Ask Beastly: I’m Married, Cheating, and Don’t Want to Stop

Secrets always surface.

Hi Alexander, I need advice. I've been with my partner for 13 years and have been married for 8. We met when I was 25. In my teens and early 20s, I explored my sexuality and did it all. I grew up in a broken home and was once homeless. I thought I wanted security and monogamy. Unfortunately, I'm a serial cheater. I can't count at this point. He caught me once, but we worked it out. The best sex is with my husband, and he has no idea what I have been up to. I sometimes feel like he knows. However, on a recent business trip, I got wild. Because he doesn't trust me and is jealous, he didn't want me to go. I went anyway because it was a great opportunity. I logged onto Grindr from my hotel room, and many guys were within 0 feet of me. I had group sex with guys from the app. I was fucked by one guy and sucked two more. My top used some of another guy's semen as lube. I think I fell in love with one of the guys the moment he walked into the room. We locked eyes and instantly connected. He watched the whole thing, and we made out. After leaving the room, we continued to talk, and numbers were exchanged.

Afterwards, I was on cloud nine. It's like I was high from this extreme sexual experience. Positive, confident, and happy, I felt GOOD. Days later, I started feeling low. Although there is no future with the guy I really connected with, since he lives on the West Coast and I'm married, I'm still very curious about him. I would like to know more about him and fuck him like crazy. I also have my current relationship to consider. Do I leave? He would not be supportive at all. I also want to remain safe and healthy. Does the high I felt after the wild sex mean this is how I should live? Am I bipolar or a sex addict? What should I do? Is my husband's ideal of what I should be making me smaller? Can I have everything?

- Terrible Gay Husband

P.S. I have a few things to add. I have recently attended a sex addict anonymous meeting. I like the idea of getting help, but after reading literature and hearing others’ stories at the meeting, I’m just not sure if I am actually an addict. Maybe I am, but maybe there’s more to it? Like maybe I’m a narcissist and want all the attention? My husband travelled to see his mother in South America last week, which gave me many opportunities to play. I have a friend whom I met on Grindr about a year ago. I had him take me to my first bathhouse, which was amazing. I have since returned for a second time on my own. In the bathhouse setting, I have suddenly become a top, which I really like the idea of.

Side note: Maybe I can be my husband's bottom and fuck everyone else? I also had the chance to visit an adult video place with stalls and rooms and theaters and play there. All of these things have been things I’ve always wanted to do. My “friend” also told me about Doxy Pep and gave me a few pills to take after these risky encounters. When my husband returned, we had amazing sex. Like, mind-blowing, but I still want to go and cruise.

If my husband ever found out, everything around me would come crashing down, which is really scary. Friends, family, a religious community, our house, our pets. I need to stop, but then I’m not sure if I want to stop. Do I like all this risk? At this point, I am living two lives. He doesn’t know I take Prep, he doesn’t know I get tested all the time, he doesn't know I’ve done any of these wild things. Also, it’s nice that this guy from Grindr has become my friend and helped me experience some great sexual adventures. But he’s probably more like an enabler at this point. He’s also married, but his husband knows. I have gotten to talk to him about the possibility of this being an addiction, and he has also gone to SAA meetings in the past. So it was nice hearing someone else’s experiences dealing with all this sex.

He has also offered to try and seduce my husband through social media. Really risky. My thoughts behind that are that maybe it will open my husband’s eyes to think outside the sexual box. I’ve also recently gotten a Viagra prescription, which was amazing to take before the bathhouse. And it probably helped me become the bathouse top. I never needed it, but I would always get nervous, and that would affect my erections in these very public situations. My friend helped me with that.

Anyway, I have really been on this big sexual jaunt since I went on my business trip a couple of months ago. I basically fell in love with one of the guys. Now I’ve moved on and still want more. All the while, I have this amazing guy at home. I should also mention he doesn’t trust me. For good reason. We have cameras throughout the house and GPS locators on my car and phone. But I’ve found a way around these things. Sorry for this explosion of information, but I wanted you to know. Thanks, Alex, for everything you do.

Hey TGH,

Yeah, you should leave him. And you should tell him the truth. However, based on your message, I don't think you will follow any of my suggestions.

This might sound clichéd, but I base all my suggestions on a core principle: we should take care of others and be good to them. And you’re not.

Dude, that’s an ethics thing. A soul thing. I’m not sure this can be fixed from a blog.

Your entire message reads like an internal monologue. You are not asking me these questions—you are self-debating, and I’m not sure you want a solution.

What do you hope I will say? Most people who ask a question about a relationship have some idea of the answer they want to hear. Do you want approval? I disapprove of unethical non-monogamy (cheating), which you are doing, but you know that if you’ve read this blog before, and it sounds like you have. Do you want me to say yes, you're being a bad husband? You are. Do you want a solution that gives you a wild sex life with a husband who won’t allow it? There isn’t one, at least not an ethical one.

You can’t "have it all" if having it all requires deception, at least not without being a bad partner and a bad person. There is, of course, a path to having it all with honesty and integrity—with the right guy, someone who allows it—and that is the sort of life that ethically non-monogamous people choose, but your current relationship is not a candidate for ethical non-monogamy.

Why? Because there’s no more trust; there are cameras in your home and tracking devices in your car. (That is toxic behaviour on his end and it’s not justified—two wrongs don’t make a right—but based on everything you’ve shared, he certainly has reason to distrust you). Ethically non-monogamous couples trust each other and communicate effectively, frequently, openly, and honestly (and if we’re being frank, that is what all successful couples do, regardless of their rules around sex). Honest communication is absent in your relationship and likely has been for some time. I believe you have ruined this relationship's chance of going open or "monogamish,” but more than that, I think you’ve ruined its chances of surviving in any form, perhaps intentionally. Your best course is to end it and do better next time. (Tip: don’t lie.)

Even if he could learn to trust you again after you tell him the truth—as you must—he would have to be comfortable with an open relationship, and he isn’t. To be ethically non-monogamous, you must have constant, transparent communication so everyone feels safe, and right now, you don’t seem fit for that task. 

And I think you know all this. You are not stumbling blind, unsure what to do. You have calculated how not to get caught and not stop. You know you must get tested for STIs so you don't give one to him, so you do. You know what you’re doing. You know you’re being a bad husband. Sometimes we do bad things because we cannot imagine an alternative way to do them, and that doesn't necessarily make us bad people; however, these actions—lying, manipulation, deceit—are inherently wrong. You are being an abusive partner. He just doesn’t realise how abusive you are.

I am very tired of the "sex addict" claim. It's an easy way to eschew blame and responsibility. "It's not my fault, I'm sick." Yes, some people have legitimate, clinical sexual compulsions—people who compulsively masturbate in public or can't stop groping strangers on the train. These people often require therapy and institutionalisation.

In my view, most people who call themselves sex addicts are just people who shame, judge, and misunderstand their own desires and behaviours. Instead of trying to understand them, they self-pathologise and call it an illness. You have legitimate desires, and if you weren't in your current relationship, satisfying them would be no problem. The things you want are normal. I love nasty, wild sex with strangers. Be a freak! Do it all! That’s fine—the sex is not the problem. The lying is.

You are allowed to have a wild sex life. But you are not allowed to hide it from the one person on earth who trusts you with their emotions as well as their physical safety. You are harming him physically and emotionally. After he finds out, think about how much this will hurt him—think about how long it will take him to heal from this, to trust others again, to ever have a healthy relationship again.

That’s on you.

I don't believe you think your world would come crashing down if he were to find out. If it would be that bad, I doubt you'd risk it. I suspect that some part of you sees all this for what it is: a messy transition from your marriage into single life, and you feel guilty for how you've done it (or at least, I hope you do).

Transition periods can inspire bad behaviour—just ask anyone who has ever been in a long, drawn-out, messy breakup. We often cannot explain even to ourselves why we cling to futureless relationships while simultaneously chasing new fun. I have known many men who hold on to a failing relationship while doing the very things they know are destroying it—men who know that, at some point, these realities will inevitably collide. Your partner is on a collision course with your other life, your "secret" self. And, my dear, I’m sorry to burst your bubble: he knows.

Or at least, some part of him knows. He might be denying it in his mind or trying to look the other way, but he knows, and if he doesn't, he will. It is impossible to keep cheating on a partner without them finding out. He deserves better, and you know that. The only correct action now—the only way to love him—is to tell the truth.

He will leave you. He should. This relationship is not in your best interest or his. For you, he is a safety blanket, someone comfortable and familiar with whom you've built a life, and it may be scary to imagine life without him. But look at what you’re doing: you’re tired of safety and security. Part of you wants your life to be shaken up, to rattle the calm of your adulthood.

Many adults with comfortable lives, stable marriages, and solid careers want exactly that: to have the rug pulled out from under them, to pack it all up and be young again, back in the days of sleeping on friends' sofas and figuring things out. It’s exciting. You probably want something like that: your life ruined to make way for something freer.

I don't care how good the sex with him is—it's not working. Love him enough to let him be free. Give him a chance to find someone right for him. If you desire a relationship (I don’t believe for a moment that you do, not right now), you should give yourself a chance to meet someone who celebrates all of you, who encourages you to explore and is willing to have an open, healthy, ethically non-monogamous relationship with you. That is the only way to have both committed love and sexual freedom—to "have it all"—and still be a good person.

I mean that. And I mean this, too: If you don't leave him—if you keep things as they are—you will cross a line from being a regular guy struggling to figure things out, to just being a bad guy.

You will go from "married guy who discovers wild sex and doesn't know how to fit it into his life" to being a malicious and deceitful man, the kind I tell others to watch out for. You'd join a class of people I don’t respect or love; you’d be someone I’d never be friends with or let my friends date. There are, actually, just bad people in the world—don’t be one. In gay land, guys like that are creations of shame, the closet, and simple cowardice: they are too afraid to own their desires and tell the truth.

People in challenging transitions inspire my sympathy and understanding. I went through a difficult transition out of monogamy, and during that time, my behaviour was less than great. I’m not proud of the hurt I caused as I struggled to figure things out; I'd wager most ethically non-monogamous people can say the same.

However, there is a point at which my sympathy ends—at which you are no longer a confused beginner in a tough transition, but just being cruel. And I think you are dangerously close to that.

This sounds paternal, but some paternalism is warranted because you’re being a child: You really, really need to think about the kind of man you want to be.

Love, Beastly