In recent weeks I have been considering my tendency to experience my longings through a process of infatuation.

I have noticed that there was a time when my infatuation for members of my own sex was a source of very acute shame, embarrassment, guilt and fear.

These feelings shifted very significantly, once I had admitted to my wife that I was gay, and I had also taken steps through coaching, to find an acceptance for my truth.

After this, for quite a period of time, I found my infatuations to be liberating, soul building and I enjoyed them with a new sense of freedom, energy and relief.

My infatuations for members of my own sex took the form of enjoying images of good looking celebrities on the internet, or in films and television, and through my imagination in books, and also by enjoying the visual aspects of men-watching whilst I was driving, running or relaxing on the beach.

My development from shame and guilt, through acceptance, to freedom and liberation had a profound impact om my ability to own and embrace the legitimacy of my private thoughts.

I have always experienced infatuation by what I can only describe as “crushes” on men whom I have come into contact with throughout my working and social life.

These infatuations have been on the whole quite transient and superficial, until recently when I have experienced a very deep infatuation for someone close by which has turned my feelings from a crush to something much stronger.

The person concerned is to my knowledge inaccessible, and even if that was not the case, I have my own moral code and duty to my wedding vows to consider.

This infatuation has felt in recent weeks to be destructive and a source of torment (not guilt, not shame, not fear) because it is incomplete, it is unfulfilled, it is hopeless, it is frustrated lust.

I have been trying hard to engage with these feelings on the level of liberation and freedom, as I might do in looking at the image of a male celebrity on-line but without success.

I feel quite exhausted by it, and a tad depressed, and stuck in a rut of uncertainty, but I have the capacity to recognise that these feelings are just a valid part of the journey.

I have taken steps in my latest coaching session to explore this inner dilemma to see if there is an intellectual or emotional or physical or communication response that I can make to it, which keeps me married and satisfied.

Themes have emerged for which my mind is preparing itself to engage, so that the energy in the living moment of inner-flux and suffering begins to transform itself into something I can manage or change or end or begin.

This is my route through infatuation – curiosity not guilt; compassion not shame; hope not fear; speaking not withholding; listening not blocking; loving not hating; crying not grinding; giving not taking.

My next blog will be: Eye Contact

William Defoe