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Is My Husband Gay?A book excerpt from chapter one of "Is My Husband Gay, Straight, or Bi?" Dr. Kort helps a wife, Jennifer, understand how male sexuality can express itself in ways that may be difficult to understand.
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Finding out your husband is attracted to men can generate a lot of questions and confusion.
“ Although therapy allows these men to reclaim control over their lives and have successful marriages, the urge of the acting-out behaviors or fantasies rarely goes away entirely.”
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The following is an excerpt from "Is My Husband Gay, Straight, or Bi?: A Guide for Women Concerned About Their Men" available from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Chapter 1. Jennifer’s Conundrum: Straight Men Who Want Sex With Men
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. ~ Steve Jobs
Jennifer felt the pieces of her life coming together at last. She and Tom had held off getting married while they waited to see if he would keep his job. So many engineers were being laid off, especially in the auto industry. When it seemed the industry was looking up, they got married. Tom was offered his long-delayed promotion, and she had gotten pregnant on their honeymoon in Hawaii. Jennifer was the happiest she’d ever been in her 32 years on earth.
Tom’s promotion meant that they’d be moving from Warren to Ann Arbor. Both communities were in the Detroit area, but Tom felt Ann Arbor was too far from Warren to commute. The move was disorienting, but not unexpected. A kindergarten teacher in Warren for the past 10 years, Jennifer felt hopeful she’d be able to find a similar job in Ann Arbor. Now, they were hurriedly packing. Tom was scheduled to begin his new position in a few days. Jennifer hadn’t even had time to let her principal know she’d be leaving.
Her cell phone started ringing. It was Tom. "Hi, hon," he said. He was at work, his last day at the Warren office. "There’s a file I can’t find on my computer here," he said. "Can you check to see if it’s on my desktop there?"
"Just a minute." She went to his home office. She turned on the floor lamp and pushed "shift" on the keyboard to wake his computer. "It wants a password," she told him.
"Just hit Enter, Hon. There really isn’t a password."
She did, and his computer jumped to display his favorite picture of her, the one from the beach in Hawaii with her laughing, holding her sunhat on with one hand and adjusting the top of her bikini with the other.
"Look in 'Work Documents,'" he was saying. "It’s called 'New Proposal.'"
"I see it," she said.
"That’s a relief. Thought maybe I deleted it or something. Okay. Thanks. Be home late probably. Got to finish here. Love you." And he hung up.
He worked late a lot, but that’s the way it was these days, with everybody wanting to prove they weren’t candidates for the next wave of layoffs. But he was doing fine. The company liked him. He was being promoted. She noticed a folder with a funny name. "Craigslist Sales," it said. Oh, Jennifer thought, I didn’t know he was selling stuff on Craigslist. She opened it. The files inside were named with what seemed to be dates. She opened 070511. It began, "Bi curious? Meet to talk and maybe more." And there was contact information. Jennifer couldn’t believe what she was reading. She opened another. "Find gay, bi, curious guys for free near you with Grindr on your iPhone…" She opened others. They were all like that.
She hated herself for doing it, but she went into his e-mail. It didn’t take her long to find what she didn’t want to find. "Can’t stop thinking how great you are," the most recent message said. "Sorry couldn’t make it last week, but can meet you today at the usual place anytime after 5:00." It was signed, "Your alpha top, Brad." It was dated yesterday.
Jennifer was waiting for Tom when he got home that night at 8:00. She had printed out all the files in the "Craigslist Sales" folder. She had printed out all the e-mails from Brad. She sat in the living room, hugging these papers to her chest as if they were a comfort rather than a torment. She had been crying for hours, but now she was all cried out.
Tom’s usual "What’s for supper?" greeting died on his lips when he saw her sitting, red-eyed with her mouth a grim hard line. Instead, he said, "What’s wrong?"
"This," she replied, and threw the papers at him. He picked up one sheet and glanced at it, lost his easy smile, and sat down across from her.
"I was going to tell you," he said. "I didn’t mean to be sneaking around."
"Tell me what? That you’re gay? That you’re going to leave me? That you’re going to take me to Ann Arbor, where I’ll be pregnant and jobless, and dump me there?"
Tom looked stricken. "Of course not. I’m not gay. I love you. We’re going to have a child, a family…"
"You’re not gay? You’ve been seeing this Brad character. Having an affair. You’ve been having sex with him."
"No," Tom said. "I did meet with him, but we didn’t have sex."
"That’s not what these e-mails say."
"We did some stuff together," Tom admitted, "more like…" He was actually trembling. "It was just… I needed to… It’s just a thing. It’s about sex, I guess, but we didn’t have sex. Not really."
"You can’t put me at risk like this," Jennifer said. She was suddenly calm, methodical. "Tell me exactly what you did with Brad and what’s going on here."
Jennifer’s Options
She first came to see me a few weeks after her confrontation with Tom. She told me about the e-mails and even brought copies to show me.
"He says he’s not gay," she said, and her words dripped with skepticism. "He says it wasn’t sex. It was just 'fooling around.' What kind of stupid does he think I am? He says he loves me and doesn’t want to leave me. How can I believe a word he says? He’s been lying to me. He’s been having an affair… with a man."
"I hear you’re angry."
"Of course, I’m angry," she glared at me, then looked down. "I’m devastated. I was so happy. We wanted children. I’m pregnant. I told you that? It all seemed so perfect."
"And now?" I waited, but she didn’t go on. I prompted her. "I hear you’re afraid Tom’s gay. He’s going to leave you. What does he say about that?"
"He says he loves me, wants to stay married, make a family. But how can he want me and… Brad? It doesn’t make sense."
"So, you think he’s not telling the truth?"
"He’s never been a liar," Jennifer admitted. "I think he’s confused. Soon he’ll realize he’s gay, and then that will be that, and I’ll be left with a baby and no husband. I was going to quit my job and go to Ann Arbor." Her voice turned hard. "I refused to go with him. He’s there, but I won’t go… not until we figure this out. My friends tell me to cut my losses, leave him since he’s going to leave me. And not quit my job. Get ready to take care of myself and my baby."
"He could be telling the truth," I said. "He probably is confused, but he might not be gay. You might be able to save your marriage."
She fixed me with her schoolteacher no-nonsense look. "Can you explain that?" she asked.
"If a man has a gay identity… if he’s born gay… then to feel right about himself he needs to socialize with other gay men. He’s turned on by men. He imagines the comforts of making a home with a male partner, and, yes, he’s most inclined to express his sexuality with another man. He has a gay identity. His erotic responses are gay. He’s romantically gay. His sexual fantasies and behaviors are gay.
"This last part, the sex part, is not enough to make a man gay. Straight men—that is, men who are naturally most comfortable in romantic and sexual relationships with women—are sometimes drawn to… or even feel a compulsion to… fantasize about or have sex with men."
"I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying."
"It is confusing, isn’t it?"
"It’s more than confusing," she said. She gave me a sad smile. "It’s a conundrum."
"It can seem that way, but we can sort it out. Do you think I could talk with Tom?"
"I guess he’d do that."
"I’ll ask him some questions. Things may not be as bad as you think.
Beyond Sex and Romance
Tom might be a straight man who is drawn to have sex with men, or he might be gay. What’s the difference, and why does it matter to Jennifer’s marriage?
What it means to be gay is misunderstood by almost everyone. This is partly because of the confusion caused by political and religious prejudices, but it is also because the human body-and-soul partnership is complex and subtle and difficult to understand, even by honest and unbiased investigators. What does it mean for a man to be gay?
The answer to this question is important if you’re a woman connected to a man who is drawn to have sex with men. If your man is gay, then it is going to be difficult for you to have a functional marriage. Not impossible, but difficult. (See chapter 13 on mixed-orientation marriages.) On the other hand, if he is not gay, then that’s not the case. If he’s not gay, and he and you want to have a marriage that works, then the chances are you can.
Some men are straight, some are gay, and some are in between. I’m going to spend some time describing "gay" now, and we’ll consider the others later.
No one thing that a man does makes him gay. It’s important to keep this in mind.
To be gay, a man must have gay sexual fantasies and be drawn to gay sexual behaviors; demonstrate a gay erotic desire; have gay romantic hopes, dreams, and behaviors; and have a gay identity. Each of these four aspects involves a set of behaviors and needs. A gay man will be strongly and consistently gay in these four related, but different ways.
Let’s consider each of them. Having gay sexual fantasies or behaviors means imagining sex between men or engaging in sex between men. It should not be necessary to list which acts are sexual and which are not, but many people make arbitrary and illogical distinctions, partly because of legal, moral, or religious considerations. Let’s agree that "sex" includes any sort of sexual activity with the understanding that we have not tried here to clarify, such things as the difference between a sexual kiss and a nonsexual one.
What is "gay erotic desire?" Imagine a man is walking on the beach. Scantily clad people of both genders are there. Whom does he notice? A gay man will notice the men. The women might as well not be there. (A straight man will notice the women and not see the men.) This reaction is deeply programmed. It’s as if a gay man’s sexual soul is wired directly to his eyes, and unless he is resisting or directing himself to some purpose—such as, say, he’s a policeman and he’s on the lookout for a female criminal—the men will overwhelm his visual circuits. He can’t help it. It’s automatic. This "beach test" is telling for gay men and for straight men, because a man’s sexuality is strongly visual.
One variant of the beach test is "youthful noticing." A gay man often will tell me that as a prepubescent boy, he was noticing with pleasure other boys his age, often without any sense that this noticing was sexual or romantic. Straight men never tell me this.
Let’s pause here, so I can go on the record about something: As I describe various characteristics of the aspects of gayness, it may sometimes sound like an uncomfortable echo of the cruel homophobic game of "catching" someone who is gay by his "non-masculine" appearance or behavior. Not that gay men tend to be particularly non-masculine, but that’s the prejudice. There is nothing wrong with being gay. I am happily gay myself. It is also okay to be a straight man with soft or "feminine" characteristics, behaviors, or interests. As we differentiate straight from gay and in between, as we consider various aspects and characteristics, ultimately only the man himself can decide if he is gay. Although he should usually inform the people close to him, for his sake as well as theirs, and try not to make false promises or tell lies, his sexual orientation is fundamentally his business and not the business of nosy or nasty strangers.
Sometimes a man who is essentially straight has a compulsion to fantasize about, watch porn about, or act out sex scenes with men. A common reason for this is that he has experienced certain kinds of childhood abuse or neglect. (We’ll look at other reasons, too, in chapter 16.) When a straight male client tells me he has a history of compulsively and repeatedly acting out specific sexual scenarios with other men, I expect to discover in therapy that he was (for example) sexually abused by a male relative, a teacher, or a priest. The repetitive compulsion is caused by my client’s need to "overcome" the bad feelings from his abuse. (This development of "core sexual scripts" from abuse or neglect is explained in detail in chapter 11.) Usually, with therapy, the force of the compulsion can be diminished or eliminated. I’ve also had male clients compulsively and repeatedly seek the comforting arms of men, and they will trade sex for this comfort. A "father hunger"—we discover in therapy—is often driven by extreme childhood neglect, and again the force of the compulsion can be diminished through therapy. Although therapy allows these men to reclaim control over their lives and have successful marriages, the urge of the acting-out behaviors or fantasies rarely goes away entirely. It is deeply encoded in their psyches.
A gay man who is not a victim of such childhood abuse has the desire to express his sexuality with men, but not in a compulsive way. He may sometimes be interested in a quick sex act with little personal interaction, but he is also capable of appreciating and enjoying a male partner in more full and loving ways. He thinks men are wonderful. He is capable of gay romance.
We all know what romance is. You hold hands. You look goofy-eyed at your lover, and he looks goofy-eyed back. You kiss. You fantasize about the house you’ll furnish together, the trip to Paris you’ll take together, the way you’ll grow old together. You want a partner who cuddles you in the morning, calls you at noon just to say "I love you," and tells you over supper what you are thinking before you say it yourself. A typical gay man—at least, if he’s given a chance to become comfortable with his gayness and a few years to transition through "gay adolescence"—will long to find a partner he can be romantic with. He will brave the stormy seas of romantic thrills and heartaches seeking a man to be the love of his life. Straight men do not do this with men. The tendency of gay men to develop their gay romantic side is natural for them, but straight men, even straight men who have sought sexual relations with men, even straight men who have tried to live a gay life, never do.
Beyond sex, desire, and romance is the deep and important mystery of identity. We all understand identity at some level. We identify with our family, the schools we’ve attended, our country, our religion, our ethnic origins. "I am one of those Smiths." "I’m a Bulldog." "I’m a Polish American." But as important as these and other cultural and racial identifications can be, deeper and more important is our sexual identity, also called sexual orientation. That word "sexual" is misleading. A person’s sexual identity is not just about sex. It is more like a tribal identity than a signifier of sexual preferences. An honest celibate gay priest has no sex life, or romantic life either, but he knows he’s gay.
Is Your Man Gay?
I will summarize here some of the key observations I make when a man comes to me confused and questioning his sexual identity. Although what follows is fairly straightforward, it is sometimes difficult for men to know where they stand. Their confusion has two major sources. First, I’ve already noted our culture’s traditional prejudice against gays and gayness. Men sometimes don’t want to know they’re gay. They fear being hated for their identity. Who can blame them? Second, severe abuse or neglect in childhood can lead to sexual compulsions that confuse the truth of a man’s identity. Generally, the man must undergo a course of therapy to remove the layers of confusion caused by the childhood abuse.
1. The beach test. Gay men notice the men on a beach and don’t notice the women. "That man is hot!" a gay man might say. In my experience, straight men, even those who have sex with men, don’t react this way.
2. Youthful noticing. This is the children’s version of the beach test. Before puberty, gay boys notice with a kind of giggling delight other boys, just as straight boys do girls. This is a perfectly natural expression of prepubescent identity that straight boys in our society typically get to share out loud with their peers and gay boys typically do not. Gay men often report to me memories of youthful noticing of boys; straight men never do. Gay men will often say they didn’t know what it meant at the time, but they recall being strongly drawn to another boy their age or preoccupied with another male on television. Only looking back can these gay men understand that their interest was romantic and sexual.
3. Waking up. Who do you want to wake up next to, a man or a woman? Some straight guys will kiss and hug other men and so forth, but they still don’t want to wake up next to a man. Something is just "off-putting" to a straight guy about the morning light on a face full of stubble.
4. Falling in love. No matter how much quick or anonymous sex a gay man might have engaged in, he loves everything about other men: their faces, their chest hair, their deep voices, their humor, their penises. A straight man who has sex with other men (or has fantasies about it or watches gay porn) is most often compulsively focused on certain male body parts or on certain sex acts or sexual scenarios. A gay man yearns for an entire man, not just parts of a man. Gay men can—and often do—fall in romantic love with other men; straight men never do.
5. Romantic hopes and dreams with a male partner. After a period of promiscuous "gay adolescence," which will occur typically for a few years after a gay man comes out, he will tend to mature beyond a frantic need to express his newfound sexual freedom and yearn to "settle down" with a loving male partner.
6. Gay sex not degrading. Out gay men don’t feel degraded by their sexuality. Straight men sometimes interpret gay sex as humiliating. For some religious moralists, the core of their objection to homosexuality is a repugnance for dehumanizing acts. However, gay men find gay sex fundamentally joyful, not degrading.
7. Homophobia. Gay men unconscious of their gayness are much more homophobic than are straight men who have sex with men. Straight men who are confused and questioning come into my office and say, "I don’t think I’m gay, but I might be. If I’m gay, help me just go ahead and come out and be gay." These men are tortured by the thought that they might be fighting the coming-out process.
If a gay man is repressing his gay identity, he is often extremely negative about gay people and the "gay lifestyle." He might complain that gay life is over-sexualized, gays are too effeminate, and gay men never have successful relationships. In therapy, these homophobic gay men hope the therapist will make them straight, not help them come out as gay.
This chapter has considered the marriage between Tom and Jennifer mainly from Jennifer’s point of view. She’s discovered that Tom has been having sex with a man. She’s devastated, hurt, and angry. She’s afraid he’ll discover that he’s gay and leave her. He says he’s straight. What’s going on? We’ve considered some of the main issues: What does it mean to be gay? Why might a straight man be interested in sex with men? In chapter 2, Tom tells his side of the story. He insists that he’s not gay and that he loves Jennifer and wants to make a family with her. We consider what is motivating Tom’s behavior in more detail and what the possible options will be for Tom and Jennifer.
Dr. Joe Kort is a certified Imago Relationship Therapist and board-certified clinical sexologist. Dr. Kort is the author of "Is My Husband Gay, Straight, or Bi?: A Guide for Women Concerned About Their Men" and is a regular writer for The Huffington Post. He has been talked about in the New York Times and has appeared on national TV shows like Tyra. For more information visit his website joekort.com.
Chapter 1. Jennifer’s Conundrum: Straight Men Who Want Sex With Men
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. ~ Steve Jobs
Jennifer felt the pieces of her life coming together at last. She and Tom had held off getting married while they waited to see if he would keep his job. So many engineers were being laid off, especially in the auto industry. When it seemed the industry was looking up, they got married. Tom was offered his long-delayed promotion, and she had gotten pregnant on their honeymoon in Hawaii. Jennifer was the happiest she’d ever been in her 32 years on earth.
Tom’s promotion meant that they’d be moving from Warren to Ann Arbor. Both communities were in the Detroit area, but Tom felt Ann Arbor was too far from Warren to commute. The move was disorienting, but not unexpected. A kindergarten teacher in Warren for the past 10 years, Jennifer felt hopeful she’d be able to find a similar job in Ann Arbor. Now, they were hurriedly packing. Tom was scheduled to begin his new position in a few days. Jennifer hadn’t even had time to let her principal know she’d be leaving.
Her cell phone started ringing. It was Tom. "Hi, hon," he said. He was at work, his last day at the Warren office. "There’s a file I can’t find on my computer here," he said. "Can you check to see if it’s on my desktop there?"
"Just a minute." She went to his home office. She turned on the floor lamp and pushed "shift" on the keyboard to wake his computer. "It wants a password," she told him.
"Just hit Enter, Hon. There really isn’t a password."
She did, and his computer jumped to display his favorite picture of her, the one from the beach in Hawaii with her laughing, holding her sunhat on with one hand and adjusting the top of her bikini with the other.
"Look in 'Work Documents,'" he was saying. "It’s called 'New Proposal.'"
"I see it," she said.
"That’s a relief. Thought maybe I deleted it or something. Okay. Thanks. Be home late probably. Got to finish here. Love you." And he hung up.
He worked late a lot, but that’s the way it was these days, with everybody wanting to prove they weren’t candidates for the next wave of layoffs. But he was doing fine. The company liked him. He was being promoted. She noticed a folder with a funny name. "Craigslist Sales," it said. Oh, Jennifer thought, I didn’t know he was selling stuff on Craigslist. She opened it. The files inside were named with what seemed to be dates. She opened 070511. It began, "Bi curious? Meet to talk and maybe more." And there was contact information. Jennifer couldn’t believe what she was reading. She opened another. "Find gay, bi, curious guys for free near you with Grindr on your iPhone…" She opened others. They were all like that.She hated herself for doing it, but she went into his e-mail. It didn’t take her long to find what she didn’t want to find. "Can’t stop thinking how great you are," the most recent message said. "Sorry couldn’t make it last week, but can meet you today at the usual place anytime after 5:00." It was signed, "Your alpha top, Brad." It was dated yesterday.
Jennifer was waiting for Tom when he got home that night at 8:00. She had printed out all the files in the "Craigslist Sales" folder. She had printed out all the e-mails from Brad. She sat in the living room, hugging these papers to her chest as if they were a comfort rather than a torment. She had been crying for hours, but now she was all cried out.
Tom’s usual "What’s for supper?" greeting died on his lips when he saw her sitting, red-eyed with her mouth a grim hard line. Instead, he said, "What’s wrong?"
"This," she replied, and threw the papers at him. He picked up one sheet and glanced at it, lost his easy smile, and sat down across from her.
"I was going to tell you," he said. "I didn’t mean to be sneaking around."
"Tell me what? That you’re gay? That you’re going to leave me? That you’re going to take me to Ann Arbor, where I’ll be pregnant and jobless, and dump me there?"
Tom looked stricken. "Of course not. I’m not gay. I love you. We’re going to have a child, a family…"
"You’re not gay? You’ve been seeing this Brad character. Having an affair. You’ve been having sex with him."
"No," Tom said. "I did meet with him, but we didn’t have sex."
"That’s not what these e-mails say."
"We did some stuff together," Tom admitted, "more like…" He was actually trembling. "It was just… I needed to… It’s just a thing. It’s about sex, I guess, but we didn’t have sex. Not really."
"You can’t put me at risk like this," Jennifer said. She was suddenly calm, methodical. "Tell me exactly what you did with Brad and what’s going on here."
“Of course not. I’m not gay. I love you. We’re going to have a child, a family…”
Jennifer’s Options
She first came to see me a few weeks after her confrontation with Tom. She told me about the e-mails and even brought copies to show me.
"He says he’s not gay," she said, and her words dripped with skepticism. "He says it wasn’t sex. It was just 'fooling around.' What kind of stupid does he think I am? He says he loves me and doesn’t want to leave me. How can I believe a word he says? He’s been lying to me. He’s been having an affair… with a man."
"I hear you’re angry."
"Of course, I’m angry," she glared at me, then looked down. "I’m devastated. I was so happy. We wanted children. I’m pregnant. I told you that? It all seemed so perfect."
"And now?" I waited, but she didn’t go on. I prompted her. "I hear you’re afraid Tom’s gay. He’s going to leave you. What does he say about that?"
"He says he loves me, wants to stay married, make a family. But how can he want me and… Brad? It doesn’t make sense."
"So, you think he’s not telling the truth?"
"He’s never been a liar," Jennifer admitted. "I think he’s confused. Soon he’ll realize he’s gay, and then that will be that, and I’ll be left with a baby and no husband. I was going to quit my job and go to Ann Arbor." Her voice turned hard. "I refused to go with him. He’s there, but I won’t go… not until we figure this out. My friends tell me to cut my losses, leave him since he’s going to leave me. And not quit my job. Get ready to take care of myself and my baby."
"He could be telling the truth," I said. "He probably is confused, but he might not be gay. You might be able to save your marriage."
She fixed me with her schoolteacher no-nonsense look. "Can you explain that?" she asked.
"If a man has a gay identity… if he’s born gay… then to feel right about himself he needs to socialize with other gay men. He’s turned on by men. He imagines the comforts of making a home with a male partner, and, yes, he’s most inclined to express his sexuality with another man. He has a gay identity. His erotic responses are gay. He’s romantically gay. His sexual fantasies and behaviors are gay.
"This last part, the sex part, is not enough to make a man gay. Straight men—that is, men who are naturally most comfortable in romantic and sexual relationships with women—are sometimes drawn to… or even feel a compulsion to… fantasize about or have sex with men."
"I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying."
"It is confusing, isn’t it?"
"It’s more than confusing," she said. She gave me a sad smile. "It’s a conundrum."
"It can seem that way, but we can sort it out. Do you think I could talk with Tom?"
"I guess he’d do that."
"I’ll ask him some questions. Things may not be as bad as you think.
“My friends tell me to cut my losses, leave him since he’s going to leave me. And not quit my job. Get ready to take care of myself and my baby.”
Beyond Sex and Romance
Tom might be a straight man who is drawn to have sex with men, or he might be gay. What’s the difference, and why does it matter to Jennifer’s marriage?
What it means to be gay is misunderstood by almost everyone. This is partly because of the confusion caused by political and religious prejudices, but it is also because the human body-and-soul partnership is complex and subtle and difficult to understand, even by honest and unbiased investigators. What does it mean for a man to be gay?
The answer to this question is important if you’re a woman connected to a man who is drawn to have sex with men. If your man is gay, then it is going to be difficult for you to have a functional marriage. Not impossible, but difficult. (See chapter 13 on mixed-orientation marriages.) On the other hand, if he is not gay, then that’s not the case. If he’s not gay, and he and you want to have a marriage that works, then the chances are you can.
Some men are straight, some are gay, and some are in between. I’m going to spend some time describing "gay" now, and we’ll consider the others later.
No one thing that a man does makes him gay. It’s important to keep this in mind.
To be gay, a man must have gay sexual fantasies and be drawn to gay sexual behaviors; demonstrate a gay erotic desire; have gay romantic hopes, dreams, and behaviors; and have a gay identity. Each of these four aspects involves a set of behaviors and needs. A gay man will be strongly and consistently gay in these four related, but different ways.
Let’s consider each of them. Having gay sexual fantasies or behaviors means imagining sex between men or engaging in sex between men. It should not be necessary to list which acts are sexual and which are not, but many people make arbitrary and illogical distinctions, partly because of legal, moral, or religious considerations. Let’s agree that "sex" includes any sort of sexual activity with the understanding that we have not tried here to clarify, such things as the difference between a sexual kiss and a nonsexual one.
What is "gay erotic desire?" Imagine a man is walking on the beach. Scantily clad people of both genders are there. Whom does he notice? A gay man will notice the men. The women might as well not be there. (A straight man will notice the women and not see the men.) This reaction is deeply programmed. It’s as if a gay man’s sexual soul is wired directly to his eyes, and unless he is resisting or directing himself to some purpose—such as, say, he’s a policeman and he’s on the lookout for a female criminal—the men will overwhelm his visual circuits. He can’t help it. It’s automatic. This "beach test" is telling for gay men and for straight men, because a man’s sexuality is strongly visual.
One variant of the beach test is "youthful noticing." A gay man often will tell me that as a prepubescent boy, he was noticing with pleasure other boys his age, often without any sense that this noticing was sexual or romantic. Straight men never tell me this.
“ Some men are straight, some are gay, and some are in between.”
Let’s pause here, so I can go on the record about something: As I describe various characteristics of the aspects of gayness, it may sometimes sound like an uncomfortable echo of the cruel homophobic game of "catching" someone who is gay by his "non-masculine" appearance or behavior. Not that gay men tend to be particularly non-masculine, but that’s the prejudice. There is nothing wrong with being gay. I am happily gay myself. It is also okay to be a straight man with soft or "feminine" characteristics, behaviors, or interests. As we differentiate straight from gay and in between, as we consider various aspects and characteristics, ultimately only the man himself can decide if he is gay. Although he should usually inform the people close to him, for his sake as well as theirs, and try not to make false promises or tell lies, his sexual orientation is fundamentally his business and not the business of nosy or nasty strangers.
Sometimes a man who is essentially straight has a compulsion to fantasize about, watch porn about, or act out sex scenes with men. A common reason for this is that he has experienced certain kinds of childhood abuse or neglect. (We’ll look at other reasons, too, in chapter 16.) When a straight male client tells me he has a history of compulsively and repeatedly acting out specific sexual scenarios with other men, I expect to discover in therapy that he was (for example) sexually abused by a male relative, a teacher, or a priest. The repetitive compulsion is caused by my client’s need to "overcome" the bad feelings from his abuse. (This development of "core sexual scripts" from abuse or neglect is explained in detail in chapter 11.) Usually, with therapy, the force of the compulsion can be diminished or eliminated. I’ve also had male clients compulsively and repeatedly seek the comforting arms of men, and they will trade sex for this comfort. A "father hunger"—we discover in therapy—is often driven by extreme childhood neglect, and again the force of the compulsion can be diminished through therapy. Although therapy allows these men to reclaim control over their lives and have successful marriages, the urge of the acting-out behaviors or fantasies rarely goes away entirely. It is deeply encoded in their psyches.
A gay man who is not a victim of such childhood abuse has the desire to express his sexuality with men, but not in a compulsive way. He may sometimes be interested in a quick sex act with little personal interaction, but he is also capable of appreciating and enjoying a male partner in more full and loving ways. He thinks men are wonderful. He is capable of gay romance.
We all know what romance is. You hold hands. You look goofy-eyed at your lover, and he looks goofy-eyed back. You kiss. You fantasize about the house you’ll furnish together, the trip to Paris you’ll take together, the way you’ll grow old together. You want a partner who cuddles you in the morning, calls you at noon just to say "I love you," and tells you over supper what you are thinking before you say it yourself. A typical gay man—at least, if he’s given a chance to become comfortable with his gayness and a few years to transition through "gay adolescence"—will long to find a partner he can be romantic with. He will brave the stormy seas of romantic thrills and heartaches seeking a man to be the love of his life. Straight men do not do this with men. The tendency of gay men to develop their gay romantic side is natural for them, but straight men, even straight men who have sought sexual relations with men, even straight men who have tried to live a gay life, never do.
“ When a straight male client tells me he has a history of compulsively and repeatedly acting out specific sexual scenarios with other men, I expect to discover in therapy that he was (for example) sexually abused by a male relative, a teacher, or a priest.”
Beyond sex, desire, and romance is the deep and important mystery of identity. We all understand identity at some level. We identify with our family, the schools we’ve attended, our country, our religion, our ethnic origins. "I am one of those Smiths." "I’m a Bulldog." "I’m a Polish American." But as important as these and other cultural and racial identifications can be, deeper and more important is our sexual identity, also called sexual orientation. That word "sexual" is misleading. A person’s sexual identity is not just about sex. It is more like a tribal identity than a signifier of sexual preferences. An honest celibate gay priest has no sex life, or romantic life either, but he knows he’s gay.
Is Your Man Gay?
I will summarize here some of the key observations I make when a man comes to me confused and questioning his sexual identity. Although what follows is fairly straightforward, it is sometimes difficult for men to know where they stand. Their confusion has two major sources. First, I’ve already noted our culture’s traditional prejudice against gays and gayness. Men sometimes don’t want to know they’re gay. They fear being hated for their identity. Who can blame them? Second, severe abuse or neglect in childhood can lead to sexual compulsions that confuse the truth of a man’s identity. Generally, the man must undergo a course of therapy to remove the layers of confusion caused by the childhood abuse.
1. The beach test. Gay men notice the men on a beach and don’t notice the women. "That man is hot!" a gay man might say. In my experience, straight men, even those who have sex with men, don’t react this way.
2. Youthful noticing. This is the children’s version of the beach test. Before puberty, gay boys notice with a kind of giggling delight other boys, just as straight boys do girls. This is a perfectly natural expression of prepubescent identity that straight boys in our society typically get to share out loud with their peers and gay boys typically do not. Gay men often report to me memories of youthful noticing of boys; straight men never do. Gay men will often say they didn’t know what it meant at the time, but they recall being strongly drawn to another boy their age or preoccupied with another male on television. Only looking back can these gay men understand that their interest was romantic and sexual.
3. Waking up. Who do you want to wake up next to, a man or a woman? Some straight guys will kiss and hug other men and so forth, but they still don’t want to wake up next to a man. Something is just "off-putting" to a straight guy about the morning light on a face full of stubble.
4. Falling in love. No matter how much quick or anonymous sex a gay man might have engaged in, he loves everything about other men: their faces, their chest hair, their deep voices, their humor, their penises. A straight man who has sex with other men (or has fantasies about it or watches gay porn) is most often compulsively focused on certain male body parts or on certain sex acts or sexual scenarios. A gay man yearns for an entire man, not just parts of a man. Gay men can—and often do—fall in romantic love with other men; straight men never do.
“ …Gay men find gay sex fundamentally joyful, not degrading.”
5. Romantic hopes and dreams with a male partner. After a period of promiscuous "gay adolescence," which will occur typically for a few years after a gay man comes out, he will tend to mature beyond a frantic need to express his newfound sexual freedom and yearn to "settle down" with a loving male partner.
6. Gay sex not degrading. Out gay men don’t feel degraded by their sexuality. Straight men sometimes interpret gay sex as humiliating. For some religious moralists, the core of their objection to homosexuality is a repugnance for dehumanizing acts. However, gay men find gay sex fundamentally joyful, not degrading.
7. Homophobia. Gay men unconscious of their gayness are much more homophobic than are straight men who have sex with men. Straight men who are confused and questioning come into my office and say, "I don’t think I’m gay, but I might be. If I’m gay, help me just go ahead and come out and be gay." These men are tortured by the thought that they might be fighting the coming-out process.
If a gay man is repressing his gay identity, he is often extremely negative about gay people and the "gay lifestyle." He might complain that gay life is over-sexualized, gays are too effeminate, and gay men never have successful relationships. In therapy, these homophobic gay men hope the therapist will make them straight, not help them come out as gay.
This chapter has considered the marriage between Tom and Jennifer mainly from Jennifer’s point of view. She’s discovered that Tom has been having sex with a man. She’s devastated, hurt, and angry. She’s afraid he’ll discover that he’s gay and leave her. He says he’s straight. What’s going on? We’ve considered some of the main issues: What does it mean to be gay? Why might a straight man be interested in sex with men? In chapter 2, Tom tells his side of the story. He insists that he’s not gay and that he loves Jennifer and wants to make a family with her. We consider what is motivating Tom’s behavior in more detail and what the possible options will be for Tom and Jennifer.
Dr. Joe Kort is a certified Imago Relationship Therapist and board-certified clinical sexologist. Dr. Kort is the author of "Is My Husband Gay, Straight, or Bi?: A Guide for Women Concerned About Their Men" and is a regular writer for The Huffington Post. He has been talked about in the New York Times and has appeared on national TV shows like Tyra. For more information visit his website joekort.com.
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