Hi everyone, 

I am new here, I have come here in search of desperately needed help & wisdom. 

[tl;dr: Me, m, 31, bi, in a loving het relationship that is about to end bc of my sexuality. What do I do?] 

I am male, 31, and I am bisexual. I have known that I am drawn to men since the beginning of puberty. But for a bundle of reasons, I managed not to deal with myself and to ignore that side of me until around age 25. I started admitting to myself that my attraction to men is real, and I began uncovering my bisexuality from all the clutter I had covered and hid it with, which to date feels like a hard, slow process, but it's getting there. Two years ago, I finally felt ready and excited (and nervous!) to at long last leave my cozy comfort zone and toss myself into the gay/bi dating scene. 

By some weird freak of chance, I ran into this girl, right at that moment, and we sparked on the spot. Before our first date, I told her openly about my situation, and that I couldn't be exclusively committed right now. It turned out that she was at a similar crossroads and not keen on exclusive arrangements, and so we began having an open relationship. I believed I had hit the jack pot. Not only had I met the woman of my dreams, I could still pursue figuring out my sexuality! And seeing that my het love life thus far had been messy and highly frustrating (to say the least), I found two old, deep, profound longings finally being met. Fairly early on, she realized that she couldn't emotionally handle an open relationship, while at the same time she really wanted me to be myself. And I had not forgotten about my plan, but was so absorbed by this beautiful, incredible woman and the relationship that I simply couldn't bring myself to try and deal with a third person in the midst of all this. So we kinda never responded properly to this conundrum, we kept crushing on each other and every once in a while the issue would come up, be talked about, and postponed, for loss of a satisfactory solution. 

This has gone on for about two years now. To her, my desires increasingly feel like a looming threat. The thought of me having sex with someone else, regardless of gender, is uncomfortable, but not something she would end the relationship over. Her biggest fear is that I will fall in love with someone else, or even discover that I prefer guys. Or discover that I will always have a craving for memen, even if I am with a woman. And because it is slowly grinding her up, she needs to end this. And I cannot simply pretend that my bisexuality doesn't exist, I have done that for far too long already. That aside I worry it would one day catch up with me with worse ramifications (e.g. ruining a family), or slowly but steadily drive me mad. So now we are seperating, slowly, because we simply cannot do the clean cut. I don't know yet how exactly my sexuality works; except for kissing a guy in a club once I am a same-sex virgin. 

My "gateway" with guys has always been sex. I struggle to imagine a romantic connection to a guy, or falling in love and wanting a commited relationship. But like with other things, I may still have barriers in my head that bar me from seeing how it is. I read that with some folks, being bi means that they could be with someone of any gender and commit without fear of missing something, i.e. having no "itch to scratch" regarding other genders. And for others, different genders exist in different spheres of the libido, making monogamy pretty much useless. One thing I do know (or feel pretty sure, I tried not to touch uponthe million different insecurities involved), is that I have a profound urge to find out about Me & guys. And then I know, from the deepest depths of me, that I love my woman, I want her children, I want her companionship, I want to grow old with her - and I used to be pretty unfazed by all this talk of "The One" and Love etc., it seemed like an outdated, fairytale concept that didn't actually exist, leaving millions divorced, bitter and hurt. 

But I love her, and the thought of us seperating is showing me levels of pain I have not yet known existed. It seems like there is no other way for us but to go different paths, and yet we see in each other all we had wanted. I am desperate, I am angry at the universe for making me incompatible with my favourite human being on the planet, I am sad, I am insecure, and I am scared that I will never be able to be in a monogamous relationship, making the search for partnership even more of a lottery. I am scared that I am tossing this one-time-super-lucky strike out of the window over something that may well turn out to be nothing more than a hunch, and that I will regret it for the rest of my days. I feel guilty for putting her through so much pain, for not having had my shit together earlier in my life etc., and all of this makes me constantly question myself, my decision-making, etc.. All of this is made extra hard since no-one has actually messed up, no-one has hurt the other, we don't have any rub between us, so the seperation feels very counter-intuitive. The thing that drives us apart is too abstract to be felt in our daily way with each other (mostly), yet it is too real and too profound to let it slide. 

Thank you for bearing with me so far. Now I am keen to hear it from you guys: If I really believe this to be my #1 soulmate, friend & lover, should I not humbly accept this gift of having her in my life? Or will there always be this nagging that will eventually blow up in my face? Will I not stunt my personal growth, or even develop problematic character traits bc there's something bottled up in me?