My Marriage

When my wife and I made the commitment to get married, it set the course for our mutual existence for the next 30+ years. We had committed ourselves to this marriage knowing what was being asked of us, we thought. We both had been married previously. Both of our marriages were short and miserable. So we already had emotional baggage to deal with and children were involved. We both had custody of our children from those marriages. When we had children together we had “hers, mine and ours”. What we hadn't counted on was latent feelings pent up inside me since a young boy.



Although at an early age I had become aware that I “liked boys”, as a young adult, I wasn’t convinced that I was a homosexual. I wondered about it at times but with my limited homosexual experience as a teenager, I didn’t really know what to think. I worried about it some but had placed it in the back of my mind, in a sort of denial.



After my wife and I were married, initially everything was fine including the sexual aspect of our lives, or so we thought. We did begin to realize at some point that my wife usually had to initiate sex. I seemed to have to be in the “perfect place” mentally to get aroused. We talked it over several times with me usually getting defensive and her ending up feeling that something was wrong, wrong with her. I would tell her the common response “its not you, it’s me”. This, by the way, ended up being the truth.



In the early 90’s when I got my first computer and Internet connection, it didn’t take much casual “research” to discover what my preferences really were. You couldn’t do any kind of searches using the search engines of those times without being openly exposed to incidental porn, gay and straight. The lingering doubts about whether I was gay were resolved quickly by these incidental and quite accidental contacts with porn but not the increasing confusion as to what to do about it. I eventually came to the realization that I was at the minimum a bisexual. I enjoyed the company of the young men that I had contact with in my life and was occasionally attracted to them.  As time went on, I just decided to consider myself gay, right or wrong. In a way it was  a relief. At the same time, I tried to continue to live a "normal" life as a straight, married, young, Mormon boy.



Since then I have had this "overwhelming" desire to talk to someone about it. But who? I have had a couple of gay acquaintances but I really couldn’t trust anyone with this new found knowledge, fearing that it would get back somehow to my wife and family.There was, and still is , the fear of being found out and the resulting rejection that has kept me silent all these years.



Maybe, I thought, if only my wife knew she would understand. After all, she knew me better than anyone. She loved me. Maybe I could be more open with her. Maybe we could talk about my feelings and concerns. Maybe, maybe, maybe….



Five or six years ago in a moment of weakness, after an especially long mental battle with myself about what to do, and in an extremely depressed state, I tested the waters. I told my wife I that I had "homosexual tendencies". It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had made a major blunder. I mean in minutes. No, she definitely didn’t understand. In reality, due to her upbringing in the church she hated homosexual behavior. She thinks it is a choice, that gay people are sick and perverted.



And to make things worse, during “that” moment of honesty, for the first time since I was a teenager living at home, I told her I had been doing "other things". And, that I didn't see anything wrong with it. These admissions were worse to her than me being gay or bisexual. She felt that I had lied to her by not telling her about "all this" before we were married. Of course I hadn't, because I didn't really "believe" that I was gay myself at the time we were married. Although things have settled down during the following years and are pretty much back to normal, life will never be the same. There is hardly a day goes by that we aren't confronted with something "gay", TV shows, news stories with gay situations, always something. We both usually just sit in discomfort waiting for the offending part to be over with, in silence. Occasionally she will want to stop viewing the offending show and move on to something else.


Now what to do? I am committed to my wife. I love her. I have a family, albeit they are grown children. I am an active Mormon and I am sure most people know their stance on homosexuality. My wife and I have had and still have a good sexual relationship although there was an uncomfortable period of time after my confessions. I know how to do what she needs to have sexual fulfillment. And she knows how to take care of me. She understands now that sometimes she has to take the lead at the right times to get me aroused and she does so willingly. But I don’t think she  will ever really understand my attraction to men or ever feel totally secure again. I will try to live my life without hurting my wife any further, risking my marriage or jeopardizing myself or my family. I will just have to live with that.



I will not "seek" gay sexual relationships. Leaving my loving wife and family because I want to “explore” what it's like living as a gay man and then finding and having a loving gay partner seems ludicrous to me. What are the odds of finding another person who would truly love me as I am loved now, be they male or female. I will continue to stay married to my sweet wife and hope for the best. I know from my own experience that the grass is never actually greener on the other side of the fence.

The likelihood of anymore "revelations" from me about my most intimate feelings? Unlikely. The fear of rejection still rules the day. I am just thankful that I didn’t share any more than I did. The experiment with honesty was a failure. From now on I have decided to be Forever Silent about being gay.