So I'm pretty sure that I am gay. But I'm also sure that I love my wife. I'm not the only person here who talk about loving their spouse while being gay. I guess I just don't really understand how this is possible. If I'm gay, why do I still love her? Why does it hurt like hell to lose her? And it's not "hetero privilege" or "the safety of marriage" -- it's her in particular. I fell in love with her. We had great sex. We shared many intimate moments. I wasn't faking it. We still chat and have lots of cute inside jokes and such. Now, this thing I've kept buried for years emerges and suddenly I'm supposed to not love her anymore? I don't have a crush on a guy -- never have. How can I explain this to myself in a way that makes some kind of sense?
I feel like I love him as a friend, but don't have romantic feelings for him anymore, especially now that I have experienced the completely different intensity of emotions with a woman. I don't feel like either he or I can love the other like we need to, and that's heartbreaking, especially when he is trying so hard to change my mind. I don't think anyone expects you to stop loving your wife. I guess it's just what is assumed must be the case since you are not happy, what else is or could be the reason? Hugs to you.
Well, you could be mostly but not completely gay - like a Kinsey 4 or 5. I'm similar. I'm mostly lesbian and am not attracted to men in general. However, twice in my life I've fallen for guys and those feelings were real. You see the same thing in reverse sometimes - "straight" people who find themselves having a same-sex attraction to just one particular person. You don't have to stop loving your wife. If you're still in love, you're still in love. What do you mean about not having crushes on guys though? I'm not doubting that you're gay/mostly gay, I'm just curious as I don't know how I'd know I was gay if not for the fact that I've had same-sex crushes/attractions.
Hi nerdbrain, I've had similar questions myself, namely, how could I love a woman for many years, have enjoyable sex with her, but yet still be gay. I think where you and I differ in our thought process is that I know and accept that I'm gay so I'm exploring the puzzle as a purely intellectual curiosity, whereas you seem to use the puzzle as evidence to create doubt in your mind as to whether or not you are gay. My current thinking is that either I'm a Kinsey 5, so the attraction to my wife is a genuine albeit secondary expression of my sexuality. My heterosexual behavior is an adaptive behavior because I was in deep denial and wanted so desperately to be straight, similar to the mindset of somebody who engages in homosexual activity in prison. This is as far as I've thought this through because completely understanding this piece of my past does little to help me move forward as a gay man. What I know is that I'm able to relate to other men in far more meaningful ways - both physically and romantically - than I was able to with my wife, which makes it clear to me that I'm gay. HTH
You're not alone by any means. "Gay with an asterisk" and "one woman short of gay" are two common short-hand descriptions for the phenomenon. I don't find either phrase very helpful. I see sexuality and romantic love as being quite complex. Shoeboxes and labels can be helpful to frame thoughts and conversations but it's very easy to stumble into a gray area where two-dimensional explanations just aren't adequate. I can't recall if you've ever said this, but many not-straight men have: "I know I am very sexually attracted to men, but I can't imagine ever falling in love with one. Or even doing romantic things with one, the way I would with a woman." Why the division? I think there are two things going on. First, sexuality and romance are linked but still distinct. Second, societal disapproval is much more effective at creating, reinforcing and controlling romantic ideas than it is at squashing non-traditional sexuality. This divergence suggests that sexuality is more hard-wired and romantic love is more a learned behavior. (With the parts that aren't learned deeply rooted in sexual desire.) If true, then perhaps the foundation for your ability to fall in love with a woman began with an openness (even eagerness) for it to happen. Society taught you to want it, to pursue it and to bask in it. Had you grown up watching ONLY terrific gay romance movies, listening to sappy gay romance songs and watching gay romantic sitcoms, you likely would not have given your wife a second thought when you met her. Society opened your heart to a certain type of romance...you pursued it and/or let it happen...she reciprocated...love and sex became intertwined. She is now the embodiment of how you understand them.
Cameron, I like a lot of what you said here. It's true, romance is probably more of a social construct than sexual attraction. I was always a very apt pupil and I'm sure I absorbed the hetero patterns very quickly, while being unaware the homo ones even existed. That said, I can recall having a crush on a girl in class in first grade, and one on my female seventh grade science teacher. Even if these patterns were learned, they are incredibly deeply ingrained. I can also recall the first time I masturbated to orgasm -- a couple of my friends were talking about masturbation and I felt left out. Apparently one of them had gotten hold of a VHS porn tape. He let me borrow it. Obviously it was straight porn. But I wonder where my sexuality would have gone if I had come to my own erotic conclusions without the influence of porn. Anyway, back to today. I still feel a deep connection with my wife. When I'm with her, it feels like home. Her presence and smell and feel are deeply reassuring to me. I feel very protective of her -- it makes me feel good to take care of her, to make her laugh and get her little presents. I admire how beautiful she is and proud that such an amazing girl is "mine." I feel that she looks up to me and I feel terrible about letting her down. So I guess even if this stuff is learned behavior, it feels pretty damn real to me. I've always felt betrayed by my gay fantasies, as if the rug was being pulled out from under my feet, toppling me over. I'm trying to move past that. But it's not easy. ---------- Post added 5th Feb 2016 at 11:50 PM ---------- Yeah, I'm a major pain in the ass like that. I can't really get behind something until I understand it. Most people who have come to know me in life have told me that I think too much for my own good. Probably true, but I'm not sure how to be any other way. If my logical mind doesn't agree with my feelings, no action is taken. ---------- Post added 5th Feb 2016 at 11:52 PM ---------- Since I was 18, I've had regular erotic fantasies about bottoming (submissive sex). Not with any particular guy, but clearly sex that requires another penis to be involved. The erotic energy and orgasms from these fantasies are much more powerful than my hetero fantasies (where I play the dominant role).
There's nothing wrong with being a nerd who thinks. In fact it's going to make it way harder for you to reject my suggestion Why don't you apply the scientific method to the study of your sexuality? When I came out to myself as bisexual, I wanted to verify the hypothesis that I was not straight. I started to collect data and observations based on experiments with other guys. As I collected this data, I concluded that I enjoyed the company of other men so I extended my research grant. Advanced research identified an experiment where I kissed a guy I cared about and had developed feelings for. The results of that experiment were very conclusive. I am gay, and I had the data to prove it. Now I'm wondering if a nerdy guy like you would be open to conducting a similar research project in NYC? A quick google search on "Gay nerds in NYC" identified a number of organizations that could help you find other guys who might be interested in helping your research. What do you say?
Gosh that sounds like me. I only recently came out to my husband. We've been together for 10 years. I can't imagine being married to anyone else. I feel sick thinking of him with someone else. But I'm gay. I know that I am. I'm still in the denial stage, but I know it all the same. So we're married friends which is odd. I don't want to leave him but I know that I can't fully love him. It almost feels like a big piece of myself is restrained? Like important pieces of me can't be shared with him. It's put us in this holding pattern and we don't know where to go from here.
Nerdbrain, you and I are so alike it is like I'm reading my own story. I am still very much in love with my wife of 13 years and it breaks my heart to imagine my daily life without her. She looks to me for love, protection and emotional support. I love to fall asleep stroking her hair and can't imagine not doing so. I can't imagine someone else who could come in and love her as well and completely as I do, and yet, because I am gay I have to accept that someone else probably COULD love her better and more completely than I do. When I step back and examine our relationship I recognize fairly quickly and easily that I have never been the man she truly fantasizes about. While I love her and believe she is beautiful and am proud to call her mine, I also haven't been completely obsessed with her like I think truly straight husbands are with their wives - swept away with wanting to ravish her everytime she looks stunning, overwhelmed with desire for her to the point of pulling the car over and taking her on the side of the road, overcome with lust and taking her in a restroom somewhere. Instead, our sex life has been more about emotional connection and foreplay that then leads to amazing sex. I listen to songs on the radio about being so overcome with lust that one can't get home fast enough. I don't think I've experienced that since we first dated and I feel like that's some sort of indication. I am a take-charge kind of guy in the bedroom with women, but in reality would love to be on the receiving end of that kind of passion with a man. I want to be overwhelmed by his lust and his desire for me and have him take charge. I've known this for a long time, but have only experienced it once after my first wife died and I hooked up with a friend from high school with whom I'd fooled around a decade before. I've had lots of encounters with other men over the years in backrooms, restrooms, etc. but they were all oral sex or masturbation. I, too, want to bottom, although I consider myself versatile, and that's another reason I know that I am gay. I'm a 4-5 on the Kinsey scale - predominantly homosexual but more than incidentally heterosexual - as evidenced by two marriages despite feeling like I was gay the whole time. I truly believe that society and social norms have conditioned me to believe that homosexual love is somehow less than heterosexual love, particularly when it comes to romance, but as I find more movies and television shows that model healthy homosexual romance, I am discovering that I am truly gay and desire romance with another man. Brokeback Mountain broke my heart - I cried for days afterward over the unrequited love. The Fosters with its budding romance between Jude and Conner has been a real eye-opener for me as it's the first time I've ever seen a healthy, homosexual relationship modeled from scratch. My heart breaks as I watch the two of them develop feelings for one another and I mourn that I never had that as a teen. I watch How to Get Away with Murder and see Connor and Oliver falling in love after a hookup and see that the times have changed so much since I was a teen in the 80s. All of these things remind me constantly that I am gay, despite having only one true homosexual relationship, despite being desperately in love with my beautiful wife, despite everything that society told me the whole time I was growing up about what normal, healthy romantic relationships are supposed to look like (i.e., heterosexual and lifelong). Despite everything I can conjure to question my homosexuality, I know that I'm gay.
Hi nerdbrain. I tried to PM you but it wont let me. I am like you. I feel stuck in limbo between gay and straight. Theres a list of reasons telling me I have to be gay and then theres my other list in my head and past history that tells me this MIGHT be ocd. I am not sure if you are like me in that my mind and body is bombarding me constantly for 10 years now that you become almost numb to the fear and you just want to accept defeat to be at peace? Do you get groinal responses/arousal feeling in groin when seeing guys? Thats my big issue I cant get over. I too had Dr. Phillipson tell me I was straight. I wish I could believe him.
I felt that too, but pushed it away with my own brand of logic which says that no relationship can be passion forever. I would eventually feel for a girl what I feel now for my husband? 10, 20, 50 years from now no relationship can possibly have the same sexual passion right? Or wrong? Maybe using the role models in my family/community is not the best idea of what to expect from marriage. Whether or not that is the case. And even if I never felt the same kind of passion for him in the beginning I felt for her in the beginning (and even now). Damn, that is super hard on yourself and I feel 100% the same. I guess I'm wondering did you ever feel that world's colliding passion with your wife in the beginning? Sorry if I asked before. Because if you did maybe that is messing with your head a bit, saying that you did have passion for her. But that doesn't invalidate the queer feelings you have, and it doesn't automatically mean you can't fall head over heels with the right guy. I never had that passion with my spouse, and so it seems much easier for me to imagine moving on from him, even if I never actually do it. Random but possibly relevant: I hear you about the porno VHS. My first exposure to anything was a P1ayb0y magazine I found and I don't know if that skewed me one way or another, but I think about it often nowadays.
Ha! Nevermind. It appears you are Banned from EC! Yet somehow you can still post? Anyway, I guess I'll post my response here. For those who don't know/care what HOCD is, feel free to ignore the below. A lot of what Steve talks about is making a choice. You're getting signals from your brain and body related to homosexuality. There is no doubt that these signals are real. The question is, what do they mean? Option 1 is that it's your true gay nature emerging. Option 2 is that it's a pesky mental condition. If 1, then you'll have to go out and explore your sexuality. If 2, then you'll have to find a way to manage the thoughts & feelings. But first, you have to choose how to interpret those signals. The choice is about meaning. I think this choice is especially tricky with HOCD because it's much harder to evaluate the rational truth of gay spikes vs. real gay, as opposed to, say, germophobia vs. real biological threats. For me, what it ultimately boiled down to was sex. I have had regular sexual fantasies about getting f*ucked for decades, and when I masturbate to those fantasies, it feels great. I basically decided for myself that there is no way this is OCD, that I'm not going to treat it as an anxiety disorder, and that I really want to get to the bottom of my sexuality. For the record, I'm pretty sure Steve didn't agree with my assessment Anyway, when you talk about "groinal response," that sounds more like a twinge in your junk that anyone can experience for a variety of reasons -- even just focusing on it, or seeing an animal's dick or something weird like that. Doesn't sound like real sexual fantasy to me. But then again, I don't know what's in your head. Here's the bad news: no matter what I, Steve, or anyone else says, the only way you are going to move forward is if you make a choice yourself. You've ultimately got to decide how to treat these signals, and stick with that decision. You're never going to have perfect information. And no matter what choice you make, it's going to suck for awhile. So really it's about making a choice that you can live with. It's taken me around 2 years to get to any kind of level of peace. It's still a constant struggle -- I ruminate and second guess myself all the time. I miss my wife and her warmth and security. But I'm starting to feel more comfortable that I made the right call. I don't think I would have been able to sustain my marriage the way things were going. And I've come to learn a lot about my sexuality and personality in this time, that I may not have done if I was simply treating the whole thing as a spike. Good luck to you. And may I suggest creating a new username with a different email address if you plan to use this site more often. ---------- Post added 8th Feb 2016 at 12:32 AM ---------- Ha! Nevermind. It appears you are Banned from EC! Yet somehow you can still post? Anyway, I guess I'll post my response here. For those who don't know/care what HOCD is, feel free to ignore the below. A lot of what Steve talks about is making a choice. You're getting signals from your brain and body related to homosexuality. There is no doubt that these signals are real. The question is, what do they mean? Option 1 is that it's your true gay nature emerging. Option 2 is that it's a pesky mental condition. If 1, then you'll have to go out and explore your sexuality. If 2, then you'll have to find a way to manage the thoughts & feelings. But first, you have to choose how to interpret those signals. The choice is about meaning. I think this choice is especially tricky with HOCD because it's much harder to evaluate the rational truth of gay spikes vs. real gay, as opposed to, say, germophobia vs. real biological threats. For me, what it ultimately boiled down to was sex. I have had regular sexual fantasies about getting f*ucked for decades, and when I masturbate to those fantasies, it feels great. I basically decided for myself that there is no way this is OCD, that I'm not going to treat it as an anxiety disorder, and that I really want to get to the bottom of my sexuality. For the record, I'm pretty sure Steve didn't agree with my assessment Anyway, when you talk about "groinal response," that sounds more like a twinge in your junk that anyone can experience for a variety of reasons -- even just focusing on it, or seeing an animal's dick or something weird like that. Doesn't sound like real sexual fantasy to me. But then again, I don't know what's in your head. Here's the bad news: no matter what I, Steve, or anyone else says, the only way you are going to move forward is if you make the choice yourself. You've ultimately got to decide how to treat these signals, and stick with that decision. You're never going to have perfect information. And no matter what choice you make, it's going to suck for awhile. So really it's about making a choice that you can live with. It's taken me around 2 years to get to any kind of level of peace. It's still a constant struggle -- I ruminate and second guess myself all the time. I miss my wife and her warmth and security. But I'm starting to feel more comfortable that I made the right call. I don't think I would have been able to sustain my marriage the way things were going. And I've come to learn a lot about my sexuality and personality in this time, that I may not have done if I was simply treating the whole thing as a spike. Good luck to you. And may I suggest creating a new username with a different email address if you plan to use this site more often.
I'm glad that you are moving in the right direction. It seemed like you were stuck in a vicious chicken-and-the-egg cycle that prevented forward movement. What I've discovered is that there's a positive feedback loop accepting one's sexuality. As I've become more comfortable with my sexuality, it's become more obvious that I am gay and even easier to be comfortable being gay, which then continues to build upon itself. Hopefully as you take baby steps being gay in the real world, you will become more comfortable with your sexuality and begin to experience the positive feedback loop as well.
