Torn Between Duty and Desire....being a gay lover and a father
All parents face challenges when raising their children, but some gay parents have an additional complication to contend with.
Imagine being a great, loving father who cherishes his children and loves his wife as a best friend. Your lover is a man who you adore and can't resist.
Just what do you do?
Your loyalty is divided between a sense of duty to your children and the desire to seek pleasure. True love is our ideal. We deserve it, and in our yearning we want to possess it, what could be more natural.
In today's society you face the greatest moral dilemma of your life, one that ultimately forces you to choose from love and duty, infidelity and honour. It is a daily struggle with your conscience that threatens your relationship with your children.
It is hard once you have met your lover, someone that you never believed existed; just one touch and a spark ignites deep inside, yet you have to succumb to your passion in secret. We live in a world of moral ambiguities, where the course of real love never runs smoothly.
In a fairytale: man meets woman, woman has baby and they live happily ever after. For reality it is much more complicated as everyone's needs are different to one another.
Every fight is personal and nobody has the right to choose for you. Children need to grow up surrounded by love from both parents, together or not, whether they are lesbian, gay or straight. A lot of the time it is the act of secrecy rather than the secret itself that is so damaging, but you have no reason to feel ashamed.
The path you are facing is a challenge but it is not insurmountable. Living through the pain of being divided by two courses of action, while you are also aware you are hurting the people you love is agonising. It is not fair on anyone as you are unable to fully commit as a husband, father or lover.
Do you follow your instinct or gut feeling? Do you know the boundary between lust and love or have you crossed a dangerous line that often isn't clear until it is too late. Can you survive on intrigue and flirting alone?
Gavin from Manchester says: "I think the moment that changed my life was when I held that small, vulnerable bundle in my arms. I'm a proud dad, have a treasured little boy and a responsibility to always protect my child. But since meeting my lover, Simon, I feel complete for the first time in my life. It is heartbreaking that I will ultimately hurt someone."
You have a right to be happy and enjoy life at its best... only you can decide what best is.
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The world we are brought up in with it's schools, religion etc. is designed to make us all feel useless, and turn us into emotional weaklings only too eager for someone to come along and make us feel good about ourselves, and use the word 'love' as a euphemism for 'you have something I think I need'. This is difficult enough for a heterosexual, but for someone who has another reason for feeling 'wrong' about themselves, their own sense of validity must surely be diminished further.
The concepts of 'fidelity, loyalty' etc are invalid in themselves, nobody has a right to own somebody else's mind or body, this is slavery, tyranny, but who dares to raise the issue? Do we have to blame somebody who has found comfort as a 'cheat, rat traitor' etc. or can we not tell them they have a right to feel happy about themselves rather than crippled with guilt, which will only destroy themselves and ruin the lives of those around them. Treat parental needs and personal needs separately, and don't stop 'loving' the people you already 'love'.
Or, to put it another way... a woman can compete with a mistress for her husbands affections. She can't really compete with a man.
I have friends who have navigated this and it is difficult, they assure me, for all. I have also seen in those cases that they have navigated a very difficult situation with no small amount of grace. Because of how they handled themselves, it worked out better than expected.
"Imagine being a great, loving father who cherishes his children and loves his wife as a best friend. Your lover is a man who you adore and can't resist. Just what do you do?"
Imagine the same, but that it is another woman who you adore and cannot resist. Just what do you do? Society will tell you that this is not a dilema. They will say you should stop being a cheating rat. Either leave your wife or stop seeing your mistress. But the situation is the same. You are treating your gay lover in the same way. You love your wife as a companion but you don't fancy her. The only difference is that the mistress can potentially give you another child. Your gay lover cannot. I guess another big difference is the taboo of same sex relations and how the taboo will affect your existing child. But running off with your mistress is no moral walk in the park either.
It is interesting how it's easier to speak about gay taboo subjects without getting flamed than it is to speak about hetero taboo subjects - like mistresses.