother was on her deathbed, when I was battling breast cancer.

I’m now 60, and can say that if the past three years haven’t broken me, nothing will. For that night was the first of many low moments. When I say this was the hardest thing I have ever had to recover from – and I watched my only child die, aged ten, from a brain tumour – I am not exaggerating.

My daughter’s death was a terrible tragedy. To see her slip away from me, and the endless sense of loss that still reverberates through my every day... there are almost no words for how awful that is.

But her death was honest. I lost her once. I grieve only her and, make no mistake, that grief is endless.

But with my husband, his betrayal of me was cruel beyond words. With his infidelity, I didn’t just grieve the end of my marriage, I grieved the person I was when I was with him, as well as the years I lost and the faith I put in someone who broke it.

Let me be clear from the outset, the worst part of his betrayal is not that he is gay, and was unfaithful to me with men, it’s the fact that his cheating on me with men means our whole life was a lie – because it means every single element of who he claimed to be was a fiction.

After all, your sexuality is an integral part of you. So his betrayal went to the very heart of who he was as a person.

I have gay friends with whom I have discussed this with at length. And they’re all in accordance on two matters: first, their ‘gaydar’ never pinged with him. They never had the least idea he was homosexual.

But more significantly, they agree that his betrayal was a terrible act, made worse because he didn’t have to conceal his homosexuality. There is no longer any societal taboo about being gay. He had no need to stay in the closet – indeed, his parents and friends have been nothing but supportive of him since he admitted he was gay – and no need to pretend he was a heterosexual man, and walk down the aisle with me.

Chris had been sleeping with men for nine years and even confessed to having male lovers in their home. Catriona says she became hysterical and peppered him with questions

Since that day in 2023, I have come across other women who have experienced similar betrayals. One woman had been married for 40 years, and told me how her husband just turned to her one day, said he was gay, and walked out of the door. So I’m certainly not alone.

I have also discovered that certain gay men actively target married men for sex. The logic is that these married men are more likely to be discreet as they have more to lose. And there’s also the certain thrill for some of ‘turning’ or bagging a married men. (Indeed, the Canadian on the boat knew Chris was married, but that did not stop him).

So while my story may sound extreme, it happened. What’s to say it couldn’t happen to you?

Ours had been such a love story.

I recently found old emails Chris had sent me when he was pursuing me (yes, he chased me). ‘You’re not like other women,’ he declared, ‘We’re meant to be.’ And the kicker: ‘I’ll protect you.’

Little did I know I was the one who needed protecting. I’m now in no doubt he knew for a long time that he was gay, and was using me to enjoy a certain lifestyle. From his designer clothes to our comfortable five-bedroom home, to the expensive artwork we purchased together, there was no end to the creature comforts I provided him.

We first met in 2003, four years after my daughter had died. I had become pregnant while in my final year of university after a casual relationship and, against all odds, had managed to finish my degree in economics and raise my delightful child alone.

When I met Chris, my grief had lessened a little, but was still there, pulsating beneath the surface.

We met at a work event I’d organised for one of my businesses. An entrepreneur, I have worked variously in marketing and local government positions. I was 37, and he was 20. A sizeable age gap, I know.

No doubt he could see my vulnerability, but as much as we got on – he was working at the event as a meet-and-greeter – I wasn’t romantically interested in him.

Over the following two years, he worked for me again and again – and the connection grew. He was handsome, well dressed and seemed older than his years. And while we had different interests, don't many couples? Despite my parents’ doubts, our relationship became official.

Our sex life was wonderful: tender, close and mutually satisfying.

He pursued a career in marketing, while I continued my work, and we moved in together. I always earned more than him, and usually picked up the majority of the bill. We visited fabulous bars and restaurants in London, where we lived for a time – from Claridge’s to Heston Blumenthal’s Knightsbridge eaterie – and travelled the world, from Hawaii to the Maldives.

One night, in a Michelin-starred restaurant, he proposed. It was 2006. I was 40 and he was 23.

Less than four months later, we married. We drove from the register office in a Rolls-Royce to The Dorchester hotel, where we dined, just the two of us.

Life seemed perfect and we moved to our Cambridgeshire home a few years later. Our love seemed solid; for example, in 2016, he supported me while I battled – and beat – breast cancer. But there were a few issues on our relationship.

One was his phone addiction: he was always on it. When I complained, he’d assure me there was nothing to worry about. He said: ‘I would never cheat on you, I promise on your daughter’s grave.’

Second was that, after a decade or so, our sex life took a downturn. It wasn’t that he developed different intimate preferences, shall we say, that might have revealed his true sexuality. Rather, he suddenly appeared to have no sex drive at all.

While we always slept in the same bed, any move from me would be rejected. At first, I wondered whether this was just part of married life. A friend reassured me that she and her husband had sex only a few times a year, so at first I put it down to sexual drives naturally diminishing over the course of a relationship.

But eventually, when I asked what was going on, Chris made a startling disclosure: ‘I think I’m asexual.’ I tried to be supportive and encouraged him to seek counselling, which he ummed and ahed about.

Her husband's phone addiction was one early warning sign. 'He was always on it,' writes Catriona, 'But when I complained, he’d assure me there was nothing to worry about'

But when soon there was no physical affection between us at all – no hugs or hand holding – on New Year’s Day 2021, I gave him an ultimatum. He had to have counselling that year or I would leave him.

When, a year later, I pointed out he still hadn’t had therapy, he retorted: ‘You’ll have to leave me then.’ To which I replied: ‘I can’t, I love you.’

You can imagine how desolate this made me feel at the time. What kind of wife is so unloveable that her husband won’t even touch her?

In hindsight, of course, I know that all this was because Chris had already moved on and was sleeping with men.

There was also the glaring fact that if he left me, he would have to move in with his parents because his income wouldn’t have afforded him a house of his own.

My mother’s health had been slowly deteriorating over the years and I had been driving weekly to see her at her home in Herefordshire.

Eventually she was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, an illness which combined cognitive decline with debilitating physical symptoms. There were occasional flashes of the woman she had been. Once, near the end, she confessed she had only ‘faked’ liking Chris so ‘you wouldn’t cut me off’.

I tried to brush away the gnawing fear in my stomach. Yes, Chris and I were in bad patch, but we would get through it.

And, yes, he had changed. Suddenly he was far more conscious of his appearance, indulging in Botox and beauty treatments. But if anyone had asked me at this time, I would have said we were still for ever.

I helped him with his career, encouraging him to study an MA, choosing to hold back on my own planned PhD so we could pay for his course.

I supported him when he showed signs of anxiety and depression, paying for private healthcare, hoping desperately that he would soon feel better.

Mum died in 2022, and the following year we took our Italian cruise, which led to the implosion of everything I thought I knew about my life and my husband.

The day after Chris told me he was gay, I asked him to leave our house. As he left, I hugged him. Today, I wish I hadn’t, but it was one final embrace before he walked out of my life for ever.

I then tried to get organised. First, to clear the house of his presence. Eventually, I tackled his desk in our office. One drawer wouldn’t shut, seemingly stuffed with business cards. As I cleared them out, one fluttered to the floor. It was a sexual health testing card. Several others popped out of the pile.

One revealed that in 2018, on our 12th wedding anniversary, when he claimed to have an important meeting, he was actually attending a HIV evaluation.

Another from 2016 – when I was in the middle of my breast cancer treatment, fighting for my life and receiving radiotherapy – showed he continued to meet men and had received hepatitis vaccine injections, as his sexual habits were clearly exposing him to potential illness.

When my mother was on her deathbed, he was entertaining men in our home, while I sat at her side. As those men walked downstairs after having sex with my husband, they would have passed a picture of my dead daughter in the hallway.

I still wonder how anyone could do something so heinous.

Needless to say, these revelations were devastating. I became suicidal, and sought treatment in the Priory. It is only thanks to the love of good friends and my elderly father that I’m here today.

The process of divorcing Chris has been bumpy, to say the least. He has dragged me over the coals financially, and so far I have spent £40,000 on legal fees.

Still, we are not officially divorced, so keen is he to draw out every element of our separation. He has also relentlessly sought to win the PR battle of who was at fault, telling friends that when he met me ‘I captivated him, and I didn’t know who I was because I was so young.’ To which I can only say, poppycock.

Chris is now engaged to the Canadian from the cruise, while I am happily single. With emphasis on the word ‘happily’.

I never thought I would experience that emotion again but, if anything, my experience has made me more resilient.

The day Chris told me he was gay is now classed as the second best day of my life. The first, was when I gave birth to my daughter. That was pure love, raw, holy and life-changing.

But the day he smashed my world apart made me free. It led me to become myself again. It has led me back to happiness.

As told to Maureen Brookbanks.

Catriona McGuire is a pseudonym. Names and identifying details have been changed.