05-24-2014, 03:21 AM
I said hello last week, buried in someone else's first thread. It's been an interesting week browsing here, and I even threw in my two cents a couple times, but I thought I'd introduce myself a bit better.
My name is Mike, and I married my husband on Columbus Day 2013 in DC. Due to the government shutdown, there wasn't much to do after the private ceremony, so we got in the car and came home to western NC, already missing our home and our pets. We had been together 27 years. The first night we moved in together waaaay back then, I knelt down on the kitchen floor after dinner and gave him my promise to love him for the rest of my life, never once imagining we would ever actually be allowed to marry.
I'm 62, he'll be 65 in a couple months. I'm going on, oh, about 38 in my head, feeling betrayed by my body; I'm really not handling this balding, hearing loss, and a few other age-related maladies very well; but overall, I'm physically healthy. My husband suffered a spinal cord injury in 2006 and was declared disabled; he can manage to walk using a cane, a shopping cart or furniture. We still love each other and are committed to each other, but there isn't much passion or romance now for physical reasons.
I ended up here after a co-worker and friend passed away while shoveling snow last February. I'd known him for all 12 years in my job. The two of us shared a private office for six years, and he was one of two people in my office that I was comfortable confiding in. Although he was straight, married and a grandfather, he knew all about me and my husband, and we'd talk about our "spouses" as anyone else might. Although I certainly miss him, the worse impact for me was that he was exactly 50 weeks older than I. My mind took an irrational trip when he died, and I started wondering if I only had 50 weeks left to live, and, far more significantly, what the hell had I done with my life now that it was too late to change anything! (I did say "irrational".)
There were many sleepless nights as I recounted a lot of major decisions I made and wondering if I'd done the right thing, sometimes knowing I'd done the wrong thing (like not sticking to my guns when I tried to break off my engagement to the woman who would be my wife for six years before I came out at 27). I wondered how I could have screwed things up so badly, and, in my angst-driven fantasy, was imagining how wonderful things would have been if I'd made different decisions.
One of the most bothersome and most repeated decisions had to do with a guy named Peter in 1972, a year before I graduated. We were both at a military academy which was still all-male at the time. I had been confused since I was 15 about why I was attracted to guys when I knew it was not possible that I could be gay (a story in itself), so I intentionally avoided making any close friends or confidantes at the academy. I wouldn't want to go drinking with anyone and suddenly feel like I trusted them so much that I might actually turn to them to help sort out the conflict in my head and heart. Something like that could get you booted out with a dishonorable discharge in a matter of hours.
Peter though seemed to see through my defenses. He made that pretty obvious, doing a couple things that straight guys just do not do for other guys they assume are straight. This included showing me how he slept in the nude (at the academy where they do random bed checks? No, he did not sleep in the nude - this was a show for my benefit.) and after swim practice when the two of us just happened to be alone in the coach's office long after everyone had left, slipping out of his Speedo and telling me it was because of a rash he had in his crotch (he pulled his beautiful equipment out of the way, insisting I look - there was no rash - but when everything fell back into place, I caught myself staring still - until I realized he was smiling and watching me stare. All of this amounted to nothing other than proving I was a coward not to try to figure out how to respond and finding out if he was thinking what I was thinking. Well, that an a bunch of re-energized fantasies. Peter did not return for his fourth year, and nobody knew why; and he didn't try to reach out to any of us who remained either. The accepted theory was that he'd flunked out, and had been told to have no contact with his ex-classmates.
Peter had come to the academy from somewhere in the LA area. Back in 2005, I had my first opportunity to go to LA on business, and I mustered up the courage and decided I was going to track down Peter. I hoped he'd meet me in my hotel for drinks, and assuming he didn't show up with a wife and kids in tow, I'd find out what was going on decades earlier. And, confession time, if he told me he'd felt the same way I had but didn't know how to make it any clearer back then, I'd have dragged him up to my hotel room and stayed there for my entire visit to make up for lost time. Yes, I would have cheated on my husband, but it was extraordinary circumstances and not something that would ever be repeated with anyone else.
I did track down Peter, but found out he'd passed away in 2001 at the age of 50. I wrote to his wife to confirm this was the same person I was looking for, and she confirmed that it was, but she declined to tell me how he passed away, and I wasn't rude enough to ask. I told her that I'd wanted to find him to thank him for being my friend back then, and that I suspected he knew me better than I wanted to know myself then. She assured me he would not have been judgmental, and would have happily accepted me as I was.
Sooooo, many nights of tossing over past decisions and hours reflecting on Peter left me realizing that I had no friends to discuss these things with. We live in a remote mountain cabin with no social life. My husband understood about my angst over past decisions, but I didn't dwell on it with him because in his disabled state, he would wonder if I thought our getting together was one of those decisions I was reevaluating. (It's not.) And along those same lines, I really couldn't discuss Peter either for obvious reasons. My one remaining confidante at work suggested I look online for a gay non-sexual, non-dating, non-threatening chat/forum, and I found this group, and I'm glad to be meeting many of you.
The depression and life reevaluation have passed. I still fantasize about Peter now and then, as I have since 1969 when I first met him, but it's not an obsession. And I no longer think I only have 30-some weeks to live now. Things are back to normal, except I have new people to chat with here.
My name is Mike, and I married my husband on Columbus Day 2013 in DC. Due to the government shutdown, there wasn't much to do after the private ceremony, so we got in the car and came home to western NC, already missing our home and our pets. We had been together 27 years. The first night we moved in together waaaay back then, I knelt down on the kitchen floor after dinner and gave him my promise to love him for the rest of my life, never once imagining we would ever actually be allowed to marry.
I'm 62, he'll be 65 in a couple months. I'm going on, oh, about 38 in my head, feeling betrayed by my body; I'm really not handling this balding, hearing loss, and a few other age-related maladies very well; but overall, I'm physically healthy. My husband suffered a spinal cord injury in 2006 and was declared disabled; he can manage to walk using a cane, a shopping cart or furniture. We still love each other and are committed to each other, but there isn't much passion or romance now for physical reasons.
I ended up here after a co-worker and friend passed away while shoveling snow last February. I'd known him for all 12 years in my job. The two of us shared a private office for six years, and he was one of two people in my office that I was comfortable confiding in. Although he was straight, married and a grandfather, he knew all about me and my husband, and we'd talk about our "spouses" as anyone else might. Although I certainly miss him, the worse impact for me was that he was exactly 50 weeks older than I. My mind took an irrational trip when he died, and I started wondering if I only had 50 weeks left to live, and, far more significantly, what the hell had I done with my life now that it was too late to change anything! (I did say "irrational".)
There were many sleepless nights as I recounted a lot of major decisions I made and wondering if I'd done the right thing, sometimes knowing I'd done the wrong thing (like not sticking to my guns when I tried to break off my engagement to the woman who would be my wife for six years before I came out at 27). I wondered how I could have screwed things up so badly, and, in my angst-driven fantasy, was imagining how wonderful things would have been if I'd made different decisions.
One of the most bothersome and most repeated decisions had to do with a guy named Peter in 1972, a year before I graduated. We were both at a military academy which was still all-male at the time. I had been confused since I was 15 about why I was attracted to guys when I knew it was not possible that I could be gay (a story in itself), so I intentionally avoided making any close friends or confidantes at the academy. I wouldn't want to go drinking with anyone and suddenly feel like I trusted them so much that I might actually turn to them to help sort out the conflict in my head and heart. Something like that could get you booted out with a dishonorable discharge in a matter of hours.
Peter though seemed to see through my defenses. He made that pretty obvious, doing a couple things that straight guys just do not do for other guys they assume are straight. This included showing me how he slept in the nude (at the academy where they do random bed checks? No, he did not sleep in the nude - this was a show for my benefit.) and after swim practice when the two of us just happened to be alone in the coach's office long after everyone had left, slipping out of his Speedo and telling me it was because of a rash he had in his crotch (he pulled his beautiful equipment out of the way, insisting I look - there was no rash - but when everything fell back into place, I caught myself staring still - until I realized he was smiling and watching me stare. All of this amounted to nothing other than proving I was a coward not to try to figure out how to respond and finding out if he was thinking what I was thinking. Well, that an a bunch of re-energized fantasies. Peter did not return for his fourth year, and nobody knew why; and he didn't try to reach out to any of us who remained either. The accepted theory was that he'd flunked out, and had been told to have no contact with his ex-classmates.
Peter had come to the academy from somewhere in the LA area. Back in 2005, I had my first opportunity to go to LA on business, and I mustered up the courage and decided I was going to track down Peter. I hoped he'd meet me in my hotel for drinks, and assuming he didn't show up with a wife and kids in tow, I'd find out what was going on decades earlier. And, confession time, if he told me he'd felt the same way I had but didn't know how to make it any clearer back then, I'd have dragged him up to my hotel room and stayed there for my entire visit to make up for lost time. Yes, I would have cheated on my husband, but it was extraordinary circumstances and not something that would ever be repeated with anyone else.
I did track down Peter, but found out he'd passed away in 2001 at the age of 50. I wrote to his wife to confirm this was the same person I was looking for, and she confirmed that it was, but she declined to tell me how he passed away, and I wasn't rude enough to ask. I told her that I'd wanted to find him to thank him for being my friend back then, and that I suspected he knew me better than I wanted to know myself then. She assured me he would not have been judgmental, and would have happily accepted me as I was.
Sooooo, many nights of tossing over past decisions and hours reflecting on Peter left me realizing that I had no friends to discuss these things with. We live in a remote mountain cabin with no social life. My husband understood about my angst over past decisions, but I didn't dwell on it with him because in his disabled state, he would wonder if I thought our getting together was one of those decisions I was reevaluating. (It's not.) And along those same lines, I really couldn't discuss Peter either for obvious reasons. My one remaining confidante at work suggested I look online for a gay non-sexual, non-dating, non-threatening chat/forum, and I found this group, and I'm glad to be meeting many of you.
The depression and life reevaluation have passed. I still fantasize about Peter now and then, as I have since 1969 when I first met him, but it's not an obsession. And I no longer think I only have 30-some weeks to live now. Things are back to normal, except I have new people to chat with here.
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Aquarius
Capricorn
![[Image: 51806835273_f5b3daba19_t.jpg]](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51806835273_f5b3daba19_t.jpg)
Thanks for sharing it...
