Are Your Fears Keeping You from Living a Gay Life?

Gay life - Anderson Cooper & Benjamin Maisani

If you have lived a long life as a “straight” man, is giving up the world you know in order to live a “gay life” really worth it?

Dear Max,

I’m a 51 year old married man, in my 4th marriage with a woman.

Since the early teens years I accepted myself as bisexual, but living in the darkness is pretty hard.

I love to share my sexuality with younger guys (10 to 20 years younger than me) and I’ve had fun in my life.

These days, I wrote a novel about a bisexual married man and his gay partner. During the whole process I felt sad writing about myself and my experiences.

None of my ex-wives, neither my actual wife knows about my bisexuality. My main concern, today, is if I have to tell my family, my daughter and my grandkids.

Lately, I have a strong feeling of living a gay life and sharing the rest of my life with another man.

Living in a small town of a Latin Country is pretty difficult to gay people, and mostly at my age, I feel like I’m going to explode.

Please, some advice.

-Carlos

Related: I’m Gay but Want a Straight Life

Dear Carlos,

If you feel like you are going to explode, it’s because you have been doing what others want you to do and not what you want to do. Nor have you been listening to your inner self.

So listen to yourself and find out what makes you happy. Life is just too short to be unhappy.

You are still young enough to make changes in your life and to make some new goals.

But you also need to be careful, as you have a beautiful family and you can’t be all selfish. You have to think about them too.

Try to find out what it is that you really want. Once you know what you want, try to find out how you can achieve your goals AND your happiness.

Is having sex with men more important than the family you have now? is living and sharing the rest of your life with another man really what you want? will you find that person in your town or would you have to move away from your family?

I would advice you to take a trip away from your family and away from everything.

Once you are alone, you will be able to listen to your feelings and may be able to make a decision that you will not regret.

And remember, it’s up to you if and when you want to come out. Anderson Cooper came out when he was 45. Here he is with his partner Benjamin Maisani.

Good luck!

Related: Elton John’s Heartwarming Message to His Husband

1 COMMENT

  1. I agree to what ever mentioned above.

    I also feel that keeping everyone happy and satisfied at all times isn’t always possible no matter what all ones does to try.

    Of course relations are important and so is family. But before all, everyone is a human being, and all humans are capable of making mistakes and no ones perfect anyway. Every human has his or her set of beliefs and/or conditions through which one has lived. So lets start looking at relations and family members as humans first before assigning designations and hierarchy. The moment we bring down relationships to human level, it becomes easy to deal with them, be it any relation.

    By no means I intend to encourage anyone to ‘hurt’ their families. But I certainly believe that if the relation is close enough, then honesty is important, being the truest expression of ourselves is important. We all want honest relationships. The question is, how honest are we in the first place? Honest with our self first, and then honest with those who really matter in our lives?

    When a person dies, everyone prays, Rest In Peace, that is the ultimate ‘thing’ everyone is looking for at the end of the day. Why wait till death? Why not make life itself peaceful?

    Sometimes honesty can be like that bitter pill which, for few moments, turns the taste on the tongue bitter, but in the long run is beneficial for ‘all’ including us. Being the truest expression of ourselves, being true to exactly who we are, matters and is rewarding. It then depends on others whether they choose to get ‘hurt’ by honesty or ‘appreciate’ the honesty and embrace it peacefully.

    Life is for once. Everyone has just one chance, just one life.

    One of the most important relation we all have is with our self. One of the most important meeting we all must have daily is with our self.

    Cheers!