Hey Everyone, I just need to vent.... I apologize for misspellings, punctuation, and rambling, but I'm fully of anxiety.. All of the following is from the heart. I grew up in rural Mississippi and still live here, only in a more urbanized area on the gulf coast. I'm a 29 year old male and tonight I just told my current girlfriend that I'm gay. It's also the first time I've truly admitted it to myself, but more on that later. I have been with my current girlfriend for about a year and a half, but we already have 6 month old twin girls together. She also has a 5 year old son whose dad is not involved in his life, but is like a son to me. I love my family with all my heart. I also truly love my girlfriend. This is extremely difficult for me... and of course for her. My first and only gay relationship happened when i was about 21 years old and only lasted for a couple weeks. It happened during a split-up between my first girlfriend and myself. This girlfriend is the only other serious girlfriend I've had other than my current girlfriend. After I got back together with this girlfriend, my gay lover went to her and told her what happened between us. I was devastated. My first girlfriend and I had been together for about 5 years, other than a few quick separations. We tried to work things out after all this, but she became mentality abusive in regards to my homosexual experience and made me feel terrible. Long story short, it got very ugly. We ended up separating for good. Her dumping me was the best thing to ever happen to me up until that point but I believe her mental abuse scared me for a long time in regards to my homosexuality... I think this made me very insecure... She even told her parents, and made me have a discussion with them about what happened... it was terrible. I ended up being single for about 5 years after this break-up. During which i had a few quick relationships with girls but nothing serious at all. During this time I kind of loosely classified myself as bisexual, but never really fully accepted my gay feelings. I would often make excuses to myself to explain away the gay feelings I had. "Oh, I just haven't had a girlfriend in awhile so I'm confused" kind of thinking... this is a very simple synopsis of this period of my life... While snooping, my current girlfriend found transgendered pornography on my computer that I had acquire when i was single and had forgotten about. This was when we had only been dating for about 3 months. This lead to the first serious tension between us but ultimately she was OK with it. I came clean to her about my brief homosexual relationship and everything. she even expressed real interest in fulfilling this kind of sexual desires with me. This ended up only happening maybe twice. I told her I was bisexual but things stayed very hetero between us. Our sex life was great at first but began to fizzle a bit more recently. Anyway, Here I am.. With a home with a girlfriend and 3 kids and a dog. I love them all, I truly do, but I have been lying to myself and to everyone in regards to my sexuality... Maybe I am bi, but much more on the homosexual side than I've ever admitted to anyone, including myself. I'm starting to think that I'm homosexual, and have just been clinging on to a mostly hetero bisexuality as a safety net. Yesterday, my girlfriend found some videos I took of myself doing homosexual masturbatory things. This included crossdressing. I made these videos within the last week. This forced the dialog between us to begin. She has gone back and forth about our future together but has steadily express than she can't go on after this. It has culminated with me finally coming out to her tonight. The way I broke the news to her: I told my girlfriend, "whatever happens between us, I'll always be there for you, our girls, and your son" and started crying hysterically.. Then I came clean to her about the fantasies I regular have about men, when she asked me. she also asked me if i have fantasies about women, to which i had to admit that I do not. I know it's not fair to her.. to our kids to have gone this route.. but I can no longer deny who I am. I feel like such a fool to have gone so long without being able to accept that I'm gay... My heart is broken right now and my girlfriend is devastated and heartbroken. she thought I was the one she would spend the rest of her life with and tonight I told her I'm gay... It hurts really bad to say the least..., but I think this is the way I was meant to find myself. I hope this rambling makes sense... It's a very brief summary of a long history of sexual repression. I've left out a lot of key points but this is a good summary I think. In hindsight, I really have had homosexual tendencies since early childhood. I think my upbringing, experiences and personality have all resulted in taking this long to come to terms with being homosexual. I truly thank you all who have read all of this. Any advice and encouragement is appreciated.
Hello, Do not feel alone or unique. I ended up married with kids for different reasons (I had no denial about being gay, but my limited experience lead me to believe gay men were not desiring ltr"s and that is what I desired). It was the love of my kids that kept me married till they were adults. In hindsight... It could have worked, raising our sons, without me forfeiting both my and my wife"s long term happiness. I find myself now looking for a partner in a gay community that is very thin in numbers. Choose wisely. There are many more available partners at your age, same goes for your girlfriend. Think long term.
The simple advice is: don't do anything right away, while you are "heartbroken". People make bad choices when they are under emotional distress, you or her. Put yourself in the mindset of being adults with children to take care of. They are too young to understand what is going on, so you don't need to get into any details of what is going on, with them. You made a mistake, a mistake which is particularly easy to make in a homophobic conservative state like Mississippi, where it is difficult for a gay man to develop normally. You are not 100% responsible for failing to understand that you are gay sooner, but you are going to have to deal with all the collateral damage that has been caused by trying to live as heterosexual. Your girlfriend is not too old to find herself a heterosexual mate, if that is what she wants. You will be financially responsible for the twins as long as they are minors, unless she finds someone who effectively lets you off the hook. I doubt that you are going to be able to function in this mixed sexuality relationship, whether you want to or not. Both you and her should start talking about how you are going to dissolve it, and how you are going to deal with the financial entanglements. You can continue to see the kids as long as you act responsibly towards them and keep relations friendly with her, so it is most important that you both talk to each other, and listen to each other's needs. You might be able to work out some other kind of relationship than marriage with her for the short term, but for the long term it is not so likely. Both of you need a more appropriate partner and the kids need a stabile home.
3lektrik, hello and welcome to the forum. Think carefully about taking the steps you are going to take. As Yossarian says you might be able to work out some kind of relationship in the short term, but longer term will be different. I still have conversations with my ex about the why's of me coming out to her and why I couldn't stay. My heart still breaks when I see my kids and think of them even though I see them every day and still play a huge part of their daily lives. But. The answer is that although I still love my wife I now know and accept that I am who (and what) I am and I can never change that part of me. Even though my wife and I can laugh and talk and eat together and spend time with each other and our kids, I love kissing my bf, holding him and being close to him. I feel like I 'belong' when I'm with a guy. I know that if I had stayed with my wife, or she had convinced me to go back with her and the kids, the desire and 'fulfilment' I get with a guy would never be mine again. I would end up feeling like I was denying a part of me existed, denying that I had those feelings and could never express them again (not to mention how relations between her and me would be in the bedroom). So while you can imagine holding things together because it feels a better alternative to what the other path is, think about the long term. Now you've accepted this about yourself, could you now accept it and lay it to one side and give her the love and everything else she expects from her husband? I asked myself that question - yes I'd care for her, yes I'd love her, but would I be able to desire her like a straight man would? Would sex between us be the same as before? Some I could answer yes to, the last two were definitely no, even though I loved her something had changed. There is a lot of emotion and hysteria when this happens - hurt and fear with her about her future and that of her children if you're not there, blind panic and a feeling of being out of control of things perhaps from you? All in amongst all of that is mixed sadness, confusion, questioning, and clinging on to the things that you used to know were real. Try to take any huge decisions yet. Talk to each other - be as open as you can be with each other. You are the same person (yes, you've made a massive revelation) and if you can try to demonstrate that in what you say or do it will perhaps add a bit of consistency and evenness to things, even if she is hysterical or in meltdown. Come here often and get things off your chest - the advice and wisdom from EC helped me through the darkest time I've ever had, and helped me get some clarity about what I was doing and whether my decision making was sensible or clouded by anxiety and uncertainty.
I feel for you Highlander. I came out to my wife about 12 months ago. My circumstances are quite different to yours but I find I do still love my wife dearly but in a platonic way. We are still together I think mainly because she cannot live without me been seriously disabled (Long story LOL). Its very tough when you realise that your sexuality is not what you thought it was. Whatever happens between you and your girlfriend, I hope you both can always put your kids first.
I find this rather interesting: This is really not unheard of, in fact, many straight spouses in these mixed-orientation marriages have, at the very least, some inkling of their partner's dabbling with same-sex attractions, yet they get married anyway, or they stay in relationships, anyway. The implication of this fact is that you are not entirely to blame for this situation, there was some complicity on her part. In other words, when the error is in the relationship, it takes two to tango. Nevertheless (and I urge you to heed my advice here) it will not end well if you use this fact as a defence for your own actions or as a means to blame her; both of you made the error of marrying for your own reasons, and both of you bear responsibility for taking care of the kids as you adjust to this new reality. I would not mention this complicity at all to her, this is for your own benefit, so that you need not entirely blame yourself for this situation. No matter what happens, the need to take care of your kids is your first priority.
