To want to marry a man even though I am gay

[strawberryplants]

I just want to be normal so much.

Bisexuality is being sexually attracted to people of both sexes.

Wanting to suppress your true desires and pick the well-trodden lifepath that looks easier to navigate, in order to fit in with everyone else? That's being human.

OP, I'm not gay, but I do know what it is to not fit in due to disability and what you might call a different cultural background. Feeling like an outsider and not being sure how to proceed as yourself is really horrible. I literally lie about myself everyday- I act my heart out to simulate not having the disability every day that's possible, regardless of the personal toll it takes on me. I fake having the cultural references and experiences others do every day because I don't want to discuss why I don't. It's all shite. Frankly, I can empathise with the place you're in.

So, from one liar to one considering it... don't take it up. It's bad enough doing what I do at work and at social occasions. At least I don't have to do it at home. You wouldn't have anywhere to take the mask off.

P.S. to everyone else: yes, I know that what the OP's asking is unreasonable. But saying that it's unreasonable and you should only marry someone you love is a very modern thing, isn't it?

How many gay and straight women have been married off by their families and told to 'lie back and think of England', eh?

The joy of the internet is that you can converse with any manner of literate bigot at any hour of the day or night, and so I know there are still plenty of people out there who think it is gay men and women's obligation to fake being straight and have children for their parents' sake. To say nothing of the people who think that if you just try hard enough, you can change your sexuality.

This is still the environment we live in. It's getting better, no doubt about that, but I think the OP can be forgiven a wobble like this thread. She's not killed anyone. She's not even embarked on a relationship.

Someone upthread made what I thought was a great idea. Do what many single people do - join clubs, start new activities. Being busy, doing something fun or rewarding is a good salve for loneliness. You may meet someone like minded if you are doing something you enjoy too.
Coming to terms with your sexuality can't be easy. Do it in your own time.

I’ve just started the opposite thread in another section of MN. I’m married with children and, although I love dh, in my heart I’ve always known I’m not straight. My heart hurts and it’s getting worse as I get older. My advice would be to talk to someone now, find people you can trust and learn to love yourself for who you truly are

I want to have a relationship with someone who loves me. I want to be loved. I crave intimacy. I’ve never really had sex because I’m not really attracted to men but can’t meet a woman because it’s taken me years to admit this to myself and now I’m not sure where to start. Do you know how that feels

What I will tell you from experience is that the loneliness you feel when you're with the wrong person is worse than the loneliness you feel alone. When you have been single for a long time it's easy to despair that it will always be this way and tempting to settle but don't. It will destroy you emotionally and it's a long road to come back from.

I hope you don't give up and I hope that it all works out for you in the end. If you're getting fed up of looking then stop for a while. Focus on yourself, find a new hobby or many hobbies, get out there and look for other things that make you happy and you'll meet many people with similar interests and may get lucky.

Thanks. OLD isn’t something I’ve had any joy with and I can’t see that changing tbh.

I'm gay, in a decade long relationship with a woman and our lives are far more 'conventional' than a lot of straight people we know. We have 2 kids together that I gave birth to, a house, a car and a load of local parent friends. It's entirely possible!

strawberryplants Wed 27-Jun-18 07:52:03
Sorry bear but that’s rubbish.

What was it in Bear's post that was rubbish?

The fact that you can't just use someone else no matter how valid you feel your needs are?
The idea that your child/ren and their father would end up feeling a lot worse than you do?
The idea that mot people have been lonely?
The fact that what you are contemplating wrecks lives?

I have been on the receiving end of the stunt you are discussing here. I honestly don't understand how you could possibly consider it, and especially how you could consider dragging children into it.

Other people are real human beings, with real feelings and real needs.

God, I have the opposite problem.

I am straight but I just feel so resentful of men, all the time. With their privilege and their rampaging sense of entitlement to everything.

I'd love to have a partner to share life with. I'd love it to be a woman but I don't fancy women even a tiny bit. I know I'm unreasonable as it's so much easier to be straight, I don't know how lucky I am etc.

strawberryplants Wed 27-Jun-18 07:14:13
Excuse me, I am not fucking up anybodys life.

I just want to be normal. I want to have a relationship with someone who loves me. I want to be loved. I crave intimacy. I’ve never really had sex because I’m not really attracted to men but can’t meet a woman because it’s taken me years to admit this to myself and now I’m not sure where to start. Do you know how that feels

The only life that’s ruined is mine yet unsurprisingly many people have focused on the hypoethical straight man as the one worthy of pity and not the one who is so lonely she could weep.

I really have to respond to this.
I am speaking as someone who has wept many times from loneliness while married to a gay man, and who has wept many times after divorce from that man - for myself but above all for my children.

As to your anger at people's sympathy for the hypothetical straight man - if you were to marry and then find a woman you loved, and leave your husband for her, guess who would get all the sympathy? Guess who would feel isolated, and afraid of reaching out to just vent?
Hint - not your straight husband.
How do I know this?

A lot of people wouldn't want to believe that a gay person could be capable of cruelty, deceit, selfishness, or any other negative trait. They would not accord gay people the same complete humanity that they would assume a straight person would have.

Nobody owes you a 'normal' life.
No man owes you the unwitting sacrifice of their dreams.
No child who did not ask to be born owes you the sacrifice of a secure life with parents who truly, madly, deeply love each other despite all the ups and downs that come with marriage and family life.

You absolutely would fuck up someone's life if you were to enter into a relationship with the aim of using them as a sperm donor, a beard, the provider of the proverbial white picket fence. Other people are not out on this earth to fill your needs. The need-filling of marriage is supposed to be mutual.

Your life is not ruined. You have more on your plate than many people, but less than many others. You do not have a monopoly on loneliness, on sadness, on wanting a child but fearing you will never be able to make that happen, on being dealt a hand that does not look promising.

You come across as very angry, and maybe also self-hating.

I really, really urge you to find counselling that will focus on helping you embrace your sexual orientation and living your life with integrity as a gay human being.

Guess who would feel isolated, and afraid of reaching out to just vent?
Hint - not your straight husband when it comes to sympathy.
Hint - yes your straight husband when it comes to being isolated.

@mathanxiety

Bloody well said and

www.amazon.com/Unseen-Unheard-Straight-Amity-Pierce-Buxton/dp/0985424435?tag=mumsnetforum-21#customerReviews

I strongly urge you to get past your own pain and consider the pain of others, and acknowledge the pain you are considering inflicting on some man and maybe a child or children who don't deserve it.

And wrt the anger you feel that straight spouses are getting a lot of sympathy, here are a few lines from one of the reviews:

Society welcomes men coming out of the closet with open arms, their are marches on washington for being gay. Their are support groups and even your own children, who have gay friends, want to be supportive. After all he was not living an authentic life. I get so tired of hearing about an authentic life. What about my life that I could have been in a relationship with a man who wanted me?..

... I use to say when they come out of the closet, we go into the closet. Not exactly a subject you feel comfortable discussing.

[sic]

Not so very long ago this type of convenience marriage amongst a gay and straight person was very common as being gay just wasn't accepted.
I mean don't get me wrong being gay isn't entirely accepted now. I watched the play of Martyn Hett life recently and he was beaten for being openly gay in the 2000s in UK cities.

This doesn't mean marrying a man when you are gay and fancy women is the right thing to do. At best you leave as friends, at worse the ex and children have their world torn apart.

I do agree that you sound like you need some counselling.
I'm an asexual Mum of a gay teenager so do understand.

You would be so unhappy and so would he. Being gay is not unnatural. You are perfectly formed to be you.

and I am bisexual. I have felt the pain of loving someone you feel you cannot tell people about.

I am honest now as it made me miserable. I am me. No one else is me.

My cousin is homosexual, she seemed so shy to everyone but me for so long. When she came out we cheered. She was so brave and now is becoming the woman only I knew she was.

She is planning sperm donation btw, one for both of them, preferably the same. A family.

julietjeskeblog.com/2012/05/on-being-a-straight-spouse-broken-memories/

And here is more on the straight spouse experience, in a very well written blog:

I was then faced with the harsh realization that on some level my entire marriage was a fraud. The depths of deep sorrow are hard to describe really, and the confusion of others towards me never really ends. Many cannot contemplate how insidious the wound of being a straight spouse, cuts right through a person. Meaning well they will flippantly try to reassure me with lines such as…

"Well at least he didn’t cheat on you with a woman"

All I can think is, well if he cheated on me with a woman at least I could understand that. Infidelity is common in many marriages and some even survive the trauma. If he had cheated on me with a woman we might still be together. Depending on the specific circumstances I might have been able to forgive him and move on. Marriage is a lifetime commitment and a lifetime leaves plenty of chances to make some fairly big mistakes. As it stands I have to live with the knowledge that he never really wanted me. That realization is horrifically painful.

"You know he really loved you, he couldn’t help he was gay"

I guess but, if he really loved me he wouldn’t have used me in this way. He knew what he was doing to me, he knew his was keeping secrets, he knew he was lying. I don’t quite understand the concept of “The Closet” as he has admitted he has known since he was a child, and then in the same breath tried to reconcile his relationship with me. So which was it? I can’t help but think he was just suppressing what he knew was there all along and I was his collateral damage. And what damage, nine years of a life, years of sacrifice and compromise, and romance that wasn’t real.

The suicide rate for straight spouses is three times higher than those in a traditional divorce. A straight spouse has to deal with a lot: damaged sexuality, loss of trust, social stigma, and wounded self-esteem. To make matters worse, a straight spouse cannot even look back to happier memories, as even they become tainted. My happy memories, broken like crumpled photographs that cannot be flattened properly no matter what method I try. As if the photographic images have scratches ground into them permanently across smiling faces. The first time I met my ex, our first kiss, and of course my entire nine years of sex with a man who didn’t really want to be there. Our first apartment, our first Christmas, every memory is now clouded and defamed. And I wonder what are these memories like to him? I can’t imagine and I don’t really care. My feelings for him have changed so much, he was once so important so central to my being and now he is just someone who knows me so well but I really never knew at all.

My entire wedding haunts me now, as one big farce. I had an absolutely beautiful ceremony, perfect weather, supportive families, and a wonderful, gorgeous celebration. I look back at it now and want to erase it from my brain. I am not angry anymore as I gave up on the anger a while ago. The rage was doing no more than grinding me down, so I released it. But I still feel a deep sadness that will flare up from time to time at times completely unexpectedly. I will find myself staring off thinking about one aspect of it, and others around me will comment that I look sad or lost. I don’t realize I am doing this, it is as if my mind just takes over for a few minutes and I sink back into the sorrow if only for a moment. And the trust issues are tantamount, I can’t fathom being married again, it is just so foreign a concept after what I went through.

And because nobody wants to be a homophobe, and also because nobody can really relate at all, on any level, you get, "What's bad is that he (or she) cheated. The gay bit doesn't matter, surely?"

Well yes, the gay thing does matter, because that is the part that makes every minute of the relationship a lie, a massive fraud, and the knowledge that you have been used nearly kills you.

A man facing the end of his marriage to you would additionally be faced with, "Whoooooarrrr. She likes women! HOT!!!!"

No, it's not hot.
It's just hell.

@mathanxiety your last post is exactly what happens every time. It’s all sympathy for the gay person, celebrating coming out. If a straight spouse had married a woman he never loved, never felt any attraction for, all the while obsessing over another woman, sleeping with her. But married the woman because the family wanted bringing kids into it he’d be slated. Look at how everyone ripped Charles apart. He at least presumably fancied Diana. Anyone who marries a straight person who is not straight/ bisexual (and honest from day one) is immoral. Nothing to do with being gay. Everything to do with being a liar, being self centred and using people like puppets in your own poorly written play.

Look, I’m not going to respond to this any more.

There’s no point at all.

What math and others don’t seem to get is that I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. I’ve denied my sexuality for years. I convinced myself I was straight. No relationships came. I think this must have been because I didn’t fancy anybody and so obviously they didn’t fancy me.

So I have been very lonely (and yes math I’m sorry for what you went through, but the thread isn’t about the trauma experienced by women who married gay men, I’m sorry, but it’s not.)

And now I am still insecure in my sexuality and still lonely and still not knowing what to do and the people who are saying well find a woman then, you don’t understand, you don’t get it.

I hate who and what I am.

I want to be normal but I am not.

I want a family and can’t have one.

And when I try desperately, anonymously, to reach out and talk about it some people react with horror and heartfelt sympathy for a man who doesn’t even exist

FGS.

Why do you feel you even need to get married? Its no one else business what your sexuality is really. Why set yourself up in a big lie when the end result may end up being the same 10 twenty years down the line ....sorry if i havent rtft yet but if you live in a place where homosexuality is not seen as 'normal' or even wrong - what are your options for moving elsewhere, or just finding support from lgb organisation

Just read your last post and some of the others - harsh....
We are what we are...we cant make ourselves something we are not, we can try to be better versions of ourselves. I am straight but i couldnt make myself lesbian, even though i actually prefer womens company to men...
You need to find some help in accepting who you are. ...it sounds like you have been living with this for a long time so it wont be easy...

I don’t really care about getting married, but I want a partner. I want love, sex, intimacy and companionship, and I want children and a family.

You need to find things to fill your life. I'm not going to say 'so you can meet someone' (although I have known people straight and gay to strike up long-term relationships with people they met pursuing the same hobby).

You should pursue interests because most of us all deserve a fulfilling, varied life, and until I hear you're serving a lengthy prison sentence, I will assume that includes you! You do not deserve to sit at home wanting to cry wih loneliness, so don't.

I know what you were put through @mathanxiety but that was serious overkill there.

OP doesnt have so much as a fate with a straight man. This thread is just her sorting out ideas and feelings in her head.

@blackteasplease 100% know what you mean!!