westman45, thanks for sharing your story and do feel free to share more of what's on your mind.

Dear Astroboy and Bulldog11. Thank you both for sharing here, your own painful stories. I only just found this page/thread today for the first time.

My analysis of your wife's response in each of your cases, is that they are blackmailing you -- especially regarding your kids.

Now, I am NOT a professional at all, but my personal feeling is that the best way to deal with such blackmail, is to open up about your sexuality to your kids. It does not have to be a huge "i am gay" expose; but could be merely a personal email to each of them, saying that you have discovered within yourself that you have a sexual attraction towards other men; and that your reading/research indicates that this is not a highly unusual situation for some older men.

When I first discovered my own m2m attraction, I told my wife, and she was accepting of it -- as long as I did not act upon it. Of course that was not going to happen!

Some time after that, I collected one of our offspring, alone, at the airport, and opened up about the topic. This child immediately went into denial and did not want to know; and retains the same approach to this day. But as we were trapped together in the car for over an hour, and I was the 'host', I pushed on with my explanations, understandings, etc.

At a different time, I collected another child from the same airport, and had the same conversation. This one was a younger child. There was not only total acceptance, but anger expressed towards my wife for not understanding it. Then this child proceeded to regale me with personal details of non-hetero sex school-mates.

As you can see, totally different responses from each off-spring.

Thanks for sharing, and I really feel for the situation which you are in; but would hope that with time and the support of other guys in forums such as this, you will slowly get to 'see' a good way forward.

Best wishes.