First Time: Hook-Up in a Gay Club (Bi / Gay Story - Part 21)

It's 30 minutes before closing time and everyone is pairing up to go home together, probably for gay sex.  

I've barely talked to anyone in the few gay clubs I'd been in and no one tonight.  Now, all of a sudden, this guy I've never seen before is asking me to leave with him.  

I'm very nervous but I think I'm going to say yes.

Gay at Night Experiment (Bi / Gay Story - Part 20)

 After coming out to one gay friend when he came out to me, I'm still 99.9% in the closet. But I'm going to try an experiment when I travel alone for two weeks in Germany, Austria and England. No one will know what I'm doing and I can't wait!

 

 

Gay Miracle / School Field Hook Up / College Year Two (Bi / Gay Story - Part 18)

 Here's part 18 of my bi / gay story, a summary of all the gay stuff that's happened to me over the past several months. The two biggest things were completely unexpected and really quite shocking for me!

 

Open Marriage or Divorce: "It's better to be divorced."

Helen and I exchanged a few emails about our lives and circumstances.  She's the young woman I quoted in my last post, the one who wrote about her parents' open marriage.

At the time of our conversation I was thinking about coming out to my kids, so we talked about that.  We also talked about the reasons why many married men "on the down-low" have no desire to come out.  On that subject, Helen realized something new:

You made me realize that my mother and my father's family wanted him in the closet at least as badly as he wanted to be there too.  In fact, he might have felt he was doing the right thing by not living openly.  He probably felt like he was protecting them.  

This is a revelation to me, and I don't know why I didn't see it before.

 On the subject of hiding same-sex attractions from one's children, Helen had this to say:

I glanced at "[Another blog]," and couldn't help but compare the two of you.  

The author of that blog wrote something to the effect that he hopes his kids never find out that he's a liar and a cheat.  

He's kidding himself.  The thing these guys don't understand is that it's better to be divorced and to have an open, genuine relationship with your children than it is to be married but lie to your kids every day for the rest of your life.  

I'm not unsympathetic.  I know how it happens.  People have been brought up to believe that their marriage and family are their real relationships, while their relationships with their lovers are secret and disposable.  They're not real and therefore not important.  That's how you end up with men who believe that "women are for romance and men are for sex."  They've never seen a romantic relationship between two men really work.  But they can and do work, and every gay person today (in most parts of this country) can pursue a genuine, loving, and public relationship with the person they love, if they really want to.  

Also, I think that all parents are guilty of forgetting that they're meant to be raising functional, independent adults.  I only have a toddler, but even I have to remind myself that these days of high dependence won't last forever and that someday she'll be a grown woman.  If I want to have a close relationship with her then, it's important to be as honest and compassionate as I can be now. 

Helen has conflicted feelings about her father.  She loves him but she also feels betrayed by his lies and cheating.  Actually, when you think about it, she feels exactly the same way many straight spouses do, just less vehemently.

She makes the assumption that every kid will eventually learn the truth about his or her cheating parent.  Yet, ironically, no man on the down-low ever expects to be caught.

I suppose that's the nature of the beast.  If you expect to be caught, why bother hiding?

How many cheating spouses are eventually caught?  No one knows.  Many of them, certainly.  Especially these days when it's easy to get tripped up in your own digital handiwork.

I've seen a number of teenagers post stories about how they discovered their father's cheating because they found some form of electronic evidence.  Before the Internet, I remember when guys would talk about finding their dad's porn stash.  Now that porn stashes are kept on computers and phones, I wonder how many teenagers go looking for their dad's porn and are shocked by what they find.  I've never read a story about that happening, at least as far as I can remember, but I'm sure it happens.

Anyway, my point is that electronic secrets are not as secret as we think they are.  Those very popular Apple products, for example, keep track of the apps you download.  If someone in your family innocently syncs a new device to your existing Apple account....whoops, there's Grindr!

My advice to spouses with secrets is to expect that the truth will some day be revealed, and when it is, expect that your spouse won't be the only important person in your life who feels angry and betrayed.  Yes, some secrets do make it to the grave, but mostly, they don't.  For that reason, it's best to prepare for the worst.

What do you think?

"My Parents' Open Marriage"

A few months ago I had a fascinating email exchange with a 30-something woman, Helen, about her parents' mixed orientation open marriage.  It was an amazing conversation; no one writes about this stuff!

Helen is now old enough, and experienced enough, to understand her parents as real and imperfect individuals.  And, as a wife and mother herself, she's sympathetic to the stresses and responsibilities her parents faced.  Yet she's still able to be balanced and critical about her parents.  I've never read a story like hers before.

I feel honored that she shared it with me and I couldn't be more pleased that she has given me permission to share it with you.  Here is that story, in her own words: 

My father was gay or bisexual (depending on who you asked).  He and my mother were very close, best friends even.  And my mother says the sex was good (I suspect though that she doesn't have the highest sex drive).  My dad knew he was gay from an early age, and actually confessed to my mother that he was bisexual prior to their getting married at age 23 in the late 60s.  She was shocked, but he assured her that he'd never cheat on her and that he loved her, and so they went ahead with the wedding.  Fast-forwarding to just before my birth in the late 70s, my dad became very ill while my mother was pregnant with me, and while in the hospital was diagnosed with Hepatitis B (which I still carry in my liver cells, via my mom).  It became clear that he had been cheating on her for some time, but despite a lot of fighting, neither of them wanted a divorce.  My mother instead agreed to have a secretly open relationship, where my father could sleep with other men as long as he was discreet and did not endanger the family in any way.  I know this sounds like a pie-in-the-sky sane solution, so let me add that my mother tears up when talking about her agreeing to my father's extramarital affairs to this day.  She was not really okay with the situation, but with a newborn and a partner who was a good husband and father, she felt that it was a deal with the devil that she had to make.

Throughout my childhood I was surrounded by wonderful gay men, but I had no idea about their sexual orientation.  I was given Disney collectible items, taken to musicals, and was just in general very well treated and loved.  Then just before my brother was born, the HIV test was invented, and my father discovered he was infected.  Miraculously, neither my mother nor brother were infected.  My mother was very upset, since her agreement on extramarital affairs was contingent on safe sex, and while it's possible that my father had become infected long before, it seems unlikely given my mother's negative status.  My father became quite sick, then received a liver transplant when I was 12 (they didn't know whether HIV would re-infect the liver at that time), then slowly became sick again.  While I obviously knew he was ill, I knew nothing of the cause while I was a child.  When I was 15 I studied abroad for a school-year, and prior to my leaving, my dad sat me down and told me he was infected with HIV; he and I were close and he was afraid that he would die while I was gone and would find out from another source.  I was shocked.  When I asked my mother how it could have happened, she yelled at me, telling me that I was being purposefully stupid and that I shouldn't need it spelled out for me that my father was gay.  I had been raised to believe, through church, that being gay was wrong and that was a very difficult year for me, grappling with these issues in a foreign country.  I decided at the end of it that if my beloved dad was gay, it couldn't be so bad and I "forgave" him for his orientation.  But to this day I haven't been able to forgive him for the callous way he treated my mother, his willful ignorance of the pain he caused her.  He died when I was 20.  We attended one queer event together, a documentary on how to approach families with same-sex parents in the school system.  I always wonder how our relationship and my feelings toward my father would have been different had we had time to really be honest about this part if his life.

There are three main points I'd like to convey.  #1 is that a closeted parent puts the whole family in the closet.  To this day I can't speak openly, because my grandparents and father's sisters are deeply hurt and offended if I do.  We are so closed off that my poor brother didn't learn my father was gay until he was 21, seven years after my father's death.  This is not a fair burden to require your children to carry.  #2 is that open-marriages can work, but only in the true absence of any kind of coercion.  If your children are grown and you and your wife are in good health, then yes, perhaps she could give you her honest opinion about what would be acceptable to her.  Otherwise you have to assume that she will feel undue pressure to keep her family together and might agree to something that she's not genuinely okay with.  #3 This one is harder to describe, but I'll try.  I feel that by not having an example in my parents, I was cheated of a model of a healthy sexual love and instead I inherited negative views about sex that I've worked hard to overcome.  I remember as a child watching my uncle affectionately pat my aunt on her bottom and feeling completely confused by it.  I now strongly believe that it is optimal for parents to have a healthy sexual relationship with each other.  It gives the children a sense of security and greatly helps when it's time for the children to navigate their own dating lives.  I'm happily married, but as a teenager I was a mess - I had no clue how men felt about women, or what to do with my feelings for men.  The underlying message of my parents' relationship was that sex isn't important between people who love each other, but is very important to have fun amongst strangers.  I hope my children see sex as something that can bind two loving people together.

Therefore I strongly support same-sex marriage and romantic relationships for gay and lesbian people.  It is healthier for them, and it is healthier for their kids.  I understand how my parents came to the place that they did - my father would have been disowned had he come out as a young man, if not worse - and I think they both did their best in a difficult situation.  But I have much less sympathy for couples embarking on mixed-orientation unions now.  I have yet to see one that was loving, honest, fulfilling for both parties, and instilled a healthy sense of sexual worth in their kids. 

For those of you who are in an open marriage (whether your spouse knows it or not) I wonder how you would respond to Helen if she was your grown daughter?  Specifically, how would your reply to her three main points?

A Bisexual Husband: He Says / She Says

I recently had the opportunity to witness a bisexual man and his straight wife speak candidly and independently about their marriage. Although I am quoting them directly, I made some editorial changes to keep their narratives tightly focused and to protect their identities.

The Bisexual Husband

Some days my marriage feels like a game to me, quick delete the emails and hide the gay porn! Other days it feels like I'm walking 500 miles in shit only to be rejected because I need more.

I'm living two lives right now. Physically... I'm a married man. I wear my wedding ring, I kiss my wife, we have sex. I don't physically cheat. I've never had sex with a man. I've hardly ever hugged a man. Mentally though, I struggle. I know that I'm married. I know that my wife has eyes for me. I know that I actually like having sex with her. Still, I'm drawn to men.

There are plenty of times that I wanted a cure for my bisexuality. I can see how it can enrich some peoples lives, but as for mine, please... lets cut it off. Like that leg... amputate it and please make life easier for me. Then I remember that this, this whole thing is a big part of me and it'll never ever just be shut off, cut off or wished away.

I don't know what I’m supposed to do. I love my wife and we have our problems but I know that life comes with problems, marriage isn't easy. If I didn't have my wife I would feel incomplete. I feel incomplete now, too. I'm puzzled and confused. Still it's comforting to know that there are that many people like me: stuck in the gray zone of needing something nearly unattainable. The bottom line is though, I've got the hots for my wife, as well as genuine love for her.

[How's your sex life?]

Sometimes we screw like hormonal teenagers and we'll have sex in the afternoons, before I go to work. I generally would refuse her because I felt that it made me sluggish and lazy at work... but it's actually put a pep in my step and it's increased my productivity. The afternoon sex sessions just keep getting better too.

The other day she jumped into the shower with me. That NEVER happens so it was a welcome surprise. Seeing her got me all hot and bothered so I started feeling her up... and SHE LET ME! Score! I pressed my self up against her and started pressing my cock up against her butt and other places. I was on cloud 9.

Another time I had been horny all day and after watching some old porn well off into the night, I was still in the mood despite having given up all hope to get laid. To my surprise my wife was horny and not at all tired. We started to have sex but something about it felt different, better. I can't put my finger on it, but something was completely different about this time. My excitement level was to the roof top.

Where does this leave me now? I've been pondering that. I'm still very much attracted to men but that night sure shook things up. Now I'm obsessing about my wife. I just want to crawl into bed and see if I can't make my way in between her legs.

The Straight Wife

We were married in September and only a few months later, in the following April I found evidence that he had been looking at profiles of gay men online. He assured me that he was only looking, just curious. I was devastated. We were newlyweds! I was so ashamed that I couldn't tell anyone. I didn't know what to do, so I just pretended like it didn't happen.

A couple of years went by, and our sex life really started declining. He was depressed a lot. He would tell me he didn't feel good, or his head hurt, or he was tired, or his stomach hurt in order to get out of sex with me. A couple times I would find evidence of him chatting online, but he assured me that it was only talking, that it didn't mean anything, and that he loved me so much. He would have sex with me for 2 weeks, then slowly our relationship would drift back to him avoiding intimacy with me. This went on for a couple years.

Eventually I told him that I needed intimacy and I threatened to cheat on him. His answer was to say that he was so sorry, and that he knew that he denied me intimacy. He promised that he would have sex with me regularly.

Of course, the sex was never regular, and he NEVER initiated it. We would have terrible fights about it. He would make me feel so bad for wanting sex. He would blame me for him not wanting it. I felt so conflicted because I wanted my marriage to work. When things were good, they were good, but when they were bad I was miserable. One day I just started praying, and I prayed to God that he would show me what to do. I begged him for a sign. Then, a few days after I prayed so fervently, some apps for gay men appeared on my phone. He didn't know that they'd be downloaded to my phone when I synced it. I confronted him, and of course he lied first then told me he was so sorry and he loves me so much. Again I didn't know what to do, so I told him that I needed time to think.

One night while he was sleeping, I took his phone and found out that he had another email account that I didn't know about, and saw emails dating back many months. I knew at that moment that I had to leave him. He talked to these men about doing the things with them that I wanted him to do with me..kissing, etc. I was so heartbroken.

I'm attempting to figure it all out, hoping that I can move in with my friend. Meanwhile my husband is begging me to stay. He promises to give me what I need, and if he can't then I can sleep with whomever I choose; although he has realized that he will never stop wanting to be with men.

He says he is bisexual and not gay...but I am done with that. I am done waiting on him to be what he says he will be. He says that he really means it this time because he never thought that I would leave him, but now that it is a reality he is willing to do whatever it takes.....what a slap in the face!!!

I am feeling sorry for myself lately. All I ever wanted was family and children and I'm scared that now I will never have that. I was so stupid all those years. I hope that I haven't wasted too much time on him. I think that I am just ashamed of the situation. I am an educated woman, I went to graduate school, how could I have given him so many chances? How could I have believed he would change?

Not all bisexual men are the same and not all bisexual married men can identify with the man quoted above. But many can.

Clearly, he loves his wife. Clearly, he desires his wife. Also, he recognizes that he is far from perfect and that his marriage has some issues. But, wow, isn't his story astoundingly different from hers???

He is not unique. Many bi-married men are stuck in their own mire and cannot see how their actions, or lack there of, directly affect the important people in their lives. This man, for example, believes that the biggest threat to his marriage is his attraction to men. But that's not why his wife wants to leave. She wants to leave because she feels undesired, "I am done waiting on him to be what he says he will be."

Many couples do not communicate about their sexual problems. This couple did. And, they both made a sincere effort to improve their intimacy. But their progress was always short-lived. Within two weeks they always fell back into the same pattern. Why? Because wanting to desire a woman 'enough' is not a substitute for actually doing it.

I believe that this couple's experience powerfully demonstrates four truisms that can often be applied to the marriages of bisexual men:

Attraction doesn't kill marriages, lack of attraction does.This wife, and many like her, can accept a marriage to a bisexual husband. A surprising number of women are willing look the other way when it comes to infidelity. But even a faithful man's marriage will not endure unless his wife feels desired.

Labels don't matter. Any man who does not (or cannot) make his wife feel genuinely desired is on a slow but steady march to divorce court. This is true even if he is bisexual and even if he is straight. What a man believes about himself is irrelevant. He can be turned off by gay porn, and thereby be certain of his bisexuality, but if his wife does not feel authentically and regularly desired, he is no different to her than a gay man.

Lies matter. The reason this straight wife is angry is not so much that she unknowingly married a bisexual man, it's because he lied so often that he turned their marriage into a sad joke. Also, she's pissed that he wasted years of her life. Or more accurately, she's pissed at herself. The signs were there yet she ignored them.

Love is not enough. Pop culture and an untold number of fairy tales ingrain into us the certainty that love is enough to sustain a relationship. This is true. Love is what sustains many difficult relationships - how would teenagers be permitted to survive to adulthood without it?? As important as love is, most troubled marriages cannot be sustained on love alone. If there is no sexual desire, or not enough of it to be mutually satisfying, then the marriage will slowly unravel, like a ball of yarn. Friendships and families are sustained by love. The difference between those relationships and a marriage is not love, it's desire.

If you're reading this and you see something of yourself or your marriage in this couple's story, you might ask, what are you supposed to do about it? You love your wife, you married her with honest intentions, you have kids, you don't really want to live as an out gay man...what options do you have besides "keep on keeping on?"

Several.

One of those options, if handled correctly, should be a "win-win" - and no - it does not require that you tell your wife that you are attracted to men.

I will explain what this option is in a soon-to-come post. In the meantime, I look forward to reading your thoughtful comments.

The Divided Bisexual Man

"Men are for sex and women are for love."

You don't usually wake up one morning and have an epiphany that love and sex work best when split by gender. Instead it's an evolutionary process. That process can vary from man to man, but it often follows a common path:

1. An otherwise hetero guy, who may already be married, realizes that he has a sexual attraction to men.

2. The man tries to squash, deny, hide, run away from, and generally do whatever he can to make those evil man-sex thoughts go away. If the man is not already married, he often gets married, with the honest hope that marriage will banish his man-sex fantasies.

3. Depending on other aspects of life, thoughts about sex with men may wax and wane, but they do not go away. Years spent fighting the thoughts makes many men frustrated, anxious and unhappy. Ultimately, most give in to temptation. They might begin by chatting about sex with other men on-line. Then they might arrange a date to receive a blow job - which they will flake out on, at least once. Eventually they keep a date and have their first experience. From there, the exact progression differs but the result is the same: within months, years or decades, they become eager to hook-up with other men.

4. After the first few hook-ups there's a serious questioning stage. Am I straight? Am I bi? Am I gay? There are no statistics but my guess is that the proportion of married men who fool around with other men and then eventually come out as gay is relatively low, maybe 20%? I say this based on personal experience and because very few married guys on hook-up sites label themselves as gay. Most men seem to conclude this stage by accepting themselves as bisexual.

In my last post, I said that bisexual men can be divided into two groups. One group I called "Casanovas" because of their natural and effortless ability to make a woman feel wanted. Upon further reflection, I've decided that "Casanova" is a bad descriptor. It evokes the image of a skilled lady's man, someone with magical eyes and a seductive touch. In truth there's nothing especially romantic or alluring about bisexual men in the first group. They're completely average. They're only noteworthy because they have an unrestrained enthusiasm to 'get it on' with their wives, whereas bisexual men in the second group tend to need a kick-start when it comes to initiating marital sex.

"Unrestrained enthusiasm" and "tending to need a kick-start" are subjective ways of segregating the two types of married bisexual men. A better, more objective way to make the distinction is based how frequently they have sex with their wives. Men in the first group tend to have regular and frequent sex, while men in the second group tend to have sex on a hit-or-miss basis.

What's interesting is that most "Get it On" bisexuals can't relate to the whole "men are for sex and women are for love" thing. To them it seems like an unnecessary distinction. For one thing, women are just as sex-worthy as men, if not more so. And falling in love with a man? There's two schools of thought about that. Either it's completely off the man's radar - as in, that possibility has never once crossed his mind, or, he feels that love has nothing to do with gender. Love is love, man or woman.

Whichever way they feel about love, there is no vague middle ground, and that's what's distinctive about "Get it On" bisexual men - they aren't conflicted. Love and sex are simple; there's no need to make any rules.

"Kick-start" bisexuals are different. They don't have it so easy. Their relatively low level of sexual attraction to their wives compared to their increasing attraction to men causes a lot of internal conflict, frustration and anxiety. As internal pressures mount, they compartmentalize their thoughts and feelings. Over time, as compartmentalization takes hold, they morph from being a relatively happy, whole and complete man to a secretive, stressed and divided man. A man who becomes a two-sided coin: a devoted straight family man on one side and a horny, cum-loving, cock-sucking slut on the other.

"Men are for sex and women are for love" is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization masks conflict: the conflict between the man he used to be, and still is, mostly, and the man he has become. Bringing the two sides of himself together feels like an impossible task, and as such, the struggle between the two sides never ends. That makes for a life that can be lived, but not for a life that can be loved.

In the story that prompted this post, a bisexual man told his wife that he had no romantic interest in men. To prove that to her, he suggested inviting a man into their bed. She laughed at that idea. Undeterred, he offered another suggestion, that she accompany him to a gay bar. He was determined to prove his "men are for sex, not for love" point. Well, the gay bar turned out to be a disaster for him. Watching his eyes at the gay bar was all the proof his wife needed to become convinced that he would eventually fall in love with a man.

Just like the wives of divided bisexual married men everywhere, the woman in the story already knew there were big problems in her marriage. And lacking a clear reason for the problems, she blamed herself. Then her husband outed himself as bisexual. That opened her eyes. Not to the fact that he was a lying, cheating scum bag, but to the fact that there wasn't something inherently wrong or undesirable about her. Watching her husband ogle men at the gay bar was the final straw. In all their years together he had never once looked at her with the same depth of desire. She realized then what he did not - that he is a conflicted man who had built a wall between the two sides of himself. She also realized he would never find lasting happiness until that wall was torn down and he was no longer a divided man.

Encapsulated in this couple's story there are three monumentally important lessons for married and divided bisexual men everywhere:

First - Any conflicted man who thinks that he has successfully hidden his woes from his wife is mistaken. No, she doesn't know that you're bi and that you hook up with men, but she does know that there's something fundamentally wrong with your marriage. That fundamental problem is not your cheating. Rather, it's the reason that you cheat: you are a divided man. You cannot be happy with one person and that means you can never be happy with her. Deep down, she knows this.

Second - Because wives of conflicted men know on a deep and unspoken level that they are not enough to make their husband happy, they blame themselves. As they witness their husband's gradual withdrawal from them they become increasingly depressed, self-loathing and unmotivated. It deeply hurts them to feel so unwanted. Different wives respond differently to that hurt. Some withdraw. Some turn their attention to the children. Some take comfort in overeating or other bad habits. Others get bitchy and critical. Whatever the behavior, the cause is the same - they know they are not enough - and it hurts.

Third - Compartmentalization, having your cake and eating it too, and/or making the best of a compromised life are all ways to cope with being a conflicted man, but none of them will ever make you genuinely happy. In truth, they merely camouflage the landmines that lurk below the surface. Yes, a man can carefully and persistently dodge one mine after another, but time is not on his side. Major blow-ups are inevitable. Porn on computers, secret email accounts uncovered, phone calls and text messages at odd hours, unnecessary errands, an HIV positive diagnosis - these are but a few of the multitude of ways for the truth to be discovered. Any man who genuinely believes he can be a perfect liar for the rest of his life is only fooling himself. To err is human. Divided bisexual men are all too human.

What's the solution?

Overwhelmingly, conflicted bisexual men feel that because they married with good intentions and their attraction to men surfaced later in life they are destined to live as divided, marginally satisfied men. Coming out as bisexual (or worse, gay) does not solve the problem and cutting men out completely just isn't realistic. "Keep on keeping on" - that's the best they can do.

Well, maybe. For some, a lukewarm life of compromise might be the best answer. But far too many divided men are stuck in the narrow confines of their own thoughts. In a soon-to-come post I will offer some new perspectives that may help some men regain their dignity - and perhaps find genuine happiness again.

Open Marriage / MMF Threesome

In a recent post I shared the story of a man who was seeking his wife's permission to enjoy casual, recreational sex with other men. He wanted an open marriage - the dream situation for just about every married bisexual man.

To allay his wife's fears about where an open marriage might lead, the man explained to his wife that his interest in men was purely physical. He said that he had no interest in pursuing a relationship with a man, and, to prove that his intentions were honorable, he suggested that the couple invite another man into their bed as the guest star. That way the wife could see first-hand what he meant.

The wife laughed at that idea.

Undeterred, the man was able to convince his wife to accompany him to a gay bar. That way she could see for herself that his interest in men was purely physical.

The couple did go to a gay bar together but the man failed to prove his point. Instead of agreeing to an open marriage, his wife decided to end it. Having an open marriage, to her, was "classic man wants his cake and eat it, too."

More importantly, she decided that his attraction to men was a very real threat to their future together. She said, "One day he WILL meet someone that he will be attracted to and will want to be with. So, after more years of being faithful to this man, he will leave me anyway. That is what will happen."

As a man who is attracted to other men, I completely understand the husband's point of view. I also know, based on the experiences of other men, that being open to other sexual relationships has the potential to strengthen a marriage; increased honesty and reduced sexual frustration usually make for a closer marital bond. As such, when conducted safely and respectfully, an open marriage can be a win-win situation for both partners.

Although I am familiar with open marriages from the man's point of view, I know little from a willing woman's perspective. The story I quoted was therefore a fascinating read. Yes, she seemed skeptical about the idea, but not so skeptical that she immediately rejected it. Further, her willingness to go to a gay bar with her husband is evidence that she tried to be open-minded. Not many wives would have agreed to go.

I posted the story because I wondered if readers (married men especially) would see the wife's reaction as valid or ridiculous. I particularly wanted readers to focus on the question of emotion. Because of the visit to the gay bar, the wife is now convinced that her husband WILL leave her for a man. Yet the husband says he's not interested in men that way. Who is right?

Consider each spouse's point of view:

The Bisexual Husband

I believe that bisexual married men can divided into two groups. The first group is composed of men who instinctively and naturally know how to make a woman feel desired. It's an effortless endeavor for them, like walking across a room; they're natural-born Casanovas. The men in the second group don't have it so easy. They have to concentrate in order to stay focused when they're with a woman.

What do I mean by 'focused?' It's a vague thing, not easily put into words. I'll use an analogy instead: it's like sex with a condom and sex without one. When you're fucking without a condom you're definitely not thinking about what a condom feels like. When you are fucking with a condom on, you're enjoying the sex, but you never really forget that your dick is covered with latex. It's distracting. It's a very thin barrier that keeps you from truly connecting with your partner. Bisexual men in the second group, in essence, are wearing a mental condom that subtly distracts them when they're having straight sex. It slows them down, both during the act itself and in wanting to have sex at all.

From a performance perspective, during sex, there's not much difference between men in the two groups. Getting hard, staying hard, and having an orgasm are usually not issues, barring any physical problems. What is different, very different, is how frequently the men in the two groups have straight sex. Because men in the second group have to make an effort to stay focused, straight sex requires some work. It's as if, instead of walking across a room, they have to progressively jump across, with both feet tied together. Having to expend the effort means they initiate sex less often, which means the couple has sex less often.

The man from the story belongs in the second group. The reason I know this is because his wife reports that they haven't been intimate "in forever." She also says she has repeatedly tried to entice him by going to bed naked and by wearing very sexy lingerie. The natural-born Casanovas don't need that much prompting. If a woman signals that she wants sex, they don't hesitate to jump right on.

Because the man hasn't been responding to his naked wife you might wonder if he is gay. He insists that he is not, for several reasons. First, his attraction to men is purely physical. Second, his taste in men is very specific; he only likes straight men. Third, he has no interest in kissing a man, much less falling in love with one. Fourth, he feels just the opposite about women as he does men - he likes to kiss women; he has only loved women in the past and he can only imagine being in love with women in the future. For him "men are for sex and women are for love." By most definitions, he is bisexual.

The Straight Wife

I have spent the last year absorbing the thoughts, opinions, emotions and experiences of straight wives who are married to gay or bisexual men. In the course of internalizing this information I have learned that straight wives care about many things, including fidelity, lying, diseases, financial security, love and public embarrassment. But what matters most, to the most women, is that they feel genuinely desired. Over and over different women have told me that "love is not enough" or "I don't want to be married to a roommate" or "I already have enough friends, I want a lover."

The need for women to feel genuinely desired is far more powerful than many men realize. For many women it is the basis of their feminine identity and their sense of self-worth. When a woman does not feel genuinely desired she feels like a failure as a woman. It's a knife that cuts her to the core, equivalent to a grown man being calling "a sissy" by his father; the hurt is deep and primal.

The woman in the story feels just as most other straight wives do. She wants to be wanted.

The Couple as Archetypes

An archetype, in this case, is "a universally understood symbol upon which others are patterned."

In my opinion, the bisexual man and his straight wife are typical of many other couples in the same situation. While the man is not typical of all bisexual men, I believe he represents a large subset of them. The wife is extremely typical of the vast majority of straight wives; she wants to preserve her marriage, provided that her needs as a woman can be met.

If you can believe that this couple is an archetype, then understanding them is a window into the dynamics of many marriages between bisexual men and their straight wives. Understanding this couple can explain why some straight wives are happy to stay with a bisexual man - even to the point of opening up their marriage - while others give up on their marriage, even when their husband promises to be faithful.

When a bisexual man asks his straight wife to open their marriage, the logical assumption is that it's her decision as to whether his request is granted. That assumption is true; lots of women will not accept a marriage with anything less than absolute monogamy. However, I have learned that a surprising number of straight wives are willing to consider the open marriage option, provided that it 'works' for them.

What makes a marriage 'work', regardless of whether it is open or closed, is if the husband makes the wife feel sexually alive. If he does not, then the marriage gradually dies.

This means that, most of the time, the bisexual man, and not his wife, is primarily responsible for the level of sexual in his marriage.

Desire

The man in the story vehemently insists that his interest in men is strictly sexual. He cannot imagine falling in love with a man; he does not WANT to fall in love with one. He's asked his wife to open the marriage by trying a MMF threesome, or by giving him permission to have recreational sex with men. To prove how harmless his interest in men is, the man convinced his wife to go with him to a gay bar. How did that go?

According to the wife, "[it was] one of the worst experiences of my life."

"[I] was looking across the bar and [saw] him looking at a man and flirting with him in a way that he has never looked at me. You know, the flirtatous eyes kind of look. I felt like I couldnt breathe...after all I have been to him, and giving him the very best of me all those years, I have never seen him look at me that way."

You might think she's misreading her husband's interest, or that she's paranoid, or that she's seeking to sabotage the open marriage option.

Any of those things could be true, however if they are, then the cost of being wrong is catastrophic for her. She WANTS her marriage to work. But she doesn't believe it can:

"It hurts my heart so much that most days I cannot breathe...Can he be my best friend and make me laugh till the cows come home? Yup. Can we cook together and drink wine and have a great time together and complete each others sentences? Yup. Is this enough for me for the rest of my life? Nope."

Clearly she loves him. Clearly she wishes their marriage could work. And yet she's convinced that it will ultimately fail. She's so convinced that failure is imminent that she's stopped even trying to make it work. Instead, she's decided to turn her entire life upside down by seeking a divorce. Being best friends isn't enough for her. She, like most other women, needs to feel that she is desired.

Women are so NOT like men. For the most part, women have a much higher emotional intelligence than men. Their 'women's intuition' is an everyday manifestation of how tuned-in they are to the people around them. When a man doesn't genuinely desire them, they know it. In the case of the woman in the story, once she saw how her husband desired the man in the bar, she knew she had never once been wanted with the same intensity.

Months of explanations by the husband after the visit have failed to convince the wife that she was wrong about what she saw. She knows what she knows, she knows how she feels.

The lesson of this couple is desire rules all. The proof for that is the decision the woman made. She gave up her comfortable life and the man she loves only because she HOPES that one day she might find a man who makes her feel desired.

Conclusions

People are different, marriages are different. What happened with this couple wouldn't necessarily happen with similar couples. But the dynamic that played out here DOES play out with many other couples:

First you have a large group of bisexual men who are unquestionably attracted to women, but 'making love' to their wife requires some effort.

Second you have virtually all straight wives who WANT to preserve their marriages, and are willing to make big compromises to do so, BUT ONLY IF their womanly self-image and feminine identity are regularly cherished by a husband who genuinely desires them.

A man can do or say anything he likes to prove his masculinity. He can aggressively make love to his wife as proof that he desires her. But most wives cannot be fooled. Desire is raw and animalistic. Desire means having a satisfying sex life - that means 'good sex' on a frequent basis. Once a month is not frequent.

The bottom line is that a large group of married bisexual men have an impossible road to travel. They are who they are, and they are authentic, but they don't have the essential and sincere ability to make a woman feel WANTED, yet being wanted is what their wife needs most.

In the story, the man's weakness became obvious when the couple visited a gay bar together. Most couples don't go to gay bars together so most wives can't compare the desire they feel to the desire they witness. But you can be certain that the marriages of some bisexual men inevitably crash when their wife has a similar "Aha!" moment; that moment where she realizes her man can never satisfy her.

In my next post I plan to write more about marriages between bisexual men and straight women. I'd like to particularly focus on why some are very strong and others are very weak, even when both spouses agree they love each other. I also hope to address the wife's conviction that her husband is destined to fall in love with a man, which is something he promises will never happen.

Your thoughts?