1) I am a 43-year-old man, married for 20 years to the woman I have been with since I was 20 years old.

2) I lost my virginity on the night of my 20th birthday, and had a brief relationship with the woman for a month. One month later I had a drunken one-night stand. A month after that I had sex for the first time with the woman I was longing for, who would become my wife.

3) I have struggled with my desires to have sex with a man since I first started masturbating as a teen. My interests were sexual, with no interest in a relationship or intimacy. I felt that I was straight in every way other than this occasional desire. While this was a reoccurring fantasy throughout my life, I pushed these feelings aside, as this wasn't consistent with my identity as a straight man and felt "wrong."

4) As a teen I started to purchase porn and had a preference for written erotica, real life stories, and swinger magazines (and classified ads in alternative papers), preferring these over photos or videos. I never collected porn and discarded what I bought after I read it once or twice. I tried but never enjoyed gay porn.

5) Over the years I have sought out situations (glory holes, parks, etc.) where I may have the opportunity to have a sexual experience with a man, only to run when it seemed like it could happen. I was both intensely curious and terrified by the possibility, both scared of cheating on my girlfriend/wife and of the idea of actually going through with it.

6) I also had fantasies of being submissive, primarily to dominant women, but also sometimes to men or couples. I was deeply ashamed of this and never acted on it or felt that it was something that I could discuss with my wife.

7) While my wife and I enjoyed a good sex life, it was very conventional, as she was brought up in a conservative Catholic household and was ashamed of sex and not comfortable receiving pleasure. While I did not grow up with shame about sex, I had shame about my sexual desires (bi, sub, kinky) that did not conform to the expected role of what it meant to be a (straight) man. This, combined with my wife's vanilla approach to sex, caused me to push down all of my non-conforming desires and be more ashamed of them and guilty that I had those feelings. I did not think it was OK to want or expect the things I thought of.

8) After we had kids, our sex life got more boring and less frequent. I increasingly turned to porn and masturbation as my sexual outlet, which fueled these desires and the shame they caused me. With the internet opening up access to online erotica and chat rooms, the porn I sought out became further and further out there, evolving (or devolving) to forced bi fantasies and cuckolding. I was very conflicted by my reaction to this and would be disgusted with myself as soon as I came. This went on for many years.

9) As the communication in our marriage got worse, I felt trapped and wanted to leave, but couldn't bring myself to split up my family, so I denied my needs for a satisfying sex life.

10) I discovered my prostate after reading about the Aneros online, and wanted to experience a prostate orgasm. I started to build up a collection of anal toys as I searched for the one to produce that magic hands-free orgasm, and would use these during masturbation. I hid the toys from my wife, eventually  asking for some anal play but avoiding any mention of penetration and what that might imply. Years later, I recalled playing with my ass with improvised toys in my earliest days of masturbation, which I quickly stopped doing.

11) A few years ago, a change in blood pressure medication caused ED (erectile dysfunction), which I didn't instantly understand and was very frustrated by my inability to get an erection. Ironically, this turned out to be highly beneficial for my sex life, as not being able to get hard led the sex we had to move beyond PIV (penis in vagina), as the penis wouldn't cooperate. I started to go down on her more (which she was previously uncomfortable with), started getting her off with my fingers (which she also wouldn't allow previously) and began to get into face-sitting, which satisfied some of my sub desire (without her realizing this was what was happening).

13) In my late 30's I discovered that I loved having my nipples played with, and allowed myself to accept this pleasure.

14) I have wanted to be pegged (fucked in the ass with a strap-on dildo) since I first read about the idea, and finally worked up the nerve to tell my wife after wanting to for 4 years. She heard the request, and I was excited she didn't react negatively. After waiting for months I brought it up again and found out that she was confused by my request and didn't want to do it, though she didn't flat out say no (or yes). Her not following up on it or asking questions about it hurt me a lot,  as I ended up bringing it up again and again, growing more vulnerable and hurt each time.

15) In my late 30's I started listening to sex podcasts, first 'Savage Love,' then 'Sex is Fun,' which led me to 'In Bed with Susie Bright,' 'Life on the Swingset' and other swinger podcasts. Through this, I found a world of people who were living their sexual fantasies, embraced their desires and were better for it. This helped me to accept my own desires and realized I was one of many 'straight' guys with a fantasy to go down on a man. I began to accept myself for what I was, kinks and all, and no longer denied these parts of myself.

16) I realized that I am a man that does not conform to a strict society-defined definition of the macho straight male. As a non-sports loving vegetarian who was more sensitive than I was raised to be, I began to accept myself and became less hung up on labels or what society (or my parents) expected me to be, and began to love myself for who I was.

17) This self discovery and the acceptance it led to first became real to me at a music festival. The sun was setting, the music and weather was perfect, and I was surrounded by dancing and sexy women and men and I just felt one with the crowd and had no problem with enjoying the sexual energy all around me from the women as well as the men. Listening to the song that was playing at the time brings me back to that moment.

18) Having fully accepted myself and my desires, I was faced with the reality that while I accepted my bisexual/kinky/sub-bottom/swinger-poly desires, I was in a marriage to a conventional, somewhat sexually repressed woman who I had poor communication with. While our sex had became more frequent and she had opened herself up to receiving pleasure in new ways from me, I was not getting pleasure in the ways I wanted and needed, and did not have the connection and romance I desired. The dichotomy between the sex life and relationship I had with the one I desired (now without the shame and guilt for having those feelings) led to me falling into a depression for the first time, as I saw no path to fixing our marriage or her accepting these things about me, feeling that my only choices were to cheat, break up my family, or repress these newly accepted feelings.

19) With the desire to cheat or leave my wife very powerful, I worked to try to repair my marriage, though not always in ways that were helpful. I was eager to experience sex with a man; now that I had accepted this as a part of me, I decided I had to come out to my wife as bi-curious, as I believed this to be the only thing that would stop me from going through with hooking up with someone. From when I decided to tell her, it took a couple of years to get there, until I felt I had nothing to lose and finally shared this burden with her. I put it out there, she absorbed it, then we went back to normal to the point that I started to think that the conversation never happened, as if I dreamed it. Finally we discussed it, and she began to share her own feelings and desires about playing with a woman and said that it wasn't fair to deny me an opportunity to experience this side of myself. She wanted to be supportive, but needed time to reconcile the idea that sex and love could be separated.

20) Sharing this secret led to an openness between us, as we began to role-play and share fantasies. She became in touch with some repressed feelings, and began to listen to some of the podcasts I had listened to,  and discovered this new world that I had found several years earlier. Talks of a possible three-way grew into talks of a foursome with another bi/curious couple to be found through a swinger website. Suddenly what was just fantasy was now possibility.

21) Seven months after sharing my big secret with my wife, on the week of our 20th anniversary, we met another couple we met through a swinger website for dinner and ended up going back to their place afterwards. We both experienced same-sex play (giving and receiving a blowjob and being on the receiving end of a flogger for me; kissing, feeling up and being licked by a woman for her). We left feeling no guilt or shame about what we did, and had hot sex repeatedly when we got home.

22) Having had oral sex with another man, I figured that I was no longer 100% straight, but wasn't sure how bi I actually was. I enjoyed the experience but did not find it transformational. I consider myself a Kinsey 2, and possibly more sexually adventurous than bisexual.

23) We are now seeking out other couples for friendship and sex. While this is very exciting and I am looking forward to the new experiences (and have seen it improve our relationship and sex life). I have some anxiety about having sex with another woman. I have always been a 'grower' who is small when not erect (avg. 6" when hard) and never had much of an issue with this, as no one saw me naked but my wife. Now I have some anxiety about being in sexual and non-sexual situations around other people, some much larger than me (when soft as well as erect). This is somewhat compounded by my fear of not being able to get hard with a new partner and letting them down with my small soft cock. I am determined not to let this stop me from these new experiences.

24) Despite the newfound openness and happiness, I have a hard time coming from blowjobs or intercourse (though I occasionally do), preferring to come after lots of sex from masturbating while my wife is sitting on my face and I am licking her pussy after I've satisfied her in other ways. I don't understand this, and it bothers me that I can't get off more easily without the help of my hand, in part because I am afraid that it may make her feel that she can't 'get' me to come.

25) Despite being in my forties and having a lower testosterone level, I have the libido of a teen and am as horny as I ever was, needing to come  at least once a day. I think about sex constantly, and spend more time than I should on the swinger websites, reading profiles and emailing or chatting with other couples or possible partners for a threesome.