I think it would help to know how you found out. Did you cheat on your wife with a man? Or did you somehow come to that realization without cheating. The latter situation is, in my opinion, much easier. And based on how you described your relationship with your wife, it sounds like you can basically come out and say it, after a brief intro/lead-in. It is still hard to utter those words but, as long as you're still in love with and committed to her AND COMMUNICATE THAT in your revelation, you guys may end up even closer after the conversation than you are now. Good luck!

 

Being bi has no bearing on anything if you are committed and faithful and up for the challenge of keeping your marriage in good health.
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I think this is probably not the site for you, you're going to get lots of judgment here. Have you looked at Savage Love?

I do think you should tell your wife. She deserves to know.

 

if my hubs told me that i'd die. maybe your wife is much more open than me.. thinking about him being with another man or wanting to be with another man creeps me out. i dont harbor any negative feelings against glbt peeps... just dont want my hubs to be one of them. not what i signed up for. to me... ignorance would be bliss.

 

Lone Ranger, she may already know. She suspects it at the very least, given your "celebrity" conversations and the other hints you've dropped. But given how tolerant of sexuality and gender you describe your wife as being, she should ultimately be okay with your expressed orientation.

My question is, why didn't you tell her sooner that you had these feelings? I mean, openly tell her? You say you felt this when you were young; why didn't you admit it before you married her? She'll probably continue to love and accept you, but you've betrayed her trust here. Hiding that part of yourself from the most important person in your life ... that's a sting.

Tell her. She's your wife and she deserves to have this piece of you. Even if you never come out to anyone else, come out to her. She's your world. Honor that with truth.

 

First of all, I'm proud of you for being strong enough to admit this to yourself, and talk about it

Yes, do tell her she deserves the chance to decide for herself what to do about this. It will be difficult for her, sure, but it's an unavoidable fact that needs to be talked about between the two of you because you are partners in this marriage and life and should work this out together. There is a chance it will not end well, but it must be done. She deserves to know the truth, and you deserve to be free of any guilt and secrets.

Decide what it is you want and need out of life as a bisexual. Do you want to experience both genders? Or are you okay with only being with your wife forever? She will most likely ask you these things. If you do not know, maybe she can help work it out with you.

Anyway, I know it must be scary to talk to her, but you are doing the right thing, for both of you.

 

Good for you at being ready to finally come out with this. What you're going to say to your wife greatly depends on how you want to proceed with her.

If you're OK with not experimenting, then the conversation really needs to include that very quickly.

 

I honestly don't know how I would react if my husband told me he was bi. It would be utterly shocking. I would be blindsided. It's one thing to joke about things like your example about gay celebrities(and we do ...all the time..much the same way you do) but it's another to find out your mate is sexually attracted to both genders.

Such news would DEFINITELy take some getting used to.

The dealbreaker *for me* would be if he wanted to have relationships with men while married to me. That would not be acceptable with me because the deal we made when we married was we would forsake all others.

On this site we often talk about having strong barriers against opposite sex friendships growing into more intimate attachments. In your case, I think you now need to realize you need to keep your guard up in friendships with men as well. Maybe you're already doing this and I'm preaching to the choir.

 

Once you tell her, what would be your desired outcome? Do you want to experience sex with men? Or do you just want to be open to the fact that you are attracted to men?

Finding men attractive is not the same as wanting sex with them.

If find the female body very attractive. I can get turned on looking at women... like in a playboy. But I have never had any desire to be sexual with a woman. I like men when it comes to sex.

Where do you fit on the continum of attraction to males?

If your point is that you want sex with men, at this point you are married. It would be cheating. How would this work out?

 

I don't see how it is important, unless you are planning to explore your sexuality with other people. Why not just leave it as 'love is love'?

Very few of us are 100% hetero, no matter what the latently gay self-haters might say. Why would it matter?

 

Cheers for the thought provoking questions all. I will try to answer what I can.

The first one would be that, the reason I have not told my Wife or had the urge to tell my Wife until recently is due to not being 100% certain myself.

I have always been more attracted to women than men. Men were just an afterthought. It was primiarly the women which got my motor racing, so to speak. With saying that though, I have on many occasions been turned on by men (there is a certain body type)

I have been with my Wife since I was 17, we got married at 20 and have a 9 month old Son together. I am currently 24 years old. So in the grand scheme of things, I have not had much time to understand myself or my feelings. From what I understand of bisexuality, it can be common that you can feel geater arousal from one gender than the other. For some people it is the same gender, others the opposite gender, but bottom line is you are attracted to both.

Next up is that I have no intention to cheat on my Wife. I have experimented as a teen anyway, my Wife knows this. As somebody said, it is probably very likely my Wife already knows all of this. She is great at putting things together and I can only think that the reason there has been radio silence is that she is fine with it. Trust me, if something is a problem my Wife will definately let you know about it.

I guess it matters because I want to approach my marriage with complete trust and honesty. This is something I have only just come to terms with myself, I did not withold it knowingly before marriage. If I was certain about this sort of thing, it is something I would have let my Wife know in the very early stages of our relationship.

I don't know what I want out of this. All I know is that my Wife isn't going anywhere. I am strongly against cheating and I could not be in an open marriage. Aknowledging these feelings does not give me the instant urge to go pull a guy off the street for the sake of it. There has also only ever been 1 guy I had sexual feelings for, that I personally knew ofcourse. I think that I would like to experiment some more, but not with anyone other than my Wife. Of all things, I feel like this would be a longest bridge to cross and it is something I am not willing to approach just yet.

How would you react to this sort of thing? Would you feel different if your husband approached you with this under the context of "I am straight" or would it freak you under the context of "I am bisexual" ???

I could see the two different contexts having greatly different reactions personally.

As for the "Finding men attractive is not the same as wanting sex with them." THIS is what I put it down to all these years. I just fobbed it off. I am very intune with my feminine side anyway, I just put it down to this. "Hey, I am so secure in my sexuality that I can agree with you, that guy is gorgeous" etc etc etc... But it turns out it is more than that. It is why these feelings have confused me for so long.

 

I think that you need to tell your wife. From the sounds of it she can handle it as long as it does not mean that you want to start cheating on her.

But I see a problem in your last post. I think you want to explore sex with men. If you do this it might distory your marriage and thus your child's secure family.

This is one reason that early marriage is not a good idea. It takes people a while to find out who they are.

 

There are phallic objects not attatched to men you know ;D

 

Yes, that's one thing to try.

But the question is ... will that statisfy the curiosty? Your wife is after all not a man no matter what she might stap on.

 

I think that it would satisfy me just fine. I still hold my strong views on how blatently wrong I feel cheating is. That is pretty core to how i view relationships.

I am not going to wander off with another women, I can see men as being no different in this regard.

I also have deep respect for marriage. My parents put me through a nasty divorce when I was 4 years old. Mummy and Daddy were meant to love each other, they were supposed to show me what love looked like. Instead what I saw was horrific. It scared my way of seeing relationships, especially marriage. I saw love as purely situational, like it was some sort of on / off light switch.

It took me a long time to get over this, my Wife was one of the major influences which supported me. Forever means forever to me, that perhaps isn't realistic to most people but to me it is something I will work towards to the best of my abilities.

 

I have no intention to cheat on my Wife.

LoneRanger, some psychologists report that we all have three separate brain systems for dealing with mating and reproduction -- and the three systems need not be in full agreement. One system deals with attachment, another with raw sexual attraction, and a third with romantic feelings. See the last half of the YouTube video at BiBrain.org. A leading advocate of that view is psychologist Helen Fisher, a Rutgers Univ. professor. You may want to Google her name for more information. She is a prolific writer.

The result, according to Fisher, is that it is common for a person to be firmly attached to his spouse, to be filled with romantic feelings only for her, but to nonetheless experience raw sexual attraction to both genders. Indeed, if the 1940's Kimsey Institute findings were correct (a very contentious issue), 46% of men are bisexual to some degree.

 

You should tell her.
Make sure she's educated as to why bisexuality is and make her understand you aren't looking for anything more or different in your sex life.

It is a hard thing for a hetero to understand often but you know your wife.
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Just curious, have you ever been with a man? i don't mean a drunken kiss, I mean the full on, um, leap frog like act.

Because maybe you are like me, I used to call myself 'bi'- I find women very attractive, think of them naked, like seeing them naked- but, and here is what i believe is the key to whether or not you are truly attracted: I never have fallen in love with a woman AND I could not go through with sex. Once during a drunken hook up with a hot girl, it was my turn to go down....and I litererally could not do it. I was grossed out! I then knew I was not bi.

 

Little D got it right.

Doesn't matter who you're attracted too. As long as you stay committed to your wife in emotion and sexuality nothing should change. But if it decreases in any way because you'd like to act on your bi status....she was tricked into the marriage.

 

LR, being bi and in a monogomous committed relationship with a woman is no different than being hetero and in a committed relationship with a woman, insofar as attraction to people outside of the marriage that you have forsaken. So long as you both nurture your sexual relationship with each other and both find it fulfilling and worth the effort of marriage.

So are you satisfied sexually with your W right now? Are your sexual needs being met and can they continue to be bet in a monogomous relationship with a female? If not is there more she could do, and be willing to do, within the boundaries of your marriage?

 

Tell her the truth about your feelings and why you want to be honest with her.

Talk about boundaries, very seriously. If you want to act on your feelings outside the marriage and you do so without her being okay with it, then you're cheating and that is cowardly. It's time for you guys to examine and renegotiate the ground rules of your relationship. Don't push her to accept something she doesn't want. Tread lightly.

Your wife sounds both open minded and accepting. If you're honest, I don't see what the big deal is. Besides, the problem isn't what gets you off in theory but in practice. You're in a committed monogamous relationship and as long as you don't cheat, your marriage is not changed; however, with the honesty comes more closeness and intimacy between you both as individuals and that's worth the risk of spilling your guts.

 

You've stated she's open minded and you've also stated you want to be honest with her, so I guess that pretty much says it all.

It sounds like you have the right environment for being honest and having some of your inner most thoughts and feelings respected.

It's hard to know how I'd react if my husband told me he was bi. I'd like to think it wouldn't matter. I think I'd have a problem if he told me he wanted to explore those feelings and pursue the experience with a man in much the same way I'd be upset if he wanted to be with another woman.

I think that he would trust me enough to share something like that with me would be very important to me.