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Trying to come out: Confused and torn

Discussion in 'Coming Out Advice' started by oldpulteney, Feb 25, 2014.

  1. oldpulteney

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    I am 29 and have been married for the past 5 years. I was brought up in a conservative south Asian Moslem household. My earliest memories of attraction to the same sex date back to when I was 4 years old. Despite the conservative upbringing, I had always been fine with my sexuality except during some deeply religious phases. But even then I never denied it, just considered it "the cross I had to bear".

    My first experience with a guy was at 20 and I'd had a pretty good monogamous relationship with my first bf for 3 years but it didn't work out in the end and I ended up giving in to family pressure to get married at 23. Quite early for getting married even by local standards but I didn't see any reason to stall. At that point I had a pretty religious mindset and thought that that would be enough to see me through my married life till I was old and frail and it didn't matter anymore.

    A few months after my engagement I ended up fooling around with my ex and kept going back for more. I always justified it by telling myself that I wasn't really cheating on my fiance/wife because it wasn't someone new. I was only having sex with someone I'd always had feelings for. This went on for the first year and a half of my marriage. I managed to develop a pretty friendly relationship with my wife and somewhere along the way I fell in love with her. Sex was okay. After the first few times I didn't have any difficulty rising up to the occasion and I learned to go through the motions. Both my wife and I are easygoing people and get along really well with each other. All this while I saw my ex and we would get intimate from time to time but that was getting increasingly uncomfortable and eventually we decided to stop lest we damage our friendship.

    A year after being married to my wife, our son was born. when he was a year and a few months old I went to the US to study/find work and pretty much lived apart from my wife for 3 years. After resisting temptation for a few months I gave in and had random gay sex, something I did over and over again. During this time I did go back home and one such trip was for a prolonged period. That is when I realized that despite having a good relationship with my wife when we were together, I was incapable of having a long distance relationship.

    Having experimented with dating men and having sex over the past year I came to the conclusion that I would not be able to give up gay sex for prolonged periods of time. For the better par of the past 6 months I had been debating whether I really was bi or had only convinced myself that I enjoyed having straight sex, albeit much much less than gay sex. I had flings with a few men but I never thought I would ever leave my wife for any of them until a conversation I had with my wife a few months ago when she told me that she had been contemplating a divorce because the long distance issue was really getting to her. This wasn't the first time she had expressed she was unhappy. That killed my desire to nurture our relationship. I have been numb since then. She did clarify her viewpoint later but I couldn't unthink what I had started thinking. I asked myself whether I should come out and end my marriage or stay in the closet and keep denying myself and pretending for the sake of my wife and son and any other children we might have, not to mention keep cheating on my wife. I have decided that I am in fact gay and I can no longer fool myself to the contrary. But the question is whether coming out is worth all the heartache I will cause my wife and myself.

    After unsuccessfully trying for two months I finally came out to two of my closest friends. They were both very supportive but the conversation quickly turned to what I was going to do about my wife and son. They both advised that given my wife's religious and conservative south asian background getting a divorce on the basis of coming out wouldn't be the best course of action. My (step) mother in Law is a very vindictive woman and I wouldn't put it past her to try and get me in trouble with the authorities as homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment in my country and worse, she would probably fling my sexuality in my son's face every time she was mad at my wife or my son. My son will undoubtedly live with my wife as joint custody is well neigh impossible given the physical distance between my home country and the US.

    A few days ago I came back to my home country to renew my visa. Once I do my wife and son can apply for their visas and finally start living with me. My friends strongly advised against having her traipse across two continents for nothing especially since her support system is back home and that's where she should be when we do get a divorce. Since coming out right now isn't the best option, especially while I am here, I have been trying to talk to her about how I am unhappy and that our marriage isn't working for me but whenever I bring it up she always says that we can work on it and once we don't have the distance between us things will get better. It breaks my heart to hear her say this. It breaks my heart to see her laugh when I am thinking of causing her so much pain. I do believe things might get better for a time, as she says, and I will get into a rut again but I don't want that. I really don't want to come out when I am 50 and I regret not coming out 21 years ago and wasting all those years of my and my wife's lives. I also think it will get harder for my son to deal with it the older he gets. Right now he barely has a relationship with me. I am in a real fix because I can't just push for a divorce on this trip because I don't exactly have a concrete reason to, short of coming out. I feel disgusted at myself for beating around the bush and hearing my wife say that we can mend our relationship and giving her a false sense of security because I choose to stay quiet. The relationship can be mended but that will not change the fact that I want to live my life with a man and that no matter how deeply I care for my wife I'm not sexually attracted to her.

    I am trying my best to lay the ground work for a divorce but I feel like the surest and quickest way to end it is to come out to her. But this also is the ugliest and I think the most painful way and I will also be forced out of the closet to all my family as well, dashing any hope of support form my family because they adore my wife. Having spent the last few days observing our son and my wife, I don't want to even suggest taking away our son away from her. Hopefully she wil find comfort in him when we are no longer married and she won't have to go though a divorce without someone to love who loves her back unconditionally. All I can think about is to make this as easy for her as I can. But truthfully I'm not even sure if I have to heart/courage/balls to go through with this.

    Thank you for reading and I hope my ramblings make sense. All comments and insights are welcome but, please, be kind!
     
  2. setnyx

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    wow such a sad situation. you need to tell her something before long. you don't want to bring anymore children into this and a reunion usually involves a lot of sex. you could tell her you hve been unfaithful and want your freedom. that way it's not on her. you don't need to tell her who you had sex with.
     
  3. oldpulteney

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    Thanks for replying!!
    No, we aren't having anymore kids (at the moment) and she has agreed to that because we aren't very stable financially.
    Owning up to infidelity is certainly an option but it will blow things way out of proportion because of how religious everyone is. Just to give you an idea, most (not all) people are virgins when they get married which are arranged marriages more often than not. Its quite uptight here.
     
  4. Daye419

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    Wouldn't admitting to some infidelity be better than coming out? I certainly understand religious constraints and I know they differ from religion to religion but it seems (at least from my background) that being gay is one worst things to own up to. From what you've described it seems like the situation is going to get ugly one way or another. Personally, I'd opt for damage control.
     
  5. oldpulteney

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    Thank you for your replies.
    Whenever my wife and I sit down to talk I just can't bring myself to say anything whether its about my sexuality or infidelity. Truthfully coming out right now while I'm on holiday in my home country is out of the question. I don't want to be arrested. But that means I'll have to do something about my situation once I go back to the US either over the phone (which I don't think she deserves) or when she moves to the US with our son a few months later (again I think having her come all the way to the US only to get a divorce is extremely unfair). I have tried my best to at least get the message across that things aren't great between us. I don't know how to behave around my wife anymore. I don't want to behave the way I always did because I don't feel the same about her or our relationship but at the same time I don't think I should ignore her because she doesn't deserve it (and she has said as much). I still love her and don't want to hurt her but I'm not in love with her.
    Maybe I am just stalling but there are a few reasons why I want to broach the subject of divorce in the US rather than here: if I decide I want to come out then at lease I will be safe; therapists are non existent in my country and I think going to one will do my wife lot of good both before and after the divorce/coming out; it will give me a chance to prove to my wife that I can be a good dad in the off chance she decides to let me have custody of or son for whatever reason; I want us to live together for at least a bit so that "we can give it one last shot"; and lastly my parents are also visiting and I am living with them for the duration of my stay and I don't want them poking their nose in my business which they are most likely to do.
    Despite wanting to come out, sometimes I think it just isn't worth the pain I am causing her and going through myself and maybe I should just forget all about it and live in the closet like I have all of my life. We have a good relationship. And maybe I can psych myself into performing in bed like I used to before... Sex has been awful this time around. I can barely get hard and even when I do I take ages to reach orgasm even when I imagine I am having sex with a guy, which puts me off even more.