Drinking to Deal with Gay Feelings?

Hi Dr. Bill:

I really hope you may have some input into my situation. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.

I am 27, he is 41. We met 4 years ago in night school.  I asked him out but we never officially went on a date. We just studied together for a couple of  years. The first time we attempted to have sex, he was drunk and "it" didn't work. He got really angry. We tried again a couple weeks later and same thing. So, in two years we have never had sex. (well maybe once for like a couple seconds before he lost his erection). We now live and are in business together; he is always there for me emotionally and financially but I want to know what I have gotten into so I can figure out my life.

I can walk around naked and he doesn't bat an eye. He never touches me sexually. We hold hands, cuddle, kiss (no tongue). He does not have stereotypical signs that he's gay. I have gone down on him a couple of times (that he let me, he usually says he's tired or pushes me away), and every time he would just lay there and close his eyes. Afterwards, he would say thank you and continue doing whatever it was before (reading, TV, etc.) He has never reciprocated. I can masturbate in bed next to him and it doesn't phase him. He says to do whatever I need to do.

I have asked him if he was gay, and he says no. He said that when we met he wasn't ready for a girlfriend and so I had to give him time. I tell him I want passion and he says he does too and that it will come but we need to do X,Y, Z first. It seems to me that if it isn't there now, it never will be. He always is talking about how old he is. I think he is really depressed but won't talk about it with anyone. He self medicates with alcohol and passes out at bedtime every night. Maybe it is just the depression and drinking that is making him have no sexual drive whatsoever?

I found regular porn on his computer (nothing blatantly gay). I don't think he masturbates... not really sure. He doesn't ever want to shower with me. He pushes me away if I try to make a move. He gets angry if I get upset about the whole no sex thing and yells that he does so much for me and all I care about is getting "fucked". I am not sure he knows the difference b/t fucking and love making although not sure b/c I have no first hand experience with him.

He is a VERY PRIVATE person and doesn't want anyone to know anything about him.

He has a temper and tends to blow up about the stupidest things. He has come to counseling with me and tells the counselor everything is fine. She told me she had pretty good gaydar but has no clue about him.

He cries during movies. He tells me he loves me. He sits in front of his computer all day.... Many more things I am sure, but I'm getting long winded.

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated when you get a chance. Thank you! Oh, I just want to say that I am completely ok if he is gay (which I have told him). I would still stay with him, I would just see people on the side and start filing out the adoption paperwork. :)


Okay, first I have to ask, why on earth would you stay with this guy if he's gay? That wouldn't be fair for either one of you. You need a man who can respond to you with full passion and commitment, and if this guy is gay he needs a man. Women who stay with gay boyfriends and husbands in sham relationships are doing neither themselves nor their men any favors. It's not 1950 when some women wrongly believed their gay husbands could "change." And why should they in any case? Staying in business together is one thing, but anything else wouldn't be advisable. If this guy is gay he needs to realize it, accept it, and deal with it, or he'll just keep drinking and be miserable.

That being said, this man's heavy drinking and his impotence could definitely be related, and he may push you away because he's embarrassed by the impotence. Alcohol consumption can certainly lead to "equipment failure." A 41-year-old man is not that old and certainly does not have to be impotent, and this would be the case even if he were twenty or thirty years older. [Impotence is rarely related to age.] His self-consciousness over his impotence may just as likely be his reason for avoiding sex as the possibility that he's gay.

I've caught no blatant red flags in what you've told me. Being sensitive and crying at sad movies does not add up to homosexuality, [As I've said many times, we need to get past stereotypes. There are sensitive and cultured straight men just as there are gay men who are insensitive and uncultured.] As for his counselor and her "gaydar," often that only means that a person doesn't conform to gay stereotypes. Since this is true of the vast majority of gay people, "gaydar" is relatively meaningless.

Some people have a very low sex drive or are even asexual for any number of reasons [depression would certainly be one of them]. There are now people who claim they were born without any sexual desire, and can only have romantic feelings for other people; the jury is still out on this claim and there's been much debate over the subject, but I mention this only as another possibility. 

Heavy drinking can be a sign that someone is deeply unsatisfied with his life and the way things have turned out. Could this guy be struggling with sexual identity? -- possibly, but I'd need a lot more to go on. It could be a mid-life crisis. He also could feel stressed out because you are younger than him. The forties is when people start to feel that they are getting older, and some people don't deal with it as well as others. In any case, getting drunk every day is not normal nor healthy, and can lead to much worse problems than impotence, such as liver and heart troubles. The cause of his drinking, be it bona fide alcoholism or just something he doesn't want to deal with, hence the anesthesia, has to be determined. It could be turmoil over repressed gay feelings or any number of other things. [Is his family liberal, pro-gay, homophobic, deeply religious? Often these are factors in whether a not a person can accept their homosexuality.]

Adding to your frustration is that this doesn't sound like a guy who wants to talk about his feelings, leaving you at sea and emotionally impotent. It's good that you're both going to counseling and perhaps some day a breakthrough will occur.

For now it sounds like you'll have to settle for companionship, which is better than nothing, but, frankly, it's not the real deal, which is what everyone deserves. If there's ever a time when he's more receptive, you might sit him down and start to discuss some of these issues in a non-judgmental way and maybe you'll have a breakthrough.

In the meantime, you might consider that hitching your wagon, so to speak, to a man who starts drinking at four every day and goes to bed blitzed every night, is problematic to say the least. If this keeps up, in five years he will look and act ten to twenty years older than he is or more, and will have developed very serious health issues.