Making Choices

It took me so many years to figure it all out. Of course I'm not sure I've got it all figured out even now at age 63; but for the most part, I feel I've been on pretty solid ground for the last 15 years or so. Before that, I could have never made such a statement, at least as far as my sexuality was concerned.

As the Moderator of a group aimed at married bisexual men, I get to chat with a number of men (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BisexualBuddies/).  The group will soon begin its 7th year. When I first started the group, most of the guys were in their 50's or 60's. Seeing someone younger in the group was rare. Now, that has changed. Most of the guys are still in their 50's or 60's but seeing guys in their 20's, 30's and 40's is no longer rare.

I really like to see the younger guys joining the group, participating and exploring their sexuality. Frankly, I regret that I didn't have the opportunity to do the same thing at their age. I wasted a lot of years feeing guilty about my desires and hating myself for what I was wanting from other men. And I honestly didn't know what I was in those years. I didn't think I was straight because I had this desire for sex with guys that I could not shake. At the same time, I didn't think I was gay because I absolutely loved sex with my wife and together we were very good at it and enjoyed it greatly.

Today, with the internet available to almost every guy, a married guy who loves sex with his wife, yet also has desires for sex with other guys is quickly able to see that he is one of tens of millions of bisexual married men and not some lone monster. The question for these young guys today is not, "What am I?" Instead the question for young guys and older guys alike is, "What am I going to do about my bisexuality?"

As human beings, most of us lead very busy and complex lives. The outcome of those lives is never certain nor is it quaranteed. As a boy, given at a young age to observation of the world around me and to a predilection for thinking about what I experienced and observed, it at first seemed the world in which I lived was pretty straight forward (no pun intended). In the post World War II era in which I was born, prosperity seemed abundant and within reach of almost everyone. My  own parents had moved well within the boundaries of an evergrowing middle class of Americans. In the small Texas town in which I was raised, everyone was middle class. No one was poverty stricken. Life held promise for all it seemed to me. One just had to play by the rules.

But then in the 60's the rules began to be challenged. Everything began to change. A counter culture began to take shape which challenged even the defninitions of success and opportunity. The concept of hard work in return for success was challenged by millions of hippies who insisted that one should "turn on" and "drop out." Almost overnight, life seemed to get more complicated. The old observations and reasoned assumptions seemed no longer to apply in a world torn by an unpopular war in Viet Nam and devastated by political assasinations and social unrest.

Yet, in all this turmoil, I had the advantage of a stable and upwardly mobile family which supported me without question and more importantly demanded that I learn the lessons of hard work and making good choices.

These lessons were drilled into me so unrelentingly that I came to see that in spite of the turmoil that now played out all around me, there was a world out there which would provide all that I needed and more, but it would only come through hard work and wise choices.

One of the first important life choices I made was to go to college. During that first year at college I made a second important life choice. I chose to get married. It was a good choice but probably not the best choice for one so young. However, the marriage was and is happy after all these years; but in those early years it required even more hard work than I would otherwise have been required to undertake. For the next three years I worked a full time job and took a full load of classes at the university. Life was a cycle of work and study, work and study. There was little else.

I had married assuming that with a beautiful and willing woman in my bed each night, my life long desire for male/male sex would go away. I had come to believe that male/male sex as just a substitute for heterosexual sex. Marriage would finally get the monkey off my back after all these years. The only problem was, it didn't! In spite of frequent and satisfying sex with my wife, my dreams were of sex with men, often to the point of my waking up covered with cum, the result of an involuntary wet dream.

For almost 30 years, the demands of family and career builiding left me little time to pursue the desires, and I could ignore them except in my wet dreams. I assumed I was the only married guy in the world that had these dreams. There was no one I could talk to about it to find out otherwise.

In the 1990's, home comptuers began to usher in a new age, the age of the personal computer and the internet. The internet provided anonymous chat rooms on any subject under the sun, and I soon found out I was not alone but, much to my surprise, one of millions of guys just like me.

With a family that was almost grown, a career that was well established and money to pursue leisure interests, as well as the knowlege there were other guys like me out there,I was suddenly faced with a choice I had never fully contemplated. Should I act on my desires or should I not?

In the last 15 years, I have gotten to know a fairly large number of guys on line. One of the characteristics of the internet is that two  people can learn more about each other in 30 mintues than they would learn in years of face to face conversations. Of course, there is the possibility of subterfuge and outright lies when one is chatting with another guy on line and that has to be taken into consideration, but while there are always guys that one doesn't want to get to know or be involved with at all, for the most part there are just ordinary guys on line who are trying to decide about their own choices. Getting to know them can be very rewarding in many ways.

I have always been concerned about not onlly making a choice but making a safe choice. The last thing I wanted to do was bring home an STD to my wife, so I have always been very very picky about the guys I choose to interact with physically. In spite of this abundance of caution, I have always been able to find a long term buddy.

I have come to believe that for the most part, guys that cannot find a long term buddy have in reality just never really made the choice to do so. They would like to do it, but some part of them is not invested in that choice and so they sabotage their opportunities. This is not always true of course. There are exceptional guys who live in a rural area where prospects are fewer and farther between and there are other things that can interfere as well.

Making the choice to act on my desires was difficult for me. To some extent, I was considering a choice that was not playing by the rules. The implications of that were huge for me. Deciding to do it changed my life. Luckily for me, it changed it for the better. It is a decision I would not change, even if I could. I like my life. I like my buddies. I like the opportunities that have come my way to meet other guys and get to know them intimately. Let me hasten to add that I have also enjoyed the opportunities to get to know men who are gay and bisexual very well though NOT intimately as in a sexual way. I enjoy talking to and getting to know guys I will never have a sexual relationship with even though we are both bisexual men. Many of these guys have brought me new insights and new ways of thinking that have enriched my life.

There is no doubt that deciding to be sexually active with a male buddy will complicate ones life. There is no doubt that it exposes his marriage to possible dangers. There is no doubt that most wives would see it as playing against the rules. Any guy who is just mildly curious and who can walk away from it all should do so and just let it alone. Most guys though cannot do that. The desires compel them. These guys should make wise choices, personal choices, private choices and carefully and discreetly do what they need to do to fulfill their lives.

I knew it hurt to live all those years with my desires pushed down deep inside of me. I never knew how bad it hurt until it quit hurting. Finding a buddy to share an intimate part of me with enriched my live and made me feel whole for the first time in my life.

Life is indeed a seies of choices. Choices are personal things. Its hard to put the lable "right" or "wrong" on choices. Our choices defy those lables. Instead we have to make wise choices for the hand life has dealt us. I did not choose to be a bisexual man. Those cards were dealt to me. I did choose what to do about it and how to do it. The choices were difficult, complex and challenging; but together with the other difficult and complex choices of my life, they have helped me to live a life in which I am happy. In my personal case, I have been able to tell my wife about my bisexuality. I know other guys who have had and taken advantage of the same opportunity, but most guys do NOT have that option. Most guys must view their desires for male/male relationships as a strictly private and personal thing. They owe it to their wives and their families to be careful, safe and discreet.

I wish you the courage to make wise choices.

Jack Scott