I was alerted about you and your blog during a very critical and extremely discomforting time in my life. For the past four years I have been involved in a serious relationship with an incredible woman. This past September we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. We also welcomed our first child in November.

Prior to dating my wife I had sexual encounters on a few occasions with men. I enjoyed them to some degree but they weren't as sensational as I thought they would be. I thought that this was all an experimental phase and that I was just sampling sex with the same sex as a means of figuring out my sexual preference and orientation. I had several meaningful relationships with women in between my occasional hookups with men. I throughly enjoyed the companionship I received from those relationships in a variety of ways. The only real attraction I felt to men was one of physical and sexual desires.

During the dating stage of my relationship with my wife I informed her about my encounters and to my surprise she was understanding. I told her that some of the experiences were okay and others were ones I'd rather not relive. She took it as me trying something I thought I might like and discovering that while it was enjoyable in some ways I mostly didn't have any interest in pursuing it long term.

Throughout my marriage the occasional "urge" to participate in same sex activity has been low to mild. After the baby was born the desire to do something with a man intensified unlike never before and before I knew it I had created a temporary email account aside from my normal one to contact Craigslist postings. I sent private pictures of myself to a handful of men and received pictures in return. I couldn't believe what I had done so I made the decision to inform my wife. After informing her about what I did I still continued to send a few more pictures. This greatly worsened our situation.

My wife has since moved back in with her parents temporarily while we attempt to figure out our marriage and what all of these sexual attractions mean. I feel like the ultimate failure in countless ways. I would like to bring some clarity to the situation so that both my wife and I can begin to move forward with our lives whether that be together or apart.

New Father's Old Habits

My response after the jump...

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Some people will excuse your actions—or pathologize them, or ennoble them—by describing them a panicky response to the crushing responsibilities of parenthood. Little babies have a way of freaking new parents out. A nice person, an empathetic person, a kind of person might look at your situation and tell you this: You subconsciously want to return to those carefree days before you became a parent—not that you don't love your baby or your wife—and you associate those carefree days with man-on-man sex and that's why you're out there looking for cock. They might go on tell you it's not really cock you want, NFOH, it's the freedom you associate with cock. And they might end by telling you that once things have settled down, once your panic at becoming a parent subsides, your "urge" to participate in same-sex activity would revert to those manageable/resistible low-to-mild levels.

I'm not be a nice person—at least I'm not today—because when I look at your situation, NFOH, I don't see understandable, excusable, transitory, new-parent panic. I see horniness, selfishness, and manipulation. You want cock, you've always wanted cock, you're out there looking for cock, and now you've told your wife that you're looking for cock. From where I'm sitting, NFOH, the timing of that revelation—after the arrival of your baby—doesn't look like a coincidence. Instead of asking for what you wanted (wife, kid, cock) when it would've been easy for your wife to break up with you—instead of negotiating a deal before the wedding, before the pregnancy, before the birth—you waited until it would be very, very difficult for your wife to dump you and walk away. You waited until she was vulnerable and dependent to spring what you wanted on her all along: a wife, a family, and the freedom to mess around on the side with guys. (I should say, "The freedom to resume messing around with guys," since you disclosed your past history with man-on-man sex to her before the wedding. You get props for that.)

But maybe I'm being uncharitable; I'm in a terrible mood, I'll admit, and my moods can cloud my advice-giving powers. It's entirely possible that you've only just come to understand your own mind/junk, NFOH, and you honestly and sincerely thought your urge for cock wouldn't rebound to the point where things—creating email accounts, swapping pics—could happen "before [you] knew it." It's also possible that the nice people are right, NFOH, and the sudden intensity of your urge for same-sex sex are a response to the pressures of being a new parent. Anything is possible and you and your wife should be talking over anything and everything with a good, sex-positive couples' counselor.

Finally, NFOH, here's what you should've done after your wife gave birth and those secret email accounts started happening to you: You should've kept your fucking mouth shut about the M4M ads you were responding to on Craigslist, you should've jacked off about whatever you liked (men, your wife, other women) without actually hooking up with anyone else, and you should've waited to see if your urge for cock returned to those manageable low-to-mild levels after a year or so. Then once your wife wasn't feeling so stressed out and so vulnerable, NFOH, you could've broached the subject of some limited degree of openness going forward—a.k.a. the subject you should've broached with your wife before you married her and before you knocked her up.

Good luck.