In many ways I'm glad that my bisexuality didn't surface until after I turned 40. When I first acknowledged my sexual interest in men, I had come to terms with myself as a person and liked myself so while a bit startled about this new aspect of me, I was able to integrate it without the self-loathing, fear and denial that I hear so many gay and bisexual men describe as they came to terms with their sexuality in their teens. Oh, in retrospect, I recognize that I was fascinated as an adolescent by picture s of Charles Atlas and other guys in bikinis, but my sexual fantasies were about women in that gentler age of shaved pubic hair, demurely closed legs and large but not all encompassing breasts. It was also a time when getting a girl to put out was no eas y task so I was relatively inexperienced when I married in my early 20's. I joke that I married just prior to the sexual revolution thus missing out on those heady days of sexual freedom without fear of AIDS.
Prior to my marriage my wife took great pleasure in our sexual contact though it was limited by our both living at home with our parents so that sex was furtive, and exciting and infrequent. Just before our marriage my wife became severely depressed. Her acute depression lasted for years and she has remained chronically, though mildly depressed, throughout our marriage. Her depression and the medication that she took for it distorted not only our sex lives, but other aspects of our relationship. I b ecame the caregiver and my wife was in effect given permission to look to me to nurture her, while not being responsible for nurturing me. While I took on this role willingly, over the years I grew increasingly resentful and the more resentful I became t he more resistant she became to my attempts to change the paradigm. The more I asked for her attention the more devalued she felt and the more she withdrew from me.
Eventually I began to look for emotional support outside our marriage. I became involved in town and church activities and the more I turned away from our relationship the angrier and the more resentful she became. It was during this period that I b egan to become aware of my attraction to men. At first I was surprised by my feelings and resisted the pull of this attraction. The fear of contracting AIDS made this relatively easy for a while, but as the knowledge of what sex practices were safe grew , I found myself increasingly drawn to acting on my fantasies. Before I acted on them, however, I had a brief affair with a woman with whom I had worked several years prior. This activity confused me since it temporarily diverted my sexual interested ba ck to women. But when she finally left the area my attraction to men reasserted itself and I entered a "slut" phase that others have described. After being faithful to my wife for over 20 years, I suddenly had an affair with a woman and began having enc ounters with men. Sex with men never seemed to match my fantasies about sex with men and many times I'd swear off altogether only to find myself irresistibly drawn back to having sex with men. Incidentally, for me, the actual sex act is far more pleasur able with a woman than with a man, but the overall sexual experience from foreplay through orgasm is infinitely more satisfying with a man.
I realize that these statements seem contradictory. What is so satisfying about sex with a man is the awareness that you are as much an object of his desire as he is an object of your desire. What I have missed in my sexual relations with women is th e feeling that they get pleasure out of looking at or touching a man's body. Whereas with a man you sense that they get as much pleasure out of giving you pleasure as in receiving pleasure from you. The thing that disappointed me about sexual encounters with men was there was often nothing going on beyond the admittedly good physical dimension. While I know many men enjoy anonymous sex, for me those encounters were profoundly unsatisfactory. As I read over this last paragraph, I realize that all of my statements really reflect my personal experience of sex with men and with women. Who knows, if I had ever encountered one of those mythical ladies that you read about other guys encountering in Penthouse Forum letters, my viewpoint might be quite diffe rent.
I met men primarily through answering ads in the local alternative newspaper. Initially I was just looking for sexual encounters, hoping that with my homoerotic sexual needs met my emotional needs could be satisfied by my relationship with my wife and children. The men I met were generally decent guys, but my encounters with them were unsatisfying.
When casual sexual encounters proved to be unsatisfying I began to realize that I wanted more from my encounters with men. At that point I began to fantasize about a sexual friendship. A relationship with a man that was based on mutual interests and mutual respect but that also included a sexual dimension. All the time I was experiencing ambivalence about my activities with men, and I also felt a deep desire to come out to my wife even though I believed that she would not accept this and would want u s to end our marriage if she knew. I found out about the Bisexual Married Men's Group through the social services listings in the yellow pages. I remember how nervous I was going to my first meeting and how I almost turned away at the last moment. I ex pected to find that most of the men would be struggling with the question of whether to come out to their wives so I was surprised to find that out of a group of about 15 there was only one other man who was not out to his wife.
It was such a relief to find this group to know that I wasn't alone in dealing with issues of fidelity, betrayal, how to balance my needs against my responsibilities to the other people in my life. I didn't know it at the time, but the issue of whethe r or not to come out to my wife was one of the primary reasons for my joining the group. To be truthful, I also hoped to meet my sexual friend there too. The fact that most of the men in the group were out to their wives was, in retrospect, fortunate fo r me because it forced me to focus on this issue and to examine my reasons for remaining closeted to my wife. I have to admit that it didn't seem fortunate at the time. I felt subtly and sometimes not so subtly disapproved of, since the group so valued openness and full communication.
What I realized as I continued on with the group was that very few of the men were able to maintain their marriages and their sexual activity with men outside of their marriage. It often seemed that telling their wives of their bisexuality transferred the burden of this knowledge from the men to their wives, and that not many women were able to handle this knowledge well. What a terrible burden this is for the women. In many cases they felt entirely isolated and unable to talk to anyone about this , and so they were forced to carry this burden essentially alone along with the feelings of rejection and sexual unattractiveness that went along with it.
I am often asked whether the deception involved with living a dual life leaves me with a great burden of guilt. I can honestly say that this isn't the case for me. I feel completely authentic as a husband, a father and middle class, suburban citizen and I feel comfortable with my attraction to men and comfortable in the milieu of a gay bar, a weekend in Provincetown or spending an evening with gay or bisexual friends. No one completely exposes everything about themselves even to their most intimate partners so my withholding my bisexual aspect from my wife and family doesn't seem to me to be a deception. My sexuality is none of my children's business and seems to me to be fundamentally unrelated to my relationship with my wife. I don't feel that m y desire for men was caused by an unsatisfactory relationship with my wife though these desires may have stayed beneath the surface had my relationship with my wife been more satisfying sexually and emotionally, but there is really no way of knowing wheth er that's the case or not. For me, my sense of having betrayed my wife comes from knowing that I have emotionally withdrawn from her over the past few years. But this emotional withdrawal is a reaction to her inability to respond to me emotionally and p hysically.
Until recently I balanced all of this pretty well though I did seesaw about whether to seek a purely sexual relationship or a sexual friendship about a year and a half ago I gave up on the sexual friendship idea and placed an ad for a sex partner in th e local gay newspaper. I got about a dozen responses and one guy I met was "the guy." We're soul mates as well as bed mates. We delight in each other's presence whether we're going to the grocery store or spending the weekend together. Sex with him ha s been a revelation. There is a mutuality and a caring about our relationship both sexually and emotionally that is truly extraordinary. I love him and he loves me, but with 20 plus years of marriage, three kids and financial entanglements, I realize th at love might not conquer all. I kid him that falling in love with him has complicated my already complex life. He's incredibly patient and understanding, well most of the time.
What keeps me from breaking up my family? Aside from the very real financial disincentives, that I have to admit also militated against my telling my wife about my bisexual activities, the question implies the answer. I wonder whether I have the righ t to pursue my own happiness at the expense of the other people in my life for whom I am responsible. My daughter and my older son are almost adults, but the break up of our marriage will inevitably have a negative impact on them. My daughter who just s tarted college has suffered from depression and has worried aloud about her fears about the lack of stability in the one area of her life that has been stable. My son puts on a face of being tough and worldly, but I know that he will find it difficult to deal with our break up. I worry most about my youngest son. He is approaching adolescence and needs to have his father around. He is prey to so many fears as it is and I wonder how he will deal with divorce and separation from me. And I also worry about my wife. Strange as it may seem, I still care deeply for her and for her well being. I'm well aware that I have my lover to go to, but that she will find it hard to find someone. It's a cruel fact of life that a middle aged woman is less "marketa ble" in the heterosexual marketplace. I also wonder whether my leaving will trigger a major depression for her. It strikes me as a bit presumptuous on my part to see myself as the key to all these people's happiness, but I do carry around the burden of worrying about their well being, and of knowing that my act of self fulfillment can adversely affect so many lives. Then, of course, there is my lover. Is it fair of me to ask him to settle for something less than my full commitment? Even if he is will ing to put up with this situation indefinitely, is it moral for me to allow him to do so?
Well I've set out the questions, but I don't have any answers as yet.