Married and expecting a baby but scared that I’m gay and in denial

Hi everyone. I’m writing all this down in the hope that someone will read it and relate. My mental health is in the gutter at the moment to the point that it feels like every waking moment is spent trying to figure out what I am and whether I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life. All this is happening while my wife is about to give birth to our first child and I feel like the worst kind of person because my mind isn’t on this.

I’m a man in my early 30s, I got married to my wife a couple of years ago and she became pregnant at the start of this year. In my whole life up until we got engaged, I didn’t think I was gay. I remember fancying girls all the way through school and didn’t report any of the ‘early noticings’ that you sometimes hear about from guys who come out later in life. When I started to become sexually active around 17-18, I struggled to get an erection the first few times. In my first opportunity to lose my virginity, I was really drunk and couldn’t get it up, so the next few times it happened, I put it down to performance anxiety. Eventually I got a steady girlfriend and started to enjoy sex.

Sometime in my early twenties, my porn tastes started changing a bit. I started watching women using strap ons on men, trans women dominating men, and then women dominating men into sucking cock. At this point I realised that I was probably bi to some degree but I never acted on it as I never felt an attraction to any guys, plus I was still really enjoying sex with girls. I used to just think I was kinkier than most because I liked the idea of being penetrated or forced into gay sex.

I then met my future wife in my mid twenties and again we had a great sex life initially - on our first holiday away together we did it twice a day for a week. I was still occasionally watching the types of porn I mentioned above but it wasn’t affecting my sex life so I thought nothing of it. I even watched gay porn once or twice and was aroused by it although in my head I felt it wasn’t really for me. In the run-up to our wedding, I started to suffer from anxiety for the first time, although initially it was not sex related. I worried that I had social anxiety, despite having a good group of friends, and that I was not going to enjoy my wedding. This persisted after we got married - I broke down in tears on my honeymoon - but eventually I recovered through seeing a therapist and doing mindfulness meditations. Because of my anxiety I decided to stop watching porn and stick to masturbating using my thoughts, which would mainly be about women.

After a period of feeling fine, I remember about a year into the marriage I was masturbating but struggling to get into it, so I started thinking about a mans body and a hard cock and all of a sudden I got hard again and came. This triggered a new wave of anxiety that I could in fact be gay. I started wondering if I was attracted to every guy I looked at, and I was scared that I would no longer be attracted to my wife and we would need to divorce. This was 2 years ago and I’ve struggled with the anxiety ever since. It went away for a while towards the end of last year after I decided I needed to find out and secretly met a guy through a hook up site. He went down on me in the dark and I came but I never even saw his face. After this, I felt quite empowered, like I had found out that it was nothing too special and I could get on with my life and my anxiety recovered. Then, a couple of months after my wife got pregnant, I started noticing good looking guys again and wondering if I was gay. I told my wife I thought I might be bisexual and she hit the roof and very nearly kicked me out of the house. The next day, I looked back on all the hook up sites to see if I could do another experiment that would prove it to me, but I didn’t feel anything when looking at the photos on the site. Last week I admitted to myself that I am definitely not straight and I’m bisexual, but since admitting this to myself I’m even more obsessed with finding out if it’s true or if I’m actually gay. I still don’t think I’m more attracted to guys in real life, but I am definitely turned on by the thought of gay sex.

I’ve probably went on long enough now, big thanks to anyone who has stuck with me this far and if anyone feels like they can relate it would be great to hear from you.

 

Hi guys, first off thanks for taking the time to respond. I think that’s my main problem, I don’t know what I want. I had a good relationship with my wife but as she approached 30 she was quite forceful in going down the marriage, house, kids route and I think I’ve went along with it a bit to make her happy. Now we have an ok relationship, we still have fun together, but we don’t have a lot in common and I find myself going through the motions a bit. I really just want to be rid of these constant negative thoughts about my life, as I know there is a lot I should be grateful for, especially this baby when it comes. I do think me and my wife could be happy together if we could get our old sex life back but since this anxiety started I’m terrified of initiating sex as I’m scared if I don’t perform then it’ll ‘prove’ I’m gay. Being bi is a lot more manageable for me as it means that I could stay married and be there for my child. As for how I deal with the being bi bit, I can figure it out as I go on.

 

Thank you very much Rachel and Bilowa, I found your comments really reassuring. So glad I found this forum. I’m going to just take it a day at a time and try to relax. I am struggling with thinking of my wife sexually at the moment as she’s in so much pain from the pregnancy that I feel I can’t touch her at all. Hopefully we can get some of our intimacy back once the baby is born. Bilowa, does your wife know you are bisexual? Did you know before you got married?