My [38M] wife's [35F] avoidance of initmacy, exclusively gay fantasies, and fascination with lesbians makes me wonder about her sexual orientation

Before you respond with the obvious "just talk about it!" hear me out first. There's a bunch of factors behind this feeling, not least of all both of our insecurities. I'd rather not bring it up at all and risk offending her if it's obvious to a detached & rational outsider that it's a stupid feeling.

There are a whole bunch of things that have brought me to point of submitting this. It would be laughable to consider she is repressing anything based on any one of these observations alone, but when I consider everything together, it makes me wonder.

Some general background: we married in our early 20s, and while not a perfect union, I think we are pretty good together. We have our ups and downs but we always sort it out. I've never doubted her love for me and I don't think she's ever doubted mine. We have two great kids together and a good life, all things considered. Neither of us had many partners before and certainly didn't have the opportunity to experiment or explore our sexuality before marriage. We both grew up inside different but similiar repressive evangelical christian groups with all the typical bullshit taboos around sex, gender roles, homosexuality, etc. The point is most of our sexual identities have been formed within the bounds and context of our relationship.

I feel like our relationship is quite well balanced, except around matters of intimacy. Basically, she does not ever initate or seek out any form of physically intimacy, flirting, or compliments. It's not just about sex (far from it), but to keep it short I will focus on that. She will consent to sex, if I initiate, about once a month generally. She is almost completely passive during the act, and has no interest in really trying different things. She's just not into it, basically. She has no trouble achieving orgasm, but prefers to use her vibrator to get off. It's important to note that it was not always like this - up until about 4 or 5 years ago, we had a very active and interesting sex life, of which she was an enthusiastic participant. I can't pinpoint any particular life event around that time that might have caused the change, but since then things have been in decline. It's a touchy subject for us, but we have discussed it many times. Generally she will attribute it to whatever is going on in her life at that particular time, and doesn't really acknowledge it as a problem. It's always me that raises it - it's obvious she would be content to continue with a non-intimate relationship indefinetly. There's a lot more to this aspect of our relationship but the salient points are: while she professes to be attracted to me and does not admit to any of the typical resentments (housework, respect, etc); nevertheless she no longer has any drive for intimacy with me, and that remains unexplained.

We didn't or don't watch a lot of porn, but when we did, she was interested in girl-girl stuff only, to the exclusion of everything else. Anything with guys in any capacity is a complete turn off to her (she has told me so explicitly). So far so good, right? Porn guys can be pretty gross, and I understand just because someone likes to watch a certain thing doesn't mean they want to do it. She also watches a lot of true crime shows, but I know that doesn't mean she is a repressed serial killer.

In the past she has confessed that her go-to fantasy is being with another woman. She would like to try it, and the idea is a big turn on for her. Again, not a big deal, and a pretty common fantasy I think. Otherwise she says she doesn't have many sexual fantasies - this might be the only one she's ever described. Like the porn thing above, it's mainly the exclusivity of it that makes me wonder.

Sometimes she will make offhand comments that give me pause - I'll give one recent example. She was relating a story about a friend of ours; this married woman is apparently deeply unhappy with her husband's behaviour, and vented to my wife about it. Upon relating the encounter to me, my wife's concluding comment was: "she might as well go be a lesbian!" This struck me as a weird take-away - there was no context for it at all in the conversation. It was as if for her the obvious alternative to an unhappy (straight) marriage is... to be gay? She has said similar things before that I though perhaps betrayed a certain (subconcious?) mindset. For example, if we are out somewhere and happen by a lesbian couple, she never fails to make some kind (subtle) comment to me about them (nothing derogatory - effectively "oh look, lesbians"). It's the same with lesbian TV characters. It seems to spark a certain fascination.

To add it all up, from my point of view: unexplained avoidance of initmacy, exclusivly gay fantasies, and a general but probably subconcious fascination with lesbians and lesbianism.

If she were coming around to a later-in-life realisation she might be gay, I think it might explain a lot of things, particularly the issues around intimacy. There's plenty of reasons she might even conciously repress it, especially if she felt like it might mean the end of our relationship. She depends on me financially, for one. She also has a chronic tendancy to ignore or postpone dealing with difficult problems - she is not the type to confront issues head on. So that behaviour would fit too.

I'm hoping some of you emotionaly intelligent people out there can help me with the following:

• I'm just overthinking things, right?
• Is any of this rational? If so, how best should I approach it? Should I approach it at all?
• And best of all, does anyone have any experience with discovering they were gay while in a loving and committed straight relationship? Did it play out anything at all like the above?

For what it's worth, I would love her, support her and try to make it work no matter how it turned out.

TL;DR: my wife's unexplained avoidance of initmacy, exclusively gay fantasies, and a general but probably subconcious fascination with lesbians and lesbianism is making me wonder about her sexual orientation.

Submitted March 27, 2019 at 03:49AM by icanteven9999 https://ift.tt/2TXYXWa