A judge annulled a couple’s marriage after hearing the woman realised she was a lesbian not bisexual, as she had originally thought.

The court acceded to the annulment request on grounds that one of the parties refused to consummate the marriage.

The couple met at university and tied the knot in 2006. Prior to that, the woman had told her boyfriend she was bisexual and had had a relationship with another woman before dating him.

The couple testified before Madam Justice Abigail Lofaro, presiding over the Family Court, that they had agreed to focus on their marriage and have no children.

They rushed into the marriage when he was leaving Malta for a job posting abroad.

It was the woman who suggested getting married “so that our parents do not tell us off for living in sin”. The man testified that about six months into the marriage, his wife kept coming with excuses not to be intimate and the marriage was only consummated some five months after the wedding.

She kept telling him that she was scared she would get pregnant but it turned out that this was not the real reason for the refusal.

The couple eventually left Malta for Ireland. After a couple of months, the man confronted her and she admitted she was having an affair with a woman.

She testified she felt “relieved” when confronted about her affair because it gave her the opportunity to come clean about her sexuality.

She said that, although she had always been under the impression that she was bisexual, spending time with the sports group made her realise that she was attracted to women and that this was the reason why she was not sexually attracted to her husband.

She said that after coming clean, she asked her husband if he would accept an open marriage, where the two could date other people, but he would not have it. In an attempt to save the marriage, she also proposed having a baby but he refused as he felt “blackmailed”.

In court, the woman said she felt sorry for her husband but could not continue “living a lie”.

The couple separated and the woman moved to Germany where she started a stable relationship with a woman.

The man told the court that he would not have accepted to get married had he known she was a lesbian and not bisexual.

In her considerations, Madam Justice Lofaro said it was evident that the couple rushed into marriage because of the French job opportunity and because they did not want their parents to think they were living in sin by cohabiting.

She ruled that the refusal of one of the parties to consummate the marriage made it null and, therefore, accepted his application to annul the marriage.