My motivations for making this post are to a) get it off my chest and b) maybe help someone else get through this faster than I did. I’ve only just recently put it all together. I am bisexual. Part of me is really stunned that I didn’t see it earlier. In a lot of ways it feels like I figured it out too late for it to even matter and that makes me feel profound regret and sadness that are in conflict with my otherwise happy life.

I am in my late 40’s, married, male, with three children. I am an atheist now and have been for at least a decade.

I was raised very religious, Southern Baptist. Both parents, completely dedicated to the faith. Full indoctrination from day 1. Even so I started deconstructing earlier than some. I was fascinated by science in school and that started quickly running into conflict with my religion. By 13 or 14 I was already having real problems with reconciling the Bible with what I knew was true about the physical world through science.

I loved to read so I decided to do what the religious always suggested. I’d read the Bible, the whole Bible. This is around 15. What was weird was adults that I would mention it to would get a strange face and try to passively talk me out of reading it cover to cover. Thinking back, I think they had never read it all and were thinking “you don’t need all that, just believe the bits we’ve given you, that’s the ‘good’ stuff.”

The result of that first read was confusion. The Bible I had was a Southern Baptist Teen type translation and it made very little sense. I powered through it all but it took a year or so and much of it I read with little or no understanding. I was left feeling like the Bible was a jumbled mess of conflicting, disjointed, often nonsensical stories. All of it seemed very loosely tied together.

Also, around the same time, I am going through puberty and figuring out sexuality. The expectation is very much that I be straight. Homosexuality was never, ever discussed. I learned it even existed by hearing two girls talk about the word lesbian in the 7th or 8th grade. Brought it up to my Dad and he condemned it in the harshest way.

My Dad was a deacon. A true to his convictions Southern Baptist. Still, he was very intelligent. I owe him for my love of science, strangely. To hear him condemn gays though, goddamn. They should “burn” for their “sickness.” Other times, “maybe they are mentally ill and need help.” The consistent message was that gays were an abomination, sick, completely fucked. My read of the Bible totally backed that up. The old testament doesn’t mix words. The gays get stoned with those guilty of bestiality. Only sick fucks are gay.

Before that, 12, 13 or so, I had experimented with a boy I knew in the neighborhood. I had done this gay stuff my dad said was the worst, most sick shit ever. I was really disgusted with myself. I shut it away. Hard. I only realized in the last few years how hard my young mind slammed the door. I remember shaming myself in a mirror over it, something I also did after straight minded masturbation also, at the time. Religion had a hold on me then for sure.

My Dad died when I was in my 20’s. Shortly after I was living with a girl, living a straight life but with tons of gay friends. Some of them observed that I seemed like a bisexual but I blew it off. I got into several situations where a man thought I was completely gay or bisexual and I had to “get myself out of it.” I thought at the time that I was just so open minded that my lack of hate for gays allowed them to see me as possibly gay. I’d worked hard to be accepting by this point. I never told Dad, but I was agnostic already when he died.

I was living on my own when he died, the internet was just becoming really useful for wide research. I was sick with faith issues. I cried and berated myself for my shortcomings. I didn’t go to church, but I just believed that God hated me. I decided to read the Bible again. My scientific bent was telling me to prove it. If I wanted to beat myself up with this thing, it needed to be true. I knew I didn’t really believe it all. I read the Bible again. This time I chose a scholarly translation with footnotes. Then I did research on why something didn’t make sense when it got confusing.

Long story short, the Bible is actually self defeating, as I’m sure many that read this will know. It was disjointed because the books were written in many varied times by very different ppl, for very different reasons. None of it was enough to logically justify a religion. Not even close. The whole thing had been laid bare to me. None of it was true. I was beating myself up with the same lies my father and mother beat themselves up with. In a way I’d been abused by them in the same way they’d been abused. Held hostage by frightening dogma.

After he died, and several years later, I had a one night tryst with another man. We were both in an altered state though. My mind chalked it up to just that. Still, somehow, my brain refuses to connect the dots. Why?

I lived my life, many decades passed. I met a wonderful woman along the way, that puts up with my specific shit, and we made some great kids. I waited until my 30’s to have kids. A complete atheist by this time, I’ve raised my children with skepticism but ultimately tell them all that they are free to make their own choices.

Somehow only once all of that was stable, and I was leading my boring, middle aged life, I start to realize that I am, and have always been, bisexual. A random encounter with a gay man, working at a grocery store woke me up. A little older than me, I could tell he was attracted to me from the first time I met him. What was weird was I was attracted too. After weeks of seeing him at the store, I wanted to think of ways I could have him. Maybe he was bi. Maybe my wife would go along? I never took it anywhere. He stopped working there but it jolted me. What the fuck just happened?

I pulled up pornhub one day and started looking at gay porn. The first few I hit on didn’t do it and I started to wonder if it was just that one guy. Then I hit a video that was less “fucking” and more “love making.” Holy shit. I wanted that. It all started flooding in with memories. Remember that one friend from high school. I felt this way about him. The tryst from my 20s was the same.

At least a year has passed since then. I am still very attracted to women generally and to my wife specifically. I say this because I was somehow still worried that if I let the gay side of myself out, I would fundamentally change. Instead, acknowledging it has just brought more truth for me. I am still who I was but more somehow. Some part of my mind believed reconciling this would ruin my life. Objectively, I suppose it still could.

The regret gets me. I could have truly explored this side of myself in my 20’s. So many willing and ready gay men in my past. I could have easily been fully in touch with this side of myself back then, if not for the terrible trauma that my religion had put on me around it. I have several memories of encounters with gay or bi men who seemed so confused that about why I was suddenly cold. I naturally got to a place with several men where it should have gone further. I just missed it.

I don’t know where this goes for me now. My wife knows, I’ve been open. She considers herself bi in a straight relationship also but she said that from the start. I feel like I missed out, and am maybe missing out now. I blame religion for hiding me from myself. Its such a cancer and such a burden to lay on young children.

It feels like a realization too late to matter for me. I’m giving my experience to whoever needs it in case it helps someone. I feel like it helps me to share it. For anyone that read this far, thank you for hearing me.