Mixed-Orientation Marriage Support Groups - A 2021 Update

I am a huge advocate for finding support for our mixed-orientation marriage journey. In the early days we often feel like we are the only ones. Sharing of ourselves and having others say “Me too!” or “I understand” can go a long way towards our feeling better about the life path we are on. Some of the online support groups have been around for years, some have moved to new platforms and some have become dormant or folded all together leaving a vacuum. As I update the support group list in the Apendix of Mixed-Orientation Marriage Pathways to Success I thought I would share some thoughts on the current state of change to the peer lead support groups that I am aware of. These are my general impressions and everyone's experiences will be different.

Goodbye Yahoo Groups - Hello Groups.io

Yahoo Groups was one of the early support group platforms . They hosted MMOMW - Making Mixed-Orientation Marriages Work , Alternate Paths, HUGS , MonMOM and MMOM among others. When Yahoo announced they were closing down their groups MMOMW - Making Mixed-Orientation Marriages Work , Alternate Path, and HUGS moved to the groups.io platform. This really was an improvement as groups.io is run with features of both a forum and a traditional email list. The creator of Groups.io helped create Yahoo Groups but never felt it lived up to his vision of what a group platform should look like so this is his new and improved version. I have been very pleased with the features of the groups that have moved there.

HOW Husbands Out to Wives a group for just the bi and gay husbands out to their wives and GAMMA A support group for gay, bisexual or questioning men who are or were married,or otherwise involved with a woman have also moved their peer run online support groups to the groups.io platform. Both HOW and GAMMMA have weekly online Zoom meetings. As for the support groups for those seeking a monogamous solution sadly MonMOM and MMOM were shutdown with the Yahoo shutdown and so there is a huge hole in support for those seeking support for monogamous mixed -orientation marriages. There are always opportunities for monogamous paths in the more generalized support groups but monogamous couples often find frustration with the open marriage discussions on those groups.

Alternate Paths moved their group from Yahoo to the groups.io platform and they continue to be a good place for support for straight wives . HUGS is a group for couples with both the husband and wife joining. While the group is not active at the moment I know a number of mixed-orientation marriage couples who have benefitted especially from their annual real world get together. There has been recent interest in increasing HUGS activity so it is worth following for those couples interested in support they can participate in together.   COVID has affected the real world gatherings for the straight wives but I am hopeful that someone will resume those soon. Those gathering details are usually announced on MMOMW, Alternate Paths and other support groups.

Facebook Groups is a growing platform for support and there are a couple of groups . Some of them are secret groups so you will need to be known in one of the public groups or by another member. The private but not secret groups I know of include Mixed Orientation Marriage and Relationship Support Group .

There is a current list of these support groups listed at the Mixed-Orientation Marrriage Support Group list This is a dynamic post waiting for some updates from group moderators and I will have additional updates as more information is received. Last update 2/5/2021