Monday, August 29, 2011

Frot & Frottage

The quintessential straight person who has never considered any type of sex as normal other than missionary position sex between a man and his wife often makes a big mistake by thinking that what they think of as abnormal sexual behavior can be labeled and separated into neat categories such as homosexuality and bisexuality.

Of course there is a bright side to being labeled homosexual or bisexual. Labels can be even more biting. Some less charitable straight people just label everyone else as perverts and let it go at that.

Having always from my earliest memories been an actively sexual person, I've paid a lot of attention to sex over the course of my life. I've studied it, read about it, observed it and participated in it on many different levels. I've found sexual behavior is almost as varied and multifarious as humanity itself.

I had the greatest of childhoods. It was filled with sexual camaraderie. Almost all the boys I grew up with were eager and willing participants in daily group sexual activities. It was so pervasive a part of life, I thought it to be the type of life every boy lived. I was surprised when, as an adult, I eventually developed sexual relationships with other adult men who told me they were, for the most part, unaware anything sexual in nature until they were 12 years old or even older. It was something I could not imagine.

Yet even in the charged sexual environment in which I came of age, there were differences among us. Looking back, the differences are more obvious to me now than they were at the time. The reality is, I didn't spend much time thinking about it all as a boy. I just enjoyed it.

I was an eager and willing participant. In fact, after my initiation into the group, in all honesty, I have to admit, I became an instigator. I simply couldn't get enough. I was always ready for more. Other boys were willing to play, but they would have been willing not to play too. It was a social thing for them. They did it because that is what the group did. I did it because I absolutely was in to it.

Within the group, most activity centered around simple masturbation. Generally, this was mutual masturbation where buddies would jerk each others cock either to orgasm or orgasm and emission. When I first became a part of the group at around age 6, emission was, of course, not possible for me; but orgasm was. It was those orgasms which compelled me. I've never used illegal drugs; but I suppose, I came to seek out the highs of orgasm just as a junky comes to seek his drug high.

Fellatio was not a group activity. It was always an activity which was engaged in privately and one on one. The same was true for anal sex. Anal sex was hardly ever even spoken of in the group except derisively; and it was always engaged in privately one on one. I was more than eager for oral activity. I loved sucking cock and having mine sucked;  and all through my school years, I had one or more suck buddies. However, anal sex did not interest me. It seemed like a dirty thing to do to me, and it wasn't like I wasn't having enough fun sexually without it. However, that said, one of my friends eventually talked me into topping him. I was big enough that he quickly decided the idea of being fucked was better than the reality of being fucked, and that was the only time I ever experienced anal activity as a kid. Later, in my first adult relationship, my buddy loved to be fucked and he got off on my big cock and liked it as rough and hard as I could make it. I found being a top was a very enjoyable experience with him; though with subsequent buddies, such activity again reverted back to not being a normal thing.

In my profession, travel was the norm. My travel was a little different from normal business travel in that there was a team of guys traveling together. We were all about the same age and had things in common other than our career. The constant traveling together brings guys close and we got to know each other very well. The relationship never took a sexual turn, but there was very little we didn't talk about. I, and I suspect one other guy, was a closeted bisexual guy. One was gay. All of us were or had been married. A few of us had had an extramarital affair with another woman. A couple of the guys made extramarital affairs and one night stands into an art form. For them it was a way of life. Most of the guys, however, were faithful to their wives and would never have thought of infidelity.

The point to all of this is that from my own experience and observation, human sexuality is dynamic. It almost defies the label of normality because human beings simply engage in an astounding variety of sexual activities.

My general philosophy has evolved to the point that I believe anything which does not harm oneself or another is within the realm of normal.

As a bisexual man, I have enjoyed a range of sexual behavior with my wife and with my buddies through the years. I've come to see that the range of activities vary for me depending on my partner. Different partners are good at different things and some can bring such talent and physical characteristics to the partnership that different things take on a whole new sense of enjoyment.

 A few years ago I was introduced to a philosophy I had not previously known of. It is actually an ancient philosophy that began to be revived in the last decade of the 20th century. It is called Frottage (rhymes with massage) or Frot (rhymes with hot). Frot is the contemporary philosophy of a man named Bill Weintraub.  Weintraub coined the word "Frot" to describe penis to penis non penetrative play between two adult men. This type of play is based on Frottage which was a part of many ancient warrior societies in which male bonding and male mentorship were encouraged. The word "Frottage" comes from the French word meaning "to rub." In French Frottage can have non sexual connotations, but in English the primary connotation is a sexual one.

Bill Weintraub and Luke Shelton have formed what they refer to as the Man2Man Alliance. The Man2Man Alliance considers Frot to be a manifestation of basic male biology. All males, they believe, are not only physically capable of giving and receiving sexual pleasure to each other through body to body and penis to penis contact; but also as males, they are hard wired to enjoy it.

At least in the Man2Man Alliance's form of Frottage, promiscuity is discouraged. While men are encouraged to be a part of a three person sexual group consisting of a man, his wife and his buddy.  I hasten to add that he wife participates sexually one with her husband in Frottage. The husband participates with both his wife and his buddy.

The alliance does not feel that bonded friendships between two men have to lead to sexual activity. They just recognize that quite often they do; and when the do, these sexual activities are not seen as aberrant in any way. In fact within the context of Frottage as male to male, penis to penis non penetrative sexual enjoyment, even the Biblical prohibition of a man not lying with another man as he lies with a woman is seen as not applicable to the situation. Frot men are not lying with a man as he does with a woman. There is no penetration with a woman, and women are incapable of penis to penis sexual enjoyment. Further, the Bible makes it crystal clear that Kind David loved Jonathan. In Frot philosophy, David and Jonathan were early examples of the biological norm for Frot practicing men.

Weintraub, a self identified gay man has never personally been into anal sex. In fact, he believes mutual jacking off, Frottage, oral sex anal sex between gay men were relatively equal pursuits among gay men until the last quarter of the 20th century when the gay culture was highjacked by radical right wing gays whose agenda it was to make anal sex synonymous with being gay. In his view, this right wing conspiracy has been a big success. Mutual jacking off, Frottage and oral sex have become simply types of foreplay that are subordinate to and lead up to the now essential act of anal intercourse.

There is actually much that appeals to me in the Frot and Frottage philosophies. Like them, I believe male/male sexual relationships are an essentially male acknowledgement of all things masculine. I believe such male to male sexual bonding is part of the biological definition of what it means to be a male; and I believe, the ability to build civilization itself was wrapped within the ability of men not only to fight each other as warriors, but to bond together as brother warriors and enjoy male/male sexuality.

Weintraub and his followers loose me philosophically simply because they are a little too militant for my taste. I'm not good at seeing conspiracies and I have trouble thinking that a right wing conspiracy of radical gay men would be able to completely change gay behavior and redefine the essence of homosexuality. I think instead the homosexual stereotype of guy fucking guy has become the face of homosexuality in the modern era due to mass communication and increased openness about all things gay.

My own view of anal sex is that no one who doesn't appreciate it will be forced to appreciate anal sex by the dictates of gay culture. I personally know of many gay men whose lives do not involve anal sex and they feel no pressure whatsoever to make it a part of their sexual play.

I think one has to be careful not to become so consumed by his own personal philosophy and by his own personal situation and circumstance that he tries to force it upon everyone else. I especially have a problem if one takes a militant course of action to force his reasonings on someone else. I plead guilty immediately to having strong personal opinions, but I am quick to recognize my personal opinions can be nothing more than considerations for others in dealing with their own sexuality.

In the straight side of my life, I watched (figuratively) as a couple of my professional colleagues fucked every woman they could get to. What I observed was that all the conquests didn't really make them happy. There was no bond, there was no love. There was only, in the end, the search for something they couldn't find. They were, as the country and western song, popular at the time said, "Looking for Love in All The Wrong Places." They never found it.

I know a number of promiscuous bisexual and homosexual guys. They cruise from guy to guy in a constant churning of bodies. They never find what they are looking for. They never stop the search because they don't realize what they are wanting, what they are needing, is to satisfy the biological need to bond with one other guy in a significant way.

One of the new trends in foods these days is fusion. As I understand it, fusion cooking takes a little from one culture and combines it with something radically different from another culture to come up with new and exciting things for our culinary enjoyment. I have come to believe the wise person does the same thing with life. He pulls what he likes from many different influences in his life and melds them into a mixture all his own and finds a buddy to share it all with.

I think the ideas behind Frot and Frottage are well worth getting acquainted with as homosexual and bisexual men. While I don't agree with Weintraub's militancy in trying to promote Frot as the only true expression of male/male sexuality, it could be that, in fact, he is right. Frot and Frottage are concepts that predate the concepts of homosexuality and bisexuality by thousands of years and the terms could cover all that is a part of the biological celebration of masculinity, of male/male sex and bonding.

Jack Scott




Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Good News - We Do Exist!

The term "bisexual" is a relatively new one and it is a disputed one. Bisexuality is a problem. There is no doubt of that. It is a problem for those of us who are bisexuals. It is a problem for our wives or husbands who are straight, and it is a problem for society.

Unfortunately a problem cannot be solved by just denying it exists, and that is what society has tried very hard to do for quite some time.

For those with an agenda, there are, of course, good reasons to deny bisexuality exists as a biological norm. The radical Christian Right doesn't yet even accept homosexuality as a biological norm. Many of them, including such current headliners as Michele Bachmann think it can be "prayed away."  See link.

The Christian Right cannot accept homosexuality as a biological norm because to do so would be to admit that homosexuals are created by God. The implications of accepting that would bring down the Christian Right's entire house of cards concerning what defines a family and a marriage.

But bisexuals are considered by the Christian Right to be an even greater threat to the Christian Right. A threat so dire they cannot even openly talk about it. At least homosexuals are becoming more and more self identified. More and more they can be easily observed in society; and they can still be fairly easily thought of as "those people," at least by members of the radical Christian Right who do not have a son or grandson who is one of those people; or if they do have a son or grandson who is such, they can label him as simply sinful because he won't pray away his sinfulness.

Even in this relatively enlightened age members of the radical Christian Right can and do ask homosexuals who refuse to participate in "having their gayness prayed away" to leave the church. Some who are not quite bold enough to ask an identified homosexual to leave can accomplish the same end result by making it clear to the offender that he is not welcome.

It's not so easy with bisexuals. Bisexuals exist among us in almost total invisibility. They appear to be perfectly straight men and women. They value their traditional families, their normal suburban lifestyle and their marriages. And they don't value these things as a "cover". They actually value them as a real needed part of the straight part of their lives.

Anyone who has been as active in the bisexual community as I have over the past almost two decades knows that bisexual men are everywhere. They are lawyers, doctors, computer technicians, pastors of radical Christian Right churches, Sunday school teachers, school teachers and anything else you can think of and in all these professions, they are invisible. That fact alone, is enough to scare the crap out of the radical Christian Right.

But it is not just the radical Christian Right who has an interest in denying the existence of bisexuality. The thankfully small radical homosexual community has often been quick to deny the existence of bisexuality also.     The motive of this group is easy to understand. It is even somewhat based in reality. The small group of radicals within the much larger homosexual community are hung up on the feeling they have been on the front lines of the fight to win recognition, acceptance and equal rights. They feel they have shouldered this burden while other homosexual men have conveniently hidden behind the title "bisexual" and remained invisible and safely out of the fray in the straight community.

They're right. Many men have done exactly that. They knew they were homosexual, but married at a time when that was the only real way to have a family, build a career and live the American dream. They used the term "bisexual" to describe themselves simply because they were married to a member of the opposite sex, yet desired or participated in sex with members of the same sex. But I think that just as many, and perhaps more men, were truly confused about their true identity in the latter part of the 20th century. I think many, in their confusion fooled even themselves with their denial of their homosexuality.

But what the more radical members of the homosexual community fail to understand is that their own prejudice has blinded them to a greater reality. Just because some men incorrectly, even knowingly, mislabel themselves as bisexuals does not mean bisexuality does not exists any more than the fact that many homosexual men label themselves as straight men means that homosexuality does not exist.

I can't speak for all bisexuals, but I assume that many of them shared my experience. As a young man, I didn't even know the term bisexual existed.  Yet by the time I was 12 years old I was beginning to know that something strange was going on. I was attracted to both girls and boys. I had fantasies about my good looking female teachers just like every boy does. I also had fantasies about my good looking male teachers! As a perpetually horny teenager I chalked this up to just having "sex on the brain." I figured it would go away. By the time I was 20 years old, I had been married more than a year to a woman who loved sex and made it available to me in great quantity and quality, but the fantasies concerning males had not gone away. I had embarked on the decades long journey I would spend in recognizing, accepting and then effectively dealing with my own bisexuality.

A recent study finally bears out what I and many others like me have known for years. I do exist as a bisexual man! The authors of this study did an amazing thing. They made it a point to find people to study who not only said they were bisexual, but lived the life of a bisexual. Sounds simple but it had never really been done before.

If you're a bisexual man,  you'll want to read the report of the study below. If  you're a straight or homosexual man, you should read the report of the study for your own edification.


No Surprise for Bisexual Men: 
Report Indicates They Exist

By DAVID TULLER
Published: August 22, 2011 


In an unusual scientific about-face, researchers at Northwestern University have found evidence that at least some men who identify themselves as bisexual are, in fact, sexually aroused by both women and men.

The finding is not likely to surprise bisexuals, who have long asserted that attraction often is not limited to one sex. But for many years the question of bisexuality has bedeviled scientists. A widely publicized study published in 2005, also by researchers at Northwestern, reported that "with respect to sexual arousal and attraction, it remains to be shown that male bisexuality exists."

That conclusion outraged bisexual men and women, who said it appeared to support a stereotype of bisexual men as closeted homosexuals.

In the new study, published online in the journal Biological Psychology, the researchers relied on more stringent criteria for selecting participants. To improve their chances of finding men aroused by women as well as men, the researchers recruited subjects from online venues specifically catering to bisexuals.

They also required participants to have had sexual experiences with at least two people of each sex and a romantic relationship of at least three months with at least one person of each sex.

Men in the 2005 study, on the other hand, were recruited through advertisements in gay-oriented and alternative publications and were identified as heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual based on responses to a standard questionnaire.

In both studies, men watched videos of male and female same-sex intimacy while genital sensors monitored their erectile responses. While the first study reported that the bisexuals generally resembled homosexuals in their responses, the new one finds that bisexual men responded to both the male and female videos, while gay and straight men in the study did not.

Both studies also found that bisexuals reported subjective arousal to both sexes, notwithstanding their genital responses. "Someone who is bisexual might say, 'Well, duh!' " said Allen Rosenthal, the lead author of the new Northwestern study and a doctoral student in psychology at the university. "But this will be validating to a lot of bisexual men who had heard about the earlier work and felt that scientists weren't getting them."

The Northwestern study is the second one published this year to report a distinctive pattern of sexual arousal among bisexual men.

In March, a study in Archives of Sexual Behavior reported the results of a different approach to the question. As in the Northwestern study, the researchers showed participants erotic videos of two men and two women and monitored genital as well as subjective arousal. But they also included scenes of a man having sex with both a woman and another man, on the theory that these might appeal to bisexual men.

The researchers (Jerome Cerny, a retired psychology professor at Indiana State University, and Erick Janssen, a senior scientist at the Kinsey Institute) found that bisexual men were more likely than heterosexuals or gay men to experience both genital and subjective arousal while watching these videos.

Dr. Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and an expert on sexual orientation, said that the two new studies, taken together, represented a significant step toward demonstrating that bisexual men do have specific arousal patterns.

"I've interviewed a lot of individuals about how invalidating it is when their own family members think they're confused or going through a stage or in denial," she said. "These converging lines of evidence, using different methods and stimuli, give us the scientific confidence to say this is something real."

The new studies are relatively small in size, making it hard to draw generalities, especially since bisexual men may have varying levels of sexual, romantic and emotional attraction to partners of either sex. And of course the studies reveal nothing about patterns of arousal among bisexual women. The Northwestern study included 100 men, closely split among bisexuals, heterosexuals and homosexuals. The study in Archives of Sexual Behavior included 59 participants, among them 13 bisexuals.

The new Northwestern study was financed in part by the American Institute of Bisexuality, a group that promotes research and education regarding bisexuality. Still, advocates expressed mixed feelings about the research.

Jim Larsen, 53, a chairman of the Bisexual Organizing Project, a Minnesota-based advocacy group, said the findings could help bisexuals still struggling to accept themselves.

"It's great that they've come out with affirmation that bisexuality exists," he said. "Having said that, they're proving what we in the community already know. It's insulting. I think it's unfortunate that anyone doubts an individual who says, "This is 'what I am and who I am.' "

Ellyn Ruthstrom, president of the Bisexual Resource Center in Boston, echoed Mr. Larsen's discomfort.

"This unfortunately reduces sexuality and relationships to just sexual stimulation," Ms. Ruthstrom said. "Researchers want to fit bi attraction into a little box, you have to be exactly the same, attracted to men and women, and you're bisexual. That's nonsense. What I love is that people express their bisexuality in so many different ways."

Despite her cautious praise of the new research, Dr. Diamond also noted that the kind of sexual arousal tested in the studies is only one element of sexual orientation and identity. And simply interpreting results about sexual arousal is complicated, because monitoring genital response to erotic images in a laboratory setting cannot replicate an actual human interaction, she added.

"Sexual arousal is a very complicated thing," she said. "The real phenomenon in day-to-day life is extraordinarily messy and multifactorial."




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Duh, every bisexual man has known for some time that bisexuality is "extraordinarily messy and multifactorial." 

It's a big part of why the radical Christian Right fears bisexuality even more than it fears homosexuality. It's much harder to see and it has all the impact on their views of what marriages and families that homosexuality does and more.

And unlike Jim Larsen who is quoted in the above report as finding the study insulting to bisexuals, I don't agree at all. I agree the study might be seen as a study of something that is self-apparent, at least to bisexual people, but the fact is there are many segments of society who need to be hit over the head with many such studies. 

I think the gay community, except for its most radical wing, is coming around to view bisexuality as a reality even if some homosexuals do hide behind the label of bisexuality.  I know I have a number of homosexual friends and none have ever seriously questioned by bisexuality. 

Studies like this one will only help open minded people to see reality. Unfortunately, such studies will not help the radical Christian Right to see anything because they are not open minded.  They live in a world where an historical book, The Bible, is deified (against The Bibles own teachings, I might add) and in which scientific fact is vilified. They live in a world where religious legalism is used as a tool to make their view of what the world should be a dogmatic requirement; and in so doing, pervert their own faith and subvert their own intellect.

Even as a Christian myself, I find nothing to admire in the radical Christian Right's views concerning science and reason. As a bisexual man, I glad to know that the scientific community has taken another step forward in recognizing my existence. 


Bisexuality is problematic in many ways. Even today, there are things about my bisexuality and acting upon it that trouble me. Dealing with it ethically absolutely requires one to redefine what it means to be faithful in a marriage. But even such redefining when it can be accomplished by a married bisexual man, more often than not, leaves his wife unaware of and  in disagreement with such redefinition. 


There are a few men, like myself, who are married to women who know of our bisexuality and who have come to understand the redefinition of fidelity. Perhaps that provides hope.

Jack Scott

Monday, August 22, 2011

Nudity

I go to the gym a couple of times a week. During the summer months there are always a number of teenage boys there.

It gets to be quite a show to watch them try to undress, shower and dress in a men's locker room without being seen naked by any of the other men and boys in the locker room. Its really funny that it never occurs to these guys that they call much more attention to themselves trying to slide off a pair of sweaty workout shorts while wrapped in a towel than they would attract if they just pulled off the shorts and then put the towel around them to walk to the shower.

Could it be that this phobia is the result of too many boys being raised by their mothers absent the influence of a father.

When I was a young kid, nudity was not a big deal. It wasn't flaunted but it wasn't avoided either. What occurred naturally occurred. There was not even a lock on the bathroom door in the house that I spent my childhood in. Also, we were on a water well and water was scarce in West Texas so it was common for me and my father to share a bathtub of water when I was a little kid.

I grew up knowing full well that my, my brother's and my father's body was very different from my mother's body. Natural was natural.

I have never had the opportunity to talk to a younger guy about the reasons for this extreme modesty over nakedness in a place where nakedness should supposedly the norm. Are they ashamed of their own body or have modern day kids been warned so much about the possibility of encountering a pervert that they are afraid to show their naked body?

It seems the foolishness over nudity is a fairly recent phenomenon. Guys 40 and over whom I see at the gym have no qualms at all about nudity. Some even come out of the shower naked and stand at the sinks naked while they shave. It seems to be mostly the young guys in their late 20's and below that can't bear to be seen naked.

I sure hope they are not in the same mode when they have sexual encounters. Sure would take a lot of fun out of it.

Being a bisexual man, I appreciate both the male and the female form. It's a shame that so many young guys are so uptight about their own bodies.

Jack Scott

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Tightening It Up

I received an anonymous comment this week from a person who told me I write well. However, he/she went on to say that I needed an editor because I rambled too much and strayed too often from my point. He suggested I should tighten up my writing style to avoid loosing the interest of my readers.

To this anonymous critic, I have only two words: You're right.


In a 5 second sound bite world, I am an anachronism. I love words and I love to use them. My whole purpose in blogging is to help married guys who are struggling with their sexuality come to terms with that sexuality and integrate it into their lives in such a way that they can meet the demands of their sexuality while living a relatively normal, happy and successful life.

Tightening Up the Cinch
I know how often the turn of a phrase or some minute detail or even an out of the way bit of trivia has had a powerful impact on my life. Thus, I tend to want to leave no stone unturned when I write.

The problem is none of that makes the critic wrong in his stated suggestions. One can't reach people if one doesn't do it within the attention span people are willing to allocate to reading.

So with the critic's suggestions in mind, I'll try to tighten things up.

Thanks to all of you who bear with me and a special thanks to those of you who take the time to comment. I love honest feedback, even critical feedback. I'm not too enthused about anonymous feedback simply because I love to interact with people and I can't interact with anonymous people. I hope many of you will consider comments with an email address attached.

Nevertheless, thanks anonymous for your critique. I'll try to do better, and I hope to hear from you again.

Jack Scott

Monday, August 15, 2011

"I'm Married To A Bisexual Guy, Will It Work"

Blogger is pretty good about giving those of us who use the tool resources to help us make our blogs interesting and informative. Blogger supplies much of the technical skill; all those of us who actually write the blogs have to do is have a little talent to come up with an idea and put it in writing.

But today Blogger actually supplied me with an idea for a blog. Blogger keeps track of various statistics that have to do with the blog. One of the things it keeps up with is the keywords people use when performing a google search that results in a reader accessing my blog at http://JackScottsBisexualBuddies.blogspot.com 


Today I noticed that someone had ended up here at my blog after using the keywords, "married to a bisexual guy will it work." Those words caught my eye because I've written a lot over the last few years about marriage and bisexuality; and even though I've tried to be empathetic to the fact that a bisexual guy's marriage might include a straight female, I've always written, more or less, from the bisexual guy's point of view.

It's not that I don't understand the wife's point of view might be different concerning being married to a bisexual man, I do. As one might suspect, more often than not, what I hear from wives are angry and bitter comments resulting from their being deeply hurt when they found out, usually accidentally, that the man they are married to is a bisexual or homosexual man. The way most bisexual men understand their bisexuality is esoterically and it is rare for anyone else to have any understanding of it at all.

It happens, only rarely, that I hear from a wife who is seeking information; but here in the information that Blogger supplies me, was notification that somewhere out there is a woman who knows she's married to a bisexual man and she is wondering if her marriage will work long term. It is a question that very much deserves an honest, thoughtful and sympathetic response.

An honest answer has to begin with these words, "It can work." There are many wives who have chosen to make it work; and not just work grudgingly or for some misguided sense of religious, social or family obligation, but really work. Some women have genuinely made their marriage work and have continued to be happy in their marriages and in love with their husbands.

I guess those last few words in the paragraph above are one of the keys to whether or not marriage to a bisexual man will work. If the marriage has not been happy, if it has been stressful for both partners, if fighting is the hallmark of the marriage, then finding another big source of  dissension will more than likely be the last straw for the marriage.

If the marriage has been happy or relatively happy and satisfying to both partners up until the point that bisexuality was introduced into the equation, or if a woman is contemplating marriage to a man who has told her he is bisexual, then certainly the marriage has a chance to work. It may even have a better chance to work than does the average marriage since the average marriage in the United States does not work and does not survive. A woman entering into a marriage with a bisexual man after what surely must be a well thought out and openly discussed situation probably means the couple enter the marriage better prepared for what is to come than do the average couple.

The same goes for the marriage of a woman who has been happily married to her husband for several years and then discovers that he is bisexual or he comes out to her as bisexual.

I have actually talked to men whose wives were told about, or whose wives found out about, his bisexuality and the new found knowledge caused not a ripple in their relationship. Such a thing is, to my knowledge, exceedingly rare, but it does happen.

My own marriage had been solid for many years and was a genuinely happy and successful relationship when I told my wife about my bisexuality. Ultimately, the marriage remained genuinely happy and successful. That does in no way mean that she was glad to receive the news. She wasn't. I can't imagine that bisexuality could be introduced into a marriage without complicating the marriage. For most men, their bisexuality has complicated their lives from boyhood. It has never not been a problem for him. Dealing with the problem has always been frustrating and painful. Introducing it into his marriage openly will without doubt bring problems, frustration and pain to the marriage. Bisexual men are not stupid, they're just bisexual; and they know there will be severe repercussions if their bisexuality comes to light. 


That is why so many men do everything they can to keep it from coming to light. Honestly, it is not that they want to be deceitful or dishonest. It is not that keeping their bisexuality in the closet lets them avoid pain and frustration. Every closeted guy has to deal with the secret he knows that his wife does not know and every closeted guy has plenty of pain and frustration to deal with too.


So, how does the woman who is married to a bisexual guy figure out if her marriage can work? Part of figuring it out consists of decisions she has to do on her own in the privacy of her own mind and heart. She may even need the help of a qualified psychotherapist or psychologist to help her gather her thoughts and feelings and examine them as dispassionately as she can. The emphasis on the words "qualified, psychotherapist and psychologist" is important. Seeking help from someone who is not knowledgeable and tolerant about human sexuality will not be helpful. That means that a woman who seeks help from her evangelical Christian pastor will rarely find real help. 


Such a discussion puts pastors on the radical Christian Right between a rock and a hard place and there is no telling where he might fall out. They may take the tact that divorce is sinful and insist the woman make the best of it. They may take the tact that bisexuality is a choice and can be fixed and thus give the wife false hope about turning her husband to heterosexuality. Either tact will not help with the problem.


Once the wife has thought through her own reaction to the idea of being married to a bisexual man, either on her own or with help from a qualified counselor, she must then take the next step of finding out exactly what she is dealing with if she is considering staying in the marriage. Bisexuality is not a point on a graph. Instead is is a continuum along a rather broad array of needs, desires and actions. She must find out what her husbands needs, desires and actions involve and what, if anything, he is able and willing to give up or modify. She must then make her final decision about staying in the marriage or dissolving it.


Among the first things she should determine to the best extent possible through conversation with her husband and review of their marriage or courtship is whether or not he is actually a bisexual man or if he might actually be a homosexual man. The difference is important.

The truth is that self examination and thoughtful introspection is so painful for some men that they just avoid it. They end up labeling themselves as bisexual men based on nothing more than the fact that they are married and yet they think about sex with and/or have sex with other men. Often, even self applied labels are invalid. Many married men in their fifties and sixties are homosexual men. They married years ago not just to deceive themselves or their wives; but because at the time, it was the only choice open to them that held any promise at all of a happy and successful family life.

An honest look at and an open discussion of the marriage will point to man's real sexuality. If the wife has always been open and willing as a sexual partner, but her husband has often been unenthusiastic about sex or unable to perform sexually, it is a strong indication that he is not bisexual but perhaps homosexual. Homosexuality, like bisexuality is not a point on a graph. It too is a continuum on a wide spectrum of needs and behaviors. There are homosexual men who can convincingly perform sexually with their wives and father children, but often the normal emotional bond that develops between a man and his wife is missing. Because both partners are frustrated constantly with him knowing the reason for the frustration and her having no idea about the real reasons for the frustration, fighting is often a way of life in these marriage. Anger and recriminations abound.

There are two scenarios in which I personally have seen such marriages survive. The first is in a situation where the man provides social status and position to the woman and the woman is more than willing to accept an unsatisfying sex life in trade for the social position and status that is important to her. The second is in a situation where the women don't care for sex anyway and the reality is she is glad to have her husband get it somewhere outside of the marriage bed so long as he does it discreetly so as not to endanger his wife's standing in the community. I have personal friends who have successfully lived these models for years. The husband and wife are good friends, they enjoy each others company and the joy of kids and grandkids. They even enjoy traveling together and actually from all appearances have happy marriages. They just do not have a sexual relationship. She live her life and he lives his.

If a woman determines that her husband is indeed homosexual, the chances of the marriage surviving go down in the long run. As a homosexual man he, more than likely, cannot emotionally relate to her and as he ages the need for an emotional bond becomes stronger. Add to that the fact that coming out is getting easier to do. The burden it brings is easing. I have three personal friends who were married homosexual men. In two of the cases, the men simply finally grew tired of the constant fighting and bickering. They both realized that they were largely responsible for it simply because they were hiding a huge secret from their wives. The wives knew something was wrong, but the fact that they could not figure it out simply added to the wive frustrations, their temper tantrums and their unhappiness.

Both of these men initially intended to stick it out until their children graduated from high school. In the end, both came to see they were not doing their children any favors by subjecting them to witness the constant altercations. In both of these marriages, the altercations became physically violent, not on the part of the men, but on the part of the women. I am convinced that the women became violent simply because they were at their wits end. The marriage was not working and they could not figure out why.

Unfortunately, when each man made the decision to end the marriage and come clean, the atmosphere was so tense and so poisoned that the violence on the part of the wives continued. Both men were, fortunately, smart enough not to be drawn into this violence and simply extricated themselves from it. One walking away from everything he owned with just the clothes on his back.

I personally know of only one case where a marriage ended peacefully when the man told his wife he was homosexual. In that case, the children were grown, the wife was self supporting and she was a member of a fringe religious group. The couple was relatively well off and the husband willingly divided their assets equally between them. In my opinion, she accepted the arrangement because in her mind he had become a lost soul that she wanted nothing to do with and was happy to be rid of because of her religious beliefs.

The woman who finds she is married to a true bisexual man is in a much different situation. By definition bisexual men can and do function well in both the straight world and the homosexual world. My wife knew me intimately for 37 years without a single clue to my bisexuality. For many of those years I was struggling with it mightily but managed to shield her from the struggle. For 11 years I was actively engaging my bisexuality and continued to shield her from it. Bisexual men can and and do often function well in both rolls.


It is important to note that I love and have always loved my wife. It is important to note that I love and have always loved my family. It is important to note that we started out with nothing and worked side by side to build our dreams and we achieved those dreams and more than we had dreamed.  It is important to note that I am socially and emotionally a straight man. I have no desire whatsoever to be in love with a man or to live with a man. A man is simply a physical attraction to me; and as I stated before, there is every reason to believe that is an esoterical thing that bisexual men understand and others do not.


One of the things that most women do not understand is that when they discover their husbands to be bisexual, they cannot honestly hope to bargain with him to save the marriage by putting constraints on him which he cannot meet. One woman I personally know of recently told her husband she would stay in the marriage, but he had to complete a class in reparative therapy. He made a valiant effort but was eventually honest with himself and with her that the technique was just snake oil. It had no real value or effectiveness. In the end, he initiated the divorce because he was honest enough with himself and his wife that he knew he could not meet her demands for saving the marriage. 


This man was a physician. He was prominent in his community and in his church. It is not that he wasn't faced with a situation where there were no "good" choices. That is exactly where he found himself. But a bad situation was made worse by his wife. Because she was hurt and emotionally traumatized, she let herself give into her emotions. She too was faced with a situation in which there were no "good" choices, but there were choices that were better than the others. In her emotional state, she made the worst choices possible. She was bitter enough and hateful enough that she did everything she could to ruin him including spreading the reasons for the divorce to his children and to all other family members as well as spreading the news to the church members as well as to those who had been who had been their friends. She was so intent on ruining him that she did not stop to consider she was damaging the lives of their children, her own life and the lives of others.


Sometimes women will offer to stay in the marriage if the husband will vow to give up his male/male sexual activities. Honestly hoping to save his marriage and his family which he truly values he will agree to the condition. The problem is he can agree verbally. More often than not, he cannot agree realistically. Bisexuality is a drive just as heterosexuality is a drive. Ask yourself. How many men could willingly give up their heterosexual activity. There are some, but they are far from the norm.


Bisexual men fall into several broad categories. There is the man who simply desires a close male friend. The friendship is the thing. Sex is secondary and usually consists of mutual masturbation and often not much more. More often than not there is only one partner and he is another married man. Such activity is relatively harmless and not apt to be subject to STDs.


Other bisexual men feel compelled to meet multiple men, strangers, and have unprotected sex which involves penetration. Such behavior is dangerous to the man and to anyone having a sexual relationship with him, including his wife.


Still other bisexual men have multiple sexual partners but are conscientious about only having protected sex. Such behavior is not without risk, but the risk is mitigated.


Most married bisexual men, whatever category they fall into, love their wives and families. They simply have struggled to deny their sexual urges and have found that in spite of the struggle they cannot control their compulsions.


Honestly, in the course of my life, I have know a number of men who were promiscuous heterosexual men. I used to work with a couple of these men. We were in a job where we traveled a great deal. These two men never spent the night alone. They were always able to find a woman to share their bed. I have to admit, I have a problem, even as a man, with rampant promiscuity run amuck whether it is homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual.


The woman who has found she is married to a bisexual man has much the same obligation as the woman who is married to a heterosexual man. She has to try to figure out what she is faced with and what she can live with because most men at some point are going to have sexual partners outside their marriages. I'm not implying anything other than that is the reality of things.


In my case my sexual partners have always been relatively inexperienced and have been my monogamous partners for years. The truth is that I have always been scared to death of the possibilities of contracting an STD and that fear has kept me cautious and constrained in my activity. My wife knows me well enough to know that I'm telling her the truth when I tell her that. Its one of the reasons she did not end our marriage.


The other reason she did not end our marriage is that by the time she found out about my bisexuality it had been an active part of my life for many years. She had never known and there had been no ill effects to our marriage. The marriage was strong. She simply decided she was not going to end something that was important to her when really nothing had changed except that she knew.


So, the answer to the woman's question about whether or not her marriage to a bisexual man can work is, "Yes it can." It can work very well. There is not a single marriage anywhere in the world that is perfect, not one. All marriages have to work around issues of conflict. This woman is aware of one conflict in her marriage. There are surely others. Some may be far more troublesome than her husband's bisexuality. Through honest and open discussion and with an honest effort from both partners to safeguard and support the marriage, it can work.


Jack Scott





Monday, August 8, 2011

Male Bisexuality and Marriage

We hear a lot these days about the institution of marriage being in trouble, and there is no doubt it is. But why is it in trouble? It's a question that has no single or simple answer.

In an era when same sex marriage is beginning to be sanctioned by a few of the more liberal leaning states, some people would have us believe same sex marriage is a deadly threat to the whole institution of marriage. These people go on and on about how God intended marriage to be between one man and one woman. I guess they've conveniently forgotten about such major servants of God as  King David who loved and had ties to many women and at least one man.

There is no denying, the facts concerning marriage are worrisome to those who feel marriage is an important institution. At the present time over half of new marriages in the United States end in divorce. And if you value marriage you'd do well to get it right the first time; because if you marry, divorce and remarry, you join a group of people in which 67%  of second marriages fail. Not getting it right the second time is even more dire. If you're unwise enough to marry a third time, your marriage has a 75% chance of failure.

Obviously the idea of marriage is important to many people, but marriage itself--not so much. The statistics speak for themselves. For well over 50% of the people, there are other things more important than marriage, things that cause their marriages to break down and end in divorce.

Perhaps the high rate of failure in their parents' marriages is one of the factors turning young people away from marriage and turning them to cohabiting arrangements without the benefit of marriage. At the present time in the United States, there are well over 6 million couples who are living together without being married. Unfortunately though, such arrangements do little or nothing to increase one's chances of living happily ever after.  Over 80% of these couples break up eventually. Of those who do eventually marry, only 12% see their marriage survive for more than ten years.

The statistics are disheartening to say the least. The emotional and economic costs behind these statistics are staggering. Very few marriages end quietly, calmly and friendly. Even those couples who vow to end their marriages without acrimony have no more chance of keeping that vow than they had keeping their original marriage vow. Most divorces are bitter as well as emotionally and economically draining. Many even endure for a time in violence and then end in violence too.  Some even end in murder. One reads about such things almost every week in the news.

At some point, society is going to have to begin to ask itself difficult and searching questions about what is behind this carnage that is modern marriage. What has to change to stop the divorces? Obviously, as a society we have unrealistic expectations of marriage and unrealistic expectations of our individual abilities to make it work in the long term.

The facts are that 60% of married men cheat; and contrary to what daytime television tells women these days, all those married men are not cheating on their wives with other married men. Over 40% of married women also cheat on their husbands.

As both I and my marriage get older, I think more and more often about what it is that has allowed my own marriage to approach the 50 year mark. What advice would I give to someone contemplating marriage that might increase their odds of building a successful one? I find that even from inside a happy and successful marriage of almost 50 years, its hard to put a finger on what it is that allowed our marriage to endure. And some of the things I think allowed it to endure will draw anger and condemnation from others who, in spite of their own marriage failures, are still quite happy to criticize based on their own self-righteousness, anger, and bitterness from their own experience.

My wife and I started dating when we were only 15 years old. We had known each other since we were 12 years old. It certainly wasn't love at first sight for either of us though my wife says that it wasn't long after our first date that she first thought I might be the one. It wasn't anything like that for me. I can't say that I really remember that first date in any detail. I do remember that it came about not as my own idea at all, but rather because of pressure from my best friend who was a long time friend of hers.

Even at 15, I had "been in love" a couple of times with other girls, at least in love to the extent that a 15 year old boy can be in love. Both relationships had ended badly and not by any decision I had made. In fact, on that first date with the woman who would eventually be my wife I was on the rebound from a breakup with a girl I had dated awhile and with whom I was quite infatuated. When she decided it was over, it hurt. It hurt a lot.

So, eventually, at the urging of my best friend who was a life long friend of hers, I asked her out for a date. Had anyone asked me if there could be anything serious develop between the two of us, I'd have told them they were crazy. But as fate would have it "Sadie Hawkins Day" came around a couple of weeks after that first date and again, somewhat reluctantly on my part, we found ourselves on another date. This time at her request. (Most young people probably have no idea what "Sadie Hawkins Day" was as it has long since become an anachronism; but you can google it by clicking here.)

I have no idea why the third date took place. I don't remember what I was thinking. I have no idea when I really began to enjoy our time together, but I did. Still, from the beginning there was so much against our building a successful relationship. There was my own lack of interest at first, but that was far from the only thing.

That life long friend of hers who was my best friend was not just my best friend. He was a friend with benefits, and he had been my sexual partner for four years. And sex between us wasn't a sometimes thing. It was a regular thing and it wasn't just him, there were other guys too. But though I had other sexual partners among my guy friends, he was the primary one at the time. We enjoyed each other sexually with no inhibitions.

That part of Texas, where the caprock ends in an escarpment and the great plains of Texas turn to a gently rolling landscape, was our play ground. His father owned thousands and thousands of acres in that beautiful rolling land. There were seemingly endless square miles of territory to be explored on horseback miles from the nearest road or house, and it was not unusual for the two of us to saddle our horses and ride and explore and play all day. It was a boy's life that every boy should have. It was the very essence of freedom, sexually and otherwise.

When we were sufficiently in the back range, away from everything and everyone but ourselves, our horses and nature, we would strip off our jeans and shirts, strip the saddles and saddle blankets from our horses and ride bareback and bare butt with the wind blowing through our hair, all of our hair.  There was something almost spiritual about it. The sandy riverbed stretched for miles uninterrupted by anything not a part of nature. There was a private lake on his dad's property too where his dad kept a small row boat. We would spend hours naked in that boat or on the grassy bank of the lake just fishing and talking and doing whatever we felt like doing. It was a good life. A very good life.

I'm aware that we are all the product of a complicated mix of genetics and life experiences, but male to male sexuality was such an prominent part of my boyhood and such a thoroughly natural part of it that I honestly believe it was and is a natural part of what it means to be a male. No one taught us to be sexual, we simply were sexual. True enough, in the beginning of it all, I was the youngest boy and I was taught by the older boys how to suck cock and how to jack off to orgasm. But those things were just added information to the sexuality that had been a part of me from my earliest memories.

I had always been fascinated with sex long before I knew what sex was. I had been fascinated with my own equipment and what it could do and how it could make me feel. It was a natural thing because it was a part of me that had always been. To me and to most of the other boys in my life, it was a natural as the sun rising in the east each morning. We didn't question the rising of the sun and we didn't question the rising of our cocks to each other's touch.

And the bonds that formed between us were natural too. I am convinced that it is the way boys are meant to be raised. As an adult bisexual male, I have come to believe that inside every man there is that boy who still longs for and needs that absolute unquestioned bond that ties him so closely to another man that sexual expression of it is just a given. And its a bond that is not romantic and it has absolutely nothing to do with nor is it in conflict with love in the way that a man loves his wife. It is simply the respect, the affection and the sense of shared confidences that one man has for another man.

The more I have talked to bisexual men over the years, the more I've read of history, aboriginal culture and the Greek and Roman cultures, the more convinced I have become that the ability for men to forge such bonds has been vital to the rise of civilization itself. Without that enormous pull on men to bond together in mutually beneficial relationships with other men to hunt, to protect and defend their women and children and to pass on their skills and their concept of what it was to be a man to new generations, society as we know it would not exist.

I think that women form similar bonds with other women which were also invaluable to the rise of civilization. In early cultures, women bonded with other women in groups to gather food and resources, to care for children and share the work of providing home and hearth. Even today women are expected to get together with their girlfriends frequently for shopping, talking, laughing and having fun.

With men not so much. Men are only allowed to get together in well organized groups for a specific purpose such as sports or organized hobby pursuits. The difference between men and their friends and women and their friends is that men's sexual equipment is hanging right in front of them. And men like to talk about sex and when they talk about sex, the equipment responds. Sometimes if the relationship is private enough and close enough, hunting buddies or golfing buddies or fishing buddies or camping buddies rediscover the naturalness of buddies with benefits.

Perhaps the only thing missing ultimately for me and the boys that were so much a part of my life back then was the understanding of ourselves and our natural sexuality that would be needed to transition into manhood in a society where the understanding of what it means to be a man was being swept away by the heterosexualization of men and the dawning of an age, dominated by the feminist movement. It was to be an age when women achieved the place in society that they deserved; but unfortunately, it would be an age when being male became a bad thing.

But how could we have known. Society itself had changed the rules and would change them further. Such bonds among boys and men were no long understood. Worse yet, religious dogmas had labeled them as sin and society had labeled them as homosexual, a term that was less than seventy years old when I became a sexually aware boy.

The awful truth is neither we nor anyone else had much understanding of it all back in those days. We boys didn't talk about it; we just lived it and enjoyed it in what we could not know were the last summers when boys and men would be allowed to be wild at heart. It wasn't a subject one learned in school. It wasn't something one discussed with parents. It just was. We didn't question if we were gay or straight. I don't think we had any better understanding of what it meant to be gay than we had of what we were doing. As it turned out not a single one of us was gay. No one remained single. Now, all these years later, I have learned that there is good reason why none of us turned out to be gay. What we were engaged in had nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality. The name for what we were engaged in is Frot (which rhymes with hot).


Frot is the normal and natural celebration of masculinity. It's hard to believe but even in the United States, that normal and natural acceptance of masculinity has ceased to be recognized as cause for celebration only in the last 100 years or so. It is still celebrated today in first world countries such as Japan where every March 15 is National Penis Day. A day when the penis and the gift of masculinity are openly celebrated.


Men who practice Frot believe all guys have same sex feelings and fantasies. They believe its not a big deal simply because guys have sex with guys, always have. Always will. And they believe all guys have fantasies about sex with guys, always have. Always will. It is part of the human condition. It is part of being a man. 


But though sex between two men is part of the human condition in Frot philosophy, it says nothing about the conditional role of men. For men it is simply an activity that excites their shared masculinity. For men other than homosexual men, and sometimes for those men too, sexual acts with another man have absolutely no implications beyond the act itself as far as the men are concerned. They do it simply because they can. Simply because they are hard wired to do it.


As with any philosophy, I don't agree completely with Frot philosophy. In their world view, all sexual labels would cease to exist. Men would simply be men - sexual creatures. They would be neither heterosexual, bisexual nor homosexual. After years of living my own life and years of talking to other men from every walk of life from priest to lawyer to carpenter and everything in between, I have no doubt that Frot is on target when it say sex between men is just part of being a man. I just think that there are men who don't want anything whatsoever to do with women sexually. And I think there are a few men, very few, who have never so much as had a passing thought about sex with another man. Homosexuality is a reality as is bisexuality and Frot.


It's hard to believe that the words heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual are themselves throughly modern words. They didn't exist in our vocabulary until the 19th century. In the Greek and Roman world at the time of Christ they didn't need such words. The fact that men had sex with men was no secret. It was a cultural norm in Greek and Roman societies. An important thing to remember is that men in that culture had sex with men just as their fathers and grandfathers had before them. Having sex with men had no implications whatsoever concerning marriage and family. Young men had sex with other men. They also married and impregnated their wives. That was just the way it was. They didn't need a name for such behavior. It was just natural.

Today, unfortunately, the situation has changed. In our uptight and Right minded society dominated by the self-righteous and dogmatic radical and evangelical Christian Right, what was a natural, normal and good thing among boys and men has now come to be seen as perversion and an all out threat to the institution of marriage and to women everywhere. If it really was a threat to the institution of marriage and to women everywhere, the institution of marriage would have faded away long ago because men have always had sexual relationships with other men.

When I look back on my boyhood knowing what I know of todays world, I am struck by the innocence of it all. We were all simply friends. No one played the bully. No one gave commands. No one issued threats. We simply took great pleasure in being males together and doing male things. I can't help but think that many marriages would be stronger today if both the men and the women in those marriages better understood the natural state of male sexuality. Women perceive male to male sex as a threat to them and to their marriage. Many times it is not. It is simply the expression of a male bond that has nothing to do with anything outside that male bond. On in the case of a homosexual man who is married yet cannot form a proper relationship with his wife, is their danger to the marriage from his becoming sexually active with another man.

The fact that times are changing and homosexual men can now live more openly with all the benefits of society at their disposal will mean there will be fewer homosexual men in marriages they have no business being in in future years.

Without anything to base my opinions and my judgement on other than my own experience, my own feelings and the overarching norms of society, I married at age 18 assuming that all the male to male sex had been nothing other than a substitute for and a preparation for "normal" heterosexual life. I assumed that being a married man with heterosexual sex, more or less, available to me at anytime, male to male sex was a boyhood thing that would no longer be a part of my life. There was no need for me to tell my wife I was a bisexual man. I didn't know it myself at the time. I assumed I was a straight guy who would take great joy in heterosexual sex and leave homosexual sex behind. The first part of that proved to be the case. I loved straight sex. Leaving male to male sex behind became an unexpected problem.

The wedding was formal and elaborate, everything my new wife had dreamed of since she was a small girl. Truthfully, to me as I suspect it is to most guys, the wedding itself meant very little to me. I just did what I had to do and showed up for the ceremony. I'd have been just as happy getting the task taken care of in a small ceremony in front of a justice of the peace with our immediate families watching and getting on with the sex.

The planning of it all was incredible to me. Fortunately, I wasn't expected to get too involved, just do what I was told to do. The expense of it all was staggering to me. Fortunately, that didn't fall on my shoulders either. Some cost fell to my parents, but her parents bore the brunt of it all. They could afford it and were seemingly more than thrilled to provide the wedding their daughter had always dreamed of.

Looking back, I've got to say I don't know how they did it; or, at least I didn't until our own daughter married. I wonder now if my own in-laws had the same fears I had on my own daughter's wedding day. My daughter was several years older than her mother and I had been when she married. She had always been an intelligent and pleasant child. She had never given us a moment's problem until her late teens and then, as so many women do, she developed a fascination with bad boys. The inevitable came to pass. She decided to marry one. Her mother and I were very distressed about her decision; but there was really nothing we could say or do that would both change her decision; and at the same time, preserve our relationship with her. So like her mother before her, she had the big wedding. I walked her down the aisle and gave her hand to her bad boy knowing that as sure as I was breathing, there was not one shred of hope for the marriage.

I've got to hand it to my daughter. I was proud of her. She tried mightily to make it work. She endured three long miserable years of hell determined till the end to make it work, overlooking his faults and his flaws. But in spite of everything she gave to the marriage, he gave nothing. In the end there were only three good things about the marriage:
  1. There were no children
  2. He never physically abused her
  3. He finally fucked up enough in one utterly devastating show of stupidity and selfishness that she could no longer convince herself that she could make the marriage work.
So, now I often wonder if my wife's dad walked her down the aisle and gave her hand to an 18 year old kid thinking much the same thing. I'll never know. He died a few months later. But I think he'd be happy to know that in spite of everything we're closing in on 50 years; and in spite of everything, we're happy and still in love with each other, probably more so than we were at age 18.

It's hard to say why a marriage with so much against it has endured, but I think I understand much of it though its difficult to put into words. I think the first seed of success was planted in that first initial dating period. We were never infatuated with one another. We never fell in love. We were friends who grew into love. Though we were and are very different individuals, we complemented each other. She is introverted and slow to trust; but when she gives her trust its a done deal. I'm extroverted and intuitive. I like people and I enjoy interacting with people. She would rather observe people than interact with them. Money is important to me because it can buy me things I enjoy. Money is important to her because it brings financial security. I'm always in charge. She happy to follow a reasonable lead. I'm flamboyant and supremely confident. She is practical with a quiet confidence. I force her out into the world. I force things into her world which she enjoys but would never reach for herself. She restrains me with just the gentlest look or word and she's always there when my exuberance results in my taking a fall.

In all our years of marriage we have only fought about three things:
  1. Sex
  2. The kids
  3. Money
It's difficult to explain why we fought about sex; and the fact is, I didn't understand it all myself at the time. My wife has always been playful and sexually giving. She has always been very good at keeping sex interesting and exciting and I've enjoyed the immense benefits of that. But at the same time because we married so young and took on the responsibilities of building a new life together from a young age with nothing to start with, there were many years of hard work necessary to make it all unfold.

Kids came along and sometimes my wife just had too much going on in her life with working a full time job while also pursuing a bachelor of science degree and then an advanced degree and an internship. There were time when she simply wasn't in the mood for sex. As for me, I was was helpful to her. I helped take care of the kids on weekends when I was home from the road. I had no problem in helping to keep the house clean. I cooked whenever I was at home. I understood that the work she was doing, the schooling and the internships would pay off eventually in a better life for us and our family. But the truth is I didn't stop being a man and I wasn't quite as understanding as I should have been about being turned down for sex from time to time.  I never wanted sex except when I was feeling good or feeling bad or feeling frustrated or when it had been more than 24 hours.

But to me, there was a good side to my constant need for sex with my wife. I really enjoyed it, needed it and an enthusiastic participant in it. That was reassuring for a guy who didn't want to be gay but nevertheless also had a constant and now unfulfilled desire for male to male sex. In those pre internet days I thought I was the only married guy in the world with desires like mine. I didn't know what to label myself, but I was sure I wasn't gay.

The kids all too quickly grew up and moved out on their own. All the hard work had paid off and money was no longer a problem, so fighting became a very rare thing for us. Our relationship, which had always been sound simply grew stronger with each passing year.

As the demands of career and family lessened, as money became available for things other than necessities and as the monkey on my back began to claw and bite ever harder I continued to struggle with my seemingly inescapable desire for male to male sex. Finally the internet came along, I bought my first computer and I discovered, much to my amazement, that I was not alone. There were millions of married men like me out there. It took me only a very short time to find one who was to become my buddy with benefits for ten years.

During those ten years, I read everything I could get my hands on about male bisexuality. I found the subject to be broad and controversial. Some say it doesn't exist. Some say it is a passing stage, a precursor to homosexuality. Some say it is a biological norm that has been dislodged from society by the dogma of fundamentalist Christianity. Most researchers admit that the topic simply has not yet been effectively and exhaustively researched. I agree, but my opinion based on my own life and what I know about the lives of the hundreds of men I've talked to over the years is that bisexuality does exist, that some men who are married and really homosexual label themselves as bisexual mistakenly and that male to male sex as part of normal and natural male bonding is in deed a biological norm.

If that is the case, and I believe it to be, each guy has only to find himself in that continuum. I think with all that is being shared by men these days and with more and more research finding oneself will be much much easier than it was in 1950 or 1960.

Men who are homosexual will be homosexual and will live homosexual lives partnered with other homosexual men. Heterosexual men will marry and live their lives with women. Bisexual men will continue to face a challenge. They will have to make decisions about which life they want to lead primarily and how much they are going to say about it to their partners. In the world that is coming, bisexual men will be able to marry a woman or form a legal partnership with another man. Bisexual men who need and/or want sexual relationships with both men and women will continue to face ethical dilemmas about how open they should be with their partners.

But whether a guy is heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, there is the real possibility that he could build a Frot bond with another man. This bond would be simply a celebration of each man's masculinity and as such would have no implications for relationships outside the bond. Almost by definition these bonds would be long term and not promiscuous. So the threat of disease transmission would be lessened. Also if one looks at the Frot philosophy, he will find that Frot is non-penatrative. It never includes anal sex. That also lessens the possibility of disease transmission.

I don't expect that people everywhere are going to flock to my way of thinking. They are not. And most married women certainly are not going to. Yet, the fact remains and I have verified it over and over and over again through conversations with other married men, that the sexual activity they have with their buddy has nothing to do with their feelings or lack of feelings for their wives. They love their wives. They need their families. They simply need the male to male bond also.

In my own case, when I did tell my wife about my bisexuality, she chose to see it for what it is and more importantly for what it is not. It is not a threat to our marriage or our relationship. That relationship has been and remains strong.

The fact is, I have talked to a number of men whose wives have responded to a situation they did not understand and ended up sacrificing their marriages, their homes, and their social view of themselves for what they perceived as a threat when in actuality it was no threat at all.

Marriage is an institution which is in trouble in the United States and around the world. Simple male bonding, even male bonding that includes sexual activity, is not a threat to one's marriage as far as any male is concerned.  That is simply a fact. It is also simply a fact that for some women, perhaps most women, such bonding is a problem. That is their right and their choice. But they should think carefully.

Men engage in sexual activity with other men, always have. Always will. Many men do not comprehend how normal their desires are and they spend years racked by useless guilt over something which is essentially normal. My hope is that men like myself who have chosen to put our own thoughts and our own lives into the open via blogs like this one will help other men to see the normality of what they are thinking and feeling. Perhaps through dialogue over a number of years women too will come to see that men are wired a little differently women and find that to be an acceptable thing.

I don't have the answers to all the ethical questions posed by every relationship between a husband and a wife. I do know that married men have always has sexual encounters with other married men and always will and society has continued to advance.


If every woman could suddenly come to understand the reality of bonding between men that often leads to sexual contact, the present threat to the institution of marriage would not suddenly go away. The threat to marriage is much more complex than male sexuality. But one aspect of the threat would be mitigated.


To save marriage as an institution, it has to meet the needs of real people as they are today and it has to fit into the realities of the world as it is today. It was one thing when people tended to die in their thirties, forties or fifties and when women were completely dependent upon their husbands for support. It is quite another thing when people routinely live healthy lives into their seventies, eighties and nineties and the fastest growing age group is people above 100 years of age. It is quite another thing when women are independent of their husbands in every way and when they do not look to him for their livelihood.


My wife and I have talked often of what different persons we are now than when we married. And its not just my bisexuality. When I married at 18, I had no understanding at all of my sexuality. I didn't even know what I wanted to be when I grew up. My wife was much the same. She had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. The only thing we had going for us when we married was a lot of love, some youthful lust and a great deal of ambition. And we lived in the greatest land of opportunity the world had ever known.

I ended up in a career field that didn't even exist when we were married. My wife's career took a turn she had never considered. We each became totally different people than either of us would have ever imagined. Lust was lost along the way. Love became heavily laced with friendship and an abiding affection and joy in being together. Fortunately, the changes in each of us were along lines that left us on common ground. I don't think either one of us ever expected our marriage to be a fairy tale, and it hasn't been. I think in addition to being lovers when we married we were the best of friends. We still are.

Most importantly, through the years we've been willing to give and to take. There have been times when I've given more than I got. Their have been times when she's given much more than she got. There have been times when we were both pulling together with all we had to keep it going. There have been few times when we were at cross purpose.

Thats the kind of thing that is vital to keeping a marriage healthy.

Jack Scott


Stand Up - Don't Stand for Homophobic Bullying

Anyone can comment on what I write in this blog. Regretfully, the recent amount of spam in my email account as required that I reinstate the word verification process for comments which I personally hate.

But at the same time I have loosened the comment moderation process so that those of you who have a Google Blogger ID or other recognized blogger ID will no longer need to wait for your comment to be moderated. I'm hoping this will tempt you to take the trouble to comment.

The truth is I want respectful comments both from those who agree with me and those who do not. All I as is that you keep comments to the point, clean and non-threatenting.

I look forward to hearing from each of you.

Jack Scott