SEXUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

I inform you that today I have put online a new book that enriches  Gay Project Library: “SEXUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS”. It is a text of about sixty pages, which is also accompanied by notes that require the typical layout of a book, and which, therefore, cannot be posted in a forum post.

The text is based on a recent and important publication: “The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds”, in the critical edition edited by Amber K. Regis for Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, in the Genders and Sexualities in History series, from which I took the texts of Symonds that I quote in my essay.

This is not a generic memoir but the author’s sexual autobiography, written with absolute adherence to the facts and total transparency to leave a document that describes the true sexual evolution of a cultured Englishman, born in 1840 and died in 1893, precisely as he himself saw it.

I have translated two important Symonds books into Italian for the Gay Project Library, and I think it is really useful to publish now, both in English and in Italian, a text that illustrates the evolution of Symonds’ sexuality.

Symonds’ Memoires are unique, because they constitute in practice the only sexual autobiography absolutely free from commercial interests of any kind that has been published. It should be emphasized that the text was not originally intended for publication because in England homosexuality was punished by criminal law and the text I am presenting to you would certainly have been considered obscene and its publication would therefore have been a real crime. This is not a novel. Symonds in addition to telling the facts explicitly names the protagonists. The book, which required the author a tremendous effort and removed him from the possibility of pursuing greater success in the field of art history and classical culture, which he dealt with at the academic level, is therefore a unique contribution to serious study of homosexuality which in his time was taking its first and uncertain steps. It should be noted that Symonds married and had four daughters, and his marriage story, carried on despite some important and enduring homosexual relationships, is a one-of-a-kind testimony of him.

I will be immensely grateful to anyone who reads my work and wants me to know his thoughts on it.

You can read the book just clicking on the following link.  I remember that all the material of Gay Project is always and absolutely free and Gay Project never asks for personal data and does not keep any data relating to accesses.

http://gayproject.altervista.org/john_addington_symonds_homosexual.pdf

CHRONICLE OF AN ANNOUNCED GAY DISASTER

Hi Project, some time ago I thought of sending you an email about gay couples, because the topic interests me personally, but this email has a completely different origin. I’m 32 years old, I’m gay, I don’t know if I have a partner or not, and I thought that my so to speak “problem” was a particularly serious problem, but that was until I realized that I can consider myself very lucky. I have a group of friends, whom my “partner” and I have been dating for years now. We always thought we were the only gays in the group. The others know it, or at least I think they understood it, no one has ever talked about it, neither us nor them, but they should have understood it, I think. Among the friends there are some very outgoing, both guys and girls, and some a little more reserved. I and my “companion” we are radically secular, I mean that we are not believers, the Church seems to us something completely foreign and even hostile. With this Pope, perhaps a little less, but it is still a world very far from our way of seeing things. In the group of friends there are also Catholics, let’s say so “normal” that is without too much enthusiasm but who still recognize themselves in those environments, but there is also a guy, whom I will call Paul here (because he always mentions St. Paul!) With whom the speech, both on my part and on the part of my “partner” has always been very difficult. He had had a girlfriend for years, always known in a Catholic environment. I would like to make a premise: my “companion” and I don’t feel Catholics but we don’t hate anyone and don’t have radically secular and priest-eating presuppositions. We also met priests worthy of the utmost respect, I mean worthy of the utmost respect even from non-believers like us, because in the end what matters is not what you say but what you do. I say this to clarify that we don’t have a spirit of repulsion towards all Catholic circles, because saying Catholic can mean everything and the opposite of everything, as on the other hand also saying gay can mean everything and the opposite of everything.I go back to Paul. Ever since I met him, Paul has shown me a kind of detachment, let’s say of splendid isolation. There was also talk, every now and then, but only about trivial issues, he, in the group, had his friends, the most radically Catholic ones, and since he had heard me say my opinion and didn’t like what I said, he kept me at a distance, but it was only he who behaved like that, with his “Catholic” friends I had an excellent relationship, we joked and talked about everything, with him no, the dialogue was minimal and limited to obvious things, he did not mix with those whose thoughts were more or less different from his opinions. Then my partner joined the group and Paul had a minimum relationship with him, because my partner is much more prudent than me, and having understood immediately who Paul was, he was careful not to say what he thought. My partner considered Paul a somehow closed guy, a little fixated on religion, but all in all a “pretty nice” guy. With our group of friends we didn’t say we were a gay couple, I think most of the friends didn’t care about it, so we didn’t talk about it, but we had with each other a behavior a bit too loose to be just a couple of friends. Paul always came with his girlfriend but he did things that I didn’t understand and that bothered me, he scolded his girl in public for things that seemed completely meaningless to me, he silenced her by making her look stupid,I asked myself why the girl tolerated all this, if I had done with my partner the tenth part of what Paul did with his girl, my partner would have made me fly out of the window. One day we begin to talk about life as a couple, “normal” Catholic friends said things that were all in all acceptable or almost even for me and my partner, but those things at a certain point triggered Paul who left in a hurry against a girl who dared to argue that premarital experiences are fundamental and can avoid “bad marriages”. Paul jumped at the very expression “wrong marriages” and began to quote Saint Paul. At which my partner and I exchanged a look of understanding, as if to say: “But this really comes from the Moon!” Then the girl told him that one must not passively suffer the attitudes of parents and at this point Paul got really warm saying that “honor your father and mother” is a commandment and that we must never forget it, etc. etc.. A girl said to him: “if my mother wants to meddle with my business and wants to tell me what guy I have to put up with, I can’t sit and listen to her ruining my life, she has had her life, mine is mine!” Then Paul slipped on the gay topic and said really absurd things, that straight couples must be “serious” because they have to collaborate in God’s plan by putting children into the world and they cannot do “like gays” who only think about “having fun”. This expression really got on my nerves, I exchanged a knowing look with my partner and then I said to Paul: “Do you realize what a nonsense you are saying? But do you have gay friends? ” He looked at me and said, “I’ve never had gay friends!” and I said to him: “No! It’s not true! You have a gay friend and it’s me!” My partner intervened and said:” You have two gay friends, the other is me!” Project, you won’t believe it, but Paul thought we had agreed to make fun of him and he didn’t believe in the slightest that we were gay… for him, gays are just another zoological species. Then, carried away by his incredulity, the others also considered our declaring ourselves as a way of making fun of Paul. All this happened about two years ago. For a few months now, things have changed a bit, Paul considers my partner and me to be two jokers friends, but 100% straight, otherwise he would never have accepted our friendship, but we had the opportunity to talk to him even a little more seriously. Project, my partner and I are really thinking that Paul may be gay. He always goes around with the girl behind him, or rather in tow, but I see our straight friends what behavior they have with their girls, well Paul’s behavior is totally different: never a caress, a cuddle, but never even a nice word for the girl, who evidently doesn’t count for anything in Paul’s world, or rather counts as something that brings him back to a heterosexual model, with whom, however, it is evident that he has nothing to do. My straight friends, both guys and girls also talk about sex, they don’t talk too much about it but it happens and they talk about it as the most obvious thing in the world, Paul never talks about it, he avoids the topic in a systematic way. The others talk about homosexuality as well. In Paul’s speeches the words: gay or homosexual never appear, not even by mistake and the call to religion is only seen in terms of restraint and limitation, never in terms of liberation or enthusiasm. I talked about it with my “partner” and we came to the conclusion that we could “maybe” tell him about us, assuming something that wasn’t granted at all, that is that he was able to understand that our statement was not a joke. We also tried, but every time he noticed that something like this was about to happen he disappeared immediately. My partner and I don’t go to church, but a couple of our friends who go to the parish instead told us about a sermon given by one of the priests who said that “marriage is the remedy for concupiscence” but did not refer the speech to straight people, as usually, but he generalized it by saying that “marriage is also the remedy for homosexuality”, an expression that manifests the most radical ignorance in matters of sexuality. The couple of our friends who were present had the impression that the speech was not generic but that it was meant for Paul who was there in the front row and didn’t move an inch until the end. My two straight friends probably thought what my partner and I had suspected, but in a similar situation what do you do? Do you face Paul directly? Or do you tell the girl to be careful and figure out whether or not it’s worth going further? My partner and I talked about Paul with this couple of friends and they told us that the priest who had said those things was considered a “somewhat strange” and problematic character even by the parish priest who had tried to limit his sphere of action. Everyone in the parish avoided him, except Paul, who was enthusiastic about him. What evidence did we have? Virtually no hard evidence, but the four of us had the same feeling. We concluded that taking Paul head on was not feasible and that we could only bring the discussion to these topics to see Paul’s reactions, and we did, but there was no reaction at all. The straight couple of friends started from the need for absolute honesty in marriage, saying that each of the spouses must know everything about the other and that deceiving the spouse means using him/her and ruining his/her life, but Paul was a rubber wall, he didn’t even listen. We noticed another thing, for quite some time, every now and then Paul made some shots at gays even in our presence because at the beginning he thought that we were actually straight, then the phrases about gays disappeared completely and the topic was 100% censored. The straight couple tells me that Paul says the same things that the somewhat strange priest says and that the idea of marriage as an “ideal of chastity” is starting to become one of Paul’s workhorses. One day my partner and I talked seriously about it and decided to take action, but before putting our project into practice, the straight couple of our friends told us that “during mass” the priest a little strange announced the date of the marriage of Paul with his girlfriend. At which, after having meditated for a long time, thinking that by now Paul was no longer recoverable, we decided to desist, and we said to ourselves: “Can we prevent an announced disaster? … Unfortunately not! Everyone is free, even to make mistakes and do damage.“ We also told ourselves that basically we didn’t have any proof or admission from Paul, but seeing his face after the marriage banns, the answer was more than obvious. A guy who’s about to get married should be beaming but he wasn’t like that at all. Paul somehow knew he was going to trap himself and was going to throw the girl too into the same trap. Paul told us that he intended to limit the ceremony only to close family members, evidently he knew well that for his friends, and in particular for four of his friends, going to the wedding would be embarrassing and therefore he avoided any embarrassing situation a priori. The wedding was officiated outside the parish by the somewhat strange priest. Of course, our assessments can be completely wrong … we will simply never know, because ” What God has joined together, no person is to separate!” Although sometimes this phrase is a real blasphemy. After the wedding we didn’t get any news about more about Paul and his wife. They have disappeared into thin air.

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This email (some contents of which have been deliberately omitted for privacy reasons) would not in itself require any comment. I will therefore limit myself to a very few lines. As I read the story, I was reminded of the romantic relationship between the poets Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake. Fitz-Greene Halleck (July 8th, 1790 – November 19th,1867) was five years older than his friend Joseph Rodman Drake (August 7th, 1795 – September 21 th, 1820).Drake in 1816, still very young, married Sarah (daughter of Henry Eckford, a naval architect) with whom he had a daughter. He died of consumption at the age of 25. Halleck never married, he fell in love at the age of 19 with a young Cuban, Carlos Menie, to whom he had dedicated some of his first poems. Hallock, 1) Halleck’s biographer, hypothesizes according to the common sense and a lot of evidences, that Halleck was in love with his friend Drake. James Grant Wilson underlined the way in which Halleck, who was present at the wedding as the best friend of the groom (a formal role at the time), described the wedding: 

«[Drake] has married, and, as his wife’s father is rich, I imagine he will write no more. He was poor, as poets, of course, always are, and offered himself a sacrifice at the shrine of Hymen to shun the ’pains and penalties’ of poverty. I officiated as groomsman, though much against my will. His wife was good natured, and loves him to distraction. He is perhaps the handsomest man in New York, — a face like an angel, a form like an Apollo; and, as I well knew that his person was the true index of his mind, I felt myself during the ceremony as committing a crime in aiding and assisting such a sacrifice.» 2) 

Here we are dealing in all likelihood with a homosexual who has chosen the path of marriage for essentially economic reasons, in the case of Paul’s story the marriage “seems” to be due to religious reasons, but it is really obscene in the first place that a priest encourages a homosexual guy to marry a woman with the idea that marriage is even the remedy for homosexuality! But perhaps it is even more obscene that attempts are made to consecrate such a union, with the words “What God has joined together, no person is to separate.” A phrase that has a very important meaning that has been distorted and abused to justify an abuse of the marriage piloted by a priest. If it is true that the parish priest had noticed that something was wrong, it is also true that he didn’t do anything to avoid such an obscenity. “He who has ears, let him hear.” 1) Hallock, John Wesley Matthew. “The First Statue: Fitz-Greene Halleck and Homotextual Representation in Nineteenth-Century America.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Temple University; DAI, Vol. 58-06A (1997): 2209, Temple University. And also Hallock, John Wesley Matthew, “American Byron: Homosexuality & The Fall Of Fitz-Greene Halleck” (Madison, Wisconsin: U. of Wisconsin Press, 2000).2) James Grant Wilson, “The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck”. New York: Appleton and Company, 1869: 184.

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-chronicle-of-an-announced-gay-disaster

I’M GAY BUT I’M FINE WITH MY GIRLFRIEND

Hi Project, a few days ago, surfing the net, I found your forum and started reading. I must say that I was very impressed because there are no obvious things. I begin to read a story or an email and I imagine an ending a bit like in a porn video, but then the story doesn’t work at all like that at all. Above all there is one thing that strikes me, there is also sex, but all in all it does not have a dominant position, it is not an obsessive idea, there is sex, it is important, but there are also feelings. Reading such things pleases me because I feel at home in them and I identify myself with some of the protagonists. Let’s talk a little about me. I’m 24 years old, I’m about to get my Master Degree and I feel realized from this point of view. I’m passionate about my studies which are not at all heavy for me, because I study things that I want to study. My family is not bad, my father is almost 60 years old, he has always tried to give me maximum autonomy, perhaps precisely because he knows that I would not abuse his trust, I have never been able to understand him, he treats me affectionately but I realize that I’m probably a concern for him, even if I don’t understand why, since I never had problems with studying and I think that afterwards I won’t even have problems finding work. I will come back later to this point because it is important, that is, it is important to me. My mother is not yet 50 years old, she feels a beautiful woman and in the end she is. I see her as very calm and even absent-minded when it comes to me and my situation, a bit the opposite of my father, that is, she sees me as someone who will never have problems and who is going on very well. Then there would be my sister, who is 28 years old and who got married six years ago. There was never a real relationship with her, that is, we never spoke with an open heart and she was not substantially interested in my life. You may have wondered why I didn’t say “I’m gay” up to this point. Here, in reality, even if it is absurd at the age of 24, I still have many doubts, or rather I have no doubts but I find myself living a very particular situation. I have a girlfriend since I was 18, and she 15, I will call her Mary. I have to try to make you understand the meaning of our relationship because it is more complicated than it may seem from outside. I’m fine with Mary, that is, I love her, she’s a very good girl and she loves me too, but she’s very different from the other girls and perhaps for this reason I really love her. We have been together for almost 6 years and have never had sex and not even things that vaguely resemble sex. She never asked me and never made me understand that she needs also sexual involvement. Some things are paradoxical: in public she’s very loose with me, kisses me on the mouth, caresses me, but when we are alone (which also happens rarely) there is none of this. Basically this is the reason why we stay together: I don’t feel cornered, for me, in essence she is a friend, a true friend but nothing else, that is, she’s not my girlfriend in the sense that guys generally give this expression, and there is also another reason, she not only doesn’t put me in a tight spot in order to induce me to have sex but when we talk, and at least we talk a lot on the phone, she never asks me for explanations, that is, she accepts our relationship as it is, without asking me and without asking herself questions of any kind. If we don’t meet on a Saturday, I just need to say that I can’t and she won’t even ask me why. I want to emphasize that she considers me an important person. Last year I went to the hospital for a small surgery and she came to all the relatives’ visits and she didn’t miss the visit a single time, she did it also because my parents were there and she had to play the role of the official girlfriend, but if my parents weren’t there, she would have come all the same. Project, I asked myself many questions about Mary, but I should have asked her those questions, but as she has always respected my privacy, so I too have always respected hers and I know very well that I must not pester her and I must not meddle in her things. Now I go back to my father. I think he’s worried because, despite Mary’s efforts to do her best  as girlfriend, my father begins to suspect that there is something strange about our engagement. We meet but it is clear that there is not all the involvement that should be there. I suspect that my father blames Mary for all this, that in essence he accuses her of being cold and detached, almost of playing the role of the girlfriend at best but not feeling in that role at all. My father thinks that the relationship with Mary makes me suffer but it is not at all like that, indeed the relationship with her calms me down, gives me serenity. In fact, my relationship with Mary is out of all the rules, she never talks about marriage and on the contrary in the speeches that are made with friends she has said many times that marriage is not needed if you love each other and it is a slavery in any other situation. And now something about me. I know I’ve always been gay, I’ve never had sexual interests for a woman, yet, I will tell you, Project, I think that living with Mary would be good and I never thought the same thing of a boy. We could be a couple without sex and at best with a little pampering, but sometimes I think that she would never accept a “bond” with me. I want to be explicit. All the other women don’t interest me at all, but Mary does, that is, it makes me tenderness, apart from the fact that I always wonder what is behind her behavior. I thought that she could be a lesbian, and she really could be, and the fact that she never spoke of such a possibility avoiding even the slightest hints, certainly does not eliminate suspicions, because I too have never spoken to her about my homosexuality. But not having talked about it, after all, is not a reticent behavior, that is, it is not a deception, we know very well that each of us has a private life and that that private life must be respected. On the gay side, so far, I have never had a story or anything similar to a story. I have a lot of fantasies and I go on with those and with some porn. Today as today the relationship with Mary doesn’t complicate anything for me, but what if I find a guy? I don’t know what could happen. I think that for Mary practically nothing would change and that maybe she would be happy too, the fact is that having a boyfriend is not compatible with having a girlfriend who has known your family for years. And then how could I tell my father that I’m gay? Mary also gave me a strange speech, she told me that if today or tomorrow our relationship ends, she would absolutely not make it a tragedy, we could remain friends as well and she said it with full conviction. I mean, Project, I like this girl. Sex has nothing to do with it, but I like her because she thinks like me, and between us, unlike what my father thinks, there is a practically perfect harmony. Project, I’m not cheating Mary and she’s not cheating me. Asking for explanations seems clearly out of place because I also don’t want to give explanations and then I believe there is no need for explanations. Even with my father I think it will go on like this. I don’t see any need to clarify. Then, if I would happen to find a boyfriend, then I will ask myself a lot of questions, but now, in my opinion, things must go on like this. What do you think about it? p.s.: If you want to publish this email do it freely. I have changed something of the details but the story in substance is that.

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-i-m-gay-but-i-m-fine-with-my-girlfriend

A GAY GUY GOES TO THE ANDROLOGIST

Hi Project,

I am a closeted thirty-year-old gay guy who lives in a very homophobic town in the rich north-east of Italy. I would like to tell you my story and ask you what you think.

Just a nod on my life until a couple of years ago, at the beginning I used to look for a real love and I never found it, maybe because I looked for it in the wrong places and with the wrong methods, then I started to go not so much for subtlety (Quiet! I have always used all the methods of prevention.)

At the age of 27, I have to say, I was a drifter of sex, in a year I had collected almost a dozen stories, which obviously were not serious things, but in the end they were even frustrating. I would have liked a normal guy who loved me and I would have gladly put the final point to all the whirlwind of my research on the apps.

One day just through an app a guy contacts me, he says he is 26 years old, we talk a bit, he’s polite, seems one not obsessed with sex, he proposes me to meet each other, I think it’s too early and I try to postpone, I expect him to disappear but it doesn’t happen. He asks me for photos but I don’t give them to him, but we keep on talking even in the following days, we talk about everything, even about sex but without overdoing it and always in a very polite way.

After three weeks of online contacts he again asks me to meet him, this time I say yes but since I don’t want problems of any kind, we agree to meet in another city and spend Saturday and Sunday together (I don’t work on Saturday). I decide to go by train so as not to be identifiable even from the license plate of the car. Note, Project, that I had never even seen a picture of him and he had never seen one of me. We meet at the station at 9.00 in the morning. I tell my parents that I have to go on a mission for two days (things like that happened other times).

I do not know who I will meet, but I feel very excited, there is something that tells me that it will not be the usual meeting “escape and flee”. When I get on the train I realize I don’t have condoms with me, but I think I can buy them there too and that they might not be useless. In the place of the appointment he is already there waiting for me, the recognition signal works (a certain newspaper under his right arm). It seems a nice guy, indeed very nice. We leave the luggage at the station depot and we go around, it’s a beautiful sunny morning.

It’s all radically different from my previous encounters, we don’t talk about sex, rather we feel a certain embarrassment, we have breakfast together, we often exchange smiles, he’s a very sweet guy, I would like to know something more about him but asking questions seems inappropriate. He knows the city, even if it is not his city and has already prepared a whole project of things to do and places to go.

I perceived his presence, there were many silences, then I asked him if he felt embarrassed and he replied: “Before seeing you, while I was waiting for you! but not now! Not at all now! And you?” “I … well I’m just fine, no problem.” Then we began to joke, to tell each other jokes. He doesn’t tell sexual jokes and uses a very clean language. We go to lunch together in a restaurant, the climate is very relaxed, peaceful, pleasant.

We walk until evening, we have dinner together, then it’s time to go to the hotel, he says: “Do you mind if we take two single rooms?” I say no, but that request cools my enthusiasm a lot. He is glad that I didn’t insist on taking a double room. We go to the hotel but there are no single rooms, he looks at me and tells me: “What can we do? Is it okay for a double room?” I spread my arms and make a sign that it’s okay too, since there’s no other way.

We enter the room, he is very embarrassed and tells me: “Now what do we do?” I tell him that I would like to have a bit of sex, I would really like it but I don’t have condoms with me and ask him if he has any, he tells me: no, but he adds that there are also the non-dangerous ways of having sex and that he especially likes them. The room is very well heated. Project, I spare you the details and I just tell you that I had never had sex like that with a guy, just mutual masturbation and a lot of physical intimacy, but it was something unique because I saw him involved in such a total way that I wouldn’t have imagined that it could even exist. It was just an exciting thing at levels I had never tried. At the end we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

In the morning we didn’t have time to repeat the experience because we had to leave the room before 10.00 o’clock. We spent the Sunday morning joking and playing with each other, then we went for lunch together and I started asking him when we could meet again. He looked at me a little embarrassed and then he told me: “There’s one thing I didn’t tell you, I’m engaged!” I felt very uncomfortable and I told him: “But how is it? You have a boyfriend and you don’t tell me?” He replied: “You didn’t understand, I have a girlfriend …”

I told him that there was something strange according to me because he didn’t seem to me a straight guy looking for distraction, he told me: “I know I’m gay, I was fine with you and I would always stay with you but I cannot, because I have a girlfriend for years and now she is part of my family and I think that in a year at most we will get married” I looked at him with a perplexed air and I asked how the sex went with the girl and he replied: “Well, somehow it works, she never noticed anything but when I do it I think about something else, I’m not straight, there’s nothing to do, if it were for me I would never have sex with a woman, when I’m there, anyway, it works all the same but it is something that I do because I must do it, and then with her I could never speak clearly because she would feel betrayed, now we are in front of everyone a very solid couple and she believes it too, I don’t think I could avoid marrying her, by now I’m too far ahead with that story, she’s a good girl but I’m not interested in girls.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get him to think, but he felt trapped and had threw in the towel, he felt resigned to being a good husband at home and a good gay, maybe with me, some Saturday nights at the hotel. He told me that he had to break away from me, that I put him in crisis, I put him in front of the responsibility of his choices but that now the choices were made and there would be no chance to go back. We took the train and we went back home.

He disappeared for two weeks, he didn’t answer to the emails or the phone, then he contacted me again, we met one afternoon and he seemed really shattered. This is what he told me:

“Here they are just caging me, I cannot stay out of it, it’s all a trap, I had to go with her for eight days in a resort abroad, all paid for by my parents! And it was a shocking thing, she was happy, I could not stand her anymore but she was the victim and I had to console her, I was forced to make love with her because otherwise she ended up in depression. She really didn’t understand anything. I thought to speak clearly but I didn’t dare to imagine her reaction and then I pretended to be worried about work reasons. I thought that in the resort we would be alone and instead her parents made us the nice surprise that they were there also them! I cannot stand it anymore! I have to go out of the cage but I don’t know how. If I said I’m gay, nobody would believe it …

“What could be done to resolve the situation? In the end we thought something that could work, he would go a couple of times to an andrologist, perhaps the first time accompanied by the girl, accusing pain in the testicles and then after the second examination it should have said that he had to do the seminogram and a few days after that the result was that he could not have children, anyway, as a gay, he would certainly not have had children from another woman.

He didn’t want to accept the whole script, it seemed to him a real hoax, but then he was aware that the alternative would be the wedding therefore he came to a milder attitude. He didn’t know whether to speak clearly with his parents, but when your parents don’t even realize that you are not well with your girlfriend and force you to go on holiday with her … to speak clearly would mean just throwing open a pot without knowing what’s inside.

In the end we have agreed all the details and all the preparatory speeches. I realize that, seen from the outside, all this seems like an expedient of the lowest alloy to avoid the coming out, but a coming out in a situation like that would have been ruinous. To realize the whole project, a low level staging, it is true, but perhaps the least traumatic solution, it took more than a month.

When he went to the girl and told her that he could not have children, the girl expected it and the recitation of the great pain had been well prepared by her family and ended with the promise to remain friends, but he wanted to return all gifts and said he preferred to permanently close an experience that had ended up being traumatic.

I summarized the whole story in a few lines but it was very demanding, stressful and even risky because, if our trick had been detected, for him it would have been a disaster, but it went well! From the following Saturday we started our meetings in the hotel in the nearby city and I think our story will continue. We’re all right together and we’re planning to change both our jobs and to move both of us to that city, away from prying eyes, he too thinks that coming out, even just in the family, is certainly inopportune. Among other things, his parents know nothing about the andrologist’s story and think that their son, the poor guy, will never marry because he cannot have children and it is good that they continue to think so.

Project, don’t look bad at me, the coming out in certain situations is not really thinkable. So we rest assured and the girl can make her life with someone who really wants her and his parents have put their soul in peace and at least there is no gossip about homosexuality because the story is all straight! Could I send him to the marriage slaughter? No! Should he expose himself to a destructive coming out? No! At least, so they are all happy and we first of all.

Let me have your news soon.
David

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FALLING IN LOVE WITH A MARRIED GUY – A VERY COMPLICATED SITUATION

I’m 31 years old, I was born and raised in Italy but I lived abroad for many years. I have always been “different” from others, grown up between adults and with a keen interest in being with adults. I figured out that I was gay during high school but the acceptance phase was long and hard. I started declaring myself 5-6 years ago with my female best friend and with my male best friend. I told my parents everything last December, but they had already guessed it. I’m proud of how my dad took it, the person I was most afraid of. Being told by my father that now I would have been even more appreciated, made me feel good.

In more than 31 years I only had a “story” with a guy, 5 years ago. The thing was over after two months for the distance and perhaps because he, just out of a relationship, was not ready to start a new one with me. I had been in love with him, I felt destroyed but then, slowly, I reconstructed a group of friends. I met guys / men, I attended people to understand if and how I liked them. But apart from the infatuations, I have never met a person who, in addition to reciprocating certain feelings, was also compatible with me.

Until August of last year, when after two and a half years of peace of mind, a guy writes to me on Planet Romeo. He was a few years younger than me, intriguing, we began to chat, cuddling each other. It has to be noted that, despite I said I was not looking for sex, he continued to write: a true rarity. 4 days later we go on Whatsapp and the same day he tells me that he was married. I still remember the scene: I was in a coffee break, I felt stunned.

I asked him what he was doing in a chat like Planet Romeo and if his wife knew. Of course his wife was totally unaware. He apologized, he thought he had already told me it the first night we had chatted, and tells me that he understands that I don’t want to meet him anymore. But voice inside me told me to meet him. I wanted to understand, only understand. We continue to write to each other nonstop, I from my office (empty for summer holidays), he from his workplace. The next day we decide to see each other spontaneously and I invite him to have a coffee at my house. The moment he enters my house and extends his hand to introduce himself, I feel a lump in my throat and my stomach closes. Beyond the fact that already in the picture I had understood that he was my type, seeing him live was love at first sight.

The strange thing is that I, generally very nervous, after not even 2 minutes, was calm and happy with him on the balcony drinking coffee as if we were friends of a lifetime. I felt so comfortable, as if we had always known each other.

Because of the heat, we move into the living room, in the cool, and we keep talking. He tells me about him, born and raised abroad, in this country for a couple of years and married for just over two years with a girl from here known in his country years before. He tells me that he has problems with his wife (too little sex in his opinion) and that he has many doubts, that he doesn’t feel integrated, that his linguistic knowledge is not enough to work in his field, blablabla. He asks me about me, I tell my story. We never stop talking a second … we have so many things to say … everything is so natural … and an hour later he tries to kiss me, I reject him and say that I have to reflect on what I’m doing. He understands and does not insist.

He tells me that at the time of the university he had thoughts for the guys, but he never tried (perhaps for fear, or I don’t know what for) and that these thoughts never ceased, that he masturbates while watching gay porn and feels guilty … and tells me that, when he got married, he promised to abandon and repress this side of his life because of which he feels guilty. A few months before meeting me, however, he cannot take it anymore and decides to meet a man with whom to have sex. He says that before he met me he had met three men in all and he had sex with them, cheating on his wife. He says that sex with men is exciting but at the same time it disgusts him, and he reiterates how the feelings of guilt are destroying him … he loves his wife, he wouldn’t want to betray her … but he needs guys, although he continues to repeat that sex with men doesn’t convince him. And I tell him that, perhaps, this is due to his non-acceptance. Strange situation, I think … then he says he is 80% happy and tells many other things. We say goodbye, I accompany him to the door and he goes home.

No more than 10 minutes after, climbed on the train, he writes to me: “where have you been for all my life? I have eternally been looking for someone like you.” In the following days we continue to write so … uninterruptedly … in the evening we say goodnight and good morning in the morning. Crazy things. He writes to me that he would like to see me again … and, please, don’t ask me why, I accept.

4 days later we meet again at my house, we talk, drink coffee, we kiss and start cuddling (not sex). We also spend 4-5 hours, after my work, talking, cooking together, having dinner, etc. I repeat, crazy things. When the train is about move, from the train itself he writes to me that I am his ideal man, he wonders how I can be single and above all he tells me that 4-5 years before he would have had no doubts about me, but that at that time he was 100% hetero and shy.

And he asks me if, in a future life, he can have a chance to be together with me. I’m clearly upset … you can imagine the emotions of hear such things from the person you spontaneously like better … Even if then he tells me that, unfortunately, in this constellation someone would have suffered (his wife). The story goes on … or better starts … we meet every time we can, I go to work, he changes the shifts to be with me at my house … we go together to the cinema … go walking in the evening … his wife, unaware of everything, works until late. On Saturdays, very often, he has to work … so we get to see each other 4-5 times a week and we often spend Saturday nights together, either by him at work or at my house … After work we walk together towards the station … and then it happens that one evening he takes me by hand and in the station he kisses me. The first time I kiss a man in public. And he, married, keeps on going hand in hand with me with the risk of being seen by someone.

My family has always made me feel loved, but the sensations I start feeling are special … this feeling light … desired, etc. … Two weeks later we end up in bed … and there we understand that the harmony is total. I sincerely hoped that he would turn out to be a landslide in bed. At least I would have had a reason to close … to forget him … All the story really scared me. We go on … in September I have two weeks of vacation … he insists to take me to the airport … and a week later he comes to pick me up and spends his Saturday with me. Obviously he had told his wife a lot of fake stories. He feels uncomfortable because he had lied and also because he is fine with me.

That Saturday he tells me that in the previous week, while I was at a sea site, he thought that maybe he can live without me … but anyway he was always with me. Even during the second week of vacation, while I was at my house, we keep on hearing and calling each other. And then he writes to me that he misses me, etc. … I come back home … the story goes on. He asks me if I’m in love, I do not answer him. But he understands. He says it’s not right for me, that I deserve a man who is 100% available, not one with problems like him. But we are in touch every day … messages … he often comes for lunch in the neighborhood where I work … even just to spend an hour with me … and to shake my hand under the table, at the restaurant.

Speaking of his wife, he says that he loves her but that sex with her is not enough … that they do it once a week if all goes well. He says he has talked to her and that she only needs no more that. He often cries when we see each other. When we make love he’s in seventh heaven … we talk, we laugh … there’s total involvement. He says that with me it’s something else, not just for the performance but for the harmony, for what you feel … trust … the bond. Anyway … then he cries … he feels guilty … and tells me that he loves her … etc. .. But then we do it another time. When he leaves my house, I never understand how he feels.

Then he goes on vacation, at the end of October, with her. For three weeks we stay in touch very little because there is no field. When he comes back he closes the story with me. He says he cannot take it anymore, he says it’s not right for me nor for her. He says that he got married and made her a promise … he tells me that he loves her … that sex with her is not bad … that having sex with me doesn’t convince him … And here, for the first time I burst: I explain to him that when you are really happy there is no reason to look for sex elsewhere and especially not with the opposite sex. I tell him that maybe he didn’t realize it … but what binds us is not a friendship …

I didn’t tell him it’s love … I told him that in my opinion he feels a great affection for his wife … but that this is different from love, and that, always in my opinion, he suffers from internalized homophobia. He asks me what the solution would be and I reply that, the best thing would be to take a break with her, to stay alone (even without seeing me) and understand what he really wants. He tells me it’s not true … he tells me that he started going with men because he felt not integrated, without a work and depressed. And I tell him that if all men betrayed their wife with other men for the above reasons, we would no longer have happy marriages. The usual things … I explained that he must look for the reasons, talk to a psychologist, etc. I explained to him how it was for me … and that in any case, the fact of feeling the need to stay / go with men, combined with homo-affectivity, has its roots in his own sexuality.

I was patient … a lot, but hearing from him that sex with his wife was not bad … and then the opposite … well, it made me go out of my mind, even if in that moment I didn’t realize clearly why. I spent a horrible week. Empty, discouraged, sad, alone. The following Saturday I wanted to see him again to talk to him and in the end we made “peace” if we can say so. And we started seeing each other again and again, etc. For the first time, it seemed to me that he understood that my goal was not that he left his wife … but that he was calm, happy, fulfilled. Everything went on normally … we saw each other when we could, I went to get him at work. As for the afternoons, his wife had changed jobs and now worked with office hours, he could no longer lie and so, to see him, I choose the free day of the week coinciding with his. He came to me at home, he reached me in bed, he woke me, we spent time together … he helped me with the work at home … as a couple that we were really not. I was the lover in love with a man of another person.

Then, at the end of November, he gets his much-hoped job … and the same evening, celebrating with me (and not with his wife), he tells me that he loves me … in his own way … but he loves me. I was happy, I was beginning to hope to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then I spent the Christmas holidays with my parents … we stayed in touch normally … I didn’t tell him that I had done my coming out so as not to burden him with further worries and when I got back we met … and there, crying, I he tells me that he has decided to close … that he wants to save his marriage … that he made a promise to his wife … that he is fine with me, but neither sex nor life with a man convince him … etc. … a bitter blow. We cried for two hours .. and he told me that he doesn’t want to lose me … that he loves me, that I’m important etc. He didn’t leave me for a minute. He said he had not yet made a choice … but that he could not take it anymore. He even told me that he had to be careful not to mention me too much … otherwise his wife would have asked questions. He tells me he cannot give me what I want from him, but that I’m very important in his life and he doesn’t want to lose me … he wants to keep hearing me.

But in the meantime he attended chats on the net … and I saw him online many times… I thought: he wants to save his marriage … but he’s always chatting with other men and maybe he also meets them! Well, do you know what? We continued with good morning, goodnight … uninterrupted messages … we conducted a relationship without sex, because I was afraid of the HIV, … just like before.

He assured me that he saw only a friend in me … then, he was constantly looking for me and wanted to see me regularly … he came regularly to my house for dinner … when his wife was out to dinner with her friends … I told him more than once that I was sorry … but even if he didn’t admit it, we were not friends … because two friends don’t hug each other … don’t give each other kisses on the neck … and above all they don’t have an erection with every hug. When I complained it he said I was exaggerating … My friends said he was an egoist and I had to close. But I, in order not to lose him, accepted everything.

At a certain point he tells me that his wife would like to meet me … and that everything would be easier for him if she knew me … because he wanted to integrate me in his life … And I tell him that I would never do such a thing, that seamed to me disrespectful and disgusting. And what was the reason? If she had known me, he would not have to answer any more questions … He asked me it, even though I had never asked too many questions about his wife and had never spoken badly about her, not even once.

Nevertheless, I asked myself what kind of wife doesn’t want to have sex with her husband at that age and above all I asked myself how she didn’t notice her husband’s moods. Perhaps it was because I realize quickly if something / someone doesn’t go but I had the impression that his was a marriage already finished. I carried on the thing feeling uncomfortable, not sleeping at night, not being able to concentrate on the studies … then I tried to discuss it with him … and he cried a lot, etc. … until in the end of March we went to walk in the mountains and once arrived at the top I extracted the thermos of coffee and a pack of biscuits … and he told me: “Why are you doing all this? Why do you bring all the things that I like?” I told him that I do it for all the people I love (which is absolutely true). And he said: “But do you know that ours is only a friendship?” … and I didn’t say anything. I just thought: “You tell me it all the time … but only because it makes you feel good”.

Then I proposed to go for dinner after the walk and he told me: “And how would you see this dinner? As a romantic meeting or as a dinner with friends?” And there I really lost patience … we walked for more than an hour in silence, then we sat on a bench … always in silence. And after ten minutes he says to me: “Don’t you have anything to say?” And I let myself explode: I told him that his behavior was unjust, that he didn’t make any choice in order not to have to take a position but in fact he was with her (heterosexuality of the facade) and nevertheless continued to get all the attentions on my part (homosexuality).

I reiterated the fact that it was not right, either for me or for her … and that I could not take it anymore. My life was not peaceful. The chat topic too came out. I told him that I knew he was always online, etc. … and he swore to me that he had not attended other men after me but that, as I knew, he could not stand without that part. And I screamed in face of him that it would have been right to let his wife go because she had every right to live with a man who really loved her. My friends said I couldn’t really know if he really loved her. And I repeated that when there is love, certain things are not to be done. And that if he were in love with his wife, he wouldn’t be so attached to me as a lover. Also because I consider myself able to recognize the difference between love and well-being.

I patiently explained to him that I thought it was right not to see /hear each other anymore. I advised him to consult a psychologist (we had been talking about it for months) and to solve his problems. And then I added that, if his problems were resolved in my direction, my door would be always open to him, but as a partner, not as a friend. Well … I have not seen him since the beginning of April. The same evening he wrote me a myriad of messages … he left me vocal messages asking me to think again about it … crying … that it was not right to close a friendship … telling me that I was not behaving well.

He proposed to me to let me heard even less, in order not to stress me too much, etc. … I didn’t listen to him, I held on. We have not seen each other since. He looks for me regularly … once a week he writes … he misses me, he concludes the messages with a big hug … every excuse is good to write. I sometimes answer politely but in a detached way.

Clearly his wife is still unaware of everything … but so … why tell her strange things… he is straight!! His perpetual searching for me makes me sick … but it gives me the confirmation that he doesn’t accept my choice and that he cannot be without me. In a message he wrote to me that he had represses himself so as not to write to me. On Monday I received a message from him: “I went by the psychologist and told him about you. I cried a lot. I miss you a lot. I hope your phrase in your Whatsapp profile doesn’t refer to me, otherwise I don’t understand why you don’t make yourself heard. I hope you’re better and that I can go to the concert with you in June.”

In March he had bought tickets for a concert to go there together in June. I replied to him with a long message … reiterating the fact that I hope the psychologist can help him find himself and live lightly … explaining that I feel not at ease, that I miss him more than ever but staying close is not a viable solution. As for the concert, I told him that I cannot give him what he needs … as he cannot give it to me. And that he can go there with other friends or with his wife. His answer was “dumb!”. The next day I wrote to him, just to know if he had slept. I did it because I needed it. I know what it means to go to the psychologist the first time and I felt compelled to write to him. He replied that he is well, that he had dreamed so much and that he feels alone … he misses me, but he cannot expect anything more from me. And still a hug …

Sorry if I was verbose … this is my story … at the moment, despite five months have passed since January, I feel really uncomfortable. I’m in love more than ever and I think he realized that maybe I’m more important than what he wanted to believe. But as my best friend says: “My dear, the facts, only the facts matter. And he’s there with her, not here with you!” My opinion is that he is gay, repressed, with a strong homophobia and that he still has to make his acceptance path. I believe that in life we need balls and courage to follow our heart and I think he is not ready yet. I don’t know how to behave anymore. I don’t know how to stop this story and go further. The idea of seeing other men makes me vomit. And the fact that I cannot have the love of my life (because I know that we are exactly this one for the other), it tears me apart.

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FALLING IN LOVE WITH A MARRIED MAN

Hi Project, I’ve been reading your sites for a long time and they’ve helped me a lot. My name is Maurice, I am 26 years old and I think I have a lot of problems related to the sphere of sex. I make a seemingly normal life, I recently graduated and I also found a job, I know very well that these days it is very difficult and I was lucky and I do a job that I like. Since I started working I no longer live in the house of my parents and with a little money that they lent me I bought a little cottage in the country, very close to the place where I work, and I live there alone for ten months now.

Loneliness is not a burden to me, I leave the house at six in the morning and go back after seven in the evening, lunch and dinner in the canteen, I don’t cook. I have internet and from eight in the evening I surf the net. I basically discovered your sites when I went to live alone. I had thought almost immediately that I would have liked to talk a little with you, but then it seemed an embarrassing thing and I put aside the idea. Reading the forum I found many things that made my ideas a little clearer, every time I read something that interested me directly I told myself that I should write to you and in the end I did it.

It may seem strange to you, but I’ve never been able to talk seriously with anyone about things related to sexuality. At home, this subject has always been a taboo, but not just about gays but even about sexuality in general. I’ve never had friends, rather acquaintances, but they were certainly not guys with whom I could talk about sexual things. Until the age of 21 I didn’t have internet, I heard someone talking about what could be found on the net but they seemed to me dirty things, for depraved people, and so I put aside the problem even though I knew long since that I was gay, let’s say I considered it as a negative thing that had happened to me, that I had to keep for myself only, a kind of pathological corner to which I was allowed to dedicate only in moments of self-eroticism and also with great feelings of guilt.

In practice, up to 21 years I have always tried to repress my homosexuality through study, but of course what you are comes out anyway but, let’s say, I didn’t accept myself in the full sense of the term. So up to the age of 21 I tried to deny myself that I was gay even if I lived those things through masturbation, that attracted me and at the same time created me a lot of complexes, as if in practice I was destroying the best part of me to make room for the gay part, now I know it’s absurd but at that time I reasoned like that.

At 21, things changed, I had my first computer connected to the internet and I became sex-addicted, in practice I spent the nights to see photos and porn videos and even here there was an evolution, at the beginning anxiety and guilt, then I got wild but over time the interest started going down. In the early days I felt very excited to think that I had to switch on the computer to see porn, then, in the course of a couple of years, things have changed to the point that in practice the videos don’t make me any effect anymore, and in any case I saw a lot less videos and I had become very much selective, I could be interested in at most two or three out of a hundred.

Then there was the chat phase, let’s say it started when I was 22, a bit like with porn videos, at first a huge curiosity, but here it was different, I had to expose myself but I didn’t want to do it. The very first experiences were squalid, obscene proposals and that’s it, but I didn’t give up and I finally met Steven who didn’t do like everyone else (I had tried in the chat at least thirty times!), He told me a lot of good things that I liked and liked a lot.

After several weeks of long conversations day and night, since he didn’t make any proposal as did everyone else, I tried in my turn and asked him to go on cam but he didn’t want. Such a thing displaced me, I didn’t understand why, I thought he was cheating me but I couldn’t understand the meaning of such a behavior, because if he wanted to take advantage of the situation he would have to go to the point, and instead it didn’t happen, the more time passed the less he talked about sex and then he didn’t really have anything that could push me to suspect something strange.

I insisted several times to induce him to show up on cam but he never did. After about six months that we knew each other, he disappeared at all and I didn’t hear from him anymore. I have not the faintest idea of why, I thought about all possible hypotheses, that he was an old man, even though he had told me he was 24, maybe he was a married guy or a priest or maybe a guy with handicap problems. The story of Steven has upset me a lot, maybe I would have fallen in love with him. Even now, sometimes I read the text messages and the conversations with Steven and I’m struck by the level of the conversation that had nothing of the classic erotic chat dialogue. At the time of the chat with Steven, which lasted more than six months, I had not looked for anyone else, but then I started again.

Shortly after my 23-th birthday, after a lot of squalid things, I met a guy from Alexandria, let’s call him Mark, he was not of Steven’s level, but he seemed like a good guy and didn’t live too far from the house of my parents, I lived with them at that time. With Mark we got to the concrete proposals, it was also all in all a nice guy, or at least passable, I lost a lot of time trying to convince me that with him something could have been born but for me he was not really sexually attractive, let’s say that since I saw him on cam I stopped masturbating thinking about him!

What should I have done? I should have told the truth, I know very well, but I didn’t do anything like that, I was afraid he would go away, I was fine with him if it was about talking, in a sense he was a friend but for him it was impossible stop there. He insisted and I escaped, I was looking for excuses, I went on like this, holding him on the rope for a couple of months, he finally made me an aut aut and told me: “If you are not interested in me you must tell me it” but I don’t have had the face to say things as they were and we have arranged an appointment. We met one afternoon, we had to go to a small house of his in the countryside near Alexandria. He, seen in person didn’t attract me at all, I told him that I didn’t feel like it, he tried to insist but I turned and I started running, I just ran away in the most shameful way, he didn’t even try to follow me. At home I saw that he had blocked me on msn.

This was my most engaging adventure with a guy, at least until recently. Now you understand what contacts I’ve had with gay guys. After the story of Mark I thought everything, I asked myself if I was gay, if I was a pathological case, if it could be the case to try with a girl, but for me this is an absolutely unknown planet and then such things never went through my head. At this point of my life I’m in total confusion also because something happened to me that I never imagined.

Five months ago, a 27-year-old guy came to work with me in, let’s call him Andrew, who is exactly the embodiment of my ideal of man, I think I have never seen a more beautiful guy, for a smile of his I would give my soul, he has a voice so sweet that it upsets my guts, I also have the opportunity to talk with him and when it happens I feel in heaven. Andrew is the real reason why I am writing to you, Project, because he is really upsetting my life, I would do crazy things for him, I started to explore a bit the ground, maybe it’s early to say, but I have the impression that he is interested in me, looking for me, smiling at me, he treats me in a loving way, but there is a huge problem, Andrew is married for 5 years now and also has a child.

In our conversations he never told me it and where I work nobody knows it but I came to known it from unofficial sources, in practice from people who know him well. If Andrew was 100% hetero I would end up removing him from my head. There are many beautiful guys and he would be one of the many who have nothing to do with me, but I think Andrew is not really hetero, it’s not something I hope, it’s something that I think on the base of many elements that himself has provided me and that I believe he has provided me those elements because of a good reason.

Project, try to understand, I’m not fantasizing, I have the very clear impression that Andrew is trying to tell me this in all the moments when we are together, he cannot but he is trying and I feel myself in great difficulty, the main reason is not that I can fall in love with him, what anyhow scares me, but rather the fact that he can fall in love with me. Even at the cost of breaking my heart, I could always drive back, but if he loses his head where are we going to end up?

Andrea is not a chat user but he is a married man, according to what I think, he is a gay married man who is desperately lonely and is trying to build something with me and I don’t know what to do, I’m afraid of these things, I don’t know how I would react in front of a similar situation and I don’t know where to start from. Project, let’s say that of what I said I’m 98% sure and I think that I’ll get soon to an explicit talk with Andrew but I fear that he too can be split in two. But why does a married guy with a child completely avoid any mention of his family? It should be a beautiful thing and instead he never talks about it with anyone. Of the fact that he is married and has a son, I am absolutely sure.

I wonder if it is morally honest for me to keep him away from his family, to hear him, and maybe offer him a chance to throw out everything he carries inside. For me it is a very important person and I tell you that I’m thinking of him from morning to night, but I would also accept not to see him any more so as not to ruin his life, but he looks for me and I have the impression that I’m also an important presence for him. Here I arrived at the end of the story. Project, please, take it for granted that Andrew is not straight, or at least he is not 100% straight, and tell me what you would do. I need a serious comparison.

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A MARRIED GAY GUY WHO HAS NOT REPENTED

Greetings to all, “I have not just registered in the forum”, I was undecided whether to introduce myself, partly because I don’t know if my story will be useful for the discussion. My not being repentant for the choices made could mislead some who are looking for their identity.

I immediately say that I have a certain age, I am married and with children, but since adolescence I have always had fantasies and even homosexual practices. But I made a choice of life that I don’t want to question now. The fact that I have read many of the interventions of this forum, which I judge serious and above all commendable in protecting the privacy of users, also highlights that I still have an interest in these issues and my for fear of not being completely in peace with myself.

I think I have an ideal family life, a wife who loves me and children I’m proud of. All this, however, has been achieved without my having ever been able to distract myself from my drives which are clearly in the homosexual sense. Even after the wedding I had some falls, I considered them “betrayals”, yes serious, but in my opinion not very different from those of straight people. I don’t know whether to consider myself a true homosexual, but the more I analyze my life and the more I believe to be gay. But I also think with different attitudes from experiences of others.

I never thought of being able to share the couple life with a man and I was mostly driven by sexual attraction, I don’t know if I “fell in love” with another guy, perhaps at a young age, perhaps with attentions directed towards those who could not create a relationship with me, inside me however the thing has always been confused. What is certain is that I have always refused to recognize him and have tried to live a seemingly normal hetero life. In short, my homosexuality is the one that is called dystonic homosexuality.

You have to consider that on me the religious element has had a decisive influence. I have understood from various interventions that this is normally considered negative. But faith for me is an irrepressible fact, full of doubts and contradictions, but I cannot and don’t want to eliminate it from my life. I never said anything to my wife. I realize that complete sincerity in a relationship is essential but I have never succeeded, perhaps at the beginning I made some attempts, but exactly as I read in some posts of the forum, often this by the partner of the other sex is not understood or the partner doesn’t even want to consider it.

Now, after a long time, for the great affection that I have towards my wife, never, never I could have let her be aware of a situation that she surely couldn’t have understood. I try to accept myself this way, maybe I have not been completely honest, but sometimes other priorities are included in the scale of priorities. The textbook on homosexuality has greatly struck me positively, especially when the topic of married gays is dealt with. I think I have found a balance as indicated in the first option, that is with fantasies and, sometimes, with porn sites that I’m a bit ashamed of but nevertheless I consider the lesser evil.

I feel fragile and willing to give in to temptation but I resign myself to what I’m. I understand that maybe my experience cannot be taken as an example, I may have managed to realize myself in a way that can be judged not appropriate to the full acceptance of how we are but, as I have repeatedly heard, every case is separate and I frankly I cannot repent of my family choice. Perhaps today with the most widespread and above all clearer and more scientific means of information on this topic, I would have done differently, but it went like this and no verification of other hypotheses is anymore possible. Hello everyone with my most sincere sympathy.

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-a-married-gay-guy-who-has-not-repented

GAY FANTASIES OF A MARRIED MAN

Hello Project, only in this days I have met your beautiful and very useful site and I have found several answers to my “troubles” and I must say that at least in part and thanks to you I feel a little less agitated. I am writing to you, however, because I think that my experience may also be useful to others (so I authorize you to post this email, if you think it appropriate), and above all because I would like to have advice on how to behave or better, on what is your best way to deal with my situation with less anxiety. And then I’m just fine to talk about it, because I’ve never talked to anyone and then I’ve been carrying this weight for 30 years now. So I would like it to be clear what a great step I’m going to make.

I am 44 years old (and also because of this I have written because I read that you like to increase the number of “no longer boys”, as you call them, who bring their experiences.

I am happily married to a wonderful woman and I have two beautiful kids. I want to underline it because I love my wife to madness and she loves me even more, if possible, and with her there is also a good sexual harmony: I find myself satisfied on that side, also because, without exaggerating, we occasionally experience something new. The only flaw is that over the years (12 of marriage) the frequency of the sexual intercourses has diminished. She too seems to me to be satisfied, but she would like to have a greater frequency in the intercourses.

But let’s get to the point. Ever since I started masturbating, that is, at 11, if I remember well, my sexual fantasies have always turned, at 95%, to homosexual contents. In most cases, depending on the time, the fantasies have seen me and see me even now in the passive role and in fact, from the beginning I had and still have a great pleasure in anal self-stimulation. I have never had any kind of sexual intercourse until the age of 28 and this does not seem normal to me. My sexuality was then expressed through masturbation. In truth, my discovery of attraction to the guys has never led me to any particular sense of guilt or to attempts of repression: I accepted it immediately, but at the same time I realized that it would not be easy to live my sexuality freely.

Girls for the truth I have always liked them, and even today if I see beautiful women, sexual thoughts come to my mind. Conversely, as many do, if you exclude the adolescent phase, I feel that I cannot find any affective interest in a man/boy: at best I could fall “sexually” in love with someone of them. As far as I’m concerned, honestly, I do not believe in love between two men; the true love I could have found, and really found presently is only with women, which I consider to be superior to men in this respect (I know you will not agree but that’s not the point).

Given the above, in adolescence, I was having trouble communicating with girls, both because of shyness and because I was conditioned by the social environment (at that time I lived in a small town) and by my mother in the sense that I did not want to be seen around with not nice girls because my mother always told me I was a good guy (that’s true) and that cute girls had to line up for me (obviously it’s not true, because I’m not particularly attractive). Perhaps I missed a strong push to have heterosexual intercourses because I probably liked more those gay. Surely I always liked better the male body. I also have always been involved in the studies and probably at that time masturbation was enough to calm my sexual appetites.

As far as the possibility of gay intercourses is concerned, even though, as has already been said, there was no problem neither moral nor of personal acceptance, living in a small town, even though there was no internet, there was anyway, of course, a strong social conditioning. etc. etc. I have never had real opportunities, nor have I really been looking for such opportunities (except for some timid approaches which have not led to anything). However, I lived quite serenely (blessed masturbation!) And by the truth I said to myself that the sexual intercourse between men was superior to that hetero because it gives the opportunity to enjoy with all parts of the body. Probably if I had more opportunities and more explicit, had there been internet with its beautiful sites (like this) that would help me overcome my shyness and, why not, less beautiful sites (porn movies) that would still make me understand many things about the gay world, I would have had my homosexual, traumatic or beautiful but still right experiences, because that was the age to make those experiences!

At that time, however, I could also have fallen in love with guys, what really happened with some comrades (without any possibility). When I left my little town to go to college in a big city, you could suppose that, freeing me from the conditioning of my old town and of my family, I could have experienced my first gay relationships but no! Again in this case, I was overwhelmed by other types of conditioning: first of all, and maybe it was also right, the commitment to the study, since I felt obliged to my parents who spent a lot of money to keep me in college, but also the fact that I was living in an apartment with one of my high school friends (and that’s where the little town comes back to me) plus two absolutely hetero guys totally locked up at any dialog. So I didn’t even have time to look for boys and girls and didn’t even have such a big desire.

I kept masturbating thinking of homo intercourses (during this time both active and passive, I imagine because, without having any experience, any way of feeling pleasure attracted me) and I was there “drooling” when I was seeing guys around or on television. When I finished my studies and started working, always in the big city, I went to live alone. At that point I said, “Finally I can arrange my life as I want, I can decide whether to have gay relationships or not, or go looking for girls!” But it was not that easy: I didn’t have a computer neither I was really interested in buying a computer, and at that time social networks and chats were still in the early days, during the university years I had been isolated from the social context and I almost had to fit into the social environment of the city, I did not know how to meet people, women or men, and those were even the first few months of the new job with all this entails, and I did not have the luck to have some bisexual colleague with whom to try something! I really was not so bad physically: not much beautiful in the face but with a muscular body, tall, wide shoulders, only with a slightly prominent belly but with a nice seat. I had started a first approach to gay pornography (magazines), but nothing more.

When at last (at the age of 28!) maybe because I felt alone, I decided that it was time to have sex (hetero or even gay), I first went with a female prostitute and lost my virginity. I must say that it was not traumatic, but I did not feel a particular pleasure. Then I started thinking that I could not go on like that and that I had to experience gay intercourses.

At that point, however, and I don’t know why (what do you think about, Project?) I felt also a strong need for paternity and “normality”: I absolutely wanted to have a family with a woman who loved me and that I could love, and also have children. I really wanted such things and not just to suppress my gay sexuality! So I thought that it was absolutely crucial to make a choice, a choice that really influenced all my life and that’s why I’m now writing to you: had I to follow the “sexual” part of me and then give vent my desire to have fun with guys every time I wanted it, but with the prospect, on the other hand, of living a life not easy (it is useless to turn around) as a bisexual single because I never wanted to “live” with a male? This would have forced me to remain basically alone, whether I chose to remain hidden or to expose my nature, causing great pain to my family. Or had I to give up a part, even important, of my sexuality, continuing to take refuge in masturbation, but having for the rest a serene life, (what then actually happened)?

I decided that sex wasn’t certainly the most important part of life and that in the end you cannot have everything and therefore I made my choice. Today I don’t regret it and this choice for the truth is very similar to that of a heterosexual man who marries and decides to be faithful, to renounce having sex with other women. Nevertheless I regret, that I didn’t have gay relationships in adolescence and youth. I wish I could say today: “I still like guys, but I’ve already done what I wanted to do, I have had my many relationships, and have experienced what was to be experienced and then I made the right choice.”

Unfortunately, things are not so and after so many years, now I feel a little in crisis because it seems to me that masturbation is not enough anymore, nor it’s enough to feel very excited when on public transport I see good guys; I would like to feel a male’s body with all my senses, let a gay penetrate me, and also enjoy him. But in my situation it’s not easy. I would not have moral inhibitions to go with male escorts, but in addition to the obvious fear of illness, however overwhelming, I would not have had time or opportunity to stay at the computer choosing this or that one because I obviously have a family and from whew I’m working I cannot go to these sites.

I could put an ad and then just wait, but in this case too, the thing should be handled by the home computer and I would have difficulties for the above reasons. And then, it’s really worth? Ah, had I too had the luck of several people who write to you, who can, by “normal” ways, get in touch with gay or bisexual people! I could make contacts with men who are in my own situation and only experience sex stories, but my wife probably would not forgive me and I do not know if I would do it. And for the truth I do not know how much I can enjoy having sex with men of my age: I still like teenagers but at my age it’s ridiculous to think that you can find someone willing to have sex with one of over 40, moreover passive, if not for money. Besides, I’m no longer as handsome as when I was young because with growing age I got a little belly. Of course, a thirty-year-old man would theoretically have more experience and know how to make me enjoy.

I didn’t said anything yet to my wife, I don’t feel like it yet, I don’t know if she would understand. maybe in the coming months I will do it, perhaps just to get rid of such a weight and maybe this could make our relationship even better, because she would understand that I am honest. Lately, I’ve given her some signal, because during sexual intercourses I asked her to penetrate me with phallic objects. At first she hesitated, but then she said to me, “Because I love you, if you like it, I’ll do” and then she asked me if I like males but I did not have the courage to say it and indeed I told her that if a man wants to feel pleasure in that way it’s not an index of homosexuality. She told me something I was happy about, that is if I had sex (and I suppose, sporadically) with a male, it would be less harming than if I had sex with a woman for the simple reason that I would go looking for a kind of pleasure that she could not give me. But soon after that she started crying and I felt my heart wounded!

Project, what do you suggest to face my situation more serenely? I would like to have your reply. Lastly, I would like to send positive messages. I hope my experience will be useful to the young guys who are now living the same things I have experienced, I hope they reflect before acting to avoid my own mistakes, putting away any hesitation in experiencing gay relationships if they feel they want to do it, and putting also away every external conditionings (which, contrary to what people think, still today are common among the guys, although in very different manners according to the context). Even today, even for those who live in the little towns, thanks to the internet there are more ways to get to know each other and compare their anxieties. And then I also think of my children, both boys: I think that what I’ve been and still I’m through is not useless because, when the time will be right, I will be able to educate them correctly about affectivity and sexuality. For charity, I will not encourage them to be gay, rather I will explain to them that gay life is tough, but I will tell them that their dad has no problem if they want to experience gay, sexual or sentimental relationships. And then they will decide what is best for them.

I wish you all the best.

P.S .: I cannot use chats and the like, I’m ignorant of the matter and on the other hand in my situation I would not even have the chance; so please give me an e-mail reply; if you think it appropriate, you can also post this mail and your answer.

What follows is my answer.

Hi, I go straight to the point. What you write does not have much of gay, rather it is a mentality far removed from that of most gays, I can tell you better, for you it is important to experience a kind of sexuality, not to build a love story with a guy. For you there is only one of the two components of homosexuality, that is, the typically sexual one, and it lacks the affective one and you tend to read gay sexuality as a set of sexual practices that are not even the majoritarian in the gay world (penetration) and are a vague transposition in a homosexual key of a typically heterosexual sexuality.

Experimentation of sexuality has nothing to do with sexuality, it is an experiment not an act of love and on the other hand you say and underline in any way that you do not believe in love stories between two men, which for a gay guy is absolutely essential. A married man gratified by heterosexuality, having a relationship with a guy or wanting to have a relationship with a guy is not a gay but a heterosexual who goes or wants to go with the guys but will in all likelihood transpose into a homosexual relationship things that with the gay world have little to do. In the heterosexual dimension, sexuality is inevitably with fixed roles, in the homosexual dimension the existence of roles doesn’t even make sense, despite what people believe, there is a principle of substantial equality, it is the sexuality of similarity and not of complementarity.

A gay guy falls in love with another guy (even heterosexual) and doesn’t fall in love because he wants to experience some sexual practice with him, but because for that guy he feels love and tenderness. I would like to clarify one thing, according to the common language a man is homosexual if and only if he has sexual intercourses with another man but this does not make sense, on the contrary it happens often that guys not yet openly gay fall in love with guys with whom they could never have sexual intercourses. A gay guy may regret a love story ended badly but not the lost opportunity of having sex with a guy.

A gay falls in love with a guy and then sees him sexually, masturbates thinking about that guy, wants him but wants him as a person, because it must be just that boy and not another one, he does not want him because he’s a guy but because he is just that guy. A gay would not think of going to search for an escort to try a sexual contact or put ads for sexual purposes, could even put ads but dreaming of doing almost miraculously in certain environments the encounter he had dreamed of all his life, that is to find there the guy who really loves him and that will be his boyfriend steadily.

A gay guy does not dream of gay sexual intercourses but of a love story with a guy and when he is in love is brought to do anything for his boyfriend. I have seen authentically heroic gestures, incredible courage and abnegation manifestations of gay guys in love for the good of the guy they love. A gay guy in love, for the guy he loves, is capable of giving up everything because he realizes that the relationship he has created, if real, is able to change his life 100%. But you tell me, in any case I still feel the strong impetus to try a gay sexuality. Given that you cannot build any serious affective affair with a gay guy, you will find only guys or men who, like you, just want to try or continue to experience sexual intercourses, if you allow me, this is the anteroom of a deep frustration. I don’t say it for moralism but because I have seen these things a lot of times.

A forty-year-old guy seriously looking for an affective relationship with a man can also find answers worthy of being taken into consideration. But when I saw married men go looking for “just” homosexual experiences to say that they experienced it as wall, inevitably, a few months later, I saw the consequences in terms of frustration and sometimes of sexual dependence. I add another thing that seems to me to be absolutely fundamental, and it is the relationship of a married man with his wife, especially in families with children. If I try to think about how a woman can feel when she understands to have a husband looking for sex out of the house and with a man, I get shivered. You are destroying your wife’s life in this way, and moreover when she made her choice she was not aware of what really you had in mind. Let’s not talk about the kids. I have seen great children who have accepted that the father was gay and that he lived with another man but in a relationship that nevertheless appeared in the eyes of the children (because it really was) a true love affair, but of course those children would not accept that the father wanted try to prove gay sexuality.

When you married you didn’t speak clearly to your wife, until now even if you didn’t really allow her to understand who you are, however, you have considered that your relationship should not be crushed by different sex fantasies (hetero or gay) but if you’re looking for sex from a man, your wife would feel betrayed and no less than if you were looking for sex from a woman. I would strongly disagree with your invitation to the guys to “experience gay intercourses.” It is good not to be “afraid of external conditioning” if it is to build true gay love stories but to push people to experience gay sexuality without an affective basis means just not having the pale idea of what gay life really is. I apologize for my perhaps too much determined way to deal with the problem, but I have to clarify and point out that what you consider gay are the typical gay fantasies of a heterosexual man, that of gay only have the appearance.

I add here below the answer to my email.

Thank you so much for the wonderful answer, it has been very helpful, you are really a nice person. The perception of me as bisexual or gay or otherwise attracted to males stemmed from the fact that my free sexuality (masturbation) has always been addressed to guys and still excites me to see beautiful males. If things are different then ok. In the meantime (and I hope I did well) I took courage and I told my wife everything! In confirmation of what you say, she felt betrayed because I did not tell her everything before marrying and maybe she would have accepted me the same but in a conscious way: she said practically the same thing you said to confirm that she is definitely a person better than me. But better late than never and also now I know, above all thanks to you, that I must not betray her for any reason in the world because I love her immensely and now more than ever I need her love and she needs mine.

I hope my wife will be able to metabolize the suffering that I created her, she who simply dreams of a normal life with a normal man, thanks to the fact that she knows that now I would never betray her and that I need her. Paradoxically, however, I feel better, because I have freed myself of a burden that I have worn for too many years and because now I know I can masturbate without hiding from her who is willing, out of love, to participate in these fantasies of mine and also accepted more serenely to practice anal penetration for me. Yesterday, after I told her, every time I approached her there was an erection and it seems to me that couple sexuality can gain, I feel even more satisfied: always a compromise solution but less hypocritical and freer.

Excuse me if I said that guys have to experience gay relationships, I was wrong to write and in fact if you read the part dedicated to my children, I spoke, more correctly, to experience gay relationships both sexually and sentimentally, if they feel they want to do such things. I just wanted to say, in fact, that if a guy in adolescence feels he wants to have a gay relationship in his sexual and sentimental fullness, he can do it without hesitation, so as not to find himself living in regret, like me.

Feel free to publish this e-mail, if you think it appropriate, I’d like to read your opinion and also those of the guys of the forum, even with reference to developments with my wife. You’re a big, Bye.

Here below my answer.

Your mail makes me immensely pleased, because you did what had to be done, that is, you spoke clearly with your wife. Sure she felt betrayed for not having known everything before, but at least now she can have the certainty of having an authentic relationship with her husband, in which there are not things that are not said. Of course you feel better! You did what you had to do. See, the relationship with your wife, just from what you write, has all the characteristics of a true emotional relationship, in which there is sex, of course, but there is also a community of life and a cooperation to build something together. Being accepted by his own wife even after such an admission is a sign that the relationship is very strong.

You can also have your fantasies about guys but loving a person is a different thing. To love means to live together, to build together, to have a common world, in two, to be a couple and no longer to two individuals.
A hug! And good luck!
Project

I report below the answer I received.

Dear Project, I’m always “the man married who experiences gay fantasies”. Excuse me if I write to you again, I’m far from taking advantage of your immense availability. But I read the discussion that followed on my case with great interest. I would have liked to register on the forum and answer the numerous comments, but my wife wouldn’t have approved.

I was pleased about the interest, but things have been said about the relationship of love with my wife that I didn’t like too much: I’m good to be considered a repressed gay or a schizophrenic bisexual (yes, I always knew that my behavior is not 100% normal and in my life I never felt heterosexual, I felt gay at times, before getting to know my wife, bisexual almost always), but it hurts me when one calls into question my deep love (both feeling and sex) for my wife. You can understand that for me it would be terrifying: it means that for all these years of marriage with my wife I only pretended to love her first of all if front of myself and unknowingly, even though I am deeply convinced of loving her in the highest sense of the term and above all of feeling sexual fulfillment: if I think about it, I feel like crying!
But I wanted to tell you that you’re really great and do you know why? I went to read a post of March 31, 2010 entitled “Gay Sexuality and Transgression”. I quote here two passages:

” It sometimes happens that some guys who have a typically heterosexual and fully satisfying emotional and sexual couple life don’t ever masturbate thinking of a girl but they do it thinking exclusively of guys with whom they don’t feel emotionally involved, but their sexual fantasies are concentrated only on a particular sexual behavior, considered very transgressive. In such situations, the classic principle of free sexuality, according to which sexual orientation emerges through the masturbation (free sexuality) and not through the couple sexuality, cannot be applied precisely because in these situations masturbation is not really free and the fact of masturbating with transgressive gay fantasies (or considered such) indicates that masturbation is experienced not as sexuality but as an act of rebellion against taboos. The more transgressive the fantasies that accompany masturbation are the greater is the gratification that is obtained by overcoming the taboo. I mean that for these guys masturbation is not really a sexual experience but an act of self-assertion as a person who got rid of taboos. This mechanism of overcoming taboos through transgressive masturbation can in some cases evolve into forms of transgressive couple sexuality.”

“It is evident that in this case masturbation is not at all a form of free sexuality and, I would say, it is not even a form of true sexuality. It often happens that the “transgressive” masturbation of a guy who is really a heterosexual accompanies the temptation to put into practice masturbation fantasies. It should be noted that in these cases the affective dimension is totally lacking and the problem is reduced to bringing the overcoming of taboos from the masturbatory dimension, that appears reductive, to a far more “transgressive” dimension of couple sexuality. I emphasize that the guys who have a “transgressive” gay masturbation generally have a rather distorted view of gay sexuality that for them, even if they say otherwise, is basically something anomalous that becomes interesting precisely because “transgressive”, the idea of gay sexuality and affectivity as normal for these guys is difficult to accept, in a sense, if they considered gay sexuality normal, it would lose all attraction for them. It must be said that these guys in the vast majority have never fallen in love with a guy and consider at least unnatural that two guys can live a deep and mutual love. All this with being gay has clearly nothing to do.”

In the aforementioned post you describe exactly how my situation is after I met my wife, except, in my opinion, that I’m not exactly hetero. You wrote this thing 3 months before I told you my experience! So to insist on the theory that is the free sexuality, without other specifications, that determines the true sexual orientation seems to me too simplifying in my case. I would like to say that, without having read the post above (I swear it, before anyone doubts it) after my coming out with my wife, as I said, we are having sex more “transgressively” (I admit, in this period I cannot help but be penetrated by her almost every night, I’m sexually happy, also because pleasure comes to me not only from the act itself, but also from the fact that it is exactly my wife who makes it to me and such a thought makes me feel like in the early days of marriage). Not only this, but the things I learned from your site have made me better understand the gay reality as something less transgressive and coincidentally, at least for the moment, I don’t masturbate with certain fantasies!

I realize that claiming to describe my sexual and affective life in 3 pages was a mistake, because I cannot make people understand all the nuances, but I couldn’t bore you by focusing on the details. After all, my goal was not to know what I’m (I am a person very self-interested: I’ve been forming a precise idea of myself for a few years now), but to have an advice on the best way to live my situation and you gave me that advice very well, Project: you made me understand that looking for occasional intercourse even on payment would be detrimental, first of all for me, even before than for my family. Of course, before knowing my wife I thought almost exclusively of guys in masturbation but it was almost always anaffective masturbation: even when I was thinking about specific guys (for example high school or college mates) I always thought of them as sexual objects. I almost never felt in love with guys, while in happened with girls (with a lot of sexual desires that anyway only for very short periods accompanied my masturbation fantasies: Jek is right, I’m not normal).

With my wife I was engaged 3 years and they were beautiful years like the first years after marriage, when we were sexually very active and not only because upstream there was a deep love relationship. In those 3 years I should have realized if something was wrong and I should have given everything up, instead everything was fine: the other night I remembered with my wife that it was enough for me to hear her voice on the phone to get an erection! Not that I stopped masturbating thinking about homosexual relationships, but my sexual fantasies oriented themselves exclusively to imaginary transgressive relationships, no longer thinking about specific guys. After all, the emotional part of love for my wife has never failed: she is the most beautiful thing that has happened to me in life and I want to scream at all! The sexual interest has waned, starting from the birth of the first child, but it is a normal thing in couples (isn’t it true, Barbara?). I would not charge it to my being bisexual or if you prefer repressed gay, if anything it’s the other way around. Those who know the life of a couple know that at a certain point it is no longer enough to see the partner naked to get excited, also because the body is not as beautiful as it once was, but it is necessary to know how to touch, how to caress, etc. in a crescendo of new sexual stimuli that for those who have a very high libido like me can mean experiencing “more” transgressive “games”. This needs time, dedication and with two children, the work, the house, I assure you that it is not easy. That’s why masturbation for me is not the only form of sexuality due to the fact that I don’t like that expressed with my wife, but the valve to vent my own instincts in a simple way, without too much effort and intellectual or sentimental involvement. What I wanted to say then is that for years I have convinced myself that I was bisexual and I believe that the discussion on the forum does nothing but confirm it, but I don’t place too much emphasis on the dissociation between heterosexual affectivity and gay sexuality, because also from a sexual point of view the hetero side is satisfying for me and it is so much more because at the base there is a deep emotional bond! (and, Project, you took it immediately).

I would not then unleash your ethical reactions (don’t be too bad with me), but I would say that I have always been happy to be bisexual: it is nice to be able to love one’s own female partner and feel sexually satisfied with her and at the same time feel excited to see beautiful guys on the street and then if I can share this excitement with the woman of my life it is even more beautiful! It is obvious that a bisexual who places the “traditional” family at the top of the scale of his values should at some point make a choice: hence my regret for not having fully lived the homo part when I could. I thank you all, no one excluded and I would really like to embrace you not only virtually, even that “bad guy” of Publisher, whose analyzes have been very useful to understand me even better. A special thanks, as well as to Project, also to Barbara, who was able to express in a sublime way my mood and of which I share every single word. Congratulations to Telemaco for his sensitivity: it is a quality that is always a pleasure to find in guys his age and I wish him to find the person who can make him happy because he deserves it. Congratulations also to Aster, who from his blog appears to be a sweet boy, cultured and also cute: in my next masturbation fantasies I’ll get excited thinking of him who says “ugly typical repressed fennel!”. Joking aside, he is a smart guy and not just for the coming out story (as a parent I hope things with his father are settled: for a father to feel close to his son who “cheated” him has not price). Indeed, as far as I’m concerned, these coming out stories have a bit fed up even for controversies. Rather, Aster, let us dream and tell us your love story with your boyfriend (sentimentally eh, I better specify it before you start to think that I’m a pervert). I regret not being able to participate actively in the forum, but maybe I will follow you and who knows, in a few years, when my eldest will be in age, I hope you can enjoy reading what I have to say about education on sexual and sentimental orientation. I hope I will be a good father, and this thanks to my “experience” and thanks to you. Best wishes.

Peter

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-fantasies-of-a-married-man

STORY OF A MARRIED GAY GUY

Hello Project, now it is so much that I don’t write to you. With my wife we talked and we decided to separate. Now we are still at home together for logistical reasons and it is not easy, but I imagine that slowly everything can improve. The guy of the message I have not heard him for months and I cannot deny that I miss him, but slowly this will pass too. On my orientation I sincerely stopped asking questions and giving me labels. I decided to live with sincerity and that’s it, without giving me a thousand problems. I also managed to talk with my male best friend and with my female best friend, with my sisters and especially with my parents. I was afraid that they wouldn’t understand, in fact I was convinced of it, but it happened the exact opposite, they understood me and they are close to me. This helped me a lot. My father’s answer was “Certainly I’m old, but in 2017 it’s no longer strange”. I and my sister were more shocked by his reaction than he was by me. He has always been one of closed mind (at least apparently). Now I’m just trying to find a balance in my life even if I have swung for months between moments of contentment and serenity and moments of confusion and sadness. I also write to you because I wanted to add my experience to the forum by telling my life, but before inserting the post I wanted you to read it and tell me your opinion. Below you find the text (I know it’s very long, but it’s a life to tell and there are many themes). Bye! And thanks.

Hello everyone, first of all I congratulate you for the forum, which I have been following for many months and that I continue to follow, reading texts, reflections and comments, and I thank Project for its advices. All those testimonies have helped me in this period not exactly easy. I have tried many times to write my story to give some help to someone else with my experience and above all to receive help or advice, but I have always been afraid and uncertain about what to write.

I’m a 29 year old guy, not exactly a teenager. I state that I understand that I have always had a strong internalized homophobia, probably acquired by a loving and affectionate grandmother who was completely against the gay world and by a father who joked about it with friends. I was a child and certain phrases that, with today’s head, I would understand that they must be contextualized and understood in a completely different way, they had marked me. I don’t know if it was because of these phrases or whatever else, but I have always seen the fact of being homosexual as something perverse and sick, I don’t say as pedophilia but almost.

I remember that as a young child I had “different” thoughts but I had confirmation of being different at 14 when I fell in love for the first time with a guy. Obviously it was an unrequited and unilateral love, because he was straight. All this made me suffer, not only because of the unrequited love, but because it was something I absolutely didn’t want and I tried to deny inside myself, hiding and lying to myself telling myself that he was just a friend. My dream since childhood was to have a family and children. The children were my biggest dream. As far as I was concerned, in addition to emotional involvement, I was also attracted toward this guy, sometimes it was enough to stay close to him to get an erection, but I couldn’t avoid to want him and it was impossible for me to take him out of my head, and all the story made me ashamed to death.

At that time I don’t sincerely remember masturbation in which direction it went, even if remembering it would be useful to understand things better. I also remember that at that time when I was interested in a guy I tried to “translate” the feelings I was feeling, directing them to girls, trying to convince myself that I felt those feelings for girls. I don’t know why I did it, but I was convinced that it was right. It was a period when I felt wrong and suffered.

I remember trying to change my gestures to look as masculine as possible, even if I still maintain a slightly effeminate attitude. I didn’t do sports or anything that led me to enter a male locker room because I was very ashamed to see naked guys, I found myself looking at them and wanting them. I tried to do everything to look as normal as possible and the fact that I had a good appearance helped me because I was always surrounded by beautiful girls, many of which followed me, while for me they were only friends. Still, I find myself better with girls and I have more male than female friends, with guys I have more difficulty in tying. I also tried approaches for a while with some girls, but without having any emotional or physical interest.

At one point she came, the girl who later became my wife. She had a great love for me and I found in her the emotional tranquility that comforted me and made me feel normal. For me she became a point of reference and I was completely carried away by her love. I somehow love her and I still care for her today, but knowing that there was something wrong with me, I was able to see it as something external, not mine, to such an extent that I had finally come to think of being “healed”, or better, not even “healed”, that there had simply never been anything strange within me. Sex worked (maybe), even though I never looked for it and it had never impressed me. Sometimes I fell into periods of sadness and silence because something came out and I closed in myself knowing that with a little time the malaise would have passed and everything would be back as before. And my poor wife was always trying to understand something that is quite incomprehensible even for me and even now.

Masturbation had become a necessity, I devoted myself to it in a mechanical way and always watching porn, straight porn, of course, watching a gay one was something unthinkable for me. Sometimes I looked at them to convince me and confirm that I was not interested. But in the hetero movies I looked at the man and in my mind I had the greatest pleasure in oral sex, with the desire, not only that it was done on me, but that I was to do it to him, and then I used to identify myself in the actress. I know, it’s absurd if I think about it, but in that way I felt normal and above all not guilty. Probably I’m the only one in the world to have certain quirks. My life has gone on like this, I have filled my life with things to do without stopping, I guess just only in order to avoid having time to stop and think.

I really believed it was all normal like that. After all I was not serene but somehow I was happy, I had a perfect life. With my wife we grew up together, we respected each other and we always did everything together, traveled, learned languages and supported each other in difficult times. So I decided to get married and give her that much-desired wedding. I tried to give her a dream wedding, I had committed to this purpose with all my heart. Although it was a mistake it was a day when we were really happy, it has been still the best day of my life and when I made the decision, for me, that problem that I had inside didn’t exist anymore.

Until “he” arrived. I was in church, that same church that so often comforted me in the most difficult moments. He was in front of me. I couldn’t look at him and the absurd thing is that every now and then I caught him while looking at me and seeing that I was looking at him, he looked away, almost ashamed. I told myself it was strange. He was not handsome, but his dark eyes, his naive look of teddy bear (so I called him), big and tender, attracted me. Then someone told him he had to move and put himself next to me. We had a chat and he was also nice and intelligent. There were so many things in common to talk about. After the course, I ran away, I left without too many words.

I didn’t see him for a while until one day I saw him in a group. We had to take a group photo and he took my hand to make me get close to him, a gesture that any friend would do, but that contact pleased me terribly, after the end of the photo service I quickly left, full of shame.

The following days I was continuously thinking of that guy. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I cried, I don’t know exactly why. Then one day I had to ask him for some information and he gave me his phone number. He looked at me in a strange way, mixed with contentment and shame. I felt that he could also feel my own feelings, but I avoided thinking about it. But I didn’t understand exactly and I repeated to myself that it was all in my mind. I called him for that information, but the chat lasted two hours. It was really nice to talk to him and I saw that it was like that for him too.

In the following days we got newly in contact and we manage to talk for hours with pleasure, without stopping. We began to be in contact more often also with messages. I realized that I was more and more of me interested in him, but as usual inside me I told myself that I had found a good friend only. Until one day I went to his house to meet him. I had to stay there no more than half an hour, but he had to go for an errand and insisted that I wait for him at all costs, and so I waited for him. Then we talked again about our studies, our travels and our passions. He seemed happy to see me and be with me. I certainly was.

The next day I had to go abroad for work and I needed a helping hand, we had talked in the morning and I had also told him about my trip and he came abroad with me to give me a hand. During the whole trip we talked and the speeches about gays and in particular about gays who attend the church came out. I suspected he was gay and I asked him it without too many preambles, stressing that it was just out of curiosity.

He asks me in turn the same question and I answer him “straight” but I talk to him about my doubts and tell him that maybe I can call myself bisexual (it was the first time in my life that I was talking to someone about such things, and it was something that I didn’t even want to talk about with myself). He replies that he too was bisexual. So we began to talk about our doubts and feelings experienced in the past. It was the first time that I really asked myself questions and talked about them aloud.

From him I learn that he had begun to accept himself two years earlier, at the age of 30. I also tell him of the feelings I felt towards him (I had no ulterior motive, it was only out of sincerity). He tells me that for him it was the same, I was happy but confused, I didn’t expect it. Then with a tender and shameful look he puts his hand on mine. He had a sweet firm touch, I felt uncomfortable, but I loved that contact terribly. I felt afraid and guilty. Then he made a simple gesture but I remember it with great pleasure. It was hot and he was worried about me, he took off my hat, and so I could see he was worried about me. This thing filled my heart. We spent the day together, looking at the view of the city and then we stopped for a drink and he clumsily tried to kiss me.

I was shocked. I pushed him away saying I was married. I read in his look that he was ashamed. He apologized. All this made me so tender, I too wanted the kiss, but I couldn’t let me go. I was afraid of myself, of the situation, and the sense of guilt grew inside me just thinking about it. I shook his hand, saying to forgive me, but I wanted nothing more than a friend. The following days we continued to stay in touch, more and more and we took every opportunity to see each other. We did nothing but talk. It was so pleasant. But I felt that feeling grew stronger and stronger inside me. Then one day he writes me by message, a simple “I love you”, and I think I was the happiest person in the world. I was ashamed to answer him and sent him a song. From there followed messages and songs, which until that day didn’t make sense, then suddenly took deep meanings that I could finally understand.

We talked about everything, our secrets and the deepest fears. We opened up with each other a lot, until one day he wrote to me “I love you, but maybe even a little more”. I would have cried from the myriad feelings and thoughts that passed through my heart and mind. I was really confused, but now I realized that I loved him and for the first time in my life I was reciprocated. I was not alone. And the only thing I thought was: how is it possible that such a strong and beautiful feeling is wrong? Then he had to leave for a trip and we met to say goodbye. I was married and I had no intention of doing anything wrong anyway. So we talked and hugged before saying goodbye. I was so happy in his arms. Then he looked me in the eyes, those eyes that I dreamed of so much, and I found myself with my face closer to his, I felt terribly ashamed. I literally ran away greeting him.

During his two-week trip we were in touch every day, every moment we could. We were also joking about sex, but always for fun. Then he returned from vacation; that night, by coincidence, I had to go out and we met on a Roman bridge. He told me about the trip and all the good things he had seen. It was cold and so, he, big and tender, hugged me to warm me up. It was so sweet and I was so happy, I felt protected for the first time in my life, I wanted that embrace never to end. I looked at him and asked him sadly why God says that such a beautiful thing it’s wrong. I’ve always seen gay love as something vulgar and carnal. Instead it had everything but vulgarity. And that’s how I found myself kissing him. But it wasn’t a kiss like all those I had given until that day. I felt my heart beating wildly, a desire that pervaded my whole body. It had never happened to me in my life.

We stayed hugged a little more on that bridge in the dark, watching the moon and the stars, over the incessant noise of the river. It was cold but for the first time in my life I felt really warm. I went home and thought about him all night and the following day.

Oh, what I had done! I had cheated on my wife and with a man. But it had been beautiful. I talked to him and he had the same guilt feelings, he was not married, but it was as if he were. Stupidly we were convinced that perhaps God had given us the opportunity to love each other without ruining our hetero duties (what a stupidity, if I think back!). But at that moment it was enough for me to get rid of guilt and to be with him. We continued as friends in front of others and any excuse was good to steal a kiss or a hug or even just a caress, until one day we found ourselves making love. It was not as vulgar as in porn movies, it was love, it was a mutual pleasure. I cannot get out of my mind his way of looking at me. I miss that tender teddy bear look. Then, afterwards, we fell asleep in each others arms. That hug is the most beautiful memory I carry with me.

After that episode we joined even more, I worried about him and he worried about me, we were very considerate of everything. We dreamed of impossible journeys and a life together, one in the shadow of the other. We imagined our old age in front of a fireplace, hand in hand. All this until one day an event happened (of which I prefer not to speak) that led him to feel guilty. I was married, and he too was as if he were. So the sense of guilt began to grow in us. We understood that everything we were doing was wrong. So he began to cry and I felt guilty about everything, about my wife and about him. I was a rag. I wanted to detach myself but I couldn’t. All this without being able to talk to anyone and trying to appear cheerful and sunny as usual in the eyes of people.

But I saw that he was moving further away from me. I told myself it was right this way, but the more I saw him get away, the more I died inside and looked for him. Until one day I felt him far away and asked him if it was over, he said yes, that it was better that way. I think the world around me stopped making noise at that moment. I told him “it’s ok”, after all it was right that way. For a week I couldn’t stop crying. I was newly alone and aware that something inside me was different, was gay.

So in that week I asked him if we could meet again. I wanted at least him to say it to me in my face not on the phone. We met. He was calm now. I didn’t understand how it was possible. So, when I got back to work, I wrote to him if he had another guy. He told me that he didn’t know how to tell me it and that he was sorry, but he had met a guy two weeks before and that with me he had confused the initial interest with love. At that moment it was like receiving a punch in the stomach, the world collapsed under my feet. I felt destroyed, I found myself losing the most beautiful thing in my life for another guy, I found myself aware that that a part of me so repressed existed and that made me really happy, and I also felt guilt for what I had done to my wife. All this in a fake straight life that made me feel in prison.

At that time I began to wonder if I could really be gay or bisexual. This thought stressed me more and more. I began to lose weight and close myself up like a hedgehog. Seeing any person made me uncomfortable. I was ashamed of myself. Sometimes I got to the point of feeling repulsion for myself. Finally I accept that part of me exists and I talk about it with my wife. That’s where I met the forum and talked to Project.

My wife helped me to understand, she thought it was a period of depression, but when she realized that this part of me exists, she went through a period of rage. But then she realized that it was simply so. On the one hand she was sad and disappointed, but on the other she was relieved because she had given herself so many faults and she thought that there was something wrong with her but now she understood that the problem was not her but was I, and she kept telling me: if you’re gay now everything is clear to me.

At first I thought being gay was only a small part of personality, but over time I saw my awareness grow up and, asking myself questions and reasoning on it, now I understand many things that I didn’t understand before. Now I’m aware that bisexual I’m for sure, and maybe gay. My wife says it’s clear, I’ve never looked at any girl, I’ve never looked for her to make love. I prefer a book or something else to her, she repeats that if I’m bisexual it’s just because she’s there. But there she was and I never had problems in making love. So a part of me is straight. At least I hope, I don’t want to believe that I really hid behind my wife. However now I stopped wanting to give myself a label. Now I just want to rediscover my serenity and really live, since until now I let myself be carried away by what was right for society. I know that from that day I rediscovered masturbation mostly without watching porn movies and all centered on that much desired guy and I also started to watch gay porn movies that give me satisfaction after all, even if I prefer the parts with oral sex or those “romantic”, Some films, however, don’t like them because they are too “hard”.

Now four months have passed since we said goodbye with that guy and yet I still miss him so much. For what concerns my wife I realized that she deserves a person who really loves her and really wants her. I tried to talk to her sincerely and stay close to her for what I can. It’s hard to leave her because I love her deeply and she has been a fixed point in my life. And the sense of guilt does not help. But it’s the right thing. On the advice of my psychologist I have been able to talk about myself with my two best friends and with my family. After that I spoke with my parents I felt an incredible sense of liberation, especially because they didn’t take it badly although I had thought exactly the opposite. On the contrary they speak as if they had always known or suspected it. They support me, worried perhaps also of my weight loss and of my sadness and loneliness that I have been carrying with me for months. Sorry if I was verbose, but summarize a life in a few lines is almost impossible.

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-story-of-a-married-gay-guy

CRITICAL POINTS OF THE PATH OF A GAY GUY TOWARDS HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE

I noticed that the statistical sites show the constant presence of readers who get to Gay Project, through the Google search engine, using keys like: ”married gays”. The problem exists and it is not statistically irrelevant as usually believed.

I try to summarize here some of the fundamental elements that emerged from the Gay Project experience with regard to married gays. Among the absolutely fundamental elements in determining the path that leads gay guys to marriage, we must remember:

1) The idea that being gay is a “choice” that is somehow modifiable or a “vice” that can be prevented or corrected.

2) The idea that sexuality is a marginal reality that, for a heterosexual, must be exclusively instrumental to the creation of a family and procreation and, for a gay guy, must in any case be sacrificed in the name of the family and children.

3) The idea that a gay guy can be fully realized, that is can be realzed at the family level, because the true realization is only that, exclusively through the denial of his sexuality and that this denial will be, after all, painless because compensated by the family affection. In essence, the instinctive affectivity, connected with sexuality, is radically denied in this way. Cardinal Lajolo, in an interview in March 2014, declared, as if it were obvious, that “Gay marriages cannot fail to disappoint those who make them”, in reality, if we consider the constant decrease in the propensity to marriage, the exponential increase in “femicides” and the constantly increasing percentages of divorces and separations (in Italy 50% of marriages end up in divorce or separation), what emerges is the substantial separation of society from the Catholic model of marriage and family.

4) Proposing to a young heterosexual the traditional family as a condition of happiness means to deceive him, on the contrary, it would be useful to induce him to reflect on the problems and uncertainties that marriage can bring and actually brings with itself, given that 50% of marriages end up in court. Proposing heterosexual marriage as the only possible option for a homosexual means even laying the foundation not only for the failure of an entirely artificial family union, which will inevitably weigh on children, but also means condemning a gay to a life entirely against nature, i.e. against his nature, and condemning a woman, who would have every right to have a husband really in love with her, to live in a state of great uncertainty and total dissatisfaction not only sexual but, in almost all cases, even emotional.

5) The idea that the “sacrifice” is a value in itself. Too often guys tend to see the renunciation of their spontaneous sexuality as a merit in the name of the ideal of the family. In reality, when a gay gets married he is convinced that accepting the sacrifice of his sexuality is something high and noble, but in no case self-repression leads, in the long run, to positive outcomes, and the “sacrifice” accepted by the gay, it actually ends up being a violent conditioning imposed on the life of a wife who often isn’t event aware.

6) The idea that conformism to traditional values is always positive, even for those who with certain traditional institutions, such as marriage, have nothing at all to do. Families rarely appreciate freedom and often tend to believe that what is socially accepted is, for this only reason, the best path to follow for everyone and in every situation.

7) The idea that obedience is always a virtue and the free of the single person must be systematically sacrificed in the name of socially accepted general rules.

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If you like, you can join the discussion on this post on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-critical-points-of-the-path-of-a-gay-guy-towards-heterosexual-marriage