Why do we keep forgetting our girlfriends?

Belgian author Caroline Lamarche’s novel “Le Bel Obscure” has seen high praise right from its publication, ending up among the four finalists of Prix Goncourt 2025. Her diverse body of work ranging from poetry to radio often focuses on complex emotions, social marginalization and intimate relationships. Her latest work dives into the topic of modern marriage – the protagonist being a wife that finds herself in an open marriage with a gay husband.

The narrative of “Le Bel Obscure” follows two intertwined storylines. Firstly the modern storyline of the narrator, a middle-aged married woman who is navigating the aftermath of her husband coming out as queer. The narrator finds solace in investigating the biography of a 19th century relative, Edmond, whose life has been wiped from the family tree for being queer (as speculated by the narrator). This review will mainly focus on the contemporary storyline by examining what it implies about modern marriage and homosexuality.

The novel examines “a blind spot in literature” – as described by Caroline Lamarche – the wives of homosexual husbands, evoking the stories of the wives of famous homosexuals, such as Contance Lloyd, wife of Oscar Wilde, and Mathilde Mauté, wife of Paul Verlaine. After seven years of marriage and two daughters the narrator’s husband Vincent comes out as gay. However he does not want to break up their family life for the sake of their children so he suggests an open marriage. Both of them still love each other in their own unique way thus they begin navigating their new atypical modern marriage where Vincent’s lovers live with them, play with their children etc. While the protagonist goes through the emotional process of “separation”, she begins to learn about the world of homosexuality in order to help make sense of her husband and their new situation. As Leon Gabriel of Ket Brussels explained: “Lamarche challenges the conventional notion of marriage as a “patriarchal prison” for women, suggesting that non-traditional unions, even when fraught with difficulty, may offer opportunities for freedom and experimentation, but also bring their own pains and frustrations.”

The author has stated that there is nothing fictional about this story and it is merely a montage of documentary elements from literature, history and archives. A study published in 2018 shows that most couples where the husband comes out as gay follow a very similar path as described in the book. The participants described “something akin to an existential crisis: the realisation that the ‘secure home and marriage” was paradoxically unstable, causing significant distress” which resulted in a process of redefining the self and the relationship. As shown in the study, most of the couples tried to accommodate an altered marriage for a protracted period of time following the disclosure (being partially married, partially separated). It is important to note that societal sexual prejudice also fell onto the wives which made the transitional period more complicated : “in seeking to protect the self and family unit, there were dilemmas about when and to whom to disclose the reason for their marriage difficulties or separation, namely the ‘coming out”.

It is great to see Lamarche bringing light to a subject that has been left uncovered for too long in literature and doing so in a very realistic manner (in comparison to the 2018 study). However what troubles me while reading the book is the fact that it perpetuates this traditionalist idea that a woman’s identity is merely defined by her marriage. In the referenced study the idea of marriage was conceptualized strictly in a Catholic sense of being a lifelong monogamous commitment which explains why the separation process was especially hard on women. But reading Lamarche’s novel in a modern Western context it is painfully dull to read about a woman whose entire identity is shattered after her husband comes out as gay, as if she has no life beyond her marriage and children. So while Vincent is freely exploring his sexuality and new identity, the narrator shuts herself in a cage of isolation, anger and celibacy and harbours this victim mentality while constantly trying to convince the reader that she does not blame Vincent. Her acceptance of his sexuality and suggestion of an open marriage is praised as a very modern reaction but I find that in the year 2026 accepting your partner’s sexuality is just the bare minimum. While the feelings of betrayal are completely understandable, the veiled anger and contempt the narrator expresses towards Vincent lean more towards a conservative way of dealing with this situation. Reading this as a young woman I have spent hours imagining myself in this situation and I cannot fathom feeling anger towards my partner for coming out as queer mainly because of the fact that queer love and sex are one of the few things that I cannot provide for my partner.

Although it is clear that there are also aspects related to late stage capitalism that lock women into their marriage and reconfigure their identity around only their family life such as the need for both parents to work and all the remaining responsibilities concerning home and children still falling onto the woman’s shoulders. This creates a state where the woman’s support system only consists of her husband thus making the separation even harder due to financial and emotional concerns. This however does not seem to be the case for the narrator in “Le Bel Obscure” as she has time to throw herself into investigating Edmond’s story. This rather illustrates a cultural problem where women tend to forget about their friends when they get into a relationship. Studies have shown that the most significant shift occurs during the first year of marriage when the couples opt to spending most of their time together with mutual friends and leaving behind separate (often single) friends, even though mutual friendships are often less close in comparison to separate friendships.

So all the while the narrator is keeping herself in this cage of isolation and celibacy I am left wondering where her girlfriends are? Research shows that having a best friend present during stressful events lessens their negative effects on children, and adolescent girls with intimate female friends presented higher self-esteem, better adjustment in their environment and superior coping skills. Moreover, women’s intimate friendships have a biological component to them – women’s tending instinct facilitates the release of an anti-stress hormone oxytocin which is generally associated with mating and reproduction. So if there even is research on the topic of female friendships and its supporting and healing properties, why are girlfriends so often forgotten in texts about women dealing with traumatizing events? In the 21st century we should not be perpetuating this image of a woman whose identity only revolves around her husband – a glass house that shatters when the husband makes an unexpected move. Given the divorce rates in the Western world, I find it essential to remind women that their girlfriends are important, especially during stressful times. We spend so much time crying on our girlfriends shoulders about men when we are young, but somehow this is always forgotten when grown women are dealing with marital problems and they are portrayed as all alone. Lamarche’s novel could have been an exemplary work if it had shown a more open way of dealing with such a situation, like for example in the Netflix series “Grace & Frankie”. We have enough literature on lavender marriages that follow the same narrative of husbands coming out and the wives left completely devastated, but why not use modern literature to create a new narrative, a new example?

In conclusion, it is extremely important to expand on the forms of modern marriage and Lamarche has done a great job of creating a realistic portrayal of the wives of gay husbands. However it has also highlighted a separate problem where the women’s support system only consists of their husbands thus making the separation process much harder than it needs to be. Instead of this outdated notion of a woman’s identity that only revolves around her husband and children, we should be reminding women the importance of her girlfriends.