Scary Mommy Founder Jill Smokler: 'My Husband Is Gay'

Fifteen years ago, when Jeff Smokler first began questioning his sexuality, "the first person I told was my wife," he says. For Jill Smokler, who by then had been married to Jeff for barely two years, leaving her husband-her soulmate-wasn't even an option. "I signed on for this," she says now. "I could have opted out, but I couldn't wrap my head around the feeling that Jeff was my person and now I have to walk away? It's not a secret that he kept from me. It was our secret, and we were in it together. I didn't want to walk away."

But the inevitable strain it put on their marriage didn't go away either. And finally, on March 4, after 17 years together, Jill, the founder of the popular parenting website Scary Mommy, revealed to her 15 million readers that she and her husband had agreed to divorce-because Jeff is gay. "My dominant feeling is relief," says Jill, 39. "I don't have any regrets about marrying Jeff or having children with Jeff. I would do it all over again. " Says Jeff, 39, who works in marketing and public relations: "We've been healing for a really long time. It has not been an easy road."

For much of that time, the couple-who live in Baltimore with their three children, Lily, 13, Ben, 11, and Evan, 9-had hoped to find a way to stay together. "What's amazing to me is how in love a gay man could be with a woman," says Jeff, who met Jill in 1995, when they were freshmen at Washington University in St. Louis. "It wasn't just a matter of wanting to keep the family together or not wanting to come out; it was really about how do I live without this woman with whom I'm in love?" They sought out therapy and over the years shared a lot of "painful, deep conversations," says Jeff. "It was not something we swept under the rug.... Jill and I viewed it as a piece of me that we had to deal with. But we both knew over time that it was becoming a bigger piece of me."

While both agree that they shared a close, physical intimacy, Jill says, "I was very obviously and painfully aware of the lack of passion. And now that I'm out of it, I realize even more how much that was lacking and how important it is." Ultimately, she says, "it's been so hard to keep this all in and so isolating. It impacted my physical and mental health and my relationships with friends and family."

Three months ago they mutually decided to separate. "Before, there was always this solid reason why it didn't make sense at that time," says Jill. "Either we had an infant or I was having surgery or something was going on. But we finally ran out of excuses."

What scared them the most was telling their kids-who took the news in stride. "Lily's immediate response was to get up and give Jeff a great big hug and tell him how much she loved him," says Jill. Adds Jeff: "We told our sons that Mommy and Daddy are going to be happy now and happier people make better parents."

Since then, they've embraced their new lives the only way they know how-together. "The other night we spent 45 minutes on the phone talking about men-men that Jeff's interested in and men that I'm interested in," says Jill. "And it felt oddly normal." Although the kids now spend three nights a week with Jeff, whose new house is just three miles from the family home, the couple expect plenty of family dinners and vacations. "We can't be husband and wife," says Jill, "but we can still have the relationship we had before, which is amazing."

This article was originally published on PEOPLE.com