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I suspect that a lot of these men were in denial about their sexuality for decades, and by the time they realised what was really going on they were in too deep. But rather than coming clean, they just pursue anonymous gay sex on the down low.
I get denial temporarily suppressing the Irishman's awareness of desiring men. I get denial making him able to white-knuckle it through successful intercourse with a lady. But like half of the culture war hereabouts is people pointing out that there's no earthly reason a man would ever want to do the dishes, change a diaper or go for that promotion at work, if it weren't for his burning innate desire to also get laid. So here's a person who doesn't even especially desire that, but he's signing on for the dishes and diapers anyway?
Why do men have affairs? I think there's a certain element of "have the domestic life where someone runs the house, cooks the meals, we have a comfortable life together, then for the hot kinky sex I hit that sexy co-worker/neighbour/woman I met while on a work trip" for some guys.
One is the support structure of ordinary life, one is the no-strings attached, no responsibilities, we just meet up for sex and maybe some romance and then I go home to my wife and don't have to have discussions about taking out the bins or whose turn it is to cook dinner with my mistress.
I imagine some MSM men are "yeah of course I like having my cock sucked, everyone likes that, it's just way easier to get guys to do it on a casual basis but that doesn't mean I'm gay".
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Humans are complex beings, even men. Family life used to be the norm and promoted in the media. It's not inconceivable that a man might want a Norman Rockwell family to feel complete and get sexually aroused by muscular male-presenting buttocks. With gay marriage being legal in the US and thus inevitably normalized it has become easier to square the circle, but someone older didn't have this option.
Yeah, there's similar drives behind surrogacy debates, and toward the gay mentor/'uncle' stuff comes from similar sources for men who can't have kids by blood.
It's... not a great situation. Even the best-case scenario for a 'down low' gay guy in a het marriage -- a wife that's aware and accepting, the guy being able to hit her needs, and a limited number of external partners that aren't Catching Feelings -- there's a tendency for them to kinda detonate as often as they work out. And most don't really achieve that level of openness, either out of fear or cowardice about coming clean to the wife, or inability to think with their bigger head if they try to button it up.
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I reckon it's probably a case of a typical-mind fallacy. Growing up, these men would have understood that their peers craved sex with women. The first time they had sex with a woman, it probably wasn't wholly unpleasant (after all, it's a bit like having sex with a man), but they may have felt a certain feeling of anticlimax, a sense of "is that it?" But they probably assumed this is what it's like for everyone, and they've heard so much about how sex is so much better when it's with someone you love. After meeting a nice girl and getting to know her, the sex becomes a bit more enjoyable because of the greater emotional intimacy, even if they can't quite shake the feeling that this isn't exactly what they were led to believe about sex. They assume this is what everyone feels about sex. The idea that they could only feel true sexual fulfilment by having sex with a man never even occurs to them, because as far as they're concerned, they have achieved true sexual fulfilment. Having started on the path of the traditional success script, they continue down it: marriage, mortgage, kids. They suppress the nagging feeling that sex with women wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Then upon reaching middle age, they experience a sexual awakening. Maybe the wife's out of town, they fire up Pornhub and accidentally-on-purpose open the gay section instead of the straight section; maybe they're in a bar, another man makes a pass at them and they feel not repulsed but excited. Whatever it is, the sexual excitement they experience is nothing compared to that when they were having sex with a woman. All of a sudden it clicks: this is what it must feel like for their male peers when they have sex with women. "The internal experiences I've been having all these years are totally different from those my friends were having when they were having sex with women."
Having had this realisation, the morally upright thing to do would be one of the following:
But these men are stuck between a rock and a hard place: desperately wanting to act on their desires, but not wanting to bring scandal upon themselves or their families, and reluctant to alienate their friends with their newfound realisation. Instead of doing the most or second-most decent thing, they take the maximally cowardly third option: not telling their wives anything, but acting on their desires by having illicit trysts with strange men.
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