Tragedy - When Trying Hard Is Not Enough

Back in the middle of January, I posted a blog entitled, "A Tale of Two Women." At that time I was convinced that one of the women was setting herself, as well as the man she claimed to love, up for tragedy. I had high hopes for the other woman that she would be able to work  out the details and make her mixed orientation marriage work.

Tragically, it now looks like that is not to be. It's not that she didn't try. She gave it all she had. She struggled mightily. She wanted it to work; but in the end, it simply required more than she had to give.

She did a great job of talking the talk, trying to psych herself up to the challenges. In the end, she was only driving herself crazy. Up to it one hour and in the depths of despair the next hour. Try as she did with everything she had in her, she simply could not come to grips with her husbands homosexuality.

I write about this not to criticize this woman. She is an inspiration to me in many ways. She's a wonderful woman. Loving, intelligent, with much to give. She demands little. She is more than willing to be the one who works hardest to make her marriage work.

The only problem is that through no fault of her own, she simply does not have the capability to build what she wants into something she can actually live with. It is as if her dream is to build a stairway to heaven. No matter how much she dreams that dream, it simply cannot be accomplished.

If there is any fault in her situation, it lays not with her; but with her husband. She has turned every stone looking for help and advice. To the best of my knowledge, he has stubbornly refused to seek advice from other people who have made mixed orientation marriages work. As is so typical of many men, he has insisted on trying to build something very complex and complicated without reading the instructions.

I must say while she has been very good at seeking advice and has received a lot of good advice, she simply has been unable or unwilling to follow any of the advice she has received. I really think she wants to follow the advice that could help her, but she simply does not have the ability to do so. Though she insists she is willing to share her husband in a mixed orientation marriage, she simply is not up to the challenge.

I am so sorry for her. I wish I could make it better for her. I can't because as much as she wants to make it better too, she simply does not have the ability. Try as she has, she simply cannot walk on water.

So, I don't write any of this to condemn her. I respect her greatly for trying as hard as she has. I write this for the men who are on the other side of her situation, those married bisexual or homosexual men who are struggling with the question of whether to tell their wives and how much to tell them.

As I have said many many times, it is the most trying and critical questions a married bisexual man struggles with. There simply is no good answer to the question. There is no right answer to the question. This woman is living proof of that.

She was more than willing to hang onto her marriage by accepting a new paradigm -- a mixed orientation marriage. She found, much to her sorrow, anger and distress that one of the greatest tragedies of life is when trying one's best is simply not enough!

I have met hundreds and hundreds of homosexual and bisexual men. I have yet to meet the man who has not struggled with his sexuality. More often than not, the struggle has lasted for decades. More often than not, the struggle has severely wounded him. Many times it has caused him to think of himself as a true monster. I hear that over and over again. I am a monster.

With that being the fact for the vast majority of men, I simply do not understand why a man who has faced the issue his entire life and often failed to come to terms with it could think that he could lay such a burden on his wife's shoulders out of the blue and expect anything good to come from it. The reality is, he can't. The reality is that to do such a thing is not noble. It is cowardly and cruel. We each must simply bear our own burdens. There are some burdens we cannot, must not, turn over to those we love.

The couple I speak of did not have a perfect marriage by any means. But they had a working marriage for years. They were achieving their dreams, until he tried to mitigate his guilt by confessing all to her. With that confession, what had been a worthwhile and working marriage flew apart in spite of her fervent desire to keep it together.

When one rings a bell, the bell as been rung. The ringing of the bell can never be undone no matter how much we might desire to have it undone. The consequences are real and they are everlasting. It is a lesson all married non-straight men should consider carefully over and over again.

When I last wrote concerning this issue, one of the comments I received was that I seemed to be biased toward not telling one's wife even though I had told my wife. It was a fair comment. It's true, I did tell my wife. I was absolutely sure I could without any lasting effect on my marriage. What I didn't realize at the time was that even though my marriage was not affected, it didn't mean that my wife felt no effects from it all. She did. Fortunately, she had the professional tools, as a psychotherapist herself, to deal with her feelings. But even for her it has been and is a struggle.

Most women have no such tools. Try as they might, most often tragedy is the end result. Add to that most women are so hurt and angry over the confession that they are unwilling even to try to live with it.

It is wise to remember also that even if a marriage survives, it does not mean it survives happily. Marriages can and do last a lifetime as an armed camp devoid of feeling or emotion, as cold lifeless ghosts of what use to be.

No man can change his sexuality. A bisexual man can learn to bear the burden with help from those who have born their own burdens. He can handle his bisexuality both discretely and discreetly, safely and with restraint while being the husband and father he signed on to be. Married homosexual men are often better off as are ultimately their wives, to end their marriages and give himself and his wife the opportunity to try to reset their lives with a person who meets their sexual needs.

As much as most bisexual men love their wives, the pictures that illustrate this post still excite us. Such is the nature of bisexuality. The fact remains that most women cannot get their head around the fact that their husband could be a part of such a picture and still love her. They simply can't, no matter how much they try.

Jack Scott
Edited at 4:45 pm
1/30/2012

Psalm 139

I realize that not all of you are religious, but the vast majority of bisexual guys are men of faith. Unfortunately, the Bible is, more often than not, used to bash gay and bisexual men. The misguided and often ignorant fundamental and evangelical Christians who choose to use the Bible as a weapon rather than as the good news of God's Grace always seem to hold fast to verses they misinterpret to support their prejudices while flat ignoring verses that plainly refute their view of both God and the Bible.

I've been a Christian all my life though never a fundamental or evangelical Christian. I have a pretty good grasp of the Bible, but for some reason Psalm 139 had never registered with me until I came across it a few days ago.

Psalm 139 has much to say to all people, but it seems to me to almost be aimed at bisexual and homosexual persons. Read the New King James Bible Version of this beautiful Psalm.

Psalm 139 1-18 & 23-24

 A Psalm of David.

 1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me.

 2 You know my sitting down and my rising up;

         You understand my thought afar off.

 3 You comprehend my path and my lying down,

         And are acquainted with all my ways.

 4 For there is not a word on my tongue,

         But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.

 5 You have hedged me behind and before,

         And laid Your hand upon me.

 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

         It is high, I cannot attain it. 

         

 7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?

         Or where can I flee from Your presence?

 8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;

         If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.

 9 If I take the wings of the morning,

         And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

 10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,

         And Your right hand shall hold me.

 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”

         Even the night shall be light about me;

 12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,

         But the night shines as the day; 

         The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

         

 13 For You formed my inward parts;

         You covered me in my mother’s womb.

 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

         Marvelous are Your works, 

         And that my soul knows very well.

 15 My frame was not hidden from You,

         When I was made in secret, 

         And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.

         And in Your book they all were written, 

         The days fashioned for me, 

         When as yet there were none of them. 

         

 17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!

         How great is the sum of them!

 18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;

         When I awake, I am still with You. 

      

        

 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;

         Try me, and know my anxieties;

 24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,

         And lead me in the way everlasting.

To me these words describing God Himself are most comforting. I hope you find them so too. It's only my personal belief, but I believe and my life experience seems to confirm that God made each of us as we are for a purpose. I am a bisexual man because God had a part for me to play in life from that perspective.

I have no way to know if that is actually true or not. It is only a matter of faith, but the thought comforts me greatly.

Jack Scott

When Right is Wrong and Wrong is Right

I've written about Bisexuality and Marriage 13 times so far in this blog. Yet, I've never found anything that comes close to being the last word on the subject for me.

I'm a grizzled veteran of the wars married bisexual men wage within themselves. The pain from the self inflicted wounds as well as the wounds inflicted by others are greatly diminished now; but like a physical wound healed long ago that still hurts with the changing weather, my wounds from the war with my bisexuality still pain me from time to time. I guess they always will.

It's been five years now since I told my wife I was a bisexual man. The hurt, the sense of betrayal, the wonder why she wasn't good enough to meet my needs have diminished for her too; but like my own ghost pain,  her pain is still there sometimes too. Not searing pain by any means, but the pain that comes when something happens in ones life that can never be undone, like the pain that still is felt 10 years after a loved one died.

In this case, I guess that sort of pain for her is appropriate. On the day I told her five years ago. The "me" that she had known and loved for more than 40  years passed away. A new "me" stood before her, shared her home, shared her bed.

The fact that we have always had the best of marriages helped us and at the same time hurt. We had been fantastic lovers since we started dating at age 16. We could make each others body sing. We could and did soar to heights seldom known to two lovers. It was like two majestic eagles mating in flight as they soared above the beautiful snowcapped mountains far below.

How could that sort of love not be enough to meet my needs? How could her willingness to be anyone I wanted her to be and do anything I wanted her to do in making love to me not satisfy my every desire? She asked herself those questions. I asked them of myself.

The only answer I've ever felt that came close is that I am simply a bisexual man. As a true bisexual man, the urge, the need for a relationship with my buddy is just as strong,  just as demanding as are the needs for my wife.

Over the last few months, a number of men have come to me as they struggle with this part of their bisexuality. The conversation is always the same, "I love my wife. I don't want to leave my wive, but there is this need in me she cannot meet. There is this place in me she cannot reach."

"What am I going to do? How do I handle this without destroying my marriage?"

"I feel I have to be honest with her, but I am scared it will cost me everything."

Fortunately, I never had to consider that my telling her would cost me everything. I was sure I could tell her about myself without endangering our marriage. I knew there would be pain and repercussions, but I knew we would survive it. I knew that as a psychotherapist, she knew I had made no choices. She knew the biological demands upon a bisexual man were just as powerful as those that drives a heterosexual man. She would be sorry to find that she had to personally deal with a bisexual man rather than clinically deal with one as was the norm for her, but she would deal with it. I had no doubt.

Yesterday, a good friend of mine notified me that he needed to speak to me on the phone as soon as possible. Without going into too much detail and keeping his privacy in mind, I will just say that his privacy had been breeched through no fault of his own. Like many of us, his family is the most important thing in his life. True, he functions as a bisexual man, but he lives as a heterosexual man. The thought that his sexuality could become a public matter was not a welcome thought.

In another situation the problem was much different. A young man came to me and asked to talk. He was consumed with anger and denial over his homosexuality. He did not want to be a homosexual man. It was tearing him apart. He was a very young man with a new wife and a new home and a great job. But his feelings about his homosexuality were beginning to affect all those things, and the more he tried to stop thinking about it all the stronger the thoughts and the feelings became.

Fortunately, this young man lives near me. We began meeting once a week and talking about his situation in depth. Gradually, I had to calm him down and help him get to a point that would be conducive to to thinking about a very complex situation. He had to also move to a point at which he could make some very difficult choices.

This young man is one of the most awesome guys, I have ever met. I don't know what his IQ is, but its bound to be 140, probably more. At an age where most of his peers are still having Mom wash their dirty underwear, he's a highly paid and highly respected professional. Nothing gets past him. He takes it all in. And for him that was actually a problem. He knew every possible outcome that could accrue to his being a homosexual man and most of those were not pretty and they were not outcomes we wanted to embrace.

One of the questions on his mind was should he tell his wife. He saw that as the ethical thing to do, but he also saw it as something that would not only destroy their marriage, it would destroy everything. The thought of that was unbearable. The thought of not telling her was also unbearable.

We spent many hours in conversation. At first he was guarded which is understandable when everything is on the line, but gradually he began to trust me and he began to tell me his every thought, his every fear and his every hope.

Being the super intelligent man he is, he is a planner. And as a newly married man he is busy planning the future for himself and his wife and the family to come. His sexuality though is a wild card in the planning. That wild card drives him crazy.

I was amazed at how quickly he began to progress once we reached the point he would honestly answer any question I asked him. I was even more amazed that he would quickly yet exhaustively consider my every suggest. Rejecting some, accepting many and modifying some to his own liking. That was exactly what I was hoping for, but what I rarely encounter in most guys.

Over the months we have talked, I have come to know that I can assure him he is not a homosexual man. He may be a bisexual man, but even that is not certain yet. What he thought was homosexual desires may have been nothing more than a bit of curiousness. It's rare, but I've seen it before.

One of his recent questions was about telling his wife. As a very ethical guy, it had to be a consideration for him. I urged him not to consider it at this time if ever. There is nothing for him to gain and everything to loose. There is nothing for her to gain either and everything for her to loose. Some can and will argue that it is the ethical thing for him to do and that she deserves to know. Those who make that argument are people who only see black and white in a world that is more often shades of gray than black and white.

Quite honestly, look around you. Those who demand black and white answers to every question and every issue are destroying this country. Everywhere you look the country is polarized. We see in in our politicians, we see it in our churches, we see it in our schools. It is everywhere we turn.

The first guy whose privacy was breeched not of  his own making, felt he had to take another route. With the fact that his personal life could quickly become public he chose to tell his wife everything. His decision was a good one. If you're going to get outed, its best to take control of the situation and make the first move.

His wife was not happy to hear what he had to say, but the conversation went well. My friend is hopeful that his marriage will survive.

Whether or not to tell one's wife is the biggest issue a married man has to make when it comes to his non-straight sexuality. It simply must be a personal decision based on the realities of his personal situation.

But in my experience telling is rarely the right thing to do. While the guy is often convinced he is doing the right thing, he is almost always doing the wrong thing. In many cases, the wrong thing for himself, his wife and his children.

If one thinks about it rationally, every single homosexual or bisexual man I've ever known has struggled with himself for years. Many NEVER really are able to stop the war within themselves. For others it takes years. How can any man who has lived those battles for decades suddenly blindside his wife with HIS war and expect her to survive it. The answer is, he can't. She will be a casualty of the war before she even begins to understand what the war is about.


Almost 70% of all marriages in which the husband confesses his bisexuality or homosexuality end within two years. That counts only the ones that end formally. It does not count the ones that are damaged beyond repair but remain in tact only on paper.

There is not handbook for the married bisexual or married homosexual man. The ultimate path is easier for the homosexual man, but easier does not mean easy. There will be pain, but as a homosexual man he has clear choices.

The bisexual man has no clear choices. He often needs his wife as much as he needs his buddy. It is a situation that women simply cannot understand because sex and emotion are wired differently in women that they are in men.

In the foreseeable future there is no good choice for the bisexual man who wants a wife and family and a buddy. Telling her before marriage is not a good answer. By my wife's own admission, had I told her before we married she would have not married me. But also by her own admission knowing what she knows now, that decision not to marry me would have been a mistake.

In every relationship one person simply loves more, one person gives more. Things are never equal. Each is duty bound to give all he/she can. A married bisexual man should give all he can, but life is full of situations where something has to be sacrificed for the greater good. For a married bisexual and his wife, the marriage is often good and to maintain it as a good and viable marriage the man must sacrifice refrain from telling the whole truth.

Some may think this works out well for him at the expense of his wife. It actually works out well for her too. A truly bisexual man will never be happy if he is prohibited from having the relationship with a buddy that he needs. His wife will live with a happier, more giving, more loving man if he has his wife to love and his buddy to bond with.

Jack Scott

A Tale of Two Women

I talk to an ever increasing number of men via Chat, Email and/or Phone. I enjoy greatly hearing personal stories from guys about their trials, their struggles and especially their triumphs. I enjoy most, talking with those guys who have finally come to the decision that something has to give way and something has to change in their life.

These guys warm my soul, strengthen my faith and remind me over and over again that there is a destiny to each of our lives and that the destiny of each of our lives is meant to be a magnificent and satisfying thing, and it can be such if they will only accept the reality that each of us must work out our own redemption and refuse to submit ourselves to the redemptive ideals of others.

But this is not a post about all those guys I talk to or would like to talk to. This is a tale of two women, two very different women. While I talk to hundreds of guys, it is rare for me to talk to women. It's really rare for me to even hear from women. Once in a great while, I will get a letter from an aggrieved and sorrowful woman who, in her anger, lashes out at me because I've chosen to post my philosophy on line for all to see and am thus available as a whipping post.

I almost never get a letter from a woman seeking help in dealing with a bisexual or homosexual husband. More often I get angry and threatening letters from women.

A few weeks ago within hours of each other, I heard from two women. My chat with the two of them lasted for some time. The chat with one continues.

For the sake of making it easier to following the dialogue, I'll call the first young woman Angry Ann. The second young lady, I'll call Hope. Each name fairly describes each woman. I respect each of these women's privacy and I have been very careful to reveal anything that would place them in any specific location or indicate in any way who they are. There is no way anyone can identify them through this blog.

The tale I tell here is as i understood it to be told by each young woman. I apologize for any misconception on my part and either young lady is free to refute any misconception on my part concerning them in the comment section of this blog.

The words I use in this post are the words of each young woman though the phrasing and the chronology is often mine in the interest of keeping this post readable.

Angry Ann

Angry Ann's letter arrived first. She had read my blog with interest, she said; yet for the first time, she said, she felt anger over the blogs topic rising up in her. She said she was an open minded person, but in reading my blog anger seemed to take over.

She went on to say she was a fabulous young woman who has much to offer a marriage partner, yet she is struggling to find a mate because it seems all the men she is interested in are interested in other men. She said it hurts to be rejected because she has a vagina rather than a cock. Her greatest wish is that every single bisexual and gay man would quickly find someone and get married so that she could find the man she wants and quit having to go to bed alone and taking vacations with girlfriends.

She went on to say she is so tired of watching men at churches and bars and singles clubs eye each other when they think the women don't notice. Then she switched course 180 degrees and thanked me for my blog because it had given her the right to be angry. It had given her the right and the courage to demand that men be men and reserve their penises for women. She is, she said, determined to find a man she likes and demand that he be sexually faithful to her.

Hope's first letter to me was much different. She told me she was a young woman with two young children who is married to a wonderful young man who is everything she has ever wanted in life. I'll call him Struggle. They have been friends since high school and she has always secretly loved him. He had been in the military after school and thankfully survived. Upon his return to civilian life, they renewed their friendship and she finally professed her love to him and they married. For several years they enjoyed what seemed to be the best of marriages and family lives.

Then things began to change. At first she could not figure it out. She thought perhaps Iraq had changed him in someway. Maybe what he had seen there and done there had caught up with him and PTSD was taking its toll.

Eventually, there was counseling but from Hope's perspective, thing continued to go down hill. The friend and husband who had shared everything with her had become a cold and private man who refused to share his thoughts with her. He seldom laughed. He seemed preoccupied almost all the time.

Not to be put off and valuing her marriage and her family greatly, she continued to push her husband to open up to her and to share whatever demons were causing him to change into a man she didn't know. She promised him there was absolutely nothing he could tell her that would cause her to stop loving him.

Finally, the day came when he did open up. He told her that he was at least a bisexual man and perhaps a homosexual man. He did not yet know for sure though he was sure he was more homosexual than bisexual.

In her letter to me, Hope said she still loved him and she was willing to do anything for him including share him with a man if she had to. She said she absolutely refused to play the part of a victim. She would share him or she would let him go if she had to, but she would always love him.

Her husband was back and forth. One day he would tell her he loved her and another he would say he just was confused and he couldn't be sure what his feelings were. She had married him for all the right reasons, she said. They were friends. They laughed together, they shared, she wanted to grow old with him. He finally confessed to feel much the same way, but a little different in a big way. She was his friend, they laughed together, they shared, he wanted to be with her, but he also thought the desires within him would perhaps change when they got married. They had not changed except to become more demanding and more insistent. His reaction to these demons was to shut down.

With that confession from her husband, Hope went into her own tailspin. At times she loved him even more for the pain he was suffering for her and for his own plight. At other times she felt he had never loved her, that their marriage had been a sham from the first. She still loves him, but she sometimes finds herself doubting he could ever love her as much. The only thing that never changed is her desire, her need to hold on to him and their marriage no matter work.

As mine and Hope's chats picked up pace she continued to tell me much of what she was thinking. I found she had a blog and I began reading it. I found there was a public face in her blog that was much more filled with negative feelings than were her expressions of hope to me.

At one point her husband told her he has always loved her but he felt bad because he knew he could never lover her wholly and completely as she deserved to be loved. He admitted he questioned her love because he simply could not understand how she could love her so much knowing what she now knows about him.

Hope's husband began an undefined relationship with another man. He was open with Hope that the relationship existed. He is not open about the extent of it (and in my opinion, he should not be I told Hope).

That admission caused Hope to become a person she has never been, a person she hates. She began to snoop into his relationship with the guy. Searching his computer for clues, eavesdropping on his phone conversations hoping for clues. She was compelled to do all this, but at the same time disgusted with herself for doing it.

Hope & Struggle

She had flat out given her husband permission to explore his gay side, but saying she was giving him permission and actually giving him such permission was a different thing she was finding and it was spinning her out of control.

In the mean time, messages from Angry Ann were getting more and more bizarre. She informed me she was going to get her man and his partner would just have to deal with it. Their behavior was unquestionably wrong. It was selfish. It was her right as a woman to be married and have children with a man who would be into their relationship fully, by choice. Homosexuality, she said, is nothing more than a choice to continue following boyhood desires long after they should have been put away.

Because Angry Ann was obviously an intelligent, though misguided woman, I wrote to her back hoping I could get her to see that gay and bisexual men were not making choices anymore that straight people were.

Her response shocked me. For the first time I realized she was not talking about a theory. She was talking reality. She had found an admittedly gay and partnered man whom she planned to marry and change into a straight man.

She said, "This is clearly an answer you have given many times Jack and one that you don't really believe yourself.  Please try again from a position of honesty.  I love this man and he loves me and we need to figure out how to work through this and if you have some real insight not some pat answer I want to hear it.  We do love each other and both of our families will be in a better position if we choose to marry. Also, I believe that we always always have a choice and I know that you believe that too or you would not have chosen to marry. We may not choose our feelings but we do choose our actions. Now please, try again.  This is a real situation that needs real solution and you have walked this out for many years.  Or perhaps, I should be speaking to your wife.

And btw, I have a right to be angry about this.  It is a vile thing and I hate having to deal with it and resent that he acted on his feelings rather than doing what he knew to be the right things to do.  It should not be this way and I should not be in this position but due to his behavior I am and I have to deal with it now."

Hope continued trying her best to understand and work things out. I had scolded her about her snooping into her husbands computer and phone calls and emails. She admitted she should not do that and vowed to stop. She reported that her husband was seeing a counselor and that it seemed to be helping him deal with how he saw himself, but was having little impact on the problems surround their relationship and her wanting to accept it but yet being unable to do so no matter how much she wanted to.

I assured Hope she is a remarkable woman and I have come to respect and admire her. I began to share with her some of the ups and downs my wife and I had gone through in the months just after I had told her of my bisexuality. I told Hope that almost everything she has told me related in some way to feelings and emotions my wife expressed during that time. I told her my sexuality was now a non-issue in our lives and we were truly happy and still truly in love. I told her if she loved her husband she had to set him free and accept that he might use that freedom to fly away, to stay, or fly away and then return.

The last time we spoke, she and her husband had decided they would separate for a while and see how things work out. She continues to love him dearly and to want to spend her life with him. He can give her no such assurance, and I feel that is an honest response from him. I know it took me the greater part of 30 years to work through my own demons. The difference is I covered my demons well for all those years. My wife had not a clue. I truly loved her. Our life was wonderful. I led two lives. A straight life that was rewarding and loving and successful. At the same time I worked though a homosexual life that was painful, full of self hate, that I gradually came to see could also be full of rewards and self fulfillment and even a man I loved in a different way than I love my wife. In the end I was able to recognize that in living these two lives, I was living as a bisexual man. Is it fair to my wife? Of course not! It is simply beyond my understanding that when the time came she chose to live that life with me. She would not have chosen it, given a choice not too, but as she expressed it she was not going to let something she never knew about for over 30 years affect her now when it had not affected her all those years. One of her greatest sadnesses about it all was that she felt she had failed me by not realizing what I was struggling and in pain and torrment. That compassion simply is beyond my ability to understand. But I love her now more than I did when I was a boy of 16.

Angry Ann did not respond well to my beseeching her to understand she could not change and should not attempt to change "her man." She told me it was a good thing she did not know where I was because if she did she would do the world a favor and murder me. She told me I was the vilest of creatures.

When I expressed my shock at such a statement, she backed off and said she was just speaking metaphorically. She said that gay and bisexual men are weak and vile creatures who can only act on their impulses while she was a strong and self controlled woman who could control her own impulses.

She implied everything I had told her about my wife was a lie while she assured me she was a real woman living a real life. She again asked me to put her in contact with my wife if in fact my wife would verify every thing I had told her about my wife.

I declined, and told her I wished her well, but I felt quite strongly that nothing good was in her future. I told her that I saw no point to our continuing our discussion.

I have not heard back from Angry Ann. I did mean it when I wished her well. I would not wish the anger and the pain she feels at this time on anyone. And for sure I would not wish the anger or the pain she will eventually find on anyone.

Strangely, in all our conversations there was no indication from Angry Ann that the way she sees homosexuality and bisexuality springs from fundamental Christianity. In all the years I have been dealing with this issue and in all the thousands of people I have spoken to concerning it, I have never seen such hate and intolerance spring forth except from fundamental Christians. I hope Angry Ann finds a good counselor before her anger destroys herself and others. As always, I wish her well.

Strangely enough, in a way Angry Ann is right. She can perhaps force her future husband into a marriage and into trying to change. After all, by her own word, gay men are weak and victims to childish impulses. But Hope's husband foretells the future for Angry Ann and her husband. He will become withdrawn, angry and sullen. He more than likely will renounce his vow to her, openly or in secret, and return to sexual activity with a man or other men. It will most likely be a tragedy for both of them and for the family Angry Ann envisions.

Hope springs eternal, it is said; and so does Hope. She is, outside my wife, the most remarkable woman I have ever met. It was rare. You know how when you know a person well, but have never seen them and then you see them and they never look the way you imagined? Well, Hope shared a picture of herself and her beautiful children with me at one point and she looked exactly as I had pictured her in my mind's eye. Beautiful, strong, loving and full of hope.

I don't know what the future holds for Hope and her husband. He's chosen not to talk to me in spite of my efforts to get him to do so. I'm sorry about that. I know his demons well. I lived with them for almost 30 years. I could tell him all their secrets. I could tell him all their weapons and ways. I could tell  him how I and other guys defeated those demons and began to live happy lives.

Of the two of them, Hope and her husband, his path will be by far the hardest to walk. There are many pitfalls, any one of which can destroy him and ruin his life. But I have no fear of the future for Hope. No matter what, Hope will be fine. Hope's path into the future will by no means be easy, but Hope will be ok. Thank you Hope for letting me get to know you. Thank you Hope for all you taught an old man. God bless you Hope and all those you love.

For married men who are married or want to be married and who are bisexual, there are no easy answers. There are no right or correct answers, but there sure are lots of wrong answers. Yet there are those of us who have made the most of the life we've been given to live.

For married homosexual men there are no easy answers either. But such men who are presently living lives of struggle and pain there can be a life of joy and redemption.

Neither man is cursed. A joyous life, a contented life, a productive and fulfilling life is possible. Some of us can share how we made it happen for us. You have to do the work for yourself. Are you up to it?

Are you a woman who has found you are living Hope's life or perhaps Angry Ann's life? There is no way to sugar coat it. There is pain and struggle ahead for you in either case. But the facts are these. I personally know women, and not just one or two women, who have found a life they can willingly live. It may not be the life they would choose, but it is a life they can embrace.

I also know personally women who insist on remaining angry and hurt and victimized, women who willingly embrace that life. For these women there is no hope for redemption. They have been victimized and they have chosen to live out their lives as victims. It is not pretty for them, their children or anyone who has to be around them. Which woman do you choose to be? Think about it carefully.

Jack Scott

Would You Rather?

Recently in the group, someone posed the following question: Suppose you could have one but not both of the following:  

 1) Loving relationships, but no sex, or

(2) All the sex you wanted, of the anonymous, faceless, zipless variety, but no loving relationships

Which is more important, love or sex?

I see this as a profound question. 

I'm not sure how the average would answer that question. I have had friends, acquaintances and co-workers over the years who have answered the question in each of these ways. And in observing these people over the long run, it has invariably seemed to me that those who chose sex over loving relationships always came out on the short side of life's experiences.

Over the past few months I've been more and more open about the fact that I have cancer. There is nothing like cancer to screw up one's sex life. As one of my long time friends told me the other day, "I've never known a person more sexual than you." And I guess it is true. Sex has been a huge part of my life since my earliest memories. As a young boy it was shared with my friends. Sexual play bonded us into true friends. It was a natural part of being boys.

As I grew older, the sex with the guys continued; but my thoughts also began to turn to sex with girls. I was, as I've always been, very lucky. I met the girl who was to become my wife in the 6th grade. As we dated through the years, sex became more and more important in our lives. You might say we kind of grew into it together. I never will forget the first time we went all the way. It was a summer night in June. We were at the lake on which I had water skied for years. The stars were bright above the trees and the water reflected the moonlight. Everything we had defined as sex up till that time melted away and a new definition of sex took its place in our lives. That was almost 50 years ago, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. I remember how I felt as I took her home. I had never felt that way. 

I also remember that I was scared shitless because I knew her mom and dad would be waiting for us to get her home. I was afraid they would see it on my face what I had just done with their daughter, and if for some reason they didn't see it on my face, I was sure they would smell the sweet smell of sex lingering around us. I don't know if they did or not. If they did, nothing was said and I managed to get out of there alive.

Over the years after our marriage, sex just got better and better. That first time, as romantic as it had been, came to the point that it held no comparison to sex as we had now  come to define it. My wife loved sex as much as I and she never failed to find something new and exciting. We've had sex half way around the world and back and in the majority of the U.S. We've had sex by several lakes and in National Parks and on ships. We've had sex in the back yard and in the swimming pool. And practice really does make perfect.

As I came to understand my bisexuality, I found my first buddy and sex with him added a whole new dimension to the meaning of sex for me. As with my wife, as the years turned into a decade with him sex simply got better and better. There was nothing we wouldn't try and much we came to love including each other. But I always knew that for me sex didn't just have to be good, it had to be with both my wife and my buddy. I was never afraid to say I loved them. I was well aware I did love them both though in different ways. My wife was my life, my partner. My buddy was my bond, my buddy, the one person in the world I could say anything to without fear of saying something I shouldn't. Sex with my first buddy came to an end a few years ago. It was time. We were moving in different directions sexually, he to living openly as a finally self identified homosexual man, me to continue living as a happily married bisexual man. But what has not changed is the love for him and the bond between us. I love him still and feel so blessed to have him still as a constant part of my life.

Today, as I said above, my cancer has really screwed up my sex life. It will never be what it was ever again. But the love of my wife and my buddy remains. I often feel a burden to my wife now, especially on the bad days. But she never seems to see it that way. She seems to take joy in caring for me and supporting me. My buddy is always there for me too, but in a very different way. Where my wife cuddles me and protects me, my buddy keeps reminding me in the crudest way possible that I have to keep my ass in gear and not whine about or give into my problems. He tells me I have to have years left simply because he's not willing to give me up even if I am a crotchety and worthless old man (he's 12 years my junior).

There is no sex with either of them anymore really and for sure not in the way we use to define it, but the love lingers. I'll go to my grave loving them and I think they will both be there as I go still loving me too. They, along with a number of great friends I've found and sometimes met along the way give me great comfort in what is surely the winter of my life. Love abides, sex does not.

Many of you out there are still struggling with your lives and your sexuality. I guess I would say to you, life is not endless. If you knew you only had 6 months to live, what constructive things would you want to achieve or experience in the rest of your life?  It's a question worth asking, and it's answers are worth working on in a personal, real and constructive way.

This link is to one of my all time favorite songs. It speaks of a philosophy that is absolutely essential to a happy life. Life is never perfect. Life is always difficult. But when you get a chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you'll choose to dance. Click here and listen carefully to the words of the song.

Jack Scott

Home for the Holidays

Because my son and his family live on the other side of the world, it is very unusual for him to make it home for the holidays. This year he did get home and we've been enjoying his visit greatly.

I apologize for my absence here on the blog. I'll be back on the week of January 9th with more thoughts for married bisexual and homosexual men. Thanks for your understanding.

Jack Scott