I have been married to my wife for 15 years, and I love her very much. I have never cheated on her, but my feelings of same sex attraction have been getting stronger over time and somethings it feels inevitable that I will slip and have sex with another man. I feel frustrated by the fact I have these feeling, as I want to be a good husband to my wife, but at the same time the frustration of denying that sexual side of my nature is overwhelming - I feel like I'm never truly honest with anyone else. I wish I could just ignore my same-sex attraction forever, but I don't think I can.

Hi unsure,

Firstly, I congratulate you on finding this site and starting a conversation that I'm sure many other men have had to deal with and I hope you will find some answers on here from like-minded men.

Being in a hetro relationship and having a same sex attraction is never an easy road, it's like a balancing act, an emotional roller-coaster if you like, where you have to deal with your guilt and other emotional issues of having an attraction to guys regardless of whether you act on that attraction or not.

You've done the hard bit in admitting and being honest with yourself about being sexually attracted to someone of the same sex and coming to somewhere like this site to talk about it. I think it's great that you've started this conversation with yourself and hope you get to talk more about your feelings honestly and openly. That way you can be honest with other people, albeit anonymously.

I found the hardest part of being married and being attracted to someone of the same sex and being able to live my life was acknowledging the attraction is there and it's not going to go away whether I acted on it or not. That's perhaps the biggest hurdle. Trying to bottle it up, denying and trying to ignore feelings can lead to other problems such as frustration with yourself and your marriage and perhaps lead to depression.

It's important to find someone talk it out with, whether that's anonymously on sites like this, a trusted friend or professional in a way that lets you explore your thoughts, feelings and anything else in a non judgmental environment will help.

Cheers

Hello Unsure guy.
Firstly, I have just joined the site, after seeing the banner ad for it on squirt. I've read through their About, Support, and Articles pages, but this is my first foray into the Forum threads. From what I've read, I expect though that I will not be a very happy person here, so I might not be around for very long, either leaving voluntarily, or kicked off for breaching their rules.

Now on to your issue. I feel that many, perhaps most bi-men will relate to your situation very much. So firstly, expect empathy and understanding from many of us. I suspect that most of us will have, or have had, similar feelings etc.

When I first found out about my same-sex attraction about 10 or so years ago, I had nowhere to turn to with my quandaries, and joined some online gay/m2m/bi sites; with the aim, NOT of meeting up with guys, but primarily of entering into conversations with other bi-men who had been there ahead of me. Unfortunately, most guys only wanted to hook up for sex, and I felt like I was mis-representing myself by only trying to have decent conversations about the issues.

A lovely man who I met online around the time that I found 'myself', recommended the bi-australia site to me; and when they opened their Forum pages to non-paying members some years later, only then did I start to learn about my situation. It is probably forbidden for me to give their URL in here (one of those rules which I will probably be trespassing upon!), but if you google for it, you should be able to find it; and there they have HUNDREDS of pages on hundreds of threads/topics, including a SEARCH facility; I strongly suggest that you dip into that wonderfully supportive resource to us all. Most of my understandings come from my readings over the years in those pages.

Now trying to tailor this response more to your direct needs right now, unfortunately there is NO one method of dealing with this which will work for everyone. Some will say to keep your counsel entirely to yourself and share it with no-one: spouse, friends, family etc. (of course that does NOT preclude seeking professional help on the issue). Others will say that they did not want to share it with their spouse, but when they eventually did, their relationship rose to a new high level. Others will write that the opposite happened to them and they counsel very strongly against such action.
Some will write of lifelong friendships falling apart when it has been shared with a mate; others by contrast write of finding that a mate has similar feelings.

I must be nearing the end of the word limit by now, so will close, but I hope that you can see that there is NO one 'proper' way to deal with the situation. If you want to ask about my own situation, please feel free to do so, and I will answer as well as I can.

Best wishes to you, and to all others in a similar predicament.
Johnnyx

Hello man i have similar issues i think for me my first sexual encounters were with a man so i felt more comfortable with or being around guy's but it has been in the last ten years or so been getting so turned on by being with a man over a women so guess I was always gay but didn't want the stigma and stereo type stuff that goes along with being gay but one is only truly free when they accept who they really are and not being scared of being oneself

Hey unsure,
my first time on this site - or anything like it. I too struggled with the issue. What was right for me may not be the answer for you, but I will share what worked for me, you may find it useful.
In the end, after much heartache and soul searching, I 'gave in' and went outside the marriage for gay sexual satisfaction. I found it best to put my sexuality into 'boxes'. My hetro box is my wife, family and the whole social relationship web associated. My gay box is separate, in my mind and in reality. There is no crossover. It's like I'm two completely different people. It works for me. After I boxed my sex life - I stopped feeling guilty. I wasn't frustrated and, I think, I became a much better partner/husband/father. For me, there was no question of ever 'letting on' to my wife. Only grief could come of that. I took the view that it would be selfish - I would try to feel better about feelings over which I have no control - but my wife would be left to try to make sense of it, wonder what she did/didn't do etc.
Anyway - some may say that I am selfish, but if I didn't deal with my gay side, I would not be in a good place in so many other areas. Now, that is not an issue and I can get on with being the best 'family man' I can be. (Albeit with a small part of me living a parallel life).
I hope this helps in your journey.

BruceJ. I agree with so much of what you have written here, on several issues.

No, I most certainly do not consider you to be selfish. You know your situation and your family and yourself, and after weighing up everything, you have set out on what you considered to be the correct pathway for yourself; and it seems to be working well for you. Congratulations.

I also enjoyed reading about your 'boxes'. In other bi or gay forums, I read comments by so many guys who deplore boxes, and deprecate anyone who uses them. I disagree strongly with such people. My take on it is that humans are a thinking species, and part of the way that we use that thinking to make sense of the world, is to categorise experiences, people, things, situations etc. -- that is IF we have the intelligence to THINK about them at all.
This, in effect, is placing 'things' into 'boxes'. It is all part of analytical thinking. So I like the way that you box up the separate portions of your sex-life and deal with each appropriately. Again I offer my congratulations to you on your success with that.

In my own case, I started out for most of my adult life thinking and believing that I was straight; then once I realised that I had a same-sex attraction which I wanted to act upon, I was happy to label/box myself as "curious" at first, and then later as "bi". Now that I have progressed much further along the pathway, I happily consider myself to be a poofter; and I am loving that part of my life. Because 'gay' has so many connotations, many of which I do not relate to, my personal preference is to be very content to call myself a poofter -- even though I understand that many lifelong gay guys find that word to be a put-down; which of course is the way that we first encountered it in our childhood. Thanks for sharing your story. J.

The idea of labels - 'gay', 'bi', etc. have come up in a few conversations on the site as well as the association with feelings of stigma around some of these. A lot of guys have also expressed feelings of anxiety and/or depression sometimes when making sense of their situation.

Do any of you feel like there is a stigma associated with being open about your experiences with anxiety and/or depression as men?

Hello Dale. Your posting seems to my reading of it, to contain two separate issues. The first paragraph was about stigma about labels/boxes, perhaps by inference including stigma about non-hetero sexuality. The second paragraph is your question, which as I interpret it, is asking for feedback about stigma associated only with anxiety and depression. Accordingly, I will write in answer to that second paragraph.

Decades ago I walked into my city office one morning, and standing there at my desk, just suddenly and uncontrollably became a shivering, quivering, shaking heap.

I had never experienced any such thing in my life before, and always considered myself to be in charge of my physical responses to life. (But of course, never in charge of the emotional responses. ha ha.).

Believing that this uncontrollability needed expert help, I immediately sought and obtained wonderful help through a workplace scheme, called an Employee Assistance Scheme, which referred me to a counselling service.

I was VERY fortunate to have there as my counsellor a most wonderful man; who explained that I was explaining in my experience, all of the systems of an anxiety attack; and that the next stage was to ascertain the source of such anxiety or fears.

To cut a very long story, short, a few years later I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with major depression.

Neither diagnosis gave me any perception at all about feeling a stigma with it. That is, I was happy to have each diagnosis at the time, which meant that I now knew the name of what I was experiencing, and that helped in further reading and research to understand myself better; and the causes etc. of each diagnosis.
That research in self-knowing is ongoing, so many decades later.

With no personal feelings of stigma, I was, and remain, VERY happy to talk openly and honestly about those experiences with anyone else at all.

In particular, I will try to reach out to anyone who I know or believe to be suffering from depression; as I truly believe that no-one who has not personally suffered from depression can 'know' its life-limiting aspects.

To the best of my knowledge, no-one has ever reacted to my openness about this in any sort of negative way. Of course many may have had stigmatizing feelings about my openness, and have simply avoided me for all future time, as their own response. I can understand that, and would not hold that against them. But amongst my own family, friends, and many acquaintances with whom I might be in regular contact --- there has never been any stigma. (Or I am so thick-skinned that I didn't pick up on it! haha.)

Now, to finish off with regard to your first paragraph:
IN CONTRAST, on the few occasions when I have opened up about my bi-sexuality to some acquaintances, I have never seen them again. So it seems that those people certainly apply a stigma towards/against me for my sexuality. BUT most close mates to whom I have opened up, are very accepting; with one mate expressing his appreciation of my honesty with him about it.