Just short of five years have passed since I told my wife that I was gay.

My faithfulness to her throughout the twenty years of my struggle and isolation, enabled us to find a way through the difficulty of our situation to stay married.

I knew, even at the moment of my telling her of my feelings for my own sex, which had been locked in and suppressed, that I needed to find some way to express my self to the world in ways which would honour our vows and my truth.

I also sensed that in telling her the truth about my feelings, she would leave me, which she did not, and that my sense of isolation would end, and it did not do so.

My feelings are in constant flux, on the one hand I want to stay married to my wife of thirty years and honour the vows I made to her, but I have struggled to bring into my life a process for honouring my truth.

My coaching sessions have over the years enlightened me on a vastly increased capacity to think things through.

I have honoured my need to be seen in my truth by releasing old fears about how I am perceived by others, and by adopting many daily routines to connect my physical, mental emotional and spiritual capacities in the pursuit of self hood and being present, through running, writing and being coached.

I have healed as far as is possible within my current capacity, the relationships with my parents and siblings and my children which had been damaged by my anger, my unpredictability and my controlling behaviour.

I am a much calmer individual, a man who lives in a much more balanced way in which my perspectives on the needs of myself, and the needs of those close to me, are viewed and understood with more compassion and understanding and a greater acceptance of how things are.

I have been concerned recently with the observation of the changing nature of my isolation.

On my journey to know and love self, I have turned to various means to address my unacknowledged sexuality (without breaking my vows!) but which have tended towards visual attempts to satisfy my curiosity and investment in infatuations and longings which cannot be fulfilled.

In recent months, having sensed that these methods are potentially destructive,  I have been successful, in pushing further into my own understanding of what it is that would satisfy my need to be seen in the fullness of my nature.

I have recognised a need for an intellectual connection with the gay community rather than a physical connection because of my desire to stay married, so that I can interact at the level of conversational and emotional understanding with men who know I am gay and whom are wired like me.

My next blog will be: Pebbles and Shells

William Defoe