Hi,
It's my first time posting here, but I'm a longtime lurker from my now-abandoned lemmy.world account. So, here's goes...
I've been feeling kind of stuck in my life, and wanted to see if any comrades had experienced anything similar or know folks who have. My main difficulty is that I only realized and accepted that I'm bi after my wife was pregnant. This is a problem for me because my wife is strictly monogamous. When we last discussed things, she flat out said that she couldn't accept me being with anyone else, even if the relationship was strictly sexual.
And I'm torn here. On the one hand, I love my wife very deeply and absolutely don't want to lose her. We've been together more than ten years, and she's the most amazing person I've ever met. On the other hand, I have this nagging feeling that a big part of me is going unexplored and undeveloped, to the point I find myself inexplicably mad at my wife sometimes - I guess because I blame her for not "letting" me explore this other side of me.
And about feeling stuck, I know I need to tell her how important this is to me, and to ask again if there's any way at all we can deal with it together. But when we've discussed it previously, multiple times, I dealt with it poorly and hurt her very badly. I just don't know if she can take another round of the same damn thing, and I'm very reluctant to try and have it turn out badly yet again.
Again, I'd especially appreciate hearing from folks who've been through similar situations, or at least know people who have.
Yeah I won't dogpile here but when you commit to monogamy with someone you are agreeing to suppressing certain desires you might have down the line. That certainly appears to be how she understood your commitment to her. Even with my spouse there are things I do not ask for or expect because I know they do not like those things.
I sympathize with feeling like you didn't get to explore your sexuality, I was raised by fundamentalists, there are things I will not get to know about my sexuality most likely. But my life is so enriched by my marriage I cannot imagine exchanging it for the chance to explore myself further. I suspect, since you voluntarily started the process of making a family with your wife, that you get a lot of joy out of your relationship as well. Sometimes relationships require that we accept some limits on what we do.
Or maybe I have a quaint view of these things because of my upbringing, but that's my thought for what it's worth.
Wishing you best of luck with a tough time comrade.