40 years old and questioning, advice desperately needed!

Hello all, I’m 38 year old guy living in London with my fiancée.


When I was younger I lived in a small town and there were no gay role models and homosexuality was definitely seen as a negative by people / my father / and if I’m honest unfortunately by me too when I was a kid (at least in relation to my own sexual orientation).


I lost my virginity to a girl at 16 (girlfriend of 1 year) and had a couple of girlfriends after that and never thought about my sexuality until I was around 20-26 when I questioned it on and off which made me periodically pretty miserable during this period but didn’t want to really look at it so pushed it to the back of my mind as gay wasn’t something that I wanted to be. During this period I had 2 girlfriends for about a year each time but wasn’t particularly successful with women (though I did try to meet women and I masturbated to females in porn), I had self esteem issues and I would sleep with female prostitutes because it was the only way that I could get sex at some points due to such low self confidence. I did my absolute best to bury my fears around my sexuality rather than examine them. I had this ‘man about town’ image that I tried to maintain at the time and had some reasonable success in my life at a young age and was trying to live up to some image probably of what I thought I / a man should be when I was in reality still quite immature - toxic masculinity at it’s finest. So there was definitely some cognitive dissonance between who I felt like I was and the image that I perceived I needed to present to the world. I was suffering from low self esteem and hid it with drugs and alcohol, never really dealing with any of my problems, whatever they were. Since the age of 27 I became pretty successful with women, had a girlfriend of 2 years, one of 6 years and have had lots of sex with various attractive women in- between the relationships.


2 years ago I met my fiancée (never fallen in love so hard in my life) and we were planning to get married this year. But two months ago I had what I felt was a ‘realisation’ or at the very least a massive wobble regarding my sexuality. I was having a gym session with a gay trainer, I wouldn’t have though he would be the type of guy that I would find attractive (I’m not sure if I did or not to be honest) but being in his company triggered something in me to the point where I stopped going to the lessons. I then went into a full blown crisis where I was questioning everything – I think I might be attracted to men, have I been living a lie, have I wasted my life, have all my plans (marriage, babies) gone to shit etc etc. I had maybe 6 weeks of hiding from my fiancée, crying like a baby on my own and just generally feeling like my life was over. I’m ashamed to say in my despair I even tried going to have a ‘massage’ with a guy to see if I got aroused, but I stopped him when he started touching my dick and I did a runner (it didn’t do anything for me, but to be honest I think I was definitely forcing it. I was so miserable, tense, anxious, low when I went to see him that I’m not sure it provides any conclusive evidence of anything either way!).

Anyway, of course my fiancée could tell that something was wrong and after about 6 weeks of being in the worst hell I’ve ever been in in my life, I plucked up the courage to tell her that “I think I might be bisexual”. Her initial reaction was devastation. She is a wonderful, understanding woman but of course this triggered a mirror image of fears in her as it did in me – i.e. have I wasted the last 2 years of my life, I love him but can I trust him, can I marry this man and build a life with him etc. That was about 2 months ago. Since then we have been trying to work through things. She has swung from being very supportive to (understandably) being sad, upset and scared for her future and ours. She still wants to marry me and believes that we can work through anything together. We have been to therapy (as have I alone) but I haven’t ‘worked it out’ yet. There was (naturally) quite a lot of pressure from her to ‘work it out’ which is obviously (through no fault of her own) unhelpful for myself when going through a process of growth such as this.


I have watched gay porn a few times but it has been an absolute turn off for me, apart from one time after I’d had a few glasses of wine and a guy was sucking off a couple of other fellas and I managed to cum to that, though I don’t know if it might have been because I was pissed or because there was some submissive / dominance stuff going on which I like generally (my therapist suggested it could be this).


I’ve watched some transexual porn and some of that worked for me much better. I could get excited if the girls looked very feminine and there was one girl who I quite liked seeing her erect dick bounce around while she was getting fucked up the ass.


I enjoy sex with women and have no problems getting excited with women, apart from a couple of times in my early 20’s which could either be self esteem issues, sexuality or both. I find my fiancée very attractive, though I have a fear that my attraction to women is some sort of learned behaviour (?).


The idea of having a relationship with a man is pretty alien to me and it not something that I feel like I “want”, but I’m aware this could just be how I have been programmed / programmed myself over the years, and of course I want to be true to myself and I worry that if I get married will this always be there in the back of my mind? Will I ever truly know myself / be completely happy again if I don’t allow myself to experience an important part of me (if it is a part of me!)? I am still pretty confused about my sexuality, which I now feel it’s ok to be (confused), and I am pretty relaxed now compared to a couple of months ago, though there is a lot of pressure on me now to move forwards and get married which is challenging, and of course I love my fiancée so much and I don’t want to waste her time (I’ve spent a lot of time meditating and working on the guilt I feel associated with how this has affected her, I now more or less don’t blame myself too much but it may have been the worst part of this process).


I’d be really grateful for any comments or advice from anyone who has been through something similar. I’m still confused about my sexuality, not sure if I can marry my fiancée and not really sure where to go from here. Sorry this is such a long message (it’s been cathartic just to write this down), thank you for reading if you have managed to get to the end!

 

Hi, and many thanks for the reply. I'll have a look at some of the forums / conversations thanks. Maybe a dumb question but do you have any other suggestions as to how I can start to figure this out? I actually split up with my fiancee two days ago for a range of issues (me questioning my sexuality obviously being one of them!). I started to have a look on ###### at guys and there are some attractive guys. I guess I could go on a date to see how it feels but that feels like a big step and fills me with anxiety... and I'm not sure if I'd be a particularly good date for a gay guy right now! Maybe I need to find the local gay community and meet some people socially in a low pressure environment ... I'm sort of answering my own question here I think lol. As you suggest maybe I'll check out the forums and take it from there!