It was not until the mum-of-three’s husband James* brought up the topic of her sexuality that she began to connect the dots.
Author Jennifer, 34, who has three children, aged 12, ten and six, says her eyes were opened after watching BBC series Killing Eve with James during lockdown.
She says: “First, we watched film This Is England and I found myself thinking of little else than star Vicky McClure for the rest of the day.
“We moved on to Killing Eve and I was equally distracted by Jodie Comer, but I just put that down to admiration more than anything else.
My boobs stole the show at my son’s party, trolls say my dress was indecent
Sporting legend Dame Kelly Holmes, 52, came out as gay just weeks ago, revealing she had battled “dark times” while in the closet.
Australian actress Rebel Wilson, 42, revealed she is dating fashion designer Ramona Agruma, writing on Instagram: “I thought I was searching for my Disney Prince, but maybe what I really needed all this time was a Disney Princess.”
And in April, singer Emeli Sande, 35, said she was in a relationship with girlfriend Yoana Karemova, having previously been with husband Adam Gouraguine for ten years.
Thankfully for Jennifer, understanding husband James encouraged her to explore her sexuality, even giving her a “hall pass” to experiment with other women.
After using dating app Tinder to meet women – always making them clear of her situation – Jennifer, from Hull, says: “It felt like coming home.
“While I had certainly found men attractive and could appreciate a good-looking bloke, it was not comparable to sexual feelings I felt towards women.”
‘With a woman I felt like an equal’
She says: “We happily co-parent, I see James almost every day still and we spend far more time as a family since my coming out.
“He is incredibly supportive of me and I could not be more grateful for that. He’s the right person, just the wrong gender.
“My friends were thrilled on my behalf, in fact they claimed they had always known. I only wish they had told me sooner.”
In the research, interviews were carried out with 200 women over the age of 30 that were married to men but admitted finding women attractive.
It concluded that women who grew up believing they are hetero-sexual can “experience a first same-sex attraction well into adulthood”.
Same-sex attraction
In her book Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love And Desire, she writes that every two years, between 20 and 30 per cent of the women changed the way they identified themselves.
Mum-of-one Chloe-Louise Bond, 30, an HGV instructor from Pontefract, West Yorks, came out to her husband Jack* a few years ago.
“I was always one of the lads, so I never struggled to get a boyfriend, and being with men seemed completely normal because I was so used to hanging out with them.”
“I found myself becoming more and more interested in her and I slowly came to the realisation that it wasn’t just one woman I had been attracted to. I never cheated on Jack but that didn’t make the split any less painful.
“I told him I wanted a divorce and he asked if we could try and make it work. But there was no going back for me and I no longer had an interest in men.
“He took it hard when he found out the reason why I wanted to go my own way, but three years later we get on better than we ever have before.
‘Lesbians are so under-represented’
“I went on to have a two-year relationship and the kind of love I experienced was entirely different to how I’d https://datingranking.net/bbw-hookup/ ever felt before. It just felt right. I’m single now and I know I would never look for love with a man again.
Therapist Marisa Peer believes that greater representation of lesbians in popular culture is making women feel more empowered to embrace their sexuality later in life.
She says: “Only in the last five years or so have we seen mainstream producers using big-name actors to play gay female lead roles.
“What this enables women who have suppressed their sexuality for decades to do is find their voice and have the confidence to be true to who they are.”
Chloe agrees, saying: “Growing up, the only lesbian on TV I was aware of was Ross’s ex-wife in Friends, who was the butt of every joke. Lesbians are so underrepresented so it would have been great to have had A-listers like Rebel at the forefront.”
She says: “They were shamed back into the closet and ended up ‘doing the right thing’ by getting married and having children.
“And for some it is simply out of their control – their attraction to a female friend or colleague comes like a bolt from the blue.
“Our biological clocks are no longer driving the need to have children and our desires morph into the need for a more intimate relationship that ticks more boxes than just lust.”
Jennifer adds: “With the changing attitudes we’re seeing, hopefully there won’t be this need to make a huge announcement and we could just view sexuality as fluid.