Hello all, I am absolutely lost and in pain at the moment. Shortly after my son was born in late 2020 I started to think about the future, what life was going to be like now as a new dad and this next chapter of life. At that same time I realised that I was no longer attracted to woman. I was always attracted to both men and woman growing up but I was never able to embrace anything out of the ‘norm’ so spending my life with a man was something that I never planned on doing. I have been with my partner now for nearly 10 years and love her greatly. Since realising that I am gay, I have basically shut down, don’t interact with friends anymore, barely have contact with family, overall have become a completely different person. I want to tell my partner the truth but the pain that this will cause someone I love so dearly just doesn’t seem to be worth it over my happiness. I am massively depressed and always anxious from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. In the long run I know that she will be better off not being with me anymore, I just can’t stand to hurt her and my son. I worry how she will cope if I was to move out as we have always been a rock to one another.

Thank you for sharing this.
I relate with “coming out to my partner” with the exception that on my recently discovered sexuality of being bisexual (I only recently accepted this a few weeks back and found accepting this difficult. It’s because of this struggle which led me to DALE today. For context, this journey started in 2020. I convinced my self that I have pure OCD, and perhaps still think that, but learning more about myself, that may of been pushed due to my massive insecurity of being gay).

About your post. I’ve been transparent with my partner about this, initially over the course of 1 year hiding my feelings for the thought of liking men really disturbed me. Similar to you, I didn’t hang out with friends, I was depressed yet had to pretend I was fine. I laid in bed thinking the worst, felt like I was dying. That life was terrible.
Until one day, I sat my partner down. And shared with her what was going on in my head. It was ground breaking. I cried. It was really difficult. But overall really constructive.
Not saying this is what you should do, but just saying how I am dealing with this. It may be scary, but it will make a huge difference. I think you should have a conversation with this with her.

Touching on one point you made (and this may differ to you), I often feel that my partner deserves better than me. I feel gross sometimes and often feel that I’m holding her back. Again this is because of my feelings of things being black and white, when that simply is not the case. I’m working on breaking the cycle.
Since coming back from work today I expressed these feelings, she was very supportive and helped me see things from a bigger perspective. Even talking about her social circle of guys who are Bi. Sometimes it feels like I’m alone in this, but hearing about my girlfriends pals and this forum makes me feel that I’m not alone. That I’m not a disappointment to my girlfriend. And that all these insecure thoughts are my own, and it’s up to me to break them