Thanks for reaching out Wonderwoman. I have to share the credit here because all of the wisdom in this thread is really a collective effort. When I first joined here, I tried the same spin many gay-in-denial husbands tried: namely, "I loved my ex-wife"..."I only figured out my sexuality much later"...and "It's partly her fault because [insert bullsh*t here]." I was very quickly (and rightfully) slapped back into reality by my fellow members. In response to your question:

"One thing I would like to ask though is ........ my husband and I did actually have a regular, creative sex life. He was always wanting me to sleep with other men and for him to watch (a common occurrence on this site which you have shed light on). I never did this or participated in these fantasties. Once I discovered the length of the cheating and the number of men I asked for a divorce and have not looked back. He is an extremely good looking, 30 something year old with an amazing body so I know that for him the hook-ups are very easy." 

Fascinating. ​Husbands who want their wives to sleep around seem pretty common based on my exchanges here. I myself didn't encourage my (then) wife to sleep around but I can see why a closeted husband would have "cuckold" fantasies. Cuckolding involves watching your wife have sex with another man. I'm not a mental health expert but I do have some experience with this fantasy as a friend in my 12-step program has this kind of open relationship with his wife. Based on our discussions, I think the fantasy serves two purposes for the gay husband: first, it allows him to justify why he's cheating in a "Well she's doing it as well." If you read through Gary's thread, another gay husband who posted here for a time, he truly believes his wife is to blame for everything wrong sexually with his relationship. So I reckon a gay man encourages his wife to have sex outside of their relationship as a form of cover or alibi. "Well we're both doing it..." sort of thing. Second, I think the gay-in-denial husband is using his wife as a prop to live out his own sexual fantasies of sleeping with men. This is pure speculation, but I think having a woman in the room allows the gay-in-denial husband to continue believing he's straight. Do you agree? 

You also wrote: "He still, however maintains that he is only bi-curious, despite many sexual partners. I do not believe this." ​Agreed. We men who marry women to hide our true sexuality have a very hard time accepting we're gay. The denial is hard-wired although I'm surprised your 30-something husband didn't come out. Is he from a religious family? Regardless, if a man's porn and sexual habits are almost exclusively male-on-male, then yes I think we can assume he's more gay than bi-curious. Bi-curious would mean that a cheating husband would sleep with mainly women with the occasional man thrown in for kicks. Curious is trying something spicy once at the Chinese buffet, not gorging on the all d*ck menu. If he's sleeping with only men, then I reckon we've moved somewhat beyond "curiosity" and into rainbow territory. Sorry if that stings a bit. 

​Thanks for sharing my friend. Be well!   

Last edited by Sean (March 15, 2018 4:14 pm)

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Last edited by Duped (August 28, 2019 1:43 pm)

Sean, my husband never suggested that I have sex with another man. He was delighted that he had married a virgin who was skinny and  flat-chested. He didn't like women to come across as sexual. He thought that women were not supposed to enjoy sex but only did it to control men. Had I been a lesbian I think he wouldn't have minded in the least because then I would not have kept trying to get him to have sex with me and trying to develop an emotional connection with him.

Me having sex with another man would have been a threat to his closet because it might have shown me how much better it could be than with him. Finding that out after he left definitely has helped me get over him faster.

Hi Sean 

Thanks again for your insight. I also loved the "Chinese buffet" comment.
We are not religious people but we are from very conservative backgrounds - fathers who have had military backgrounds, we live in Africa but similar to your southern conservatives (shooting, fishing, sports, manly men) and grew up in a rather homophobic society. 

His habits are male-on-male and he has no shortage of attention from females so I still believe he is gay. I guess the question that I still ponder is how we were able to have a regular sex life (3 times a week at least) and certainly creative. I was not dissatisfied and as a result this was such a shock to me as I never suspected a thing. 

UPDATE: ​Yesterday I had a sit-down with my ex-wife. For those who are new to this forum, I am a gay ex-husband who came out to his wife in 2012, separated in 2014, and divorced in 2015. The final years of our relationship were really bad. I was a full-blown narcissistic sex/porn addict who was overtly cheating on his wife. I also neglected our three kids. We divorced in 2015, things have steadily improved since then, and our chat yesterday was probably the first one-on-one conversation we'd had in about two years. She came to my place, our former apartment, to discuss the final settlement of assets, custody, the kids, and so on. It all went very well and was probably one of the first times I wasn't hiding something like my sexuality or cheating. It was also one of our first conversations during which I just wanted to listen, rather than dominate/manipulate. So why am I sharing all of this? 

​Near the end of our conversation, it felt like she was holding something back. She then said, "I'm sorry if the way I treated you made you gay. I often think that had I acted differently, had I loved you differently, you wouldn't have turned out like this." My heart sank. For the past six years, she's carried around this guilt that she somehow made me gay. It was the first time she'd mentioned it, ever. I tried to share with her that we're born gay and don't become gay. I realized this was the result of my narcissistic manipulations while we were together. I felt ill. Gay-in-denial husbands like I was often make their straight wives feel like it's somehow the wife's fault there is a lack of sex, her fault he's cheating, and her fault he's unhappy in the relationship. Turning back to my own situation, I did my best to explain that I was 100% responsible for the lying, cheating, and our divorce. I told her there was nothing she could have done to change my God-given sexuality, just like there is no way she could change my eye colour. I hope she understood. 

​So what's my point? We are born gay, just as we are born heterosexual. No one chooses to be gay, just as no one chooses to be straight. We just are. Sexuality is as involuntary as whether I'm right or left-handed. We need to get over this idea that sexuality is akin to a weight problem or that being straight is like learning a new language. You can't just put in time and effort to be straight. I'm a perfect example. I'm the only out gay man in my entire family. My sister is straight. My parents are straight. My cousins are straight. My aunts and uncles are all straight. Of my blood relatives, I am the only gay person. Before coming out, 99% of my friends were all straight. So if environment determines someone's sexuality, then I should have been straight. 

My point is that no wife, girlfriend, nor partner is responsible for her husband's homosexuality. If you suspect that your husband is gay or bisexual, there will inevitably be a confrontation about it. When you say to your husband, "I think you're gay" carefully watch his reaction. There are two possibilities, two forks if you like, one healthy and one narcissistic/toxic. If he listens to you, really listens to what you're saying, truly listens to what you're feeling, and then responds in a loving/caring way, this is a healthy emotional response. It sounds like this, "I'm sorry that I hurt you. I've struggled with these feelings my whole life. And this is what I'm going to do..." Then there is a second reaction which is unhealthy and toxic. The second fork is like this: "I'm not gay! I was just curious. And it's your fault that I'm no longer interested in sex because you gained all that weight. You just need to try harder."

If like me while I was married, your husband is: cheating with men; watching gay porn; and no longer has sex with you NONE OF THIS IS YOUR FAULT. As I told my ex-wife yesterday, these always were my problems, not hers. And they're a gay husband's problems because he was attracted to men before he met you. Most gay people start to feel their same sex attraction at around age 5 or 6. So that often means a decade of denial, of lying, and evasions before he met you. The message I tried to convey to my ex-wife yesterday is that there was nothing she could have done to make me a straight man because I was born gay. Our relationship problems were my fault. We divorced because of me. We need to start seeing our sexuality as involuntary as eye colour. No straight wife could simply try harder to make her husband feel an attraction towards her, the attraction is there or it isn't. If you disagree, just read the many stories on this website. There are countless stories of unhappy straight wives who did everything possible to stay married to their gay husbands. Even after decades of a "mixed orientation marriage" which means he gets to cheat, new things in the bedroom (she wears a strap on), and letting him watch gay porn, the attraction just still isn't there. 

I know there are many who may believe that sexuality is learned or determined by environment. Many gay-in-denial husbands (GIDHs) use these "nurture" arguments to remain married to straight women. To those who deny we're born gay (including GIDHs), I say: 

​1. Talk to openly gay people and ask their opinions.
​2. Ask yourself: when did you choose to be straight?
​3. If your husband claims to be bisexual or simply curious about gay sex, ask him how many women he's cheated with or why he doesn't watch just straight porn. The question is: why would a straight man watch gay porn and f*ck men? 
​4. If your husband is claiming sexual assault or abuse made him gay, ask him why this didn't instill a lifelong fear of gay sex or sex in general rather than stoking an attraction to men. If I almost drown down at the lake as a child, I'd fear the water for the rest of my life. I wouldn't watch countless hours of drowning videos, post messages about drowning on Craigslist, and then secretly go to my neighbourhood pool without telling my wife. We avoid things that scare and traumatize us, not rush towards them. 

​Sadly, many gay-in-denial husbands try to blame shift rather than just admit, "I'm gay." They'll blame their straight wives, an absent mother, an absent father, porn, or even child abuse (whether real or imagined). As I told my ex-wife the other day, straight wives need to understand that there is nothing they could have done to make their husbands straight. Similarly, there is nothing a straight wife can do to prevent her husband from cheating with men, watching gay porn, and lying about both. If your husband suggests you are somehow to blame for his homosexuality, he's both gay and a stupendous *sshole. We are born gay and, like me, choose to marry women to conform to a largely hetero-normative world. None of this is your fault. It's the gay husband's fault. I hope that helps my friends. 

Last edited by Sean (March 24, 2018 5:33 am)