We met years ago. For a long time we were just friends: we talked, both of us were just interested in each other’s lives. We knew that eventually, sex could be part of our friendship, but nothing was forced upon. Four a couple of years we lost contact and since about a year we started to see again. Sex started to be an intense part of our meetings. Slowly, I felt a liberation from my fears. He is a well endowed man and in my mindset, penetration was something I didn’t want to do. Too painful, but the real reason was that I felt completely vulnerable if penetrated. What “if” this was another touch and go experience? I didn’t want to trust just for nothing. We are both versatile and with an extreme care, he started to make me abandon my fears. Slowly, carefully, thinking in my pleasure and not only his. I surrendered completely. But not only. He made me trust back in my own ability to hold and erection to penetrate him. It was my fear not to be able to, for a number of physical and psychological reasons (they usually come in pairs). With him, I have experienced such a joy, such a profound liberation, such a complete feeling of masculinity I can hardly believe it existed. I have cried my guts with him. We have both grown as men, we both love each other. And we don’t demand anything but respect and sincerity. Just that. He accepts me with all I am and all I have. We are dearest friends, partners. We are not and don’t want to be a couple. I have built my life as a married man. It is my choice and I don’t owe any explanation to anybody. At the same time, I do deserve to be happy with all I am and with all my feelings. I am the happiest man on Earth. Andreas
I have a JO buddy and I love it. We are very special friends and respect each other’s walk of life (he is gay). I used to look for JOB in the parks, but this is long ago. I tried to “escape” the feelings of wanting to be with another man doing it in an open space, with somebody I hardly could see his face. Now I do it with a man I feel a deep respect, with whom I can be naked in his bed and create a profound connection with. And most important: with somebody I can meet over and over again because I’m no longer afraid of my feelings. I do deserve respect to myself, I do deserve listening to my soul and not run away from my male’s nature. Because we are beautiful creatures, capable of intense connection with another male. It is a gift from Nature, maybe one of the most treasured ones. – I’m a married man in my 50’s
Dear All,
I have written a fair bit about myself and my journey on this site so I won’t repeat myself (too much) here. I want to thank all of you again, especially Seb, for giving me a place to gaze at, contemplate, lust after and interrogate men of all sizes, shapes, ages and experiences, all of whom are beautiful and sexy in more ways than I thought possible before discovering this site.Those of us who have have shared our sexual and family lives with both women and men have managed to do this in different ways. My sex life with men is what I would call an “open secret,” in the mode that is adopted in many societies around the world where especially men, but also women, often have multiple relationships, be they brief or long-standing, next to marriages where children are born and raised, hopefully in the loving and stable environments they need for successful development into adulthood. In all possible cases of how “other” relationships next to marriages are handled, the key question, to gage success or failure, is: Are you and all those you love happier than would be the case if monogamy or having to choose just one sexual preference was being strictly enforced and observed ? For Andreas and BoB the answer is unequivocally “YES!” Andreas writes: “I do not have to find the ‘right equation’. I just found myself.” BoB raises a glass “To life” in all its wonderful, bi-sexual variety and complexity. I will claim to be as fulfilled, finally, in the way I live my “open secret” of a life as they are in leading theirs, however they would characterise their “equations.” But as JoE makes clear, there is no single, magic formula for how to “balance” all your relationships or feel that “you” are always the same “you” in all of them. I hear you, JoE! I confess that, in my case, I like leading the “secret life;” something about the intrigue and complexity of it appeals to me. And I don’t feel guilty about it either, maybe because I’m a secretive, self-serving little shit, but in part also because my wife knows the secret. And I don’t care how many others know it as well. The success of my current marriage (I’ve been married twice before, not successfully) has never been based on sex, in any case, which was wonderful when it was and has now subsided, but on our long history of mutual support in small ways and big, on sharing our love of our children, on our travels and adventures together through the world, on growing old together (she’s much younger than I am), and on my wife’s love and tolerance of me being myself. Maybe this sounds terrible to say, but “coming out of the closet” so that I can wear the right “label” in the eyes of society, so that everyone can know exactly “who I am” and claim me as a member of their “community,” is not what I think is important. What is, as Andreas seems to agree, is finally, after a long personal journey of my own, which others have had to share with me, like or not, I have found myself and am happily just who I am, in ALL of my relationships, which is as good for all of them as it is for me.
PS Just a short footnote. It occurs to me — I’m slow, I know, it’s so obvious — that one, if not the main reason why my first two marriages failed was that, although I always, knew I wanted, needed to have sex with men, I never did until I was married for the third time. In my case, the success of my third “str8” marriage is based on actively having sex with men on the side, in both short- and long-term relationships. The question of “openness” about my “bi-sexuality” (see my “Fuck the Labels” post for reasons why I don’t think this “label” even applies to me to begin with) is irrelevant. I make this comment because some of you have agonised over the issue of being open or not with your wives about your relationships with men. I just don’t think “openness” is fundamentally relevant, frankly, to the success of any of your relationships. If you’re a happy human, deeply fulfilled as a man in every sense, even if you are leading “a secret life,” then everyone around you benefits.
AAAAMEN,,, spot on.
Yes I relate to the emotions. Being s cancer sign my emotions play many parts of my all day long. Even when I was younger I could not go to the sex clubs and just have all night sex with random people. I need to touch and be kissed, loved held afterwards. For me it’s all about that. I have been with some married men it was wonderful we even talked afterwards. But I felt you are married it got me somewhat altered but then I thought he needs to be touched as well. Maybe they have kids and it all that or maybe she does not even want to be touched by him really. Or maybe I don’t know sometimes it gets complicated. I really want love and one person. So I save my self for the right one.
I still have not found the man I want to settle down with. For now it’s better taking it where ever and when ever I can. Im really not looking a nice guy but a brute that only wants a pathetic cocksucker like myself to drain his balls
Dear Andreas,
I love your story of finding a partner that fulfills you and lets you enjoy all the aspects of your masculinity.
I have many similarities to your experience, but I cannot figure out how to balance the relationship with my wife of thirty-something years, and the handful of out gay men I have formed relationships with. I can’t, of course, share any of my male relationships with my wife, or my facade of being a 100% heterosexual monogamous man would crumble- and I, like you, do not want the truth to be told.
And while the gay men who have taken me to their home, their bed and sometimes their heart seem to be fine with me being married, I cannot complain of my marital frustrations or speak of my married life with them because a) I feel that I am betraying my wife in a way that is far worse than sharing my body with another man, and b) if I blend my two personas, the internal conflict renders me impotent.
On top of all this, I leave these men feeling ashamed of myself because they made a brave choice to live their lives honestly, back in a time when it meant ostracism from your family and friends. And I…well I feel like a coward.
So this is the reason that a blow job from a stranger in a park or a video booth or maybe their apartment, is my most sought after form if relief from my unfulfilled masculinity. I wish I could be more like you.
Hi Joe. Thanks for sharing your feelings.
What I appreciate the most of this blog is its ability to open up inner spaces of our masculinity, and put into light our complete selves.
Some time ago I searched on internet “married men with gay lovers”. To my surprise, the most I could get was we are “invisible”. Scholars don’t know about us because socially, we don’t exist. And worst of all, we do not exist to ourselves.
I used to believe I had a “second life” a kind of hidden self, apart of my “real” persona. That caused me a profound misconception of who I am, of what being a man really is.
I’m not a bad person, I love my wife, my daughters, my grandson. My wife is the love of my life… but… what about my feelings towards men.
For me, it didn’t make sense, until I found this site and started learning that many men feel the same. Are we all nuts or is it that we are all men exploring and living our masculinity from a different and maybe broader perspective?
I hooked up with several men, but since some years, I have met a couple of friends with whom i
Have created long-lasting relationships.
We have grown together, and we have discovered that masculinity is beautiful and complex. It is full of affection and emotions, towards our families (if we choose to raise one) and towards another male.
We are not “split” in two, but a complete and unique male being.
I stopped to feel awkward, I stopped to feel guilty, I stopped to refrain from love, sex, tenderness, emotions, affections. My life bloomed, I laugh from my guts and cry from my soul. I embraced myself, my wife, the whole world of affections I have built through.
I do not try to find the “right equation”. I just found myself.
Andreas – You are correct. For me also, the joy of being more complete, more enlarged in personality and joyful in life is an important bi-product of embracing my love of sex with men as well as women. It has surprised me how different they are, but oh, how complementary the experience. And it was Seb’s site that helped me see that. We are complex creatures, but we are born to be ourselves and not diminish that personality. I feel richer for my man-sex and thankful for my loving wife. I have my complaints, and I wonder what happens when those worlds collide. But that too will be an enhancement of experience and a journey of discovery. To life.