I recently had a conversation with a friend about the phenomenon of “gay men married to women”. I know that homosexuals still face a lot of abuse from the world-at-large, but nothing like it was in years past. A lot of guys married women and had families just because they thought they “should”, but then later came out when they couldn’t handle the dishonesty any longer. Sometimes after they have been married for decades…
He contended that a lot of them were probably actually bisexual and not really exclusively “gay”, simply because of the fact that they had multi-year relationships with someone of the opposite sex, and even had children together. He basically said, “How can somebody call himself ‘gay’ when they have been married to a woman?”
I’m not sure about this – how can you really ever know someone’s true intentions or sexual interests, unless they flat out tell you? And there would be lot of pressure, especially if one was raised in a hyper-religious conservative fundamentalist family, to just “go with the flow” of society, court and marry a woman, and attempt to live a “conventional” life. And of course, there is also the factor of self-delusion. But I figure that a lot of the guys eventually decide that a more “authentic” life would ultimately be lot better for both themselves and their families. But what do I know?
Some gay men, especially in the past, married, partly to hide the orientation and partly because it was expected for men to marry. They may even have had sex with their wives, but more out of duty than out of any desire for them.
But they really weren’t interested in sex with women.
If a guy is married to a woman but considers himself gay, that’s not my business to try to convince him that he’s wrong. Orientation is deeply personal and not subject to external votes.
It would not surprise me if a lot of men in the past didn’t know they were gay. Or didn’t understand what it meant to be gay. It’s not something people talked about like they do today. When I was a kid in the 60s, you more or less knew what it was, you knew it was bad, knew it was one of the worst things you could be, and you also “knew” that people could choose to not be gay if they “got their minds right” or something along those lines.
If it’s coerced marriage - and I use “coercion” very loosely, i.e., social pressure or fear of coming out of the closet - then it can’t be considered bisexual behavior on that basis alone, any more than a vegetarian who eats steak in public for fear of being ridiculed for being vegetarian, is a true “meat-eater type.”
What if it’s consensual and the gay man manages to have sex with a woman a couple times over a period of several years? That’s what I imagine many of these marriages to be. I personally wouldn’t label that bisexual either.
The answer to the question “how would you know unless they told you” is that you wouldn’t, and even if they told you they might not truly understand themselves to be able to give an accurate report.
It is certainly possible for a gay man to have sex with a woman. I’ve done it, and it wasn’t horrible (not for me, at least, I gathered I may have lacked in skill or finesse as a lover). I was able to finish and if babies had been the goal I had a reasonable shot at being a father. And I’ve been in a sexless relationship for quite a few years now, so I know what that’s like too. There are compensations. Even if I were married to someone of the “wrong” gender it might be easier to stay together with real affection rather than rip our lives apart so I can go out and see what else is out there.
So I think your friend is wrong, and it is probably the case that he is not close friends with any gay folks (that he knows about).
He is a pretty nice fellow, and has some casual gay acquaintances. He was raised in the very conservative “Church of Christ” (I was, as well), but has always had issues with the fundamentalist approach to religion. He continues to attend services just to “keep up appearances” for his elderly parents. I stopped attending altogether a few years back, and I’m pretty sure that he will, as well, after his mom and dad die. He certainly has no “ill will” towards gays, like some people in the denomination do!
It sounds like your friend’s problem is that he’s stuck on thinking of sexuality as behavior, and not orientation. Which, given his background, isn’t surprising: a cornerstone of “reparative” or “ex-gay” therapy (which is practiced pretty much exclusively, in this country, by conservative Christians) is the idea that if you just keep having sex with the opposite gender, that makes you heterosexual, regardless of what’s going on in your head when you’re aroused. But that’s not really a useful way to model sexuality, because there’s a lot of outside factors that influence behavior, which aren’t directly related to sexual orientation: need for financial security, desire for family, fear of discrimination, and so on. A guy who’s exclusively attracted to other men, but marries a woman because he thinks it’ll further his political career, isn’t “bisexual.” He’s a gay man who has other priorities in his personal life than sexual satisfaction.
I’ve also heard that back in the day, it was not uncommon for gay men and lesbians who were good friends to legally marry each other, and live together, while having sexual relationships with the same-sex partners they really wanted to be with.
So he’s doing things that he doesn’t like/believe in to make others happy. Like, I dunno, hmmm, marrying / staying married to a woman when you’re gay???
I knew a woman in college who had regular sex with her best friend who was a gay man. But the sex they had was BDSM without anything people would consider “normal sex.” Basically, he had her cause him physical pain, even to the point that there might be bruises. But he found it quite cathartic, while she found the experience enjoyable.
And if you wonder why she chose to tell me this, I’m pretty sure it was a sort of test. I’ve seen it before. Tell someone something weird about yourself, and see if they judge you for it. If they don’t, then they may be friend material.
We didn’t really become friends, but it was for other reasons. Basically, I think I was too boring for her.
Being a gay man does not automatically mean one is repulsed by women, or sex with a women.
Another point - I had a good friend who as a younger man was part of a gay couple. But, he also wanted a more traditional family life with children. At that time he found a women who was willing to marry him and have children with him. I did not keep in touch, so I don’t know where it all ended up, but the last time I saw him they had 2 kids and a minivan and a house in the suburbs.
So, I guess my point is that everyone is different, and it is not really useful to imagine that if someone is gay that they consequently must fit into some narrow set of behaviors.
Yeeeah. You sound like a stereotypical late Victorian there. For example, Phillipe, I, younger brother of Louis XIV was unabashedly and openly homosexual. He married, twice and begat several children. He also ended up having an affair with Cardinal Mazarin’s niece as well as with other ladies of the Court. An affair, which had no political necessity and on the contrary could have been problematic.
To the OP. Turn it around. What about a man who spent time in a boarding school or the Navy or prison, who had several same sex experiences and who ends up happily married to a woman? Is he not really straight?
Situational Sexuality is a pretty well-attested thing.