Gay curious man who is happily married
Posted on by Dr. Stacy Friedman

Dr. Stacy, I’m Happily Married With Children But Am I Gay?

This week Dr. Stacy Friedman a clinical sexologist and certified sex coach has partnered up with the sexual wellness store Adultsmart to answer some of your deepest and most intimate anonymous questions which were emailed in to askasexologist@gmail.com.

Question

I have been married over 30 years and I am a 58 year old male. My upbringing was staunch catholic and prior to meeting my wife I had 3 very clumsy sexual encounters with girls. Growing up I was always more comfortable around boys, particularly my best friend (I will call him Ray) whom I had feeling for but never acted on them. After I got married, we had kids.  I was happy with my wife’s companionship but always used to dream what it would have been like to be with Ray. Our kids have now grown up and we are empty nesters now but I feel there is something missing – I find myself looking more at other men and wondering what it would be like to have a relationship with another man. I have told no one but my wife knows there is something wrong and troubling me. I feel guilty and wonder whether my whole life has been led as a lie. Am I gay? Should I act on my desires and find out?

Dr. Stacy Friedman’s Answer

This kind of soul searching and defining your orientation cannot be completely answered by responding to one question but I can say this… Having an affair and acting on your desires to find out how you feel about being with men can have damaging affects on your current relationship and may not be the best action to take.  I do understand that since you haven’t been with a man before you may want to act on it to see if it is something that you are truly interested in so it is a tricky situation to be in.

Many times having a religious upbringing can keep people from truly being able to explore their sexuality as they grow up for fear of judgment or what your religious beliefs may tell you but the fact that you have always had a feeling for your friend Ray, may shed some light as to who you prefer and have truly desired to spend your intimate and emotional time with.  Being gay isn’t just being physically attracted to someone of the same sex but can involve being with someone that you truly want to connect and be close to on an emotional level.  Sexuality is fluid so you can be attracted to both men and women but desire a relationship with just one gender.

Man who is sexually fluid
Image: Sexually Fluid

As you get older you start to blossom into who you are meant to be because you have lived your life as to what society has told you is acceptable and you get to a stage where you just want to be happy.  I am sure you love your wife but you should never feel guilty for something that you are not doing on purpose.  It is not your “fault” who you are attracted to or desire to be with and being attracted or interested in another man may just be who you are and what your needs are.  Don’t look back at your life as being a lie because you may not have known the full truth until now.

I can’t answer the question “Are you gay?“, as that is something that only you can truly know.  I can say that you may want to discuss this with your wife if you feel you have an open line of communication and express your concern. You can mention this to her since she already knows something is troubling you and maybe you can work this out together to do what is right for the both of you.  Don’t forget if you feel that you have been living your life as a lie and feel that you desire to be in a relationship with a man or unsure where you stand with your wife, it is only fair to her to let her know how you feel or to allow her to be with someone who truly wants to be there with her.  If you need extra coaching or counseling through your soul searching, please let me know if you would like to have a phone or video session so I can help guide you through your discovery.

Best wishes,

Dr. Stacy

Would You Like To Ask Dr. Stacy Friedman Your Own Question?

If you have an sexual lifestyle, wellness and health issue or question that you have always wanted to know about be sure to send through an anonymous email to askasexologist@gmail.com. Dr. Stacy Friedman may answer your question in an article that will be published anonymously on Adultsmart’s Blog!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. View more
Cookies settings
Accept
Decline
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookies list
Cookie name Active

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
Save settings
Cookies settings