First, a word of warning: this is a very long post. It would definitely help me out if people would read it and respond, but I wanted to let people know it is long-winded ahead of time, in case they are not interested. Thanks!
Hi everyone,
I am in an interesting (read: absolutely gut wrenching) situation, and I wanted to get some input.
My wife and I have been married for four years, and together for almost 11. We are only 26--we were high school sweethearts, and as you can do the math you will know we have been together since we were 15 years old. I know for a fact that I am very strongly attracted to men, and I have been for as long as I can remember.
She and I have never really had the most stable relationship. While we have not actually been "broken up" for more than a few weeks throughout the whole 11 years we have been together, there were multiple instances in high school and college where I cheated on her--almost exclusively with other men (I think the cheating with women was not because I was attracted to them but for other reasons... not quite figured that out yet...). I have been faithful (at least in the literal sense of not having any kind of sexual or emotional interaction with another person) since we've been married.
In addition to the cheating, our sex life has never been good. She was abused when she was younger, and I have my own issues with sex, so it has always been really hard for us to separate and determine if our sexual hang-ups were do to our respective histories, or due to my sexuality. I think it is probably a mixture of the two, although we always wrote it off to our histories to avoid having to think about my sexuality. We started having sex about a year after we started dating, but it never got comfortable. I was never able to open up and really give myself to her sexually--I was always in my own head, not able to enjoy the experience and only able to think about how I had to please her and show her that she was pleasing me. She also has never been able to fully open up to me sexually, I think because deep down she was protecting her heart, afraid to open pandora's box only to find that I was gay.
This last part was probably not helped very much by the experience we had our sophomore year of college. She was studying abroad in London, and I was planning a trip to visit her over spring break. Before I went, I got really freaked out and decided that I was definitely gay and that I needed to end the relationship... and this is what I did when I went to London. She has never been one to take no for an answer, so when I tried to break up with her and she wouldn't let me, I really let her have it. Not in an intentionally spiteful way, but it hit home nonetheless. I told her that I was absolutely gay and that I was not attracted to her. Now is this true? I am not completely sure... If I'm not 100% gay I am close. My profile says 90% but it is probably closer to 95%--I didn't choose 99% because I thought that was a bit too extreme. But am I attracted to her?
Well, I think that depends on how you look at it. When I look at her, I definitely feel that she is attractive! She is beautiful, gorgeous, sexy! When I look at her body I love her curves. But I have not had a real desire to be with her sexually in a long time.
So we broke up in London and I went home. This was in March. We got engaged that August and married just under two years later in July.
We got married, as I said, four years ago. I think we both subconsciously thought that marriage would make us both feel more stable and secure in our relationship. Of course, that is the dumbest rationale I can imagine--if your relationship is unstable and uncertain, just get married! But we thought that maybe one of the reasons our sex life was not good was that we didn't see each other often, and so we didn't have sex very often, and so when we did have sex it was kind of awkward (we were each others' firsts)... so I think maybe I thought that when we were married we would see each other all the time and we would have sex more often and by extension we would get through the awkwardness, and I think she felt like if she had the promise, commitment, and vow of marriage from me, then she would finally feel secure and be able to open up.
That didn't happen. We got married and still didn't have sex. She was upset with me for not making advances, and she didn't feel comfortable making a move on me for fear that I would turn her down. When she would ask why I never made a move, I would answer that I never thought about sex. This was partially true--I never thought about having sex with her, but I did look at gay porn on a regular basis--at least once a week.
About two years ago, she finally hit her breaking point. It sounds kind of strange, but it all started because of David Cook. My wife had never really been a fan of American Idol. She had watched it some off and on, but never really got into it. I, on the other hand, had watched it religiously for at least the previous two seasons. I convinced her that we needed to watch it 7th season, and we did. David Cook came on the screen and she immediately felt a connection to him. Through the TV screen, he had made her feel more wanted than her husband had ever been able to make her feel, and that triggered something in her brain. She started distancing herself from me, found a David Cook fan forum and posted and read obsessively. We watched the show every week and she made her parents and me call and text votes for him until our fingers practically bled. After the season, she went to all kinds of his concerts, starting with the American Idol tour, and continuing when he went on tour solo. She wrote fan-fiction about him--she and her forum friends actually wrote and bound a collection of erotic short stories involving him. I saw in her a sexuality that I had never seen, because I had never been able to bring it out in her, and I was incredibly jealous! I loathed David Cook with a passion--while at the same time admiring him for his musical abilities and his apparent voodoo charm over the ladies, and I must admit a little over myself as well.
The David Cook thing sort of fizzled out, after the tour for his first album was over. In the year of the Cook, my wife and I had sex maybe once a month, probably less often.
Last July, my wife had a friend of hers visiting from out of town--a girl she had met through the David Cook forum, actually--and they went skydiving. She automatically fell in love with it and has been doing it ever since. She now has her second level license (B License), and 80+ jumps.
We are both very obviously aware, and have been for at least the past two years, that we have problems. Throughout the whole David Cook thing, I was not at all understanding. I think my wife had a hard time verbalizing exactly what was going on in her mind--she may not have even come to terms with what it was yet--and I definitely had a hard time hearing what she was trying to say. All I could see was that she was sexually interested in this other man... more than I had ever seen her be interested in me... interested enough to actually write erotic stories about him... and that I was hurt by this. And by golly I let her know it. We fought or argued or gave each other the cold shoulder more throughout that year than any time before.
And then came the skydiving. I immediately didn't like it. She was driving three hours out of town, every other weekend, to spend the night at the drop zone where she jumped. There were men there. Men who had the laid back, laissez faire, confident personality that I so totally lack. Men who were completely comfortable with themselves and their sexuality. And there was an actual threat as opposed to the psychologically perceived threat David Cook had posed. In the beginning I handled the situation very poorly. I called and texted all the time when she was down there and if she didnt respond immediately I freaked out and assumed she was fucking some other guy. In short, I turned into a jealous asshole. She let me know how much this behavior upset her and through time I learned to tone it down.
About the same time she started skydiving, she also let me know that until we figured our shit out she did not feel comfortable putting her heart on the line and so she didnt feel comfortable having sex. And so we literally have not had sex in a year, since late July 2009.
And within the past few months, we both started going to therapy (both she and I had been afraid for me to see a therapist, as we were trying to avoid hearing what a therapist might findthat I was gay and needed to end the relationship) and I think she finally got to the root of what her problem had been all along. She felt like I was not interested in sexthat coupled with our history and with my lack of initiative in planning things for us to do, etc, led her to the conclusion that I was probably gay.
Now to put that in context I told her that I was bisexual on our second date. In high school I actually used to talk on the phone with her about a guy I found attractive. She knew that I had cheated on her with other guys. Then there was the London incident. So her thought process was that we both knew the truthit had been there all along staring us in the face and we had always just chosen to ignore it. And she also feltrightfully so, I can add now in hindsightthat I was never given the opportunity to make the choice for myself. Society puts a lot of pressure on males when it comes to sexuality, masculinity, etc. On top of that, she felt that maybe she had pushed me into marriage. While I think there was definitely an element of that, if I had been thinking for myself I couldnt have been pushed into something that I thought was wrong for me.
So we decided we needed to spend this summer apart. I needed to stay home and figure out what I want and need out of my life, while she would spend the summer at the drop zone (she has summers off from work, obviously). So I have been really trying to do a lot of work to figure out what it is that I need and want. What kept me in the relationship this long? Was it love and devotion, and the sex stuff might be fixable? Was it some sort of twisted thought process that I owed it to her because of what I had put her through in the past? Was it that I was comfortable being married to a woman and didnt want to rock the boat? On the surface, we have a perfect life. We are 26 and both gainfully employed, we live in an idyllic little country town, and we own our home. We are living the American Dream.
Therapy has been a huge help to me. Its funny how the situation has progressed. When I first went to therapy, all I could talk about was what my wife told me she didnt like, what she wanted from me, what she thought was missing. I think in the first few sessions, there was no mention of what I thought or what I wanted. In my whole life so far, for whatever reason, I have stripped myself of my identity. No preferences, no desires of my own, no knowledge of who I am and what I want. I have just always gone along with what other people say because it is easier than making waves. But throughout the process my therapist has really helped me to learn how to think for myself and think of myself.
But anyway, all of that to say I still dont know exactly what is right for me, but at least I am a step farther along than I was before, because I am finally listening to myself, finally interested in knowing what I want, finally doing this for me and not just to appease my wife because she isnt happy with our sex life or our romance and feels that we are just roommates.
I am at the point now where I think that I am close enough to gay that I probably could not have a happy, healthy sexual relationship with a woman, or if I could that doesnt necessarily mean its whats best for me or what I will want in the long run. At the same time, I am terrified of the alternative. I have been in a relationship with this woman for 11 years out of my 26 year life. That is a long time, and its hard to end something that has been such a huge part of my life. I am afraid of coming out when I first went to college I decided that I had hidden my sexuality for long enough and that I was going to come out but I didnt so much come out as just give head to a bunch of guys. I think at that time I was too afraid to just come out and say, Yes, Im gay. What of it? It is just one part of my life and has no bearing on who I am. I am still absolutely terrified of the prospect, especially in our idyllic country town because the problem with an idyllic place is that if you dont fit the ideal youre fucked. Are any of those good enough reasons to stay? No. That wouldnt be fair to me or to her. But I guess I need to determine if those are the only reasons, or if there is actually something else keeping me here a hope that we could fix whats wrong with us and actually have a happy, healthy relationship, maybe?
I dont know if I need advice so much as just the catharsis of putting this all down in words and sharing it with people. My therapist already knows the whole spiel, but she is the only one that knows everything. Thank you for those of you who took the time to read my memoir, and any comments would be appreciated!
Hi everyone,
I am in an interesting (read: absolutely gut wrenching) situation, and I wanted to get some input.
My wife and I have been married for four years, and together for almost 11. We are only 26--we were high school sweethearts, and as you can do the math you will know we have been together since we were 15 years old. I know for a fact that I am very strongly attracted to men, and I have been for as long as I can remember.
She and I have never really had the most stable relationship. While we have not actually been "broken up" for more than a few weeks throughout the whole 11 years we have been together, there were multiple instances in high school and college where I cheated on her--almost exclusively with other men (I think the cheating with women was not because I was attracted to them but for other reasons... not quite figured that out yet...). I have been faithful (at least in the literal sense of not having any kind of sexual or emotional interaction with another person) since we've been married.
In addition to the cheating, our sex life has never been good. She was abused when she was younger, and I have my own issues with sex, so it has always been really hard for us to separate and determine if our sexual hang-ups were do to our respective histories, or due to my sexuality. I think it is probably a mixture of the two, although we always wrote it off to our histories to avoid having to think about my sexuality. We started having sex about a year after we started dating, but it never got comfortable. I was never able to open up and really give myself to her sexually--I was always in my own head, not able to enjoy the experience and only able to think about how I had to please her and show her that she was pleasing me. She also has never been able to fully open up to me sexually, I think because deep down she was protecting her heart, afraid to open pandora's box only to find that I was gay.
This last part was probably not helped very much by the experience we had our sophomore year of college. She was studying abroad in London, and I was planning a trip to visit her over spring break. Before I went, I got really freaked out and decided that I was definitely gay and that I needed to end the relationship... and this is what I did when I went to London. She has never been one to take no for an answer, so when I tried to break up with her and she wouldn't let me, I really let her have it. Not in an intentionally spiteful way, but it hit home nonetheless. I told her that I was absolutely gay and that I was not attracted to her. Now is this true? I am not completely sure... If I'm not 100% gay I am close. My profile says 90% but it is probably closer to 95%--I didn't choose 99% because I thought that was a bit too extreme. But am I attracted to her?
Well, I think that depends on how you look at it. When I look at her, I definitely feel that she is attractive! She is beautiful, gorgeous, sexy! When I look at her body I love her curves. But I have not had a real desire to be with her sexually in a long time.
So we broke up in London and I went home. This was in March. We got engaged that August and married just under two years later in July.
We got married, as I said, four years ago. I think we both subconsciously thought that marriage would make us both feel more stable and secure in our relationship. Of course, that is the dumbest rationale I can imagine--if your relationship is unstable and uncertain, just get married! But we thought that maybe one of the reasons our sex life was not good was that we didn't see each other often, and so we didn't have sex very often, and so when we did have sex it was kind of awkward (we were each others' firsts)... so I think maybe I thought that when we were married we would see each other all the time and we would have sex more often and by extension we would get through the awkwardness, and I think she felt like if she had the promise, commitment, and vow of marriage from me, then she would finally feel secure and be able to open up.
That didn't happen. We got married and still didn't have sex. She was upset with me for not making advances, and she didn't feel comfortable making a move on me for fear that I would turn her down. When she would ask why I never made a move, I would answer that I never thought about sex. This was partially true--I never thought about having sex with her, but I did look at gay porn on a regular basis--at least once a week.
About two years ago, she finally hit her breaking point. It sounds kind of strange, but it all started because of David Cook. My wife had never really been a fan of American Idol. She had watched it some off and on, but never really got into it. I, on the other hand, had watched it religiously for at least the previous two seasons. I convinced her that we needed to watch it 7th season, and we did. David Cook came on the screen and she immediately felt a connection to him. Through the TV screen, he had made her feel more wanted than her husband had ever been able to make her feel, and that triggered something in her brain. She started distancing herself from me, found a David Cook fan forum and posted and read obsessively. We watched the show every week and she made her parents and me call and text votes for him until our fingers practically bled. After the season, she went to all kinds of his concerts, starting with the American Idol tour, and continuing when he went on tour solo. She wrote fan-fiction about him--she and her forum friends actually wrote and bound a collection of erotic short stories involving him. I saw in her a sexuality that I had never seen, because I had never been able to bring it out in her, and I was incredibly jealous! I loathed David Cook with a passion--while at the same time admiring him for his musical abilities and his apparent voodoo charm over the ladies, and I must admit a little over myself as well.
The David Cook thing sort of fizzled out, after the tour for his first album was over. In the year of the Cook, my wife and I had sex maybe once a month, probably less often.
Last July, my wife had a friend of hers visiting from out of town--a girl she had met through the David Cook forum, actually--and they went skydiving. She automatically fell in love with it and has been doing it ever since. She now has her second level license (B License), and 80+ jumps.
We are both very obviously aware, and have been for at least the past two years, that we have problems. Throughout the whole David Cook thing, I was not at all understanding. I think my wife had a hard time verbalizing exactly what was going on in her mind--she may not have even come to terms with what it was yet--and I definitely had a hard time hearing what she was trying to say. All I could see was that she was sexually interested in this other man... more than I had ever seen her be interested in me... interested enough to actually write erotic stories about him... and that I was hurt by this. And by golly I let her know it. We fought or argued or gave each other the cold shoulder more throughout that year than any time before.
And then came the skydiving. I immediately didn't like it. She was driving three hours out of town, every other weekend, to spend the night at the drop zone where she jumped. There were men there. Men who had the laid back, laissez faire, confident personality that I so totally lack. Men who were completely comfortable with themselves and their sexuality. And there was an actual threat as opposed to the psychologically perceived threat David Cook had posed. In the beginning I handled the situation very poorly. I called and texted all the time when she was down there and if she didnt respond immediately I freaked out and assumed she was fucking some other guy. In short, I turned into a jealous asshole. She let me know how much this behavior upset her and through time I learned to tone it down.
About the same time she started skydiving, she also let me know that until we figured our shit out she did not feel comfortable putting her heart on the line and so she didnt feel comfortable having sex. And so we literally have not had sex in a year, since late July 2009.
And within the past few months, we both started going to therapy (both she and I had been afraid for me to see a therapist, as we were trying to avoid hearing what a therapist might findthat I was gay and needed to end the relationship) and I think she finally got to the root of what her problem had been all along. She felt like I was not interested in sexthat coupled with our history and with my lack of initiative in planning things for us to do, etc, led her to the conclusion that I was probably gay.
Now to put that in context I told her that I was bisexual on our second date. In high school I actually used to talk on the phone with her about a guy I found attractive. She knew that I had cheated on her with other guys. Then there was the London incident. So her thought process was that we both knew the truthit had been there all along staring us in the face and we had always just chosen to ignore it. And she also feltrightfully so, I can add now in hindsightthat I was never given the opportunity to make the choice for myself. Society puts a lot of pressure on males when it comes to sexuality, masculinity, etc. On top of that, she felt that maybe she had pushed me into marriage. While I think there was definitely an element of that, if I had been thinking for myself I couldnt have been pushed into something that I thought was wrong for me.
So we decided we needed to spend this summer apart. I needed to stay home and figure out what I want and need out of my life, while she would spend the summer at the drop zone (she has summers off from work, obviously). So I have been really trying to do a lot of work to figure out what it is that I need and want. What kept me in the relationship this long? Was it love and devotion, and the sex stuff might be fixable? Was it some sort of twisted thought process that I owed it to her because of what I had put her through in the past? Was it that I was comfortable being married to a woman and didnt want to rock the boat? On the surface, we have a perfect life. We are 26 and both gainfully employed, we live in an idyllic little country town, and we own our home. We are living the American Dream.
Therapy has been a huge help to me. Its funny how the situation has progressed. When I first went to therapy, all I could talk about was what my wife told me she didnt like, what she wanted from me, what she thought was missing. I think in the first few sessions, there was no mention of what I thought or what I wanted. In my whole life so far, for whatever reason, I have stripped myself of my identity. No preferences, no desires of my own, no knowledge of who I am and what I want. I have just always gone along with what other people say because it is easier than making waves. But throughout the process my therapist has really helped me to learn how to think for myself and think of myself.
But anyway, all of that to say I still dont know exactly what is right for me, but at least I am a step farther along than I was before, because I am finally listening to myself, finally interested in knowing what I want, finally doing this for me and not just to appease my wife because she isnt happy with our sex life or our romance and feels that we are just roommates.
I am at the point now where I think that I am close enough to gay that I probably could not have a happy, healthy sexual relationship with a woman, or if I could that doesnt necessarily mean its whats best for me or what I will want in the long run. At the same time, I am terrified of the alternative. I have been in a relationship with this woman for 11 years out of my 26 year life. That is a long time, and its hard to end something that has been such a huge part of my life. I am afraid of coming out when I first went to college I decided that I had hidden my sexuality for long enough and that I was going to come out but I didnt so much come out as just give head to a bunch of guys. I think at that time I was too afraid to just come out and say, Yes, Im gay. What of it? It is just one part of my life and has no bearing on who I am. I am still absolutely terrified of the prospect, especially in our idyllic country town because the problem with an idyllic place is that if you dont fit the ideal youre fucked. Are any of those good enough reasons to stay? No. That wouldnt be fair to me or to her. But I guess I need to determine if those are the only reasons, or if there is actually something else keeping me here a hope that we could fix whats wrong with us and actually have a happy, healthy relationship, maybe?
I dont know if I need advice so much as just the catharsis of putting this all down in words and sharing it with people. My therapist already knows the whole spiel, but she is the only one that knows everything. Thank you for those of you who took the time to read my memoir, and any comments would be appreciated!
The fact that you say I always have the right to ask the question, and that she always has the right to refuse to respond, reminds me of my therapist. 
