Being in love with my wife

In Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel, the title character's alter ego, Percy, had just watched his wife leave after a difficult discussion.  He is described as "a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last."

When I first read that passage, I thought it utterly ridiculous.
I wondered if the author, being female, had talked to any men who really did this kind of thing.  But, then again, I'm not straight, so maybe they do.  Or perhaps this is the fantasy that the author had, that men would be helpless passionate lovers who depended upon their wives for any true bliss; that secretly, the moment their wives left the room, the husbands mourned deeply and emotionally at the lack of their spouses' presence.  If that's what it means to be straight, you can count me out.  I love my wife dearly, and I do miss her when we're apart.  But I'll stay the gay husband and try to be more calm.

I don't think most reasonable people would say that Percy's actions were healthy.  Straight men are not expected to behave that way.  But when people argue that a gay man can't give all his love, his passion, his whole self to a female wife, I feel they are holding Percy up as the ideal husband that gay men will never meet.  It feels like a double standard.  It may be true that I don't see my wife the same way I see an attractive looking guy.  But does a straight husband see his wife the same way he sees another girl he finds attractive?  Do you see the double standard?

Being gay is just my orientation.  It's like having blue eyes.  It's a characteristic.  It determines the direction of my immediate attractions (and they are exclusively toward guys, sorry girls).  But I get to choose the relationships I develop and grow.  I choose with whom I nurture marital love, intimacy, and passion.  I love my wife.  But I don't think I'll ever be as silly about it as Percy Blakeney.