Mixed orientation marriage - lost and confused

My name is Scott and I am am 26 years old and I have been married for 4 years to my wife who is 25 years old. We have an almost 5 year old and almost 3 year old. Before we married she was aware of my entire past, the fact that I had been sexually abused, that I knew I was gay, and all the stuff I have done including that this first time I had sex I was 7 with a friend spending the night. So there is no doubt in my mind she didn't know what she was getting into. She is an ex-mormon and I would consider myself christian and I think she would to now, we go to a christian church on most Sundays. We had a great friendship and great time just talking for hours on the phone, texting for hours, and just enjoying spending time together be it off-roading my truck or watching a movie together. Our dating life was pretty damn great. Then we got married, got divorced (insurance reasons), had a kid, moved states, got remarried and bought a house. It seems like about 18 months after we got married, we just weren't as passionate or romantic with each other and I started having cravings that she could not fully satisfy even though we even did role-reversal during sex. I started looking at gay porn, and after about 6 months of looking at porn and still occasionally having sex with my wife, I started to desire more then just porn, more then just my wife so sometime in like October of 2013 I posted a craigslist add looking to meet up with a guy on my lunch break. I never actaully met up with any of the people that responded cause one didn't like any and two after posting I felt bad and removed it about 20 minutes later. Fast forward to April of 2014 one of her sisters who was i believe 19 at the time was out here for spring break and kept coming onto me and flirting with me. While my wife was out with the boys and my sister we stayed home cause I had work to do and the sister wasn't feeling well. While I was working the sister starts touching me and rubbing me and one thing led to another and we tried to have sex, but i couldn't stay aroused for her. That was a few weeks before our anniversary, a day after our anniversary the sister told my wife what had happened and apologized. Me and my wife talked about it and we discussed everything and after a week or 2 it died down a little bit after me explaining what happened and that I wouldn't do it again and I was sorry, of course she is still hurt by it and I don't blame her. Not fast forward to i think june or july of 2014, my wife is going through my phone and finds the emails from 2013 of the guys I was talking to and we get into a argument and asked me if I wanted men over her or if I wanted out of the relationship.. I told her no to both and that I loved her and that I never met with them and that it was stupid, it was because I had been looking at porn and I was having desires that I didn't follow through with. She I think somewhat didn't believe me, but overall she let it go. We started seeing a counselor that specialized in marriage counseling and had experience with homosexuality and MOMs. It went well at first and she helped me come terms with my abuse in the past and a lot of stuff, but then it turned quickly with her telling me she thinks we would be happier if we separated but stayed close friends and co-parented for the kids. This was after we had told her we wanted to stay together at the beginning of our first session and that we were here to find a way to make things work. Life goes on for the next year and we get a lot of it behind us, we had our good days and we had our bad days. I also had issues with ED so this causes issues with trying to have sex with her. There has been times where I stumble and look at porn again and have strong desires to get pleasure from someone behind her back. She is strongly strongly opposed to open marriages and said if thats what I want then we can get a divorce. Now we come to the present, last week my wife found some pictures of me, along with pictures of other guys. The pictures of me were supposed to be sent privately to my wife during times she was out of town, but I never sent them because she was out of town with her family and didn't want them to pop up while she was sitting next to them. The pictures of the other guys (2) were on my phone because I have been getting lots of spam from random people and some of them have pictures of men or women naked. We have had sex 3 times since then and 2 out of 3 times I have had issues with ED. I love my wife and I love my two little boys to death and don't want to hurt any of them, I want us to stay together as a family and I want to be able to make my wife happy in every way. Mentally, emotionally, physically. psychologically, you name it and I want to be the one to make her happy. She says she doesn't feel desired and that there is a lack of passion, but I am unsure of how to show her that I do desire her and that I am passionate about or marriage. She told me last night that she thinks or marriage is failing and the rate we are going we won't last. Truth be told I don't know if we will last either, me desires to be with a man that can satisfy me in ways that she can't due to no fault of her own. Just like I want her to be happy and be with a man that can desire her and satisfy her in ways only a straight man could, unfortunately I don't know if I can become that "straight" man. Thanks Scotty

Sorry, this woman married you and had kids with you even though she knew you're gay? Huge clue, Scoob ol' pal - HUGE. (Insurance for what?) "We started seeing a counselor that specialized in marriage counseling and had experience with homosexuality and MOMs. It went well at first and she helped me come terms with my abuse in the past and a lot of stuff, but then it turned quickly with her telling me she thinks we would be happier if we separated but stayed close friends and co-parented for the kids." I'm not surprised. Because happy is as happy *does* and you two - with mainly you being the one expressing it in the open - are not "doing" happy. Quite the opposite. So what you're REALLY both saying is this: that although this mutually safe/hidey-hole style relationship as poses as a front of total normality x 2 to the rest of the world isn't making you happy, it's preferable to facing the big bad world on your tods and doing what everyone else does PROPERLY. Fairenoughski...perfectly normal and natural reaction, but...well, if your 'safe place' isn't any longer doing it for either one of you (which must go for the little mini-me sponges as well) then surely you should at least both TRY taking off the stablizier wheels for a while? So, if actual, bona fide divorce feels like too big a bite (despite works well enough for her as a threat and deterrent against scaring her), why don't you just try a period of amicable separation and SEE whether you're all that much better off? If not, it's then perfectly easy and simple to go back to living together, but with new tweaks here and there as needed, is it not? Consider it a holiday, if that's what it takes. Having married so young, you're both not who you were any more. You can't hold back the tide (personal development). So even though you both might have THOUGHT you were in full-blown stasis, no you were not. You were meanwhile imperceptibly but steadily growing, developing and GAINING IN CONFIDENCE (not least because of each other working as an inadvertent tonic) thus re-sparked curiosity. Maybe you first, with her following after, but, believe you me, dissatisfaction with this now-redundant methodology would have manifested in her too, it being just a matter of TIME (when, not if). If you two don't at least try it, you're just going to keep making each other more and more miserable. Why do that to yourselves when it's neither of yours' fault per se nor remotely your intention? It's the SITUATION, the SET-UP that no longer fits and suits, and the PRODUCT of that which is hurting and just *feeling* like deliberate-ness and carelessness. Put it this way, try this simpler analogy: You two put on one pair of comfy, joint kids' shoes because your feet had been bound, Ancient Chinese-style. Meanwhile, against all assumption, your feet recovered and recommenced growing and changing shape. Said shared shoes are now getting more and more painful (*and* need a clean and polish). To counter this, you and she are both encroaching into each other's share of foot-space, which hurts and, with repetition, is bound to cause resentment and fights (because *someone* has to be responsible or else that means you're both out-of-control victims all over again, right?). What I'm recommending you do is take the damn things off, go barefoot for a while, see IF you prefer it, and, if not, examine the shoes to see how and where they can be stretched and customised (they can) so that you can together wear them comfortably again. (I mean, who DOES feel passionate when their feet are being painfully squished by ill-fitting shoes?! Don't make me laff!) You did, after all, ATTEMPT this course of action for said insurance scam, but obviously only got as far as an on-paper exercise. I know you THINK it was purely for insurance reasons but that was just your tacitly complicit cover story whereas the truth is, it was a TINY little step in this here recommended direction, you two tempting yourselves with sight of an exit door, albeit one you didn't follow at all through with. Try it, Sam-I-Ams, you might like it. If you DON'T prefer it, then this time knowing that for a FACT will make getting back into that old pair of now-stretched-and-roomier shoes all the more appreciable and pleasurable... because they'll now feature further room for both sets of feet to grow. I suggest 6 months, just living separately, having more room both physically and mentally to yourselves, NOT SEEING OR FLIRTING WITH ANYONE ELSE, NOTE, yet feeling free to visit daily and stay the odd night over. Make the experiment end date a firm one that you both write in Red on the wall calender ABOUT WHICH YOU INFORM YOUR FRIENDS AND RELATIVES so that neither of you ever experiences any panic and suspicion wobbles in terms of whether the other is secretly viewing it merely as a sneaky and cowardly exit route rather than a true plan committal for the right and productive reasons. Is that a not-rocket-science plan or is that a not-rocket-science plan? :-)

Thanks for the reply soulmate, Let me clear something up real quick. There was no insurance SCAM. We got married (eloped) and then my parents found out. I was 19 at the time and they had us get a divorce because me being married meant that I lost the medical insurance under my parents medical plan, being that I do extreme sports and have broken bones and needed stitches they thought it would be better to do the divorce and me be back on the insurance and then me and my wife/ex-wife live together for awhile and me be able to afford my own insurance before remarrying. Once I had a good job and almost done with college, that is what we did and so we remarried. Why would you be sorry that she married me even though she knew I was gay? We have had many good years and many many great memories, that I wouldn't change for the world, but like you said i am becoming more and more unhappy in the current situation, but I also know that even if I tried talking to her about doing a trial separation she would probably just want a divorce. I also don't want to upset my parents and my siblings, everyone loves my wife and I do love her, but I am not sexually attracted to her. Thanks Scotty

SUSIEDQQQ: I know she deserves the FULL commitment of man, but I am scared my kids are my everything and they are the main reason I have put this off for so long. I've know I was unhappy for 2+ years before I cheated on her, and was close to asking for separation because of how I felt but I thought about how the kids would miss me and how much I would miss the kids and how much pain I would cause her, I talked myself out if it, and I have many times, because I can't stand the thought of being a "weekend" dad or being an every other week dad, I want to be a full-time dad and nothing less. They are the most important thing in my life, I would do anything for my kids. I do think that a separation may be food but I don't even know how to approach the idea with her, I don't want to crush her completely, she already has self-esteem issues. as far as me having someone on this side.... I do not have anyone on the side, nor am I even thinking about a person that would fulfill my needs and desires. Thanks Scotty

Thanks for the clarification. It did sound like a scam, the vague way you put it, but I shouldn't have assumed (ass, you, me and all that). But as for my 'Sorry', that's just a British colloquism alternative for 'Did I hear you right?!'. What I meant was, a woman has to have her own agenda in order to willingly marry a man who's informed her he's exclusively/additionally into men. It could be that she didn't quite believe you and thought she could persuade you 'back' to heterosexuality, but I'm suspecting she has/had her own reasons for wanting a permanently safe port in a storm. There again, considering we modern-day beans aren't that black & white when it comes to agendas and motives, it could quite possibly have been a bit of both (plus other side-influences). So she's playing hard-ball, as in, marriage or nothing, is she? Are you saying she wouldn't believe you if you said your reason for wanting a break was out of a hope that it might improve things between you rather than to sidle out by first getting her semi-used to living alone? Is she scared of living alone for any reason you know of? Or is it simply because it's a scary "great unknown" what with her having gone straight from home to marriage thus never having experienced a single life? Does she not comprehend that unless remedial or pressure-relieving steps are taken whilst they still can be, it's pretty inevitable that you and she are going to end up divorced anyway? So isn't that a choice between definite divorce whether she likes it or not and a chance at NOT ending up divorced? Might I ask, how on earth is SHE coping with what I logically presume is a lack of sex and romance? I expect you must feel like you're trapped between a rock and a hard place - namely, stay being a 24/7 father through remaining in a dissatisfactory and unhappy-making romantic relationship or give up that full-time-fatherly privilege yet be happy on the romantic front, right? But if your kids had a voice, what do you supposed they'd choose out of quality time with Happy Dad versus full time with Unhappy Dad? You know how the safety advice on aeroplanes includes the rule about putting on your own oxygen mask before trying to help others on with theirs? Can you see where I'm going with this? Have you tried writing out a three-column list of pros and cons (with the third column for 'don't knows')? If you get these out of your head and onto paper then your mind needn't store it and will have a greater number of 'cylinders' with which to find a solution. Want to try it?

If your gay then your gay stop trying to please everyone and living a lie just accept it. There is nothing wrong with being gay but your situation to play the 'normal family' is messed up when your clearly more into men.

'Clearly' more into men? I'm not so sure myself, and here's why: "I started looking at gay porn, and after about 6 months of looking at porn and still occasionally having sex with my wife, I started to desire more then just porn, more then just my wife"