Quite the Pickle I have Gotten Myself Into

Hi Link

I am in a VERY similar situation to you, but with a few differences: 1) i have 3 children and 2) i have met an awesome guy.

In my opinion there are only really 3 options:
1. You stay with your wife and have relationships with men without her knowing (terrible option for both of you)
2. You stay with your wife and have relationships with men with her consent (perfect option for you, but what about her - will she be able to see other men too / would she want to or even consider this)
3. You guys seperate as a married couple but remain good friends.

These are really the only 3 options.

I know at the moment you feel very optimistic about your marriage and the status quo, but all of that can change in the blink of an eye if you develop a deep emotional connection with a man - then it will no longer just be the sex you will be longing for, but the intimacy as well. Try to picture what you feel for your wife, now transfer that onto someone you feel incredibly sexually attracted to. Could your wife compete? Would you still stay?

As far as kids go: DON'T HAVE KIDS NOW. Don't even consider it unless you and your wife have settled on option 2 or 3. Your children may fulfill you and your wife as individuals, but the stress they will add will magnify all the problems you are currently facing.

Well that's my 2c worth. I am also new to all of this, so don't hesitate to contact/msg me if you want to chat.

Stay strong!

 

What a fascinating thread to follow. Thank you for posting. I am, and have been, living a very similar experience. The only major difference being that I came out to my wife as bisexual before we were married so we didn't have to contend with the betrayal issues later on down the road during our 29 years together. Like you I continually struggle with the desire to be in a loving relationship with another man while attempting to maintain a healthy and loving relationship with my wife. I think because I was only out to my wife and no one else for many years that I disavowed the same sex attraction part of me. At age 45 that disavowed part came rising to the surface with a vengeance demanding attention and I am still in the process of figuring all that out along with my wife. It's a pathway not a destination.

I think what you are doing right now is as it should be, particularly the fact that the two of you are communicating and continuing to communicate. Try and let go of the cultural narratives that try to dictate how you and your wife should construct a relationship. Let things grow and evolve, as they will anyway, and try not to hold too tightly to an ideal or expectation of how it has to be, or that decisions need to be made and a course set. All relationships are living organism and they shift and change over time. I am not (thank god) the same person I was when I got married nor is my wife. The story of our marriage has contained many chapters, and I have no idea what the final one will be. I simply trust that the story will play out as it is meant to play out. It can't help but do that.

That said, I am responsible for my intentions, actions, and doing my work —*which is to live as authentically and as honestly as possible, and do the least harm to others around me. My wife is responsible for doing her work. It is wonderful that you recognize the strengths and competencies your wife possesses. Now try to trust in them. Too often I read stories such as yours where the man wants to protect the wife, or care for her out of concern or guilt. As lovely as that may seem it is patriarchal and quite frankly selfish. Continue to be honest and respectful with each other and the path will reveal itself, knowing all along that your paths may head off in different directions at some point, run parallel, or merge in a new and unique way for a while longer. One thing is for sure though, your relationship is no longer the same so be sure to allow each other to grieve that.

As for experiencing a loving and intimate relationship with another man while being married, I have had the joy of experiencing two longish term relationships with men over the years while remaining married and committed to my wife. In the most recent one I was trading off weeks living with him and then living at home with my wife and son. Over time however, it was very difficult to sustain this arrangement for a variety of reasons. The three of us are in the process of determining what form our relationships will now take. During those relationships with men I was able to fulfill many of the needs and desires for which I longed, but at the end of the day it was my wife and family where I felt the most fulfilled and at home. Will that always be the case? I don't know. Like I said, relationships are living organisms and I have no control over the future. But for now it is my wife with whom I want to grow old. I cannot imagine my life without her, but I know that I will be just fine if that were not so.

That brings me to my final point. I would invite you to put some energy into really learning to love yourself, to let go of the shame that so often surrounds those of us outside of the normative hetero culture, and let go of the idea that you will only be fulfilled and whole if you are in a relationship with your wife or a man. Again, all relationships are impermanent, they change. The one thing that will always remain with you in this life is you. Love yourself, learn to be content in solitude, embrace your whole being — particularly all those disavowed parts (the parts that have been closeted for so long).

BTW, I am 53 and I have had no difficulty meeting and connecting with other wonderful gay and bisexual men who are seeking a loving, caring, and supportive relationship. Try not to grasp too tightly to the mental fantasy you have created about what your life could or should be like. Open to the present moment, because all the rest is just fiction anyway.

 

Hi Bipossible

Thank you so much for your post. I cannot begin to tell you how moving and validating I found your thoughts. Some of the things you said were real AHA moments for me. I have a long way to go on this path I am on, but it makes the journey so much less scary when you realise that you are not walking this road alone.

Thank you once again.

 

Hi Link....
I feel for your situation as it resembles mine in so many ways. Even the answers you seek. Except I have children. However and unfortunately I don't think you will find what your looking for from us but instead from within your heart. I came out to my wife several years ago and immediately pretended like I never said it. We continued with our perfect little life for several years until I just couldn't take the numbness and depression any longer so I came out to her again just recently. So the one sentence that really stood out for me was this. "I have also not decided to pretend like the disclosure never happened." I think this statement is key in your situation. I vowed this time that I can't and will not go backwards. I don't know what the future hold for us but there's no denial this time. No pretending. Like you, I feel closer then ever to my wife since telling her but I'm afraid it's a false positive. We tend to feel closer to anyone that we open up to, even our friends. Tho we do love our wives Im afraid we could just be delaying the inevitable. This is just my opinion I wish you the best in your journey.

 

^^^^this... probably the best post on this thread

 

i feel like the man on man urgers seem to be getting stronger and you will want to fulfill them sooner or later. since you seem honest and a non cheater, you will likely by hook or crook meet a man and then somehow ask your wife's permission for you to "experiment" with him. likely the man will be full on gay and likely you will have some teenage courtship before anything physical happens. all of this will get you riled up and eventually to the point where you are going to want to have sex with him and you will have to choose between the wife or the male sex. my advice to you is that the good news is that there are no kids involved yet. you have to ask yourself, can you throw about the gay fantasy? if the answer is yes, then this is a non issue. start making babies , stop looking at those gay sites and close that off as a possibililty for your life. if you know this will make you unhappy, then separate, gay-date, see how it feels and if it sucks see if you can get back with your wife. i personallly think that is unfair to the wife but it is an option before full blown divorce. to me the gay feelings are not going to go away, your wife will always be wondering now if you like her more or another guy. eventually this will eat away at her and her self esteem and she'll start to look for signs of your gaydom and look to see if you are flirting or what guys you are low key staring at. all of this will end up in resentment against you. just know that the gay fantasy is a fantasy and that you'll likely end up kissing more frogs before you find a prince. if you however, just want to have random sex with attractive men, you'll be a-ok in terms of finding plenty of those opportunities. if you want an emotional connection with an attractive man where physical sex is not occuring soon after you meet them, then that my friend may take a long time or possibly never happen. just get ready for what you're getting into. the gay life is not an romantic comedy and it's not the "notebook" or a jane austen book (pride and predjudice). just know what you're getting into so you wont be disappointed later.

 

Can you make things work, in a closed marriage, short term? Probably.

Long term, will you be happy? What do you think you will feel like years from now, an admittedly gay man, who is "stuck" in a marriage where there were words of love, but the most basic of your human experience, your sexuality, doesn't find expression, isn't honored? Do you think the love you share with her can survive and overcome you repressing yourself?

One year ago at this time before Thanksgiving I was a deeply depressed and suicidal man. I was with a woman I loved deeply, she expected us to become engaged. I wasn't exactly sure why I was so unhappy. I thought it was more about things about her. After Thanksgiving I made the choice to get support and help. It took a few months for me to articulate and accept that I am gay. Now I live a fully out life - to my kids, parents, friends, community. I have stepped outside my comfort zone to make friends in the LGBTQ community and enjoy that world. I have connected with many men. I have fallen in love with a man.

Perhaps, in therapy, I could have learned how to box up my gay fantasies and feelings - either to stifle them or live them out in a private world. I intellectualize lots of stuff. I would have probably intellectualized all that -- at the cost of my feelings.

I jumped out of the plane with a parachute on... with the support of close friends, support groups, my therapist. It was scary at times. Painful at times. Unsure at times. (and to be clear -- still is at times!).

I wouldn't trade my old life for my new one. I am *me.* And that, where ever it leads, is amazing and priceless.

You are on your own journey. I tell my story, to offer support.

All the best / Pete

 

There has been a ton of excellent advice, all of which I'm sure is helpful. I've been down a "somewhat" similar road. I went through periods of self-hate and feelings of being flawed, wondering why I have these desires. Prayers to God for help with what I considered a "curse" went unanswered. I'd fool myself into thinking at times that I had it "under control", only to fail, then beat myself up for that (then the pattern repeats). I thought if I found the right women and fell in love, those "other" feelings would subside. They do, but I learned only temporarily, they're still there, just below the surface. I finally did divorce my wife (actually NOT because of my gay feelings) because over time I discovered she was bipolar with horrible mood swings, selfish, self centered, immature, loved to argue, and nothing was "ever" her fault (but that's a whole other story, lol). But because of family (yes, I have kids) I'm still in the closet (and have no idea if or when I'll ever come out).

I think I've finally come to accepted "that part" of myself and I know it will never go away, no matter how much I'd like it to. It will always be there, nagging away at you and pulling your strings, it's a very powerful emotion! The only thing I have to add is I think you will be fooling yourself if you think you can continue to keep your gay feelings "boxed up" and controlled. The more you suppress it, it seems like it grows stronger and stronger, until you fail (and I'm not meaning an affair, but even becoming addicted to gay porn for some kind of release, or some other form of adicition...) and then you'll be "beating yourself" over that.

Eventually your secret will erode your marriage and your self worth. It will wear on you, as well as on your wife. You still love and respect each other today, there are no children, this might be the right time to break ties and move forward separately. I'm not saying don't to still be close to each other (best friends if possible), but perhaps not as husband and wife. I know it's very, very hard, but it will only get worse if resentment sets in, and I think that is inevitable. Save your friendship with her before there is nothing left to save. My two cents worth... keep us posted.

 

I think Pete hit it on the head. If you're having these doubts today, they will only grow with time. You could find yourself 5, 10, 15 years older with kids in the mix and depressed about not being able to live as the real you.

I thought I could keep my gay boxed up for life, but I finally realized I'll never find the fulfillment, confidence and purpose that have been missing from my life without being honest about who I am. It's a difficult road, but easier the earlier you start. I say to take the plunge now.

 

Fully concur with Chip on this one and can offer some anecdotal evidence with regard to the physical manifestations of marital stress.

About the same time that I lost a good job, in 2007 (about 14 years into our marriage), I started developing a very mild case of psoriasis (an autoimmune disease of the skin which can also be associated with arthritis) on my hands and feet, at times it was excruciatingly painful. By some weird stroke of fate I was hired at around the same time by a dermatologist who ran the clinical research company that I worked for (until March of this year) so I got some treatment, which helped.

I still have a touch of it on my hands, but since I left the house, it is much, much milder, and I am almost clear of it on my hands...

My wife also developed an autoimmune disease within the last 5 years of our marriage, more serious in the long-run: Sjogren's, which is an inflammatory disease causing joint pain, dry eyes and mouth and other nasty sequelae (I don't know if my leaving helped, but I suspect it did).

During my marriage, I tended to get a cold right after one of our regular blow-ups, I distinctly remember noticing that pattern...fascinating how two people who are sick of each other can make each other sick...

 

Very interesting....I, too, inevitably got sick right after our fights. She would generally work herself into a full-blown asthma attack and be sick as well. Although after enough years of it, I started to recognize that often the fights followed any one of several of her health issues--a ramping up of the asthma, one of many clumsy injuries (generally the result of rushing around because of being behind the eight ball for one thing or another), or not taking all her meds as scheduled. I eventually got to the point where I could usually tell that a fight was coming, and did my best to hold it off until I was at least somewhat prepared to fight back. Because there was not STOPPING it, although sometimes I could keep the collateral damage to something of a minimum.

 

Chip, you bring up some very interesting points about the wife's role in this. My wife claims she had absolutely no inkling I could be gay, which I find hard to believe after spending 20+ years together.

She is now intensely angry, but I'm now thinking the anger may not really about me having hidden being gay. It could be anger that I violated our unspoken agreement to stay in the closet and never give voice to my true feelings. It's hard to know where the truth lies.

BTW, I'm on my second Joe Kort book and highly recommend them. Oh, and thanks for solving the mystery about why I developed migraines in the past few years. :lol:

 

It's perhaps a commonplace thing to say, but behind most anger is an intense sadness...it's getting through the defences that is the hard part...

 

Don't forget that the "unspoken agreement to stay in the closet" probably gave her a gigantic amount of power in your relationship, and she probably feels very adrift now that she doesn't have that stick to beat you with. My wife's self esteem has been in the toilet since her teens, and the positive changes in me over the past year are very clearly threatening to her. Even the kids have commented to me that Mom seems to be "getting a lot crazier lately".

One of my favorite recent quotes is from The Perks of Being a Wallflower - "We accept the love that we think we deserve." My wife, and probably yours, probably knew on some level that the love we had for them was incomplete, but they could accept it because they didn't feel they deserved more--and really, neither did we. Accepting something so deep within ourselves forces them to look inside as well, and they may not be liking what they see. All at once, they have lost power AND been given a glimpse at things they can't face about themselves. We see light, however distant, at the end of the tunnel now. They may just be starting to blast their way through the mountain.

 

Very insightful Choirboy. The power dynamic is definitely changing. Before I came out, I had to prepare myself for the possibility of losing everything and being outed to everyone. I accepted that fact and decided I had to do it anyway. So what can anyone really threaten me with now? It's kind of liberating.

 

Link4816
What a wonderful, thoughtful, supportive thread you have started! EC at its best. I hope that it is helping you process things?
I am 50, but when I was in my 20-30s I was pretty much closeted (out as bisexual to a few close friends) and most definitely wanted the whole 'normal' heterosexual dream. During this time I had two serious relationships with women - both lasted for two years. In both cases they knew before they started dating me that I also found men attractive and in both cases this didn't stop them pursuing me and getting me! In both cases i had pleasurable sex and was emotionally close (truly in love with them). I was more than happy to suppress my homosexuality to have all the benefits I thought having a hetero relationship would bring. BUT in the end in both cases, my girlfriends however loving and supportive and understanding they tried to be could not live with the situation and they split with me. The first time was very painful, I was so desperate to be seen as straight and have a normal relationship and I loved her so deeply that when she found someone else I was devastated!! The pain was so great that we lost contact (she moved away). The second time was different however... again my girlfriend decided she couldn't live with my homosexuality as the elephant in the room and although it was difficult and bumpy we kept talking and now 15 years later - we remain best friends. We live many miles apart but see each other often and know each other like .... husband and wife??? (or better as no conditions). I am now 'out' as gay (not bisexual) to everyone .... and my ex girlfriend has been my greatest supporter through all this. This just would not have happened if say we'd tried to stay together (or have an open relationship or whatever...)
So I guess what i am saying is being best friends with a woman (my ex.. your wife) but be totally honest that this will not involve a sexual aspect is the best possible outcome I could imagine.
Hope both of you find a way forward ... reading your posts I kind of sense you will!

 

Electra,

Thanks for sharing, life does throw us down some difficult roads. Glad it worked out for you, and cool that you remained very close to ex #2.