I'm a 38 year old gay male who is attractive, jovial and intelligent. I am a father and very proud of my son whom I have spent a great deal of effort to ensure doesn't have to experience the same hardships that i had endured. My own father commited suicide when i was just six and having grown up without a father, I wanted to give my son the involved and active father that i was denied.
My son's mother is a friend of mine and we have never been involved with each other, she and my son's biological father seperated before my son was born. She and I decided to raise him together as friends, which worked out very well for the first ten years of his life. Just within the last 6 years have we lived apart, but having known only me as his father, I have remained an active part of his life. He is 16 now and I am proud to say that our relationship has only grown stronger over the years. We are like best friends, he tells me everything. Even if he knows i'll get upset, he will still tell me what is going on with his life. We spend an average of 2 hours a day on the phone and he'll stay with me almost every weekend.
Lately, like most 16 year old boys, he has been extremely interested in the opposite sex. He tells me who has his interest and asks me to read his interactions with his interests on his facebook or myspace. I'll read his chats and tell him what I think, i'll critique how responsive he is and so forth. The last few months he was interested in someone who I just felt was not as interested in him as he was in her, and after telling him that she didn't seem too interesting he moved on. Now he has an interest in a girl who is unlike the others so far and like him they have alot of similliar interests. I like her and hope they both hit it off.
The problem I'm having is that I can't help but feel envious of him and it makes me feel awful. I was never in the closet and although I have always been proud of who I am, lately I can't help feel as though I have been cheated from experiencing the same things I am blessed to witness my son experience. I set out to provide him the chance to experience everything that I was not able to, but now that he is, I'm feeling for the first time in my life, unhappy about who I am. Wishing that I could experience a relationship with someone that I could marry and grow old with, yet having been alone for so many years, I can't help but feel that my life will never be complete in that way. Knowing that my son will be a wonderful husdband to someone someday and the just witnessing how beautiful his life is and what a good attitude he has, should make me beside myself with happiness, and I am, but I hate myself for envying him.
I succeeded in providing for him the childhood that will result, I have no doubt, into a happy and fruitful life. Why do I feel so unhappy? I can't stop feeling that I have somehow been denied the special happiness that I am able to see my son begin to experience. I would never want my son to be denied these things as I feel I have been, But why can't I just be happy for him and know that eventually he will be a father and provide me with grandchildren, all of which is a fulfilling life to lead, so why am I being so selfish? Why do I now feel that having been born gay, that I have missed out on so much? Why do I have no hope for something similliar in my life? My son would like for me to have someone just as much as I want the best for him. Yet I can't help but feel, That in this area I'm a complete failure.
