Emotionally gay?

[AdamAnt]

Has anyone ever heard this term or experienced something like this?

I am a man in my late 50's who has been married for 25 years. I grew up in an alcoholic enmeshed home where I was forced to partner with my mother emotionally. I was abused by an older boy at 10-11 years old. My sex life with my wife was good the year we dated but soon after we married things really slowed down. She had been doing all of he initiating and wanted me to be the one to try. I took this as a lack of desire so I withdrew from her and turned to pornography and being vouyeristic toward other women.

My life has been ruled by denial so I pretended to have a decent loving close relationship even though my marriage became more strained.

I acted out sexually with other girls in my neighborhood as a kid but after the abuse I became more anxious about approaching girls and later women. I felt more comfortable talking to and being around men.

For the last 15 years I have been very happy to get the attention from a local businessman. My wife says I float and act giddy when this man pays attention to me. At the same time a few years ago I started to spend some time with my college roommate and I acted the same way. This has caused my wife to question my sexuality.

My marriage is falling apart and I continually lie to my wife to keep up appearances. This has been confusing and hurtful for my wife. I am not sexually attracted to other men but there has been some type of need for a male connection. I have some type of sexual identity issues. I have been denying this adamently for the past two years. This is very confusing for me as well and I am looking for help or ideas to figure out why I don't fit in the "normal" emotional world. Has anyone experienced or heard of something like this?

 

[George]

A lot of us have the same kind of issues around other men, and for most of us that started as boys. For a lot of us the foundational years of our budding masculinity was both stunted and/or sent off course, for a lot of us that leaves us feeling different, less than a boy/man, craving the unmet needs of not being brought into the fold of a healthy sense of self & masculinity. Those basic boyhood needs should've been provided by your father were love, attention, acceptance & affirmation. Those unmet needs will manifest themselves in a lot of different ways, some of us we will act out sexually with other men looking to fill that hole, sometimes it wont be sexual, but emotional like you mentioned.

Father issues are are huge, I finally figured that out after many years of just focusing on the sexual abuse itself, I didn't see how much those unmet needs played a big role in my own drive to act out & shut down around other boys/men in my life. I felt like an outsider with no self confidence even before the abuse, but between those two major issues, they really screwed up the natural course of my life. The good news is that you can heal from these father wounds too.

 

[AdamAnt]

I should be more direct in how I phrased my story. This is the first time I have gone public with anyone besides my wife or my therapist. I did act gay with these two men and I was giddy as a schoolgirl to get the attention I was craving. I lied to my wife in order to spend more time with my college roommate.

I continue to make excuses for my behavior to justify my actions and to say I am normal. Early on in my marriage I was so sexually frustrated that I couldn't approach my wife that my vouyerism as I put it was actually standing in my garage looking into my neighbor's bathroom. I was a peeping tom looking into a home where there were three children living.

I am so ashamed of myself that I keep trying to convince my wife and myself that my normal is everyone's normal. I have been emotionally attracted to other men and am putting it out here to try and deal with my feelings.

 

[Ceremony]

Hello AdamAnt, your post resonated with me. I had 2 close friends in college. One was a gay activist and the other I learned was Bi. I have no problem with any sexuality or gender expression, within the boundaries that excludes underage, abuse or other overly creepy stuff. I love the appearance of most women's bodies, and when you mentioned voyeurism it reminded me I used to be a looker. I had too much of a wandering eye, and I daydreamed. 99% of that would be women, but some men really do look beautiful, so sure. I'm for any woman who wants to be with a man in a healthy emotional connection. That's a bit of a loaded statement, please let it slide.

So, I recall the voyeurism of my past, all through my 20's, even after I married at 23. So, I do recall that I felt guilt, but I excused it because I was surrounded by thousands of relationships and women at university. It was part of the scenery to people watch. Now, why I met a gay man and it was partly through the friendship with the Bi man, I think is resonating with your post. Sharing it doesn't mean I've any work to do, I think most of that era was making do with the situation I was in and having friends. I really needed friends and that's the key to why they became my best friends.

In my mind, they're still among my best friends, and would wish they felt the same, but I don't have any way to find out for sure. The man who is Bi, whom I'll call Jake, was a very smart man, about 22 when I met him and I was 25 by then, maybe 26, that time is a bit fuzzy. I was getting wasted to forget everything and have no emotions. I did that a lot at that time. He was part of that. I could hang out at his place in safety, get wasted, listen to great music and watch MTV or whatever. It was a very comfortable situation for me. But, it was not very cool to be doing since I was married. Within the first day I was invited to join a group of partiers who had no plans but to drink and smoke weed. I was very anxious, but joined.

I'm terrified of groups where I don't know who the people are, it's because I put myself in that exact situation and got raped. So, this was definitely a triggering situation, BUT, I didn't have any thoughts this was because I was raped or it being a trigger at the time. I've only learned that since last Summer when I woke up to the PTSD of that rape. I've learned a lot about why I behaved and thought like I've done. This and sparked by your post, is why I wish to share all this.

So, anyway, I'm now at the party house, and there's only 5 of us. 4 guys and a female roommate. The other 2 guys were nice and I was comfortable. We drank some beers, and smoked on joint. I thought maybe they had intentions to go out to a bar, so I dressed. I had no idea how to dress for that town. It was a smallish college town. The strip was for the university population to party. That's where they wanted to go, but I sort of killed the mood, because I visibly shook and frowned with high anxiety. Maybe that endeared me to the one man, who turned out to be the gay activist (I didn't know that yet). So, they're cool with just hanging out and we watch very cool videos of bands. I really enjoyed it all. Later, it was time to decide what to do with the rest of the night and I was wasted. I didn't have to go home for some reason, I don't recall why? So, I asked to stay on the couch? HOW in the hell would I do that again??? That's exactly how I was raped!! So, there I was, wasted, and it's about 1am. I'm left alone and that's cool.

Well, again, how in the hell did I set myself up for this?? But, this time it's a question and there's no struggle nor grabbing me to submit. I'll call him Syd, and he comes out of his room and I'm still up. I know I'm still very nervous, and only now do I know it's because my body is having a reaction that I didn't connect to that rape. So, I'm really nervous and Syd sits next to me and asks if I'm ok and want to snuggle? Ohh,, well no, thank you, but I don't. He's fine with that and leaves me alone. Wow?? What just happened I'm thinking?? I guess it's just that everything has to be about sex and I don't think like that constantly. Hmmm... That's not true, but I don't around men.

So, the next morning, and I've slept a little, I'm going back home and it's Ok. We all agreed to party again next weekend. And we do. We do quite a bit of that for the next 2+ years. Maybe 3, I'm not sure. So, it was a good time, and Syd made every effort to make me welcome. He flirted with me, but never pushed me. I felt happy he flirted with me too. So, that's exactly why I'm responding to you. I'm not upset about any of this, and I'm happy that I've a memory that can relate to another survivor. In a way, this is just confirming to me, that my need for friends had everything to do with feeling safe around them. So, 2 men accepted me, made me welcome to feel safe and we had good times and memories.

 

[EdfromNYC]

I relate very much. I used to act "flirty" around certain men that embodied certain traits that I admired or wanted for myself. I acted out sexually with men for quite a number of years but that was different. That was based in the abuse by a male; the flirty stuff is more about my original father/son/male psyche wounds.

Changing the terminology or the frame of reference used might lessen the sense of shame around this. Looking beneath "flirty", it is really a little boy with unmet needs who is seeking attention from another male that he wants attention from or esteem from. It's that simple. And little boys can be starry eyed kids around grown men who are fully men and embody strong male characteristics and those little boys might look a little "flirty" as I can picture it. Boys "court" older mens' attention and approval.

The "flirty" aspect is something that I saw myself do over the years but it is a habit which I broke. It took time and effort. The recognition and discomfort around it are potentially beginnings to seeing the father/son wound that is beneath and the psuedo-sexual ways of trying to get it met. Those early wounds can be healed. These two male relationships in your life sound potentially very good.

Treating the deeper wounds with other males (and females, secondarily) allows me to function as fully as another male in my male/male relationships rather than a flirtatious seeker of approval. Disclosing this stuff on here is an excellent start.