Growing up in the 70s and 80s I didn’t have many gay role models. Sure there was Liberace or the Village People, but I was never exposed to college educated professional gay men, and honestly didn’t know they existed. I thought that to be a gay man one was destined to be a hair stylist, or make up artist or some other career involving sequins and feather boas. I never imagined that gay men went to college, had successful careers and moved to the suburbs.

I did know that being a hair stylist and living for the next circuit party was not who I was, so I figured that I had to be straight, even if I knew I was attracted to men. (The other difficulty I had was imagining myself in a long term romance with a man. I don’t know why that was, but I could never see myself waking up every morning next to a man. Having that daily contact with a woman seemed more comfortable, more natural. Maybe it’s because I was conditioned to think that only heterosexual relationships were legitimate? I am not quite sure.)

Well after being married to woman for more than ten years, and three children later, the desire for some male companionship became overwhelming. The internet made it possible to find others like me…hundreds, if not thousands of men, many of them married, who wanted a physical connection with another man.

Anonymous sex with random men never appealed to me, so I persevered until I found someone who, like me, wanted a friend, a companion, a regular sex partner even though we were both married. We saw each other regularly and spoke by phone every day. Over time I feel in love with this man, and for the first time knew I could wake up next to him every day. At that point when I admitted to myself that I was in love with this man, I found my “truth” and accepted that I was gay.

Having come to terms with the fact that I was gay probably isn’t much of an accomplishment when you are already 37 or 38 but when you are married with three young children it is earth shattering. A decade of frustration passed before I finally came out. When I did it felt like I had stepped off a cliff and I didn’t know when I was going to hit bottom. I am not quite sure when I did hit bottom but it was sometime many months later.

Looking back over the past several years I can’t say that my life has been easy, but it has been better because now I can approach the world as a genuine person and not someone who is living behind a facade. For the first time in my life I can drop all pretense and just be ME.