Ask Adri: How do I sleep with other men without my wife finding out?
I probably shouldn’t be doing an “Ask Adri” column in my current mood. You can’t see me right now, but I’m making my pain face. Why? Because I’m in pain. I don’t know what I did to my right arm yesterday, but I woke up this morning feeling as if a few members of the WWE had been using it as an illegal blunt object in the ring. With it still attached to my body. So I’m kind of cranky. But the news is alternately boring me or pissing me off with arseheaded reports that now the LGBT community is pushing for a non-trans-inclusive ENDA (what the hell happened to solidarity, people? I bet we wouldn’t be so willing to ditch them if it was the G or L getting left out), and this letter’s been sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks now, so I really shouldn’t neglect it any longer. (Also, to two people who e-mailed me asking for private responses: I’m not ignoring you. You’ll hear from me some time tomorrow.)
Hello Adrien.
I am 37/gwm/FL. [Note from Adri for those who don't do netspeak: He's a 37-year-old gay white male who lives in Florida.] My wife and I have three lovely children. I am gay. I knew I was gay when I married her but I thought I could live a normal married straight life. I have been happy with my children and I love my wife, but I am very unhappy with myself. I can no longer pretend attraction to my wife and would like to explore my homosexual side. I do not want her to find out. I would like to have a relationship on the side with another man. How can I meet men without coming out publicly? We live in a small town and if I go to the gay bars nearby I will be recognized. Someone will tell my wife. I need to meet a man who can be discreet. Can you tell me how I can do this?
Sincerely,
Frustrated Florida Fag
Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Hold up and slow your roll, Holmes. Are you asking me to help you figure out the best way to cheat on your wife with other men?
Oh, I don’t think so.
Let me tell you something, son. You are going to do this right, rather than in the way that’s the most comfortable for you. You are going to inform your wife, properly and politely, of this particular turn of events in your life. You are going to take responsibility for the years of your marriage, and you are going to make this as easy for her as possible, because none of this is her fault and she’s going to feel hurt and betrayed, almost as much as she would if she caught you cheating. I know this isn’t easy for you, either, and I feel for you, I really do - as while some of this situation is your fault, not all of it is. But you are not going to make it worse by being a reprehensible human being and sneaking around behind your wife’s back like a dog, do you hear me?
You and your wife are going to talk about this. She may leave you, but for the sake of your children, she may not. If she stays with your sorry behind, she may even be willing to come to an agreement. You stay married as parents, but not as sexual partners, and then with her permission you can slip around on the sly all you want as long as you don’t bring your sexual partners home and trip the kids off as to what’s going on. It’s not an ideal situation, and later when the children are older and not as likely to be affected emotionally by their parents breaking up (for whatever reason, sexuality has little to do with how kids are affected by divorce), they will need to be told the truth. Frankly I don’t like the idea of hiding your sexuality from your kids, but it would just be too confusing for them to understand, in their formative years, why Mommy and Daddy have separate bedrooms and Daddy brings men home to spend the night.
And you know what? Your wife may take the kids and leave you. There’ll be a custody hearing; it may be ugly, it may not, but as long as you’re not declared unfit then you’ll get to spend plenty of equal time with your kids. You can even come out publicly and explain a few things to your kids, about how Daddy is gay but Daddy’s still Daddy and still loves them, supports them, etc. - and yes Daddy still loves Mommy, just not in certain ways.
Or you can stomp down your urges, stay miserably in the closet, and keep your family exactly the way it is. It’s an unfortunate situation, and there is no easy answer, no right answer, and no answer that’s going to make everyone happy.
Except you screwing around behind your wife’s back, and that you will not do. Not with my help, anyway. When you get caught, I want no part of this.
And you will get caught. Men always do; I know this from experience, not from cheating myself, but from dealing with cheating men from ex-boyfriends to my own father. You always get caught.
And when you get caught, those hot messes that I described above will be ten times worse.
So just don’t do it.
I know I was a little stern there. You needed it. You need a hard look at the reality of what your decision entails, from an outside perspective. This entire time you’ve probably been focusing on your own misery, and your own potential happiness. When you create a family, you can’t just think of yourself alone anymore. Your decisions deeply affect other people, and you have to consider that before every choice you make. I know you feel trapped by a decision you made years ago, and wish you could go back and undo it. You can’t. Unfortunately, part of adult life is living with the consequences of your past actions, and sometimes there just isn’t a way to wipe the slate clean and start over blameless.
Unless you’re Catholic, but don’t even get me started on that.
Despite my harsh words, I do wish you the best, and I hope that the difficulties along the road ahead are eased by mutual understanding between you and your family. You have a lot of tough choices to make. Good luck with them all.
See this? This is my problem with the whole “sanctity of marriage” crap. Heterosexual marriages break up all the time, for just about any reason; it’s not uncommon for someone to go through two or three spouses on average in their lifetime. How sacred were those marriage vows again?
But this situation in particular, oh, this one gets under my skin. If homosexual marriages were acceptable and legal, this man might not have felt the need to get into a heterosexual relationship and later marriage, in order to conform to the pressures to live the picture of the societal norm. He might have married a man and lived happily ever after, while the woman who - in this alternate future - is not his wife would have married a different man and moved on to have several fat, shiny babies. Instead we’ve got a tangled mess in which the husband is miserable, the wife is oblivious and just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the children could very possibly have a previously happy home torn apart.
Oh, but that marriage is between a man and a woman, so hey, it’s just fine.
George W. Bush, you can suck my middle finger.
Have a question you’d like to see answered on Ask Adri? E-mail your question to adrien-luc.sanders@451press.net with the subject “Ask Adri Question” or use the Contact Form to send your question in.
ask adri, gay advice column, coming out, sanctity of marriage, gay marriage, heterosexual marriage, ENDA
November 7th, 2007 at 8:32 am
I’m going to keep my mouth firmly shut about this one.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:34 am
No, go ahead, Sihaya. This guy said he wanted his answer posted publicly, so I’m sure he’s open to perspectives other than my own. He can probably use all the insight he can get.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:30 am
[...] Pro Wrestling Blog wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt…know what I did to my right arm yesterday, but I woke up this morning feeling as if a few members of the WWE had been using it as an illegal… [...]
November 7th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Alright, here I go.
First of all I need to get this off my chest (and it’s going to sound pretty horrible and I feel mean for saying it): I find it hard to believe that you love your wife in any way if you even consider doing that to her. You are not talking about a one-time thing that you regret afterwards - something which most women would forgive if you really regret it. You are talking about deliberately and repeatedly betraying a woman to whom you made a promise to be faithful until the end of your marriage (in whatever form it may end). That I find inexcusable.
Now that that’s over:
On the other hand, I feel for you. You want to spare everyone the heart ache and the trouble and I understand that. It’s sweet. But I really think that after a while you will start feeling guilty. And in the end that’s going to eat at you even more than the unhappiness is, now.
Talk to her. Tell her. Tell her everything. That you knew you were gay before. That you just can’t play pretend anymore but that you tried because you love her. Tell her that you’re starting to think drastic things because it’s weighing on you - because, really, that’s what your letter sounds like, to me, a desperate lunge for something that seems like the easiest way out. Maybe she already knows, deep down. Sure she’ll be hurt, she’ll be angry because her life as she knows it is based on a falsehood.
But you have to take a chance on her! You have to be brave; in the end that’s what it comes to. It’ll be hard and you’ll hurt too, and if you’re hurting you should tell her. You have to make her understand that it’s not her fault, but that it’s not really yours, either. The only mistake involved is that you made a promise you are unable to keep, because of circumstances that are ultimately out of your control. You didn’t choose to be gay. You did, however, choose to marry her. Clearly your family means a lot to you. So be honest to them! Be the best man you can be for them! They love you, and it may take some time, but in the end, it’ll work out. Stick to the vows you made: to take care of your family, to love them, to protect them regardless of what happens. If you cheat on your wife and are found out, you’ve broken every one of those promises, and she will hate you for it. Your kids might hate you for it, I would sure hate my dad if he cheated on my mom! And that is a terrible thing to think about. Look at it any way you want: don’t to it to your family. Don’t do it to yourself!
I really really do hope you will find your way to happiness. In the long run, rewards come for doing the right thing. Karma does exist. So good luck and a lot of courage to you!
And for goodness sake don’t cheat on your wife T_T
…
That took me half an hour.
Adri, I hope your arm gets better soon! =(
November 7th, 2007 at 11:13 am
I think you said that with far more empathy and compassion than I. Bravo.
As far as the arm…um…let’s not talk about the arm. The pain is currently crawling up my neck and trying to eat my face. Grrr.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:58 am
If it’s muscles cramping you should put something warm on it. If you don’t know what it is, cold would be best.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I really don’t know what it is, though I suspect it’s an old sports injury from high school acting up without provocation (sign that I’m getting old: it starts hurting all on its own without me doing something idiotic to provoke it, like trying to benchpress twice my weight). Right now I’ve got my shoulder (the main source of the pain, it kind of radiates out from there) slathered in Icy Hot and wrapped up tightly in an ace bandage so it’ll stop slipping in and out of the socket. The ointment’s helping to ease the pain a lot, and stretching and moving it around every so often helps as well.
…though the ointment makes me smell like an old man’s farts. It’s hideous. I’m just the pinnacle of sexy today, lemme tell ya.
Aaaand we are so OT. ~hushes~
November 7th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I think everything I can think of has already been said, so I have no reason for commenting except to agree that cheating on your wife is absolutly garunteed to solve nothing.
November 7th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Dude, like … dude! That was so terrible, I think it gave me cancer.
Speaking as someone on two sides of that dynamic (being cheated on and being the other man, once unknowingly and once when I knew his girlfriend), the whole situation is not good. Even when I knew the guy’s girlfriend (I hated her), it still made me sick to know what I was doing. The other ass was apparently married, and I honestly can say I’ve never been so angry with another person in my entire life. But what can I expect from men: we’re all a**holes.
Oh, and feel better, Adri. My motto has always been, “better a pain in the arm then a pain in the…” well, you get the picture.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
[...] Adrien-Luc Sanders placed an interesting blog post on Ask Adri: How do I sleep with other men without my wife finding out?.Here’s a brief overview:I probably shouldn’t be doing an “Ask Adri” column in my current mood. You can’t see me right now, but I’m making my pain face. Why? Because I’m in pain. I don’t know what I did to my right arm yesterday, but I woke up this morning … [...]
November 8th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Pretty much everyone has said what needs to be said about this issue, bottom line being cheating=bad which I am in full agreement with.
I just hope your arm gets better Adrien! *offers kumagoro*
Peace, love and chocolate chip cookie dough!
November 8th, 2007 at 3:08 am
[...] Sanders wrote an interesting post today on Ask Adri: How do I sleep with other men without my wife finding out?Here’s a quick [...]
November 8th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Just as a female who found her then-boyfriend cheating?
Yeah. Don’t. It will not end well.
My personal example- We were going out, just boyfriend and girlfriend. He had expressed an interest in an open relationship, I had told him that I hadn’t felt ready for that, and we agreed to remain exclusive.
So when my friend caught him, on no less than the night of my birthday, getting a blowjob from a less-than-convincing drag Queen, I was more than a little upset. And hell, at least I knew that he had an interest in an open relationship.
Now, magnify this by a marriage instead of a young relationship and by multiple encounters instead of a one-off, and you can perhaps understand that this is not a wise thing. It will hurt your lady, it will embarrass you, your kids will *not* react well no matter how you try to explain it, and oh god will it cause you to be socially ostracised for treating tham all like that. People really do gather to protect if they think someone’s been wronged.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
The only part of all this that honestly CONFUSES me is this: why would you marry a women if you KNEW you were Gay? WHY for heaven sakes!? The Poor Women!
Wouldn’t you have had to realize that eventually your gonna need to be with a man?I can’t say this guy is all there. I’m bi-sexual and if I suddenly stopped having feelings for men, the last thing I would do would marry one- and then have kids! I just cannot feel for this man. Did he ever think of her in the beginning? Or did he just start now…? This can’t end smoothly.
December 12th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
“Instead we’ve got a tangled mess in which the husband is miserable, the wife is oblivious and just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the children could very possibly have a previously happy home torn apart.
Oh, but that marriage is between a man and a woman, so hey, it’s just fine.”
Yea. That. Switch husband and wife around and that’s my situation. The one thing that makes me so happy about all of this is that I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my girls will be raised to know they can and should love who ever the heck they want too - and that they don’t have to repress or deny or stuff it all down inside. In the midst of all this mess, that at least gives me comfort.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:02 am
[...] reminds me of the jerk who wanted my help finding a way to discreetly cheat on his wife with another man. That just made me livid; gay or straight, if you’re unhappy in a relationship, bloody well [...]