Here's what I thought when I read what your husband said when you confronted him:  He says he is not gay and was in it only for the sexual gratification?  But all his encounters were with men? That's the definition of gay!

 
 

jlwilliams wrote:

I need help.  I'm looking for opinions.  Is it possible for a "happily" married man to seek sexual encounters with other men and say it was purely for selfish reasons and that he now realizes that he "had what he always wanted right in front of him the whole time." 

A man who seeks frequent sexual encounters with other men is not happy in his heterosexual marriage.  If he was happy and fulfilled he wouldn't be looking for sex outside the marriage.  THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT.   He is gay and needs sex with men.  

jlwilliams wrote:

How can a man be sexually involved with multiple men (he admits to probably over thirty) over the course of a few years and say that he doesn't have feelings for men?  Is my head in the sand?
 

How can he say this??   Very easily.. nearly all GID (Gay-In-Denial) men say this exact same thing.  They are lying.  They are not ready to come out of the closet.  They hold the secret of their homosexuality above anything else in the world.  They will lie and manipulate everything in their life to keep this secret.  Your husband will tell you what he thinks you want to hear so that you won't kick him out, share his secret, or change his life in any way.  He wants to stay hidden.  He needs you to be his "beard" so he will lie to you without any shame or guilt to keep his secret.  You need to know this and understand it. 

Sorry, I hope I don't come across too bluntly here.  Your head is indeed in the sand.  There is nothing wrong with you though.  You married and gave yourself fully to a man who you thought loved you completely.  You had no idea that he held this secret.  You are indeed in shock and in denial.   I was exactly in the same place myself.  Denial is a very powerful thing.  We don't want to believe it, so we just don't.  The writing can literally be on the wall in front of us and we will chose not to see it because we aren't ready for it.  I had huge suspicions that my wife was cheating on me with her friend from work.  It would have been plain as day to anyone else.  Somehow in the week or two after she admitted to me that she was a lesbian I completely forgot those fears about the other woman.  Then I caught her cheating.. and somehow it was a huge shock to me.  How could I have possibly been surprised.. it was plain as day..   But I was in denial and wouldn't let myself believe it.    

Sorry for rambling.. just wanted to illustrate how we can in fact put our heads in the sand and not see things that are in fact very clear for others to see.   But again, don't blame yourself.  This is natural and normal. 

Please do what Daryl mentioned.  Get yourself checked for STD's and stop having sex with him.  Your health is the utmost importance.  

Please do what jkpeace said.  Keep writing.  This is therapy.  We are here for you and will help you.  Sharing your thoughts and writing things out is so good for you.  We can offer a sounding board and sympathy and community.  

Please do what Rob said.  Build a support network.  You are going to need it.  Don't hide in his closet and suffer alone.  You don't need to publicly out him right now because that would make things dangerous, but you can find some people to quietly disclose your situation to so that you can get the support you need. 

Take this a day at a time.  Know that it's a roller-coaster and you will have some very bad days, but then you'll have some better days and you will get through it. 

We are here for you, lean on us for support..  keep writing and sharing and asking questions.  
 

Last edited by lostdad (February 8, 2017 11:48 pm)

I'm sorry you are here.  I was in your shoes.  Am in your shoes still at times.  I wanted so badly to believe that my husband was bi-sexual and it was just an aberration.   And it is hard to say now what is true as he is with another woman.   

BUT he has betrayed your trust, lied to you, come to your bed risking your health.  These are seriously UN-loving, UN-devoted, UN-believably hurtful things in themselves.  What he is or isn't doesn't even matter.  What matters is that he is not treating you and his children with basic respect and decency.  He is an unhappy and confused person that doesn't value you enough to be honest or faithful as his wife. 

That lead me to decide to divorce as I could no longer believe anything.  So many times I was confronted with no where near the amount of evidence you have and my GIDX lied, again and again.  He cried.  And when I asked him to be honest and open, he assured me he was.  That he loved me so much.... blah blah blah.... LIES.  All of it. 

It is so painful.  Follow the advice here.  I still struggle to be here and read this as it is like PTSD all over again reading your post.  I feel so much for you.  THIS is so hard.  The lies and betrayal just turn your world upside down.  Hold on...  Be so very kind to YOU.  This person is not kind.  This person will continue to hurt you.  I never believed my beloved of 27 years could hurt me as much as he has, but merely to mention his lies or to ask a question about what he was doing was to unleash a barrage of "why do you want to berate me when I've said I'm sorry!!!" As if "sorry" was some sort of balm that could address the pain of sooo long a lie.  These people are just in denial about how hurtful their actions are.

But I was so slow, still am to a degree, to see how cruel my husband was.  Now the scales fall away and it is so awful.  I wish you comfort and ease on this terribly journey.  X

Thank you to everyone who replied to me.  I feel so alone and have no one to turn too.  It helps to read your responses.  I've read each of them multiple times and although I've been crying every time I read them, it helps to read all the strength you have when I have none.

I will admit that I'm stuck on the realization that my husband is gay.  I know this doesn't make sense but since I found out last June, I've convinced myself that he is bisexual.  Thinking of him as being gay means that throughout our entire marriage, it was all a lie.  He never wanted me and I don't know how to go on. I feel so used and disgusting.  Like every time he touched me it was because he had to cover up who he was.  I mean nothing.

If he's bisexual it means that he was selfish, a liar, a cheater and chose to do dangerous things because he only thought about what he wanted.  But it also meant that I meant something.  It meant that he could still want me and be remorseful for what he did.

Being gay means that I'm just his cover or his beard as lostdad wrote.  

I have no one to turn too.  My family can't find out.  My friends can't know.  I am so embarrassed and I don't want anyone to judge him.  They would judge me too because they won't understand why I still want him.

What is wrong with me? I feel so worthless and I'm letting my children down.  Our middle daughter is still in high school and moved in with my Dad and stepmother a few days before Christmas.  She's been diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression and has been cutting.  I have been no help to her.  I work full time and at the end of the day I just want to go to bed.  She's so explosive and I can't deal with yelling or conflict.  All I can do is cry.  She left and won't even talk to me because she said that I'm not emotionally there for her.  My Father is calling me and telling me that I need to get my act together and stop ignoring life.  He has no idea what I'm living with and I can't tell him.

I want so badly to believe my husband that he loves me.  I keep reading where many of you wrote that there were always signs.  That sometimes we chose to ignore them but that signs were there.  I was completely unaware.  I read an email where a man was offering him another "session" of oral sex and my whole world ended.  My husband has been so affectionate throughout our entire marriage.  I thought our sex life was normal.  I don't understand why he won't be truthful to me.  Why does he hate me so much that he's continuing to tell me that it was all just for his own sexual gratification.  He claims he just wanted more sex but I told him that he could have come to me and talked to me and that I don't understand why he chose men.

He also says that he chose men because it was easy.  I keep telling him that I don't understand and he says because if he had chosen a woman it would have been cheating and that by doing it with men, he didn't feel like he was being unfaithful in his marriage.  I don't understand how having sexual encounters with anyone is ok if you're hiding this behind your spouses back.  I don't understand the term easy when instead it was incredibly difficult.  It was difficult because he lied to his wife, he falsified his time cards and cheated his employer, he then lost his job and started the exact same behavior with a new company and risked his job all over again.  He brought potential health risks to both he and I and something that our children would suffer from if we were suffering.  He risked so many things and yet keeps saying it was easy.  I'm writing all of this and hearing it all in my head and I'm so angry and yet I'm also so afraid of being without him and I'm afraid I'm failing my children.  Why am I not doing something about this? 

I know I'm rambling.  I have a thousand things going on in my head all at once.  I apologize and really appreciate all of you for trying to offer me support.  I want to believe this is just a bad nightmare.  I want my life back.