Patrick, I was pleased to discover your site and I felt compelled to join, because I can really identify with many of the guys out there dealing with all these issues without anyone to turn for help or advice.

I am a married man in my forties with a wonderful family and a successful career. I exemplify your typical heterosexual male that displays all the behaviors and attitudes expected by members of my gender in our society. However, all my life I have kept a secret hidden deep inside of me that I would never dare to share with anyone. From the first day my hormones kicked in, back when I was a teenager, I have felt attracted to both genders. To compound my problem, I was raised in a household with very strict religious and traditional values. Therefore, I grew up hearing that homosexuals were sick deviants, so I was terrified of letting anyone find out about these sick and evil feelings stirring inside of me. Consequently, I successfully repressed this wicked side of me that society deemed unacceptable, while trying my best to play my heterosexual role.

Fortunately, I was also attracted to women so it was not too difficult for me to conform to society's expectations for most of my adult life. However, I always felt that something was missing in my life. Anyway, everything changed a few years ago when I first got Internet access. I was surprised and elated to discover that I was not alone and I proceeded to read everything I found on personals looking for people like myself. After a while I realized that I wanted to be able to talk to other men in my same boat dealing with my same issues and not with men just looking for sexual partners. I simply couldn't justify risking my health and ruining my life to satisfy my sexual curiosity with a stranger. It became apparent to me that I had to find other men like myself that could understand how I felt, because unless they were married like me they wouldn't have the same goals and priorities in life. Therefore, I got enough courage and finally posted an ad looking for a friend in my same boat.

Since I was terrified of anyone finding out, I pretended to live in Chicago, IL. In any event, I received a bunch of responses mostly from men looking for a sexual partner, but there was one guy that really hit a nerve. Reading his e-mail I felt as if I was reading my own words. He was my age and had been married for the same number of years as I was. He had only one son, and his son's age and name were the same as mine. He turned out to be from a very small town in a very remote state and we corresponded daily for over a year. We became very close friends and talked in the phone several times, but the distance was too far and we both wanted to be able to show physically the love for each other that we had developed in our correspondence.

Finally one day he told me to try to find someone in my area to make reality my fantasies, because realistically there was no way he could ever be that man. He had some homosexual experiences going though college, but I was still a "virgin". It was very painful for me to break up our loving relationship, but we cut off communications completely to make it easier for me to forget him and find somebody else in my own state. I posted again in my area pretending to be from another city in my home state and I received again an avalanche of correspondence mostly from promiscuous gay males wanting to show me a good time.

I was really scared and turned off by what I received and quickly narrowed the list to a hand full of men that appeared to be on my same boat and removed the ad within a week. After corresponding with these men I narrowed the list down to 3 that felt safe and I met these men. One of them totally misrepresented himself and I simply told him that I wasn't interested and didn't want to see him again. The other one was also a virgin and we had a sexual encounter, but he went into a panic attack afterwards. Right now he is trying to repress again those feelings he can't control. As I told him last time he wrote, it's going to be a lot harder for him to block those feelings now that he has actually acted upon them. He told me the first time we had sex that he had the best orgasm of his entire life, but what happened was that he became very concerned when he realized that he was developing an emotional attachment to me beyond the physical aspect. He was terrified of becoming "gay" and losing his heterosexual drive. I still remember how excited he was when he shared with me that he had some great sex with his wife after we had our first encounter, because that proved to him that he was still straight.

In any event, during this time I also met with my "perfect" match. He had been sexually active with other men for the last 6 years and he was an absolute mess when we first met, completely depressed and overwhelmed with guilt. He was actually meeting me to discourage me from pursuing my feelings, because he was a very honest and religious person. In his case, dealing with all these issues had brought him to the verge of suicide in order to deal with his inner demons. In any event, it was love at first sight, because the chemistry was perfect and we seemed to be very emotionally compatible. Furthermore, he was very handsome and sexy, so in addition to the emotional bond he appealed to me physically too.

To make a long story short, with my help he stopped his sexual feeding frenzy and broke away from his self-destructive path. We have become very good friends and lovers over the past 2 years. We love and care for each other a lot, but the love we share has not taken away from our respective families and lives. We are only filling that void that was always empty inside of us without affecting the rest of our current lives.

Actually, because of our love we are more stable and happier, because we are now for the first time in our lives fully satisfied emotionally and sexually. I don't feel I'm living a double life, because our society forces us to hide our true feelings and in this case the truth would only cause pain and hurt those we love. I'm a better and happier person, because for the first time in my life I feel like a "complete" person. Nevertheless, I need to keep some part of me under covers for the sake of my family, because society is not ready to deal with people like us. Another way to look at this is by accepting the fact that regardless how honest and open we are with our families and friends there are always secrets we keep to ourselves. Furthermore, the only difference between now and a few years ago is the fact that before it was only fantasy and now it's reality, but I was still "hiding" those secret desires from everyone back then too. I hope this helps! J