I’m sorry none of the bisexuals you’ve met have been interested in romance with you. However, you seem to be under the impression that bisexuals are incapable of being romantically attracted to one gender or another. I’m a bisexual guy. I’ve mostly dated women, but I’ve been romantically attracted to wide swaths of people irrespective of gender. In my experience I’m romantically attracted to more women than men, but the crushes I have on men tend to last much longer. I am not to interested in folks that pigeonhole me because I’m bi however, and wouldn’t waste my time dating someone who thought that being bi “means having sex with the same sex and falling in love with the opposite sex.”

I’ve identified as bi for over 15 years now. I was in an 8-year monogamous relationship with a woman and for the last 4 years have been in and out of relationships with men. My attractions tend to be more with men sexually, but there are women that just do it for me and I was deeply in love with my ex-wife. I always tell my dates that I love people and am very monogamous by nature. I have not desire for a 3-some or open relationships. My attractions are just more fluid.

I’ve felt embraced and rejected by the straight and LGBT communities for my attractions and have learned to live somewhere between. If this is a phase, it’s the longest freaking phase I’ve ever seen . . .

I agree with the earlier commenter about the fact that bisexuality is difficult for people who need firm definitions. I’ve come to consider bi a catch-all for those of us with fluid attractions and a broad spectrum of desire when it comes to monogamy versus polyamory. We’re all in this definition, but apparently that’s not narrow enough for some folks.

I’ve been trying to be much more open about my own bisexuality, rather than simply letting myself pass as straight because I’m in a monogamous (for now?) relationship with a man. I had a discussion with my mom, my very conservative, Alberta-born-and-raised mom, and said that I felt that most people are or have the potential to be bisexual. She said “you are a very odd daughter to have” and that was it. The reaction I pretty much expected.

Two days later we went for lunch and she said “you know, I think you might be right. A woman like me who is unhappy in her marriage might find something that she’s missing with another woman.” So, there is hope!

I agree that being bisexual, being open about it and trying to find a community within which to operate and feel comfortable and accepted, is incredibly difficult. Part of it is our language. If I’m engaged in a sexual act with a woman, it’s homosexual sex. If I’m engaged in a sexual act with a man, it’s a heterosexual act. So outside of group sex, where am I able to engage in bisexual acts? I don’t feel like I switch from one orientation to another, I am what I am regardless of what I’m doing. I’d like to find language for that.

Violet: Thanks for this one. My best friend and I have the *exact* same conflict and plenty of late-night boozy rants center around this. Our most fitting answer so far is that we prefer the male-female relationship dynamic and don’t have a strong preference for a specific gender dynamic in sex. I see nothing wrong there and it makes sense.

Anyway, back to bisexuality :-). I was always like this, since I remember, it only got more defined (in words) as I grew up and my vocabulary increased in size and depth and scope of definitions. I always was with girls and boys, women and men. Loved them and sometimes made love to them. It is not “just sex”, that’s chauvinistic, moronic nonsense! People fall in and out of love, no matter the sexual orientation they possess! Bisexual people are NO DIFFERENT; it’s a lie that we only engage with mostly one sex and “have affairs” with the other or other such bullshit. Maybe some individuals have it like this (like our beloved Violet Blue :-)), but it’s in no way a standard! I am currently living with a man (mostly), but we are both polyamorous and have many other loves. He is not “primary”, I simply found to this time only one woman I want to live in the same FAMILY with and one day it will happen (financial situation and other such MUNDANE problems make it hard). I would live with two or more partners if not for those troubles. The only reason my male partner is now with me and my female partner is not is he is from the same city as I am and she is from another country. He is not jealous of me and I am not jealous of him. We don’t understand and fail to accept the “you must be INSANELY jealous of your lover if you are really in love” notion idiots put into minds populace. Marriage? We will probably never marry, because law doesn’t allow people like us to marry legally, until marriage is defined as a coupling of any number of males and or females in any combination and of any sexual orientation I can’t and WON’T marry. Besides, marriage is overrated and out of date. We don’t plan to have children, so why would we marry? To fill up taxes together? Maybe. Maybe not :-). Certainly not “because we love each other”. What kind of retarded reason is this??? If we cannot keep relationship without marriage, how is marriage going to help it? God will force us to be “faithful”, maybe? :-) RELIGIOUS NUTS!
Don’t even start with “should we ALLOW” homosexuals (or bisexuals?) to marry, you “allow” them to LIVE and “allow” them to VOTE and pay TAXES, you fuckers (I mean, moral majority, president Bush), you even gloriously “allow” them to DIE IN PEACE (sometimes and you try hard to make dying harder…FOR fucking RELIGIOUS REASONS!) and be buried on your chosen “sacred ground”, what’s up with marriage then, fuckers??? FUCKING RELIGIOUS PEOPLE AND THEIR POISONOUS BOOKS. They all should be burned and forgotten. Books, not people :-) And I don’t really mean it, but — Religion is a memetic poison! BEWARE!
Milk and kisses,

I agree with this completely. I use the descriptor “bisexual” when explaining my sexual orientation to others simply because it’s what people understand. When I get to talk to them more I go more indepth about it and this is exactly what i explain…that my primary emotional and I guess sexual pull is toward men but I have a strong physical attraction to women and I love having sex with women. It’s been almost entirely a physical thing for me so far though. I have never fallen in love with a woman. I don’t rule it out in the future–maybe I’ll meet that person. But I don’t seek her out the way I seek out male partners to emotionally bond with.

For myself I think of all of these sexual experiences as erotic, not homoerotic or heterosexual. They are just erotic experiences no matter what gender I’m with. That’s how I think about other people too. Especially men who experiment with other men; I don’t think that makes you inherently bisexual. I think it makes us curious and open to different sensations. I think these categories prevent a lot of men from exploring. It’s getting better but I think so many of them are afraid of being labeled. Women don’t have to worry about that if they make out with their girlfriend in the bar or have a single sexual experience with a woman and liked it but aren’t sure they’ll do it again.

Asinine family members abound: I told my mother and her reply was “don’t ever tell your father” That’s the last we ever said on the subject. *sigh*

Reproductive instincts/sexual indentity don’t simply open up at a specific age. They are enhanced and fluctuate with age. At the same time, people are sometimes pressured into suppressing their perfectly healthy desires to appease “societal norms” -as well as, more often then not, asinine family members and friends.

My snarky way of putting it is that people turn me on more than genitals…

In case anyone was wondering, I’m somewhere between Marlan Brando and James Dean in terms of orientation.

At one time in the past… if someone made bizarre gestures with their hands and bizarre facial expressions in public, heard voices in their heads, talked to people who weren’t there, made off-color comments to others, or acted overly unpleasant to the opposite sex they were labeled “Queer”.

It’s amazing how the definitions of some words drift over time.

Honestly she is one of the few researchers out there who a) is actually interested in a true interactionist model of sexual orientation (acknowledging both biological factors from birth and the possibility of sexual fluidity and the influence of experiences) and b) is interested in studying bisexuality rather than ignoring it because it’s seen as inconvenient. (In an essay by Diamond and Savin-Williams they write, “many researchers intentionally exclude such individuals from their samples because they are difficult to categorize. As a journal reviewer for one of our recent manuscripts queried: ‘How can you be sure of their true sexual orientation? It would make for a cleaner study if you took them out.’”)

I thought your comments were right on par with what I have experienced with partners – it is so much more complicated and misunderstood.

I think I will also be deep in thought about this now….

I think your prior lovers, the ones who didn’t understand or got jealous, thought your sexual orientation determined certain facets of who you are and what you would do. That or they thought bis just haven’t chosen a side yet. If you try to figure out who you are based on what others expected from you, or justify or explain yourself based on how others think, you’ll never succeed. We don’t owe them a tidy explanation.

::deep in thought now::

- the hostility you’re getting has more to do with non-monogamy than being bi. Having multiple concurrent partners is fine in principle but (unless there’s duplicity involved) but in practice it’s really hard to make it work for all concerned. Yes there are happy polygamists about but when you look closely they’re special people and they work hard at it.

- being bi is really offensive to people who like other people to be neatly pigeonholed, and those people are much greater in number than they ought to be. I think these people also feel that you are challenging their own binary view of sexuality. It’s particularly ironic that a lot of gay people feel this way.

In your case the ‘bi’ label is too limiting anyway. As far as I can gather (I’m an avid fan) you’re happy to test the boundaries of whatever warm body you’re in contact with (and in the process, your own) and that makes you your own kind of special person. Even the statement that ‘you only fall in love with guys’ probably should have a ‘so far’ after it! So quit trying to categorise yourself and get on with being VB. There are lots of us out here that love you for it :-)

DG