Married man seeking advice

The confusion stage is often the trickiest part of figuring out where your sexuality lies. Now, as you have said, you have a serious sexual attraction to men. To determine whether you may be gay, bisexual or even just curious you'll find you have to think about a few things (e.g. could you only have sex with another man, could you see yourself dating one, etc). It might seem hard, and it might take a while but just thinking and trying to get a feel for where your feelings flow will help with the confusion. We're here to help along the way, if you need more help of course =]. Only you can decide what sexuality you are, but remember nothing is set in stone yet and your marriage isn't necessarily jeopardized by this.

 

It's no problem, glad to help. Also,that could help you in deciding where your feelings lie. If you were unaware of these feelings up until a year ago, then it could be because your attraction towards other guys doesn't make up a big percentage of your overall sexual attraction. In other words, it's always been there, but has been a low enough amount that it never had any need to manifest itself earlier in your life. Also for what it's worth (I know you aren't definitively gay or bi) but your situation is a lot more common than you think. There are actually a lot of people who don't realize this sort of thing until their adult age, and who go through the same thing you are going through. It's just that there's a sort of "norm" where a big portion of people who have same sex feelings realized it at a young age. Also, how you imagine yourself when you're with another man could also help you in your figuring out.

 

No problem =]. If your wife isn't very tolerant of GLBT, then you'll most likely want to wait until you're absolutely sure of what you are before you tell her. If you tell her you're confused she'll most likely do everything in her power to convince you that you are straight and only straight, and get you to suppress the attraction you have for guys which is never a healthy thing to do. At least once you're sure of where your feelings lie, you can counter any negative reactions from her and say, "Well you know what, I've thought about this a great deal and I'm quite sure this is how I identify."

 

You're DEFINITELY not alone on that front. Myself, and many others I'm sure, can vouch for the fact that we were all worried about who would find out, and we all felt like we were doing something we shouldn't be by being attracted to the same gender. But that's why we're here to let people know that they aren't the only ones feeling what they're feeling.(&&&)

 

I'm glad I helped =]. And yes, it's gonna take some pondering about things but we're always here if you need us =D

 

just want to say that you might be confused but your family comes first.

 

Inspector1:

There is no simple answer to your situation. You may need to seek counseling to discover whether these are just fantasies or whether you are gay. Everyone- gay, straight or bisexual- has fantasies. Not everyone chooses to act upon them, especially when they are married with children.

There are several guys on this site with a story very similar to yours and I'm sure they would be happy to talk to you about how they dealt with your situation.

 

Hi there. I'm one of those guys that discovered (or finally had to admit) that I was gay later in life. I had been married for 10 years and had two little girls. I knew I was turned on by the thought of gay sex, but never considered the possibility that I was gay. So I got married and started to lead the life that I figured I was supposed to.

What eventually happened is a bit of a long story so I won't get into it here.

However, couselling helped me tremendously. Perhaps your employer has an employee assisstance program that you could take advantage of and see a therapist to talk through this. It's very complicated but at the same time something that you're not likely to ask for advice about while standing at the water cooler.

After talking with a therapist it might become clearer for you.

DON'T attempt to figure it out by "trying" something with another man. I've been down that path unfortunately - cheating on my wife - and wish I hadn't. You can never take that back, and you owe it to your wife to be faithful to her.

However, you also owe it to her to be honest - eventually. But hang around here to get more comfortable with the concept of being something other than 100% straight. And talk to a counsellor.

It can all work out - despite things seeming very doom and gloom right now. I think I'm an example of how things can work themselves out.

PM me if you want to chat more. Good luck. And welcome to EC!

 

Counseling sounds like a very good idea to me. You may very well be bi-sexual. I guess the big question is how do you feel about your wife? It must be very stressful being separated for three months from her. Do you think your fantasies would be "running wild" if she were there? Do you think you would be thinking about men so much if she were not gone for 3 months? I guess you have to figure out how important your marriage is. I agree with Jim that experimenting is not a good idea.

 

Hi I can relate to were your comming from as I have just come out to my wife that im gay. I have 2 young children as well. Im finding it very dificult to deal with and have 1,000s of questions to so what ever you decide to do. There are some very nice people on here who can help you though it as I am finding out myself and now I dont feel so alone in my thoughts!(*hug*)

kind regards
Steve.

 

Well its too bad she couldn't handle the truth. I'm sure that does cause alot of stress. Is it possible for you to go see a counselor about all this?

 

Though I can't totally identify with your situation (I'm one of those cases of the "norm"), I would definintely say that couseling is a good idea, and I CAN identify with the fear of doing it face to face and not being alone. Firstly, you've opened up online. This may sound trivial, but it really isn't. I came out for the first, second, and third times online, and it proved to be a wonderful thing. However, it does make telling someone face to face extremely difficult. If you choose to seek a counselor (which I think would be awesome!) then you could always write it out in a letter and have them read it (or something along those lines) if saying it out-loud is too difficult.

Also, you said that you have told two of your closest friends about the way you've been feeling. Perhaps one of them would be willing to go to couseling with you? Would that help ease the anxiety of doing it alone?