Does it get better for gay and married men?

Abe asked a really interesting question...for gay and married men does it get better?

Here is my response,

Short answer: I think for most yes it does to a certain point.

For me, I made extremely slow progress when I was very closeted then rapid progress when I first came out then that tapered off until I was making little or no progress at all.

And I have been in that place of little or no progress for years.

What I have now is a sense of peace within myself. I know who I am.

That differs greatly from the conflict and confusion that reigned supreme prior to my coming out.

Where it has gotten better is that my internal world is OK now and some improvement has been made synching up my internal and external worlds.

I have partially succeeded in synching both worlds because the people most important to me know the real me and accept me as I am so I no longer care who knows.

The only exceptions are my wife's family who I have not come out to out of respect for my wife's wishes. Fortunately, my wife's family live out State.

That freedom from fear allowed me to openly and honestly interact with most of the world.

Then I learned the vast majority of straight people accept me just as I am or could care less what my sexuality is.

This caused me to change my focus to the many that accept me instead of the tiny minority that would do me harm.

This change in focus has had a dramatic affect on my life.

I now feel safe almost all the time except for the rare occasions when it makes sense to feel unsafe.

I never realized how unsafe I had felt before.

So it has much gotten better because I now feel comfortable in my skin and for the most part feel welcome by the outside world.

Where has it not gotten better?

Well, in my sexual relationship or, as I like to put it, in my primary affectional relationship.

I didn't know for years but I know now that I have a much greater capacity for intimacy with a man than with my wife.

There are discrepancies in our marriage caused by my limited ability to relate to her.

There is nothing wrong but there is something missing from our relationship. Something vital.

But, since I have never been in a relationship with a man, I have never experienced what that something or something(s) is.

Yet my limited experience with men and my intuition tells me clearly there is something.

So what to do?

I cannot make progress in a vacuum.

To make further progress would require having some kind of relationship with another man and I know my wife well enough to know the marriage would not survive.

So I have come to the conclusion that I have reached the point of diminishing returns unless I am willing to end my marriage.

Yet I haven't been able to accept this conclusion so for years I have been spinning my wheels trying to make things better while staying within the status quo.

I guess you could say making things better has long been my gay obsession.

Which was OK as long I was making progress but now that obession seems almost counter-productive.

The sensible thing to do if I am to stay married is to focus my energies elsewhere where there is at least some opportunity for progress.

And that means changing my focus from making things better in my gay universe to accepting what I have and instead focusing on other areas that my gay obsession has caused me to neglect in the past.

Makes sense right?

As always there is something I forgot to mention...

I am talking as an older man (57 years old).

One more reason I can be as OK as I am with being gay celibate is that my sex drive is no longer driving me crazy.

But now that that primordial need is receding more and more into the background, other intimacy needs that were there all along are coming into ever sharper focus.

Kind of ironic considering for so long I thought it was just about sex when it was always so much greater than that.