But I still love my wife and life.....

It's doubtful you will alone. In time your wife might come around.
You will make new friends - and maybe a new relationship. You are in the rough part right now - it will past.

 

That is my day today:fear. It comes and goes sometimes hour by hour. My husband is my best friend (only one nearby) so this process sucks.Its scary. Its lonely but its also the right thing to do. For both of us. He deserves to be loved with all the same passion that he gives. Not just sexually but everyday joys. I love him deeply & cant sleep without him but its still the best for both of us.
I know right now I'm not a "catch" in any aspect of me.I'm not sure I will find someone who loves me the way he does but its not fair to him that I don't love him with the same passion.

 

Unfortunately, this is where my husband and I are right now too. We care about each other deeply and have always gotten along so well. We are great partners and good co-parents to our four kids. In so many ways we have a model marriage. But seven years ago I came out and all hell broke loose because I'm from a very conservative family. So I stayed. And I have been having sex more or less on his terms for seven years to keep the peace. Finally last week I talked to him about it and basically said I can't keep going like this. It's not working. It's slowly sucking the soul out of me. It's killing me. I didn't get all the way to "penises gross me out" and "sex makes me nauseous" part. So we are talking about separating because to him, marriage without sex or with infrequent sex is unthinkable. But we so dearly love our life and our kids and our house and neighborhood and lifestyle. So it's hard to let go of that. I would be tempted to just stay if I didn't know that I simply can't. I've tried for so long to keep it going. It's time to let go. But how far do we have to let go? That's the question. It's a possibility that we'll develop the garage and space above it, along with the master bedroom/ensuite and attic space above into another 16/1700 sq ft unit unit and make our house into a duplex. We always have been out-of-the-box people. I think it will work

Therapy has been a HUGE part of getting me to where I could voice my needs and be able to stand on my own. On my therapists wall there's a saying that goes something like this: ...and there came a time when the pain of blossoming became less than the pain of staying a bud. I think that accurately describes his process.

 

I am in this same situation and have met other men who are, as well. I am working with my therapist to accept that if I've made a beautiful life once....I can do it again. We have three wonderful sons, two daughters-in-law and two grandsons. I have to trust that if they really are as fabulous and grounded as I believe, then I need to trust that they will not abandon me, as the rush to support their mother.

I think it's the familiarity and routines that call me to stay put, instead of deep love. While I do love my wife, we have been sexually dead for a couple of years and rather emotionally neutral for even longer. I think I'm fighting the discomfort and absence of staying put rather than the risk of a life re-start at 60. So, I've given myself a year. In the scheme of things, a year isn't really all that much time to make such a huge decision. I just have to stay committed to it not being longer than a year. Since coming out to my wife, we've been though several phases. In the beginning, she was very supportive and quite worried about me. Now, it's beginning to get a little "chippy" with me feeling more picked on for unrelated matters. I sense that she's quite financially dependent upon me to maintain her lifestyle and cannot begin to envision what life on her own would entail or require of her. That worry has to be brought to the surface eventually, so that can be discussed. My hope is that she can also find someone (therapist, or friend) with whom she can be encouraged to examine those fears. Lord knows that I can't handle this big of an issue on my own, so why should she. It's just as huge of an issue for her, but thus far, she wants to keep it all too herself. One step, one day at a time....but the clock is ticking on my one-year countdown to decision. I am now out to myself and my wife for 3 months. I'm working on it, but she's not. That means I've got more difficult conversations ahead of me. At least I'm getting better at them.

 

I'm also married and gay, however, my husband knows I'm gay and it's working out fine. It's pretty funny because we're ideal partners, but it's like being married to your best friend (who you usually don't sleep with). We're planning on separating after we finish our respective graduate schools (we'll have been married for over 10 years at that point).
So I understand where you're coming from because I have grown accustomed to the DINK lifestyle. I'm also very conservative so finding an intelligent, educated woman that likes the same things I do will be next to impossible. Most lesbians are fat, ugly, and have useless degrees in things like art. I want the female equivalent of my husband: tall, think, an engineer, athletic, likes guns, has strong morals, and ethics... I may not be 100% happy with my husband, but if I can't find a woman to suit my desires/needs why would I be so stupid as to leave him? That's how I see it. I'd rather have the worst sex life for compatibility and a stable dual income.
So if you can take that step and fly solo while searching for someone who is that 100% for you, you are far more guts than I do!

 

I still love my wife and life too. I'm hoping we can stick it out together. Time will tell.

 

My situation is a bit different. My wife is retired and very involved in things that don't much involve me, so she increasingly has a life that is somewhat apart from me. This, in fact, was the context that made it somewhat easier to come out when I did.

And although she never paid too much attention to gay and lesbian issues before, she has been much more vocal in her support since she started spending time with a gay man who is basically now her closest friend (and I'm not talking about me). A few months before I came out, she and her friend went to a play about someone coming out. I was invited but didn't go.

 

I came out to my wife few days ago as being bi (Which took me years to accept). I still love her and similarly to Rose27 she is also my best friend. Till now she find it hard, but she is really supportive as well. She is particularly afraid that in fact I'm not bi but gay, and she thinks that my acceptance of being bi might just be a temporary step before I realize that I'm gay. How did you discover that you were gay and not bi?

 

First off, to be bi is a totally legitimate thing, but obviously, it's harder to define in exact terms, to think of this as exactly 50% men/50% women is to be precisely wrong. It's much more complicated.

To acknowledge and accept being bi is what could be called inclusive of both genders; to acknowledge and accept being gay can be called exclusive of the opposite gender.

A great deal of confusion arises from finding the opposite gender attractive, beautiful even, and yet still be gay. In this case, there's a disconnect between the ability to appreciate beauty, and any sense of arousal.

It is true that many who have been closeted for years will start coming out as bi, if only to explain their past sexual relationships with the opposite gender, and then, by carefully observing themselves in the here and now may decide that being gay is closer to the truth.

It's really a matter of the degree to which one is aroused by either gender. I accepted being gay because the strength, the power, of my arousal vis-à-vis men vs. women is like an atom bomb vs. a firecracker, both will go bang, but you see the difference.

This may be very different for you...unflinching honesty is the only correct path.

 

Well, I live in Estrie. Won't tell more than that since I'm in a quite smallest town than Montreal .

I think I understand what you mean. When discussing with my wife, I realized that I have absolutely no fantasy with another women (but my wife), but I have plenty with men...

I should stop for this morning, I'm really getting worst if I think too much. I guest one step at the time...

BTW thanks for accepting me in your circle (I can't not reply directly to you since I have not enough post)
Bonne journée,

 

What made you feel bad, having sex with your wife or having the fantasies about men? On my side, having sex is ok, but each time I have fantasies about men I felt really guilty. The accumulation made me somewhat rethink about my identity, which I assume is at least bi. I think I have more work to do on my self to determine my real identity...

 

I have decided to stop worrying about the gay-or-bi thing. I identified as bi for much of my life and have enjoyed sex with women, above all my wife. And I suppose it's true that I'm bi, in the sense that I remain very attracted to women in many ways. But I have concluded that my true SEXUAL orientation is gay, that it's what feels most right to me. One of the most enlightening things about EC has been how many men have experienced the kind of split I have in the two different kinds of attraction.

Great whale makes a great point. There is a mistaken idea that to be bi means to have equal attraction to men and women, or to believe that the nature of the attraction will be the same. Whatever our orientation, we relate to men and women differently. If you have grown up assuming you're straight, you have certain kinds of friendships with other men that are different from the way you have always related to women. Speaking for myself, I have almost never had sexual thoughts about male friends. I have only been attracted to men who I think might be gay.

Early on, in my 20s, I found the idea of kissing another man on the lips too horrible to imagine. And I have had presumably straight friends say things like, "I can imagine fucking a guy but not kissing him." That's pretty much how I felt. But kissing is now the first thing I think of, and I know that I want it very much. (I suppose it says a lot about that nature of homophobia that while I warmly imagine kissing a man, I still get uncomfortable about it when I see two other men kiss.)

 

There were definitely times when I was faking it with my wife, fantasizing that she was a man. I agree with you that I feel badly about that.

As for straight men, I guess it's mostly a matter of socialization. There were men I liked in college who may or may not have been straight, but they had a quality that I think of as "feminine" that turned me on. And never in a million years would I have dared to ask another man if he was gay, because I couldn't reveal that I was. (And I was sure I wasn't.) Now that I'm out, we'll see if the same kinds of attractions still hold true.

As I mentioned to my brother, I did notice that the other night when I was watching the local sports report that I realized I would sleep with the Dodgers' outfielder Andre Ethier in a nano-second. So who knows?

 

That's pretty funny. I can't tell you how many time's I've had to fantasize about my husband being a woman during sex. I don't feel badly about it though because I've been brutally honest with him about it.
I can feel you on liking the feminine ones, I'm a lipstick that likes to chase skirts.
Btw, Andre Ethier is a good looking guy!