My Heterosexuality Couldn’t Hold
January 20, 2022
In my previous post, "Bisexuality vs. Straight faking," I said that, "ultimately for me, the strength of my heterosexual side couldn't hold. I eventually became overwhelmed with the need to be with a man." Here's the background for that statement.
I was bisexual through most of my life. My crushes during elementary through high school were all on girls. My homosexual interests developed pretty slowly beginning in high school with sexualized attractions to male bodies. I didn't come to full awareness of my bisexual orientation until I was 23 and I married my wife soon after that.
The nature of my orientation over the succeeding 34 years is a very long story but it can be roughly summed up in one word: flexible. I experienced both the homosexual and heterosexual sides of my nature with the center of gravity shifting back and forth over time. I experienced a marked increase in heterosexuality after about a decade in my mixed-orientation marriage, which continued to gradually increase for about 2 more decades. At the same time, I sometimes experienced strong homosexual desires and had one intense year-long romantic relationship with a man.
The last years of my marriage is another very long story. But it can also be summed up in one word: incompatibility. Our personalities had changed in significant ways leaving us at odds with each other. But more importantly, I believe we had given each other so many wounds over the course of our marriage that we became unable to find a way beyond them. I sense that ultimately, my orientation was the root of it all.
I will not judge all mixed-orientation marriages, but I say without equivocation that for us, and many couples I knew as a therapist, they are a source of deep and unhealing wounds. I simply could not be what she needed me to be. She and I have cried many tears for that.
Our wounds created resentment and defensiveness. Anger and bitterness followed. Things were done and said that left me in a state of substantial trauma. I can only imagine how painful it was for her. God, I feel so much anguish and grief about those final months!
During that time in the crucible, I felt my flexibility and heterosexuality drain out of me. I became a solid 6 on the Kinsey scale. My wife, and women in general, became objects of fear and loathing. The last time she and I had sex, I felt afterwards like I had done something very, very wrong.
She and I had been a model mixed-orientation marriage. We had made it work quite effectively; we weren't faking it. But as I said, ultimately the strength of my heterosexual side couldn't hold. I'm pretty sure, looking back, that my natural orientation was always bisexual-leaning-gay. But sexuality was somewhat malleable for me, and my religion and culture demanded straightness. So, she and I parlayed my thimble-full of heterosexuality into a thirty-four year straight marriage. We both paid an extremely high cost for it. And now that I'm in a relationship with a man, it is abundantly clear that this is what I was made for.