Bi The Way

I just wanted to let everyone know that although this is the first update for almost 2 years. The blog is still been read and the comments still published.

My main reason for not publishing was to begin with a lack of anything to say that I hadn’t really covered already. More recently its because I’d been insanely busy.

Of course in the last two years my views on some points of detail have changed, I’ve had new experiences, many of them very positive, and of course the blog has been bombarded with comments.

Your comments are typically my main source of inspiration for new responses, so keep them coming in and hopefully in 2012 I’ll be able to add a few more articles.

But yeah, just a post really to let you all know this site is still active.

Happy 2012!

I want to carry on from my last post about Female Reaction to bisexuality, which dealt with how straight women respond to discovering their boyfriend isn’t quite as straight as they thought he was. I also highlighted that central to many fears are abandonment issues and in my last post I promised a to discuss how we might get over them. But before I get onto that I wanted to explain in a bit more detail why I think this needs to be tackled instantly.

They say time heals all, but often there isn’t much time, here’s why:

Upon learning their boyfriend is bisexual, women are generally hurt and afraid, but all too often they make the mistake of focussing on their own feelings rather than recognise the difficulty this presents for their boyfriends.

After coming out with a big personal admission, men need reassurance too. If those admissions, especially concerning someone’s sexuality are not greeted with universal acceptance, then we put ourselves in a very emotionally delicate and vulnerable situation.

We bear our souls to our girlfriends, only to be told we are liars (often only by omission), cheats (often only because we have fantasies) and that we have “ruined everything”. How do you think that feels?

A little more empathy on the part of women would go a long way here. Even if you can’t accept the revelation, to at least empathise and acknowledge the difficulty we must have over-come to come out, to be grateful for the trust we have demonstrated in sharing our darkest secrets.

If this isn’t acknowledged it creates an emotional chasm between the two parties which can be difficult to bridge.

This same chasm can cause wild and incoherent responses from men. This is because of the intense confusion, rejection and condemnation we have to suddenly rationalise whilst the woman we love stands there telling us we are inadequate.

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t acknowledge women’s hurt and women’s feelings in all of this. Of course we should. In particular if they have been cheated on or deceived. But we need to know are partners are capable of moving on and won’t keep returning to square one. Wounds don’t heal overnight, but they don’t heal at all if you keep picking at the scab.

If a woman doesn’t seem to be able to move on, or keeps throwing her hurt back in the face of the man, then the relationship is on borrowed time, particularly if the woman failure to empathise earlier has created emotional distance.

We wont wait very long for women to get over something if they singularly fail to recognise they have hurt us in the process.

Yes I know that women might be having to come to terms with infidelity, but frankly compared to coming out as bisexual (or being outed as bisexual) that’s something which is relatively common. A Durex Global sex survey found that 22% of people have had extra-marital sex, that’s not counting affairs from unmarried couples. Infidelity happens very frequently, its hurtful and difficult to handle but most of us have to deal with it once or twice in our lifetimes.

Whereas coming out as bisexual, is a once in a lifetime experience, for about 2% of the population. Its bigger. There is more at stake. The social barriers, fear and shame that men have to over-come whilst coming out or being outed is far more intense.

Failure to recognise that puts your ability to rescue your relationship in serious jeopardy.

One of my most popular posts was a piece entitled “How to talk to your bisexual boyfriend” and it attracts a lot of comments from women seeking to deal with their boyfriend’s bisexuality. I thought it would be interesting to analyse the female reactions to discovering they have a bisexual boyfriend and to see if we can learn anything from it.

I apologise in advance if this article comes across as sexist. I do have a prejudice in so much as  I have experienced these situations for myself as a male who has come out as bisexual to several girlfriends. But I do think this perspective and my conclusions will be helpful to women, so if you can get over my wounded male bias and reach the end of the essay, you’ll hopefully find it useful.

Based on the comments my earlier article attracted and on emails I received privately, it would seem that generally speaking you can characterise the sentiments of women who have just discovered their boyfriend is bisexual  as some or more of the following.

1. They still love their boyfriend
2. They are angry/hurt he didn’t reveal his bisexuality sooner.
3. They are worried he might decide he is gay.
4. They want him to be true to himself.
5. They don’t want him to sleep with men on the side. (The monogamy clause).

Lets briefly deal with each and then I’ll take a more holistic discussion of the points.

(1) Women still love their bisexual boyfriends. Good! Happy days! This is an excellent and fortunate place to start. From here all things are possible.

(2) They are angry and or hurt that their boyfriends didn’t reveal their bisexuality sooner in the relationship. On this point I see varying definitions of “sooner” ranging from “before he even asked her out” to “before he asked her to marry her”. What’s more the definition of “sooner” appears to be proportional to the length of the relationship up to the revelation. Men can’t seem to win on this one, because they can never tell their girlfriends they are bisexual soon enough.

Whilst its understandable that women are going to feel hurt, particularly if they have caught their boyfriend being unfaithful. I have never heard from a woman (even one who has not been cheated on) consider all the social barriers, shame and fears a man might have about revealing his bisexuality. In our hetero dominated world, few people outside the LGBT community understand how hard it is to come out. Girls you need to be more understanding about this, especially if you and your boyfriend live in a very heterosexual social environment or have a religiously conservative background.

(3) They worry their boyfriend might decide he is gay. I’ll analyse the motives behind this fear later, but for now, I’ll just say two things, (a) we can blame every gay man that ever tried to be straight for creating this stereotype [Joking] and (b) it singularly fails to understand bisexuality as a distinct orientation to homosexuality.

Its worth noting that for many bisexual men, the last two points (4) & (5) are impossible to reconcile. A point seemingly wasted on some of their girlfriends. Due to the logical inconsistency, I tend to dismiss point (4) as tokenism or at least as being very low on the list of priorities. In fact what is far more over-riding in these circumstances is abandonment issues.

Personally, I find its telling that I have never heard from a woman, who has dumped her boyfriend because she found out he was bisexual. They all want to save the relationship, they often are unsure how to do this or whether the relationship can survive. They are often confused and hurt, but I have not heard from a woman who instantly gave her boyfriend his marching orders just because she found out he liked boys.

So I don’t think women want to leave their boyfriends. More over their objections to him sleeping with men (the monogamy clause) and their fear that he might decide he is gay, are actually two sides of the same coin and centre on their fear that their boyfriend will leave them, not vice versa.

This is what leads me to think that abandonment fears are actually at the heart of the whole issue.

Bisexual men tend to keep their sexuality a secret because they fear their girlfriend will dump them. Something I have seen no evidence of. When they reveal their bisexuality, their girlfriend then fears that their boyfriend will leave them. Again if he is bisexual there is no evidence of this either.

The unfairness about these respective fears is that the male fear of abandonment is falsifiable and can be demonstrably shown to be misplaced, ie: by coming out and discovering that your girlfriend doesn’t actually want to leave you. In contrast the female fear of abandonment is (in the short term at least) unfalsifiable and there is nothing the guy can do to show her it is misplaced.

The problem is that this female fear of abandonment tends to manifest itself with trust issues, resentment and insecurities. These become a destructive force in the relationship before sufficient time has elapsed to allow the abandonment fear to be abated.

One guaranteed cure for female abandonment fears is long-term monogamy. Some women might be able to gradually accept an open relationship whereby they allow their boyfriend to have casual male partners providing of course that they always return to their female partners afterwards. But each takes time to accept and the abandonment fears actively work actively against allowing this to happen.

I seemed to be working towards a conclusion that you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. However, I don’t think that’s helpful or proactive in terms of relationship counselling.

The solution as I see it rests with the ability of women to quickly get over any feelings of hurt and anger they are experiencing and to rapidly resolve any abandonment fears they might have. This is easier said than done and places a heavy burden on women, but I do believe that if more women can take a cognitive approach to the situation, better outcomes ie: a loving and trusting relationship will result.

An explanation of how this might work will have to wait for another article, and whether or not you think I’m being fair towards women is also open to debate. However, I think we’ll agree that abandonment fears are a major destructive force in relationships, they cause men to lie and women to lose trust and feel insecure. Getting over abandonment fears is therefore central to a happy relationship.

My posts are becoming more sporadic because I think I’ve said most I wanted to say about bisexuality in previous articles. At least for now. I opened up the blog to other bi-writers to share their experiences, but they too have either said all they felt they needed to or found other pressures on their time that have diverted their attention.

So in an effort to breath a bit of fresh live back into the blog, I thought I might share some cultural references that the bi-community may have missed.

The first is the music video from the Ash single True Love 1980, Ash are an alternative rock band from Northern Ireland and I’ve been a fan since their début album.

Now Ash are not a bisexual or gay band by any stretch of the imagination, to the best of my knowledge all the band members are straight. So its nice to get this little nod in a music video.

If you enjoy the song and the music video you can watch more on the Ash YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/darthmarkh

Incidentally the You Tube user “darthmarkh” who uploads the band’s videos is the band’s bass player Mark Hamilton.

Its been a fairly emotional December and aside from Christmas (which was great) its one I’m keen to forget. I’m sure my girlfriend is too. There have been a lot of strains on our relationship, sickness, hospital appointments, moving in together. All sorts of stuff, but probably above all else my girlfriend and I have suffered a bit of mutual emotional battering as we’ve gotten to know things about each other that we previously didn’t share or suspect.

Last May, just a few of months after we’d met, she was all set to move away. To sell her house and head back home to her extended family. At my request she turned down an offer on the house so we could have a go at building a life together. One cannot expect to know all the intimate details about your partner after dating them for three months, so in acquiescing to my request she must have known she was taking a risk. However, this didn’t stop her feeling like I misled her when I later shared some admittedly shocking secrets about my past sexual persuasions.

In a way she was right, there are many things we do keep from our partners (as bisexual men this is typically our bisexuality) and if this doesn’t feel like lying it certainly feels like an omission. But equally these are not things we feel comfortable enough sharing until we are in a very safe emotional place with our partners. To reach this place takes time. When my girlfriend and I took the decision to be together, time was something we didn’t have. The offer for the house was on the table and a choice had to be made.

The outcome is that my girlfriend felt like I lied to her by omission, and I felt somewhat hard-done-by for being expected to share my darkest personal secrets a matter of weeks into a new relationship. What’s more my girlfriend’s response has made it abundantly clear to me that such revelations (particularly when misinterpreted due to a fudged drunken explanation) can profoundly alter her view of the man she fell in love with.

My conclusion really results in a warning. If you’ve been in a relationship for a while and reveal a shocking new fact about yourself, particularly if you don’t have a succinct and reassuring way of explaining it, then you run the risk ruining your partners image of you. For example, if there is anyone reading this who is thinking of coming out as bisexual, whilst in they are in relationship. Then be under no illusions, you are between a rock and a hard place.

Areth is a young woman living in the United States. She has always known she was bisexual, and has not come out to many people. At every stage in her life there had been love interests from both sexes. She is quite certain that she is bisexual despite never having a full-blown relationship with a woman. However, her reluctance to come out can be attributed to being in a hetero, monogamous relationship.

During the first few months of her relationship she had confessed that she is bisexual, and in return she discovered that her mate, in a strange twist of things, also is bisexual. This gives her the opportunity to offer a unique perspective, on what its like to be a bi, monogamous woman in a relationship with a bisexual man.

This is my first contributing post, and I am extremely happy and anxious to be a part of this community. My real name is not Areth, but I decided on a pen name to conceal my identity because I lead a public life as a teacher. I feel that many of the individuals I work with, on a daily basis, would not be ready to hear about my sexual preferences. I am a bit ashamed to say that I have not come out to everyone, and that is the cursed blessing about being bisexual. Several of us live our lives undetected, and several of us are never questioned.

As a female bisexual, I find it hard to relate to how society perceives us. For one reason or another, it’s a hot thing to have a bisexual girlfriend. Some women would go to lying to admit it, despite having no interest in an actual relationship with a woman. Straight and lesbian both fear us because they believe that bisexuality somehow translates to having two romantic relationships at the same time.

However, to be as honest as I can be, I am a strictly monogamous bisexual. I have known this all my life, and this facet of my life was never challenged until recently. Although this community focuses mainly on male bisexuality, I have been given this opportunity to share in my experiences not only because I, too, am bisexual, but because my male partner of 2 years is also bisexual.

I had told my BF at the beginning of our relationship that I had genuine interest in a relationship with women, and that I could see myself eventually living with another woman and being her mate for life. In that regard, he reacted very differently from what I expected. He was afraid. He was unsure. He did not want to fancy the thought of a threesome as most men would’ve jumped on the bandwagon and encouraged me to find a woman to have sex with. However, I believe that he was scared because he knew I was capable of loving another woman to the same degree that he could.

In many bisexual relationships, jealousy can run ramped and cause huge misunderstandings between two partners. I was extremely relieved that my BF did not ask for a FFM threesome, but a few months after my confession I realized that he, too, was bisexual. My following posts in this community will be a kind of therapy for me, as well as a chronicle of my experiences with bisexuality, within myself and my partner.

Some of your may be aware of a Downing Street E-petition that called on the UK government to stop deporting gays and lesbians to countries where they may be imprisoned, tortured or executed because of their sexuality.

The Prime Minister’s Office have issued a response to this e-petition which has been published today:

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20418

Effectively, the response states that whilst individual cases will be assessed on their merits the UK government will not stop deporting gays, lesbians or bisexuals to countries like Iran where they can still be executed because of their sexuality.

Clearly they fear a flood of LGBT asylum seekers from countries who still punish homosexuality. But, not only is this unlikely, this is not in the spirit of the UN Refugee Convention or the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) either. If we want to espouse our values of human rights and human dignity. Britain needs to be a beacon of hope for anyone facing persecution.

We would not refuse an applicant because they faced persecution because of their ethnicity. Why wouldn’t we accept someone facing persecution because of their sexuality?

For all the bigotry and discrimination LGBT people may feel they have to suffer in the western world, its nothing compared to being LGBT in Iraq. Human Rights Watch has reported that hundreds of gay and bisexual men have been hunted down by death squads or become the targets of honour killings from their own families.

Story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8204853.stm

Worse still Human Rights Watch also asserts that Iraqi security forces have actually “colluded and joined in the killing.”

The rise of anti-gay violence in Iraq is almost certainly due to the rising power of Islamic Militias following the fall of Saddam and a fragile democratic government, who in a deeply Islamic country, finds it politically inconvenient to challenge religious intolerance.

Tiresias has written recently about the importance of bi guys being visible (Goodbye, Mister Bond: Why Telling Matters). I had been wondering for a while if I should come out and be honest with the world about myself, particularly since developing intense feelings for a close friend. But I have decided that I’m not going to. A few close friends know about me, usually because they’ve worked it out for themselves, or have known me long enough to know my history, and I made a point of telling my wife at an early stage in our relationship, long before we were married. But otherwise, I don’t tell. And I think there are three reasons why that is.

Firstly, there is a real concern for my wife. Far too many would assume that I was having guys on the side if they knew that I was bi. I don’t want people thinking that my wife is a shield for closet homosexuality, or that she has to put up with unfaithful behaviour from me. Our marriage is good and strong and loving, and I would want to spare my wife being the victim of gossip and speculation.

Secondly, there is the work involved in coming out as bi. It is an on-going business, especially for those of us who are married, to explain to new people that you are bi. I have been rather more open in the past, but perhaps it was easier in the days when I was seeing another guy, though even then many people failed to understand. Some clearly assumed that my boyfriend was simply a mate, and others thought I was having a little phase. So I gave up trying to be out, and it’s amazing how quickly you can resume a straight identity. If I were now to try to be out to every group of people I know, I would need to invest so much energy on being out that being bi might come to be seen as the key thing defining me, which it isn’t, as it’s one of many factors that make up my personality.

Thirdly, the fact that most mates think I’m straight means that I can enjoy a certain amount of subtle affection with them without them realising it. This might sound a bit furtive, but every time a mate pats me on the back in a ‘blokey’ way, every time I share a bit of sexy banter with mates, every time I take a shower with other guys at the sports club, I enjoy a small degree of relaxed intimacy with other men that couldn’t happen in so spontaneous a way if they thought I fancied them. A wonderful example of this subtle and rather clandestine intimacy occurred in my last job, when a tall, handsome colleague needed to be measured for a new piece of uniform. The guy who normally dealt with that was gay, and my colleague feared that he would make too much of a meal of taking the measurements. So he asked me, as the safe alternative. He’ll never know how much I enjoyed getting that close and putting my arms round him to take various measurements (whilst all the time we were both joking about how much the gay guy would have enjoyed it!), a pleasure that would not have been possible if he had suspected that I thought him attractive.

So, I stay in the closet. But this presents a dilemma. When I was a teenager I would have welcomed some visible figures who demonstrated that it’s possible to be bi without the sky falling in, but now I don’t feel able to be out. My guess is that my reasons for not coming out will be familiar to many bi guys – do they sound familiar, and are they reasonable, or do you think I’m just being faint-hearted and dishonest?

- Marston

Photo by Robin Wong. Creative Commons Attribution 2.5

I have to confess I’m not normally a reader of The Sun newspaper, but sitting in a Chinese takeaway yesterday, flicking idly through a copy of it, I was struck by the sight of the word ‘bisexual’ in a headline. It appears that a number of American female celebrities are acknowledging that they are bisexual. The most recent to have done so being Fergie, who sings with the Black Eyed peas (helpfully distinguished by the paper from a certain football manager and the Duchess of York), and the actress Megan Fox. It may be that this report reflects nothing more than a certain titillation on the part of male editors, who find the thought of attractive women getting flirty together a bit of a turn on (but then again, who doesn’t?!). The report certainly contained one reference to ‘lesbian sex romps’ which might tell us something of the mindset of the reporter, and we cannot know how it would be reported if a male celebrity were to identify himself as bisexual.

But I was struck by the fact that the word ‘bisexual’ was actually used. The article didn’t talk of the celebrities being confused, or of having had a phase, nor was there any suggestion of a crisis in Fergie’s marriage to Josh Duhamel - it simply stated that that was the sexual identity of the women named. It’s probably too early to get too excited – I’m old enough to remember the excitement when Brett Anderson was identified as bi in the mid-nineties, which is now all but forgotten. But part of me just dares to hope that a tiny advance might have been made for bi visibility.

Or have I just been duped by some clever PR for a few American celebrities?

- Marston