Popular broadcaster Louise McSharry has announced on her podcast that she is gay and has split with her husband Gordon Spierin – the couple have two children together
Louise McSharry pictured at the launch of the Supper Club at the Devlin, Ranelagh.
Picture Brian McEvoy(Image: Brian McEvoy)
Louise McSharry has announced that she is gay, as well as revealing she and her husband Gordon Spierin have decided to end their marriage.
The pair have been married since 2015 and have two sons, Sam and Ted.
The podcaster explained that she came to the realisation she is gay three years ago after going to therapy. “Three years ago I had a conversation with Gordon, it was a topic we had talked about before. I came home from a therapy session… I had a question mark around my sexuality for a long time. That was something Gordon and I discussed [previously].
“I had landed on the fact that I’m a gay woman… I had this really intense session where I knew it was time and needed to tell Gordon,” she explained.
Louise came home crying and told Gordon that she thought she was gay. “He said, ‘I’m not surprised’. That set off a massive domino effect in our lives, trying to figure out what that meant for our relationship, what it meant for our family, our immediate family, us and the boys, what our future as going to look like.”
The broadcaster explained that she has bought a house and will be moving into her own space in the next few weeks. “We are going to have a new family life. It’s been really difficult and really strange not to talk about it… I feel incredibly protective of Gordon, and of the kids as well,” she said on her podcast, The Catch Up.
Louise says her and Gordon have managed to transition into a beautiful friendship and they are in a really good space, but that it has been a difficult journey.
Louise McSharry
The former RTÉ presenter thought that everyone felt the way she felt, adding that she had to dig down into who she was at the core.
“A question mark had appeared after I got married… actually, Gordon said to me, ‘Do you think you’re bisexual?’. I said, ‘Yeah, probably, but I love you and I’m married to you and want to be with you forever so it doesn’t really matter’…. I really meant that at the time, and I continue to mean that.
“That’s one of the challenges, when you are with someone you love and really care about them and do want to be with them forever, you don’t want to acknowledge there is a growing question mark that’s getting bigger in the back of your head and harder to ignore… that’s why I started to go to therapy.”
She said it was hard for her to get her head around how she “missed” this. “When I talk to my kids about what’s going on, I say, ‘You know there are some people who are gay?’, and they say, ‘Yeah’.”
“I say, ‘Some people know that their whole lives, and some people don’t figure out for a really long time’. I’m one of the people who didn’t figure it out, and that is the truth.”
She added that she didn’t fall in love with someone else or start a new relationship.
Louise told her dad too, who also supported her. The fact that her mother has early onset Alzheimer’s gave her the push she needed to explore this part of herself, she added. “When my mam was 58, and I was turning 40, I just realised, you could have 18 years left of your life and are you really not going to figure this out… something wasn’t right.”
