Freedom?

[Bi-ten]

Hi all,

Well, I got up the nerve to tell my wife about my bisexuality. It was truely a roll of the dice as to whether she could accept it or not, but I felt that I could no longer live a lie or a double life. I could not be free to express my true self with this skeleton in the closet :(

Anyway it has not gone well so far, I am now looking for a new place to live and wondering what I'm going to tell the kids. I will probably live in near poverty and be hated by most if not all of my in-laws!

I question whether I did the right thing, I know in my heart that I have, and I trust that God will see me through...I just really feel alone right now. You quickly learn who your friends are in these times.

Hugs,

[csrakate]

Bi-ten....I don't have any advice for you but I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am that you have apparently lost so much by being honest.

I can't stress enough the importance of being totally honest before going into a relationship. People seem to have preconceived ideas of what is normal and what isn't and to throw this issue into the midst of these feelings can't lead to much more than the pain you are going through right now.

I hope you will find some peace in your life but if it is any comfort, please know that you have come to the right place to find support and solace in this time of need.

My thoughts and prayers will be with you during this difficult time and I pray that you find a full and meaningful life. You shouldn't have to pay such an enormous price for your honesty but unfortunately it looks as though you will have to go through some roadblocks to find some fulfillment in your life.

Take care.

Kate

[wellred]

Bi-Ten,

Your courage is admirable! From previous of postings that you have written, I was aware that this issue was an important one for you. You have chosen a path which I regretably do not have the mettle to walk.

It is a huge leap to go from the shadows of secrecy to the naked light of truth. Your truth is one that radiates within you and now also has a blinding impact on those around you. As you are aware, their image of the life they have been living with you is now subject to re-evaluation, too.

I hear the pain of your liberation and wish that I could provide some measure of comfort. Doors are closing around you, yet I believe your "trust in God" and, if you allow, new opportunities will open for you. Please do whatever you can to find support from others. This is a huge step and one that should be taken with loving, caring people to bolster you while you travel through the storms. Be kind to yourself.

You have listened to your inner voice and you should be true to that message, celebrating this success, even when it does not seem to be a triumph. Happiness may be elusive, at least in the near future. Let your soul guide you to a life of integrity.

With Love and Light,
Red

[BiCpl69]

That is a very difficult choice. We have both been open with each other since 1972, however, when I first told my wife, it almost cost our marriage. So, I feel your pain. Fortunately we worked through it. She end-up exploring her feelings for women and found she is bisexual as well. BTW we have never told our children.

In all candor, we have always recommended extreme caution in opening up to a spouse. As you have found, the results can be devastating.

[EbyKat]

You have been brave. And will continue to be so in the days to come.
I don't doubt it will be hard. But you have us. Faceless and nameless as we might be.
You have our support, for however that will help you.

I congratulate your honesty. Don't regret it.

[m.in.heels&hose]

bi-ten, i am very and truly sorry for what happened to you, for just being honest with those you love,
it saddens me to hear of some one losing what they worked so hard for many years to accomplish, and to loose it all over ones desire to be "different" (according to society)
i told my girlfriend (now wife) that i was bi when we were dating it was never an issue with her, she still loves me for who i am and what i am all about
we have been married for nearly 12 years and i can honestly say i truly love her as she does me also!
bi-ten, things may look grim tright now, but hopefully they will brighten up and get better for you!
good luck my friend and keep your chin up!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gina42]

Hello Bi-ten,
it took alot of courage for you to share that with your wife,i am sorry that it didnt work out well for you and as far as the kids are conserned...if they ask be honest with them but with discretion,i am not sure of there ages...you are there father no matter what,they maybe alittle confused at first but the kids will come around.
for the in-laws and other family and friends this is a true test of who your friends really are dear..
see i am married to a bi-crossdresser and i have know for years even before i married him,i wish more men and woman were more open and excepting..
my veiw is when you are in love with a person,you love them,straight,bi or even gay and you never try and change them because that is not what love is about.
i wish you lots of luck over the next few months,you'll be in my thoughts and prayers my friend and yes i feel you did the right thing,you were true to yourself...if you ever need a friend to listen and im in chat,i'll chat with you.
gina42

[arana]

Bi-Ten, First off, a VERY BIG HUG to you. I am so very sorry that your wife could not accept your sexuality, and see that sharing your secret with her would have made your lives together so much more open, honest and richer in the long run. I hope your children are more open minded, but even if they can't accept it at first always be there for them because eventually they will see that "bisexual" isn't a bad thing that took their dad away, it was just another part of who he was.
I know all the best wishes in the world will not help the real life drama's you'll have to face now but know we are here when you need to vent or get a hug. Try to keep a positive outlook. Once the storm is over and you get through the worst of it, you'll have a fresh new life where you can be who you truly are and enjoy it.

I wish all the best for you, Bi-ten!
Arana

[Bi-ten]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your encouragement and kindness, so far this roller coaster has been mostly downhill...but the upside is hearing from people who understand and care.

I know that time is a healer, but I wish in this one case it would hurry the hell up:)

You truely have made a big difference to me, God bless you all.

[csrakate]

Stay strong!

Kate

[jo69guy]

I am so sorry to hear that things didn't go well for you! It really hurts when we bare our souls, and they get trampled! I wish you all the luck, and happiness in the world! Hang in there, time does heal many things.

HUGS :flag3:

[bookworm]

There is always a price to pay for Freedom, Bi, just as there is always pain in growth. Kudos for your honesty, my best for what lies ahead. We are here for you.

[TicTac]

Bi-ten, you are doing the right thing by being honest, never forget that.

I'm nervous to say this after everyone's responses, although I'm going to anyway because this is simply too important for me to say nothing... but is there any chance you're giving up too soon, or even drawing this particular negative reality toward yourself by believing it can't be different?

I really hope I'm not getting this all wrong... but something tells me that this is all very recent, and happening day-to-day within the last few days. Don't accept this is how your relationship with your wife is going to end. Give her time... you have just rocked her world!

Just constantly, without any hesitation, confirm your love for her. That's all you can do right now while she digests this new truth.

But it's something.

I'm in a similar situation to you. I also have recently come out to my wife. And it's been rocky... and we've got a long way to go... but I have not just come out to her about my bisexuality, I have opened myself up to her COMPLETELY, and made DAMN sure to include how much I love her, and want her in my life and how important she is to me, and hope that somehow, sometime, she will be able to look at me and not find me 'wrong', or 'unacceptable'.

I have made it clear to her that it is out of my love for her, that I wanted her to know everything about me. I want no secrets between us because it subtracts from what we might achieve in love.

I hope you see what I'm saying. I might be luckier than you (and I really hope this is not the case) because we are still together and actually growing stronger day by day. If we get thru this 'rough patch', I don't believe there will be anything that can destroy what we have. But you cannot know until you give it time and space to heal, which is growth, as so many have said in this thread. But don't leave it to luck. Make it happen! Believe it and you will make it so.

You will not be able to resolve this and gain her acceptance, approval or even understanding in this short a time. This could take months to work through, even more. It is going to take every ounce of your patience and love. But if you mean what you say about her... you have got to try!

It is possible. Small steps at a time.

Either way... I am so glad you came to this place. The people here not only understand, accept and have similar experiences to share... there are some really nice folks in here too. No matter how this goes, you will always have support and friendship here. In my particular case... this network has been more valuable to me than I know how to express sometimes.

Ciao & hugs
TicTac

[moongirl]

Ditto to the above and I hope the door can stay open between you and your wife, so there's room for her to change her position if she's ready to. So hard to make that choice between hiding who you are to protect others, and being honest. But then, what's the relationship if your life partner doesn't know who you really are? Hope your relationship with your kids can stay intact. thruout all this.

Moongirl.

[clubmanrob]

Bi-ten,

You are indeed an Honest and Decent guy... I told my long term partner of my Bisexuality and that ended the relationship forth with.

Its not always easy for someone to accept it when you drop a bombshell like that...However me and my ex have stayed in touch and are good friends, although at times she likes to make little digs about my own bisexuality.

I am also alone and have been searching for over a year for a bisexual woman so that i can re-enter into a more open relationship, with understanding but have not been lucky so far...So i also suffer extreme loneliness, but i live in hope.

I feel that i definately made the right decision, as to do anything else is not being honest and true to yourself..

All the best

ClubmanRob

[csrakate]

I know I said in my earlier post that I didn't have any advice for you and just wanted to wish you well, but after reading some of the other posts and after giving it some more thought, perhaps I could at least give you some perspective from the "other side". Of course, I still wish you well and hope that you can stay strong, but as some of the others have said, this may only be a temporary setback and that perhaps you and your wife might just need a little time to sort things out.

As for the view from the "other side", I have been married for 25 years to a bisexual man. In order for him to feel as though he was being totally honest and open with me, he decided to tell me about his bisexuality the night that he proposed. He told me that while he would always consider himself bisexual, he loved me and was commmitted to remaining faithful to me. I could tell that it was difficult for him and it hurt me to see the fear and pain in his eyes as he told me. Well, of course I told him that it didn't matter. I was in love with him and I was filled with a mixture of excitement after finally getting a proposal after six years of dating and fear of the unknown as to what his admission really meant to us, to me and to our future.

I put this in the back of my mind and concentrated on finishing my senior year of college and planning a wedding all within a six month time period. There wasn't enough time to worry about it and as a typical southerner, I just decided that I would "think about it tomorrow". Tomorrow finally arrived once the excitement died down and we settled into being married. It all started when I ran across a magazine full of naked men in various poses and positions and being rather naive, I can admit that I had never seen anything quite like it before. The fear started to set in when I realized that perhaps I might not be able to make him happy....that despite loving me, he would need to actually experience sex with men on a regular basis. And as much as I hate to admit it, I would occasionally throw this in his face whenever the insecurity became too much for me to keep to myself. All I managed to accomplish was making him feel hurt for not trusting him and shame for having been so open and honest with me. To make an already long story short, after many years and a lot of talking and being totally open and honest with our feelings, I finally came to see that being bisexual didn't make him love or desire me any less. It was just a part of him that he couldn't deny and had he not told me the truth, then part of our marriage would be a lie.

Of course, things are somewhat different for us than they are for you since my husband has chosen not to pursue sex outside of our marriage, and before anyone calls me a blind Pollyanna, you should also know that in time we began to incorporate certain things such as sharing fantasies and role playing into our sex life. Doing so fulfilled certain desires for him and also opened the door to my becoming much more aware of my own sexuality. I have to say that after 25 years, our sex life is better than ever and much more adverturesome and mutually satisfying than it was when we were younger.

What I am trying to share with you, and I apologize for taking so long to get to the crux of the matter, is that your disclosure feels frightening to your wife right now. It is new, it is different and it is a threat to her feelings of security within the marriage. And why shouldn't it? After all, right now she is probably feeling deceived, mislead and quite honestly, just plain hurt. It is very possible that by remembering your love for one another and your commitment to each other and your children, that the two of you may one day find a way for this marriage to be mutually satisfying, a way to continue your life together that fulfills the needs of you both. But you have got to be open, honest and willing to hear each other and willing to find a compromise. But I do urge you to both be honest with each other and just as importantly, yourselves.

Once again, I apologize for the long post and chapter one of my life story, but it was the only way I could fully explain the journey that we have been on. I wish the best for you and as strange as this concept might be, if you feel your wife may want to chat with someone who might understand how she feels, someone who might be able to shed a little light on the reality of her situation, please feel free to contact me. I would be more than happy to let her know that her world doesn't necessarily have to end at unhappy!

Take care!

Kate

[csrakate]

PS...I certainly didn't mean to imply that you do or intend to have sex outside of your marriage. I certainly have no way of knowing that and I'm sorry if it appears that I am assuming as much. It was just poorly worded! LOL!

[mike9753]

Hi Bi-ten:

I replied to you on the threat, "Coming out the hard way". But I thought what I said there has relevence. I am very sorry to hear of your pain, your wife's pain and most of all your children's pain. The end of a family/marriage, if that's what it turns out to be, is a great tradgedy.

However, let me ask if I heard correctly. What I heard is that you have discovered that you are bi-sexual. But there is more. You want to be promiscuious with men as well as your wife. You have discovered that you have sexual feelings for men and you are having a hard time controling these feeings - in fact you have acted on them. Your wife, as a woman does not completely satisfy your desire to experience sexual activity with a man, so you want to have sex with both your wife, if she'll let you, and a man, if you find the right one? Monogomy with your wife is not something that is acceptable to you anymore, right?

I can't help but wonder if your wife would have reacted the same way if you had shared with her your new realization that you are bi-sexual, but that you also loved her and were committed to a monogamous marriage? Perhaps you did do this, I don't know. I do think that there is a very important distinction between realizing you are bi-sexual and what you then actually do about it.

Does my summary sound harsh? Actually I tried to make it harsh, as a way of helping you make the distinction. I hope that it will help you decide exactly what it is that you really want.

The posts from well wishers and sympathetic readers about being true to yourself seem to suggest that it was better to be true to yourself, and be promiscuious, whatever the consequences to your marriage and to your children, than to live a lie. I would agree that living a lie will indirectly hurt not only you, but those around you as well. However, the damage to your kids, if you become bi-sexually promiscuious will no doubt, be worse.

I guess I am from the old school that adheres to the value of keeping commitments, especially when there are children invloved. That does not mean that we have to deny our bi-sexuality. What I am suggesting is that if you were to be true to your real self - come out to your family, but remain monogomous with your wife, you are growing and evolving but you are keeping the marriage commitment - a promise that you and your wife made together and that probably was the foundation on which you decided to have children. That's what you and she promised each other, right? Isn't that a vlaue you would want your kids to have as well?

Recently my son had a decision to make about his girl friend. I told him to make it with his heart AND with his head, but not with his penis. The life decisions we make with our genitals are usually great for 30 minutes or until orgasm, but awful as time goes on. Think of today, tomorrow, next year and when your kids are grown and you are a grandfather. Your future happiness is determined by what you do today in the significant relationships that mean so much to you. Coming out to your family, but maintaining commitments will be no picnic.

Sorry if waht I have said makes your choice more difficut.

No matter what you decide to do, it is very difficult.

Mike

[Bi-ten]

Wow,

First I want to thank you all again for your overwhelming support. Csrakate, your story is full of hope and I really, really appreciate it. Unfortunately I think that my wife would be less than accepting of your offer to chat right now, I think she needs a lot more time to come to terms with everything.

Mike, thank you too for your question and thoughts about monogamy...I realize that staying with her would mean committing to monogamy, or agreeing to an open relationship of some kind. I know now that I am capable of monogamy and would commit to that for the sake of my marriage.

I have discovered a lot about myself lately, including the fact that I am not cut out to live a double life. Lying and cheating, no matter how small eats away at my soul. I would rather not be married than to do that ever again. In fact, married or not...I will never do that again. I realize its just not who I want to be.

I also know that I need my partner to fully accept and love me for who I am...I am no longer willing or able to hide that from her. I believe that my supression of the truth (to myself and finally to her) has led to a loss of intimacy and true friendship, and it really upsets me. This situation is not fair for anyone, and it has to end.

So in a nutshell, I've discovered my sexuality, I have accepted it, and now I have to deal with it in a fair and honest manner. Its the only way for me.

Many hugs to you all,

[Bi-ten]

PS

I almost forgot to say thanks to Tic Tac and everyone else who has taken a little out of their day for me. I am really overwhelmed (but not suprized) by the kindness you have shown.

I really am in the right place.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.

[clandestine]

Ten, i feel for you, and pray that things work out, especailly with the children.

as kate said time is an important element, i think i will be having the same talk with my wife soon, i do want to lead a bisecuxual life, but as kate and i discussed, i do not want to hurt her, but like you, i think the time is coming soon where i have to let her know that i want to try things with men.

I will pray for you, i truely understand and fear what you are experienceing, and hope it works out for both of us, especially for you!

[mike9753]

Bi-ten:
Don't be a stranger. This is a community of people who will listen, offer support, warmth, some humor at times and who have struggled with similar questions.
Mike

[twosides]

Oh Bi-ten. I really empathize with you. Reading the posts here, and in similar other threads, causes me discomfort in knowing that you now have this uphill struggle to face. A battle of philosophy in a way with someone who is dealing with a limited, if not non-existent understanding of where your head is at. My former girlfriend was similar in some of her views of some of my lifestyle choices. (Not the sexual identity choices, though. I wasn't there yet when we were together.) But it led me to understand a lot more about who she was. And when I was trying to "share" my views with her, her closed mind offered no point where I could get a foothold to start a real conversation with her.

I too, pray for your strength, your resolve, to honestly deal with the situation at hand. It sounds like you're willing to give up expressing a side of yourself to maintain an established, long running relationship. I applaud you for this, and I pray that your wife's heart is open and accepting, and that she will reach out to you and accept you for who you are. I hope that she reaches halfway across the gap to meet you there. If not, I pray for your resilience to make it to her side and be able to show her that it is she who you love and are committed to. If she doesn't even after that, then it's her loss of someone who loves her enough to put aside an important aspect of his life.

A positive note that I read in your latest post was that you have discovered something important about yourself. Understanding of one's self often comes with a great price. Not always, but it seems that in my life, I've had to give up something in order to gain more. Most of the time it wasn't a conscious decision to give it up, but when I allowed the loss to be part of my life experience, and accepted it, I discovered something else about me that allowed me to see how I have grown from a previous time.

All my best to you and your wife. Know that you are loved here, we will accept you and comfort you as you need. Fight for what you need most. Don't give up. There's a lot of living yet to do.

[csrakate]

Bi-Ten
All any of us wants for you is for you to be happy and to be happy with a minimal amount of hurt to those involved. If being true to yourself means ending your marriage, then you are probably doing you and your wife a favor. It certainly wouldn't be fair to her if you continued to live a double life, no more than it would be fair to you.

And if your story could have any positive effect on others, I would hope that they would realize that if you have doubts about your sexuality before marriage, it is imperative to address that issue before taking another step towards a marital commitment. It would save a lot of people a lot of pain.

Best of luck to you and remember that you have an entire community of people here who are available to you in the event that you need further support.

Kate

[bigregory]

I send a hug and a kiss.
Im into being honest with my wife Re. bi stuff...
It worked for me . Im sorry that it did not for you.
:grouphug:
greg