Dear Dr. Love,I am a married male who is very devoted to my wife and I’m hoping you can help me. For the last 2 years I have found myself being very attracted to the male gender. This is very akward for me in that I travel with male companions frequently.What can I do to repress these feelings? Is this normal? Please respond as quick as possible.Thank you.
Your request that I respond as soon as possible, is a clue that you are feeling afraid that you are going to act on your desires. In other words, you are not sure that your impulses are fully under your control. This explains why you asked me to help you repress your feelings.Here’s the deal. It is not healthy (or even possible) to repress feelings. When a person tries to do so, emotional symptoms will result: These symptoms could include: anxiety, depression, guilt, self-attack and periodic emotional outbursts (when the stuffed feelings suddenly explode). What’s more, you risk to develop physical symptoms if you try to suppress your feelings. These can include, headaches, stomach disorders, allergies, skin rashes, and anything else you can imagine.My point to you is, you don’t want to supress your normal feelings (all humans are bisexual by nature). What you need is to learn to separate feelings from actions. In other words, you can recognize your desires and know that you don’t have to act on them. The same principle is true for many other feelings as well. You can feel like killing your boss, but know that you can’t act on the urge.So, accept your feelings, even allow yourself to fantasize, but don’t act. Understand that I am not saying that a person should not act on homosexual desires. If a person chooses to live a gay lifestyle, that’s fine. But, in your case, you have chosen to live a heterosexual lifestyle, and you stated clearly that you wish to continue to do so. So, in your case, you cannot act on your urges; doing so would go against the choices that you have made and continue to wish to live by.Once you can accept your feelings as normal, and separate them from actions, you will be fine.
