I Don’t Know What to Tell You

I very much dislike saying this.  I am all for women embracing their bisexuality but the way we’ve always looked at love, sex, and relationships just makes it so very hard for women to do this.  Even single bisexual women tend to run into a brick wall when it comes to being able to fully express themselves in this way without a lot of childish and nasty things being said about them because they’re not “strickly dickly” and like they’re supposed to be.

You have what it means to be in a relationship – monogamy and faithfulness – and the worst thing for any bisexual is to be in a relationship with someone who, ah, doesn’t look kindly at anything that isn’t boy/girl and, again, like it’s supposed to be.  And it just sucks to willfully put yourself into a situation that isn’t going to allow you to be the woman you want and need to be.  I mean, things are slowly changing in this regard as more and more couples with a resident bisexual are seeing the necessity to take a step away from the way conventional relationships have been rigidly mandated to be and, from a man’s point of view, there is nothing worse than living with a woman who needs the touch of another woman… and she can’t get it.

Yeah, talk about hell not having much in the way of fury…

As a bisexual man who supports bisexual women, jeez, I really dislike running stuff through my head and coming to the very sad conclusion that, for many bisexual women, I just don’t know what to tell you other than do what you gotta do.  Until our society decides to grow the hell up and be more accepting and receptive to bisexuality – and we get off our asses and make a push to redefine what it means to be in a relationship, I realize that many of you have little in the way of choices and it pains me so very much to know there are bisexual women out there who aren’t being allowed to be bisexual…

Even when the general consensus is that, ah, bisexual women are the shit.  The mythical and elusive unicorn that makes straight women look like they don’t know squat about having sex.  We can, at a high level of thought – allow that if “Sally” wants to sleep with “Amy” – but then gives “Brad” a run for his money, well, okay – it’s just a “girl thing” – nothing to see here and nothing really unusual going on, well, not until a woman not only decides that bisexuality is the best fit for them, she makes it known that, uh, she wouldn’t object to being able to openly explore this bisexual thing.  Now she’s all kinds of sluts and whores and let’s not forget they’re some really fake bitches because they’re just saying they’re bisexual so they can get their gold-digging hooks into a man.

It sickens me to see how immature we are about all of this and more so when we like to say we’re better than that… and we really aren’t.

Okay, my lady lets me know that she loves me… but she likes women, too.  Yeah… here comes the much-dreaded and hated threesome thing and, I’m sorry, but guys can just be assholes about that.  If she tells me this and tells me how she feels, believes, and thinks that being openly bisexual is going to make her a better person – for herself and for me, too – does it make sense to tell her that she’d better not even think about that or, damn it, you can do it… as long as I get to be all up in the mix.

I don’t know what to tell you about this other than a lot of men, sadly, thinks a bisexual woman is all about them and we’re so possessive and insecure that other than the sex, the only reason why we wanna be all up in girlfriend’s bizness is so we can make sure she doesn’t leave us or, yeah, to make sure she’s not gonna enjoy being with a woman as much as she thought… because she’s supposed to be first and foremost all about the dick.

Yeah, it often shames me to be a man and be guilty by association for having this very juvenile and terribly outdated and outmoded mindset.  If you’re not going to be of a mind to let your woman be the woman she needs to be, why in the name of all that’s holy are you doing everything you can to prevent this?  Dude, ain’t it your damned job to make and keep her happy so she can be the best she can be?  And, sadly, I can “hear” a lot of guys saying, “Yeah, but…” – and here comes the very long list of reasons why girlfriend can’t be bisexual and, oh, yeah, by the way, none of the crap that’s gonna come out of his mouth has anything to do with her… because it’s all about him.

And dudes want to know why their lady will get it into her head to get her a woman anyway?  Yeah… the “Ch” word.  Not a woman’s first choice and is usually a measure of last resort and some guys are really that stupid to think that girlfriend can’t and won’t find reason to activate that measure of last resort because, you know, his cock is all she’s ever gonna want and need.  What arrogance.  An unimaginable degree of cluelessness.

I don’t know what to tell you… other than I know some stuff about this that allows me to understand your plight since, as a bisexual man, that’s been my plight at times in my life, too.  It still saddens me that even armed with all I’ve learned about this, the only and “best” thing I can say is to do what you gotta do and if there’s something you want to do bad enough, you’ll find a way to do it.  It saddens me that many of my bisexual sisters will choose to do nothing… then wind up being so terribly depressed because they can’t be who and what they need to be and because some dude said so.  And guys wonder why women tell us, time and time again, that we don’t know shit about women and what makes them tick?

Sometimes, I feel as if I’ve totally and utterly failed all of my bisexual sisters… but I snap out of it because it’s not my fault my bi sisters are trapped and “imprisoned” in a heterosexual world that, for whatever reason, ain’t really working for them all that well:  It’s our society that’s at fault; it’s that ancient and flawed crap about what relationships are supposed to be like and the only acceptable sex that is to be allowed; it’s the continuation of that stupid-assed perception that men know what women want and need better than women do and, again, all a woman really needs is a nice hard dick to take care of all her sexual needs.

And there’s not a whole lot I can do about that other than to tell all of my bisexual sisters:  Do what you gotta do and if you really need it, find a way to get it… because I do know how not getting it can mess with you in ways that ain’t even close to being good.  And I know that this sentiment might not hold water so much.  Yep – I’d give my lady my blessings if she wanted to check out other women for sexual and even emotional succor because I’d be nine kinds of an asshole to think or otherwise believe that I’m everything she’s ever gonna want and need… but unlike a lot of guys, I learned this very important lesson and I did learn it the hard way… but learn it I did.

I just do not know what else I can tell you other than to not ever give up and, again and again, do what you gotta do and if what you gotta do about this is nothing at all, I understand – and my heart and soul goes out to you.  Wow… I’m feeling kinda crappy and I do apologize for that…

KDaddy23 – Fellow Bisexual and Contributing Author

“I’m Lookin’ For a Love”

This is actually the title of a song I heard a long time ago by a group called The Persuasions and it came to mind because bisexuals – both male and female – have a common problem:  Finding a lover.  I’m a member of a forum site for bisexuals and while there are women on this site, eh, we don’t hear much from them but the guys are almost always asking about how they can find a lover and, preferably, a Friend With Benefits rather than the now and much-dreaded casual hookup.  It doesn’t matter whether the guy in question is single, married or otherwise hooked up although, as you all know, the last two things bring their own problems to this party.

A lot of guys will state their preferred or ideal lover and, at least to me, quantum physics is less complicated.  While it’s almost instinctual to ask yourself what kind of person would you want as a lover and then create a long list of rather exact criteria that a potential lover has to meet and most of it is non-negotiable, what usually happens is a guy finds that he’s set the bar way too high and has made it damned near impossible for anyone to meet the required criteria.  Among bi guys, there is a resistance or outright rejection of casual sex that’s taking center stage these days because, for one, a lot of guys are of a mind that if they have an NSA encounter, they’re gonna most definitely get infected with something and, for the other, a lot of bi guys are more relationship-minded than at any other time I can remember so if their dream guy isn’t of a mind to be their FWB, it’s an instant deal breaker.

Then there are the guys who desperately want a male lover… and they’re doing nothing except maybe trolling the apps but, by and large, just sitting on their ass and waiting for a Mr. Right to drop out of the sky and into their lives.  Even if they use one of many apps out there for this, they won’t engage someone who might be checking them out and won’t even agree to meet someone even if it’s just to lay eyes on each other.  Guys are losing their minds about dating other men and asking why it’s so hard to do, why a lot of guys ain’t interested in dating, stuff like that and instead of keeping at it, they throw their hands in the air and just whine and complain about there not being any men they can get with when, usually, what they really mean is that they can’t find a guy who can meet their very exacting requirements and expectations.

I know quite a few bi gals who are like this as well but, being honest, you almost expect women to be highly picky about who gets to get in their panties and while I’ve not seen women looking for women to be… overly detailed about the kind of woman they want to be with, those I know are sitting around wondering why they can’t find their Ms. Right and, sometimes, can’t even find a Ms. Right Now.

And to those men and women I say that if you’re not willing to put in any of the work that’s required to find a lover, you’re not gonna find one.  Yeah, married folks have a different kind of problem with this but the basic premise is still the same whether you have permission or you’ve decided to take matters into your own hand:  You want a lover?  Get to looking for one and the search begins with taking a very close look at where you’ve set the bar and if you’ve actually set the bar too high for anyone to reach.  Yeah, yeah, I know – you want what you want and the way you want it but for those of you looking for a lover, ah, how’s that been working for you?

If I’ve learned nothing about being bisexual, I’ve learned that if you want to have the sex, it’s better that you make it easier to have it rather than to make it damned near impossible for someone to get you into bed.  Yeah, yeah, I know – ain’t too many women fond of being tagged as being easy but when I say make it easier, I mean that the thing anyone should do is have a set of minimum requirements rather than creating that laundry list of requirements that will pretty much guarantee that you’re not gonna find a lover.  Making it easier doesn’t mean being reckless, careless, or anything like that because you still have to be discriminating so that you can protect yourself at all time and if you’re, um, out on the side looking for a lover, making sure your ass is covered and all that.

So if you have a list of requirements, take a very close look at them… then get yourself “out there” so you can look for someone and someone can find you.  Of course, the thing that drives many bisexuals crazy is the fact that you can’t look at someone and tell that they might be bi; hell, you can talk to some people and not get a clue that they’re bi.  That doesn’t mean that you can’t “hang out” in places where people tend to gather and that can be pretty much anywhere and not necessarily the local bar or club.  The biggest and most real problem, of course, is how to strike up a conversation with someone just to find out if they may be bisexual and, yeah, it really does suck to find out that, oops, they aren’t.  I don’t know a whole lot about how women go about this but I know that guys have fits trying to steer conversations in this direction… but many do find a way to squeeze it in since guys, um, well, we like to talk about sex and since we know this, now it’s a matter of “sneaking in” the topic if possible and then gauging their responses… but with the understanding that chances are good that if the other guy is, in fact, bisexual, he might not want to talk about it because bi guy fear being outed more than they fear anything else about this.

A lot of bisexuals can’t find a lover because they keep getting rejected… by people who have set the bar really high.  In this, that’s not any different from “normal” dating and trying to get laid; you might very well make it easy for someone to take you to bed but you can almost bet that other people are making it hard for you and themselves so to that end, the way to go is to not get frustrated over being rejected and you just don’t give up, not if this is something you really want and need.  Again, I don’t know about women in this but I do know that a lot of guys tend to be… pushy and aggressive and that’s a real deal-breaker so it pays to not be pushy and aggressive while not appearing to be needy which, honestly, that’s kinda the truth, ain’t it?  You need a lover so you can have the sex and other intimacies you need?

You’d probably be surprised by the things guys reject other guys for; again, it’s well-known that women can be really funny about who can get naked with them but I’m here to tell you that there are guys that make most women look very easy when it comes to this.  Rejection is just an occupational hazard in any of this but, again, just because you get rejected or you reject someone doesn’t mean that you should stop looking and trying.  You should, in my opinion, ask yourself what is the minimum thing you’re willing to do to get what you want; what are the minimum qualities the other person has to have?  Are stunning looks really a hard-set requirement and are their things in your mind that cannot be negotiated?  Sure… ya might not want to sleep with “just anyone” but it’s still a matter of what, if anything, you’re willing to do to find a lover and whether it’s just for “one night” or something a bit more lasting.

And if you’re sitting around waiting for someone to stumble onto you, well, that ain’t gonna cut it.  Sure, you could get lucky like that but I keep stressing that if you want and need a lover, you gotta do the work it takes to find and get one.  Got a problem with Mr. or Ms. Right Now?  Hmm, maybe rethinking your position on NSA stuff might be in order.  A Mr. or Ms. Right a must for you?  Okay… what’s the least thing they gotta have going for them so that you can consider them?  And might I point out that if you’re looking for instant chemistry, you’re going about this the wrong way because any kind of relationship has to be cultivated – ya gotta look for all of the things you may have in common instead of relying solely on chemistry instantly hitting you like a bolt of lightning and, indeed, a lot of bisexual make themselves sit on the bench because they don’t want to be bothered with creating their own chemistry with someone.

Are you looking for a love or, really, a lover?  What are you doing toward that worthy goal?  What aren’t you doing?  Yeah… married people.  Absolutely the worst situation a bisexual can be in, right?  Got a husband or wife who ain’t feeling you having a lover other than them?  Kinda okay with you having a lover… as long as they can get involved and, yeah, wants to be in charge of whatever you want to do and screen those you wanna do something with?  Yep – this situation puts a very major crimp in your quest to find a lover and the bad part is getting uncrimped is up to you to figure out if you can.  I don’t recommend it but I will say, for the record, that many bisexuals take this matter into their own hands and accept the consequences of their actions – and I’ll leave it at that.

You’re not gonna find a lover if you don’t look for one; a potential lover isn’t going to find you if you’re not “out there” to be found.  If you set the bar too high, chances are very good that the only person who can reach that far only exists inside your head.  If you don’t make this easy on yourself, well, good luck with that.  Don’t get discouraged when you get rejected if you can manage it – it’s a normal part of trying to find a lover and regardless to one’s sexual orientation, right?  And look everywhere and be seen everywhere… because you never know when you just might meet the lover you need and if it happens to be Mr. or Ms. Right Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing because, as I told a guy who was looking for his Mr. Right, if you’re not willing to “interview” people for the position (and that includes sleeping with them if you’re actually feeling them like that), how are you gonna find Mr. Right?  I told him that he didn’t have to be stupid about it but checking out Mr. Right Now will accomplish one important thing:  He was gonna get laid.  So if you’re looking for a lover, eh, you might consider this take on things.

There’s no cut and dried way to go about doing this – your results are definitely gonna vary.  I just happen to know what people do make it harder for them to find a lover or for a potential lover to find them and take them to bed.

KDaddy23 – Fellow Bisexual and Contributing Author

You Are Not Alone

This a kind of PSA for any/all men and women dealing with bisexuality:  You are not as alone in this as you think and feel.  We are legion; we are in such great numbers that we cannot be counted.  I know what it feels like to have these… dual feelings and how weird but kinda wonderful they feel and you almost can’t help getting the sense that you’re the “only one like this” when, in fact, you aren’t… and you never were.  It’s a self-induced mindfuck, actually, and more so if at any time in your life, you were aware of the fact that men have sex with men and women have sex with women so if you learned this, nope – you were never alone in this.

Upon discovery of these feelings, there’s a crazy thing going on; you wanna tell the whole world about how you feel… and you don’t dare tell a soul about it since there are a lot of people who, bluntly, will think you’re some kind of freak or sex fiend because you’re not straight like they are… or not gay like they are.  And even in this, you’re still not alone because there are a lot of bisexuals who are “in the closet” and feel that they must stay there and, often, at the expense of alienating themselves from friends and family, to stop being as social as they were before they discovered their bisexuality lest someone find out about it and starts reading them the riot act.

And I’m here today to tell you that if you’ve gone into some kind of shell, feel like you need to put a lot of distance between yourself and those you know, and meeting new friends is just too “dangerous,” you’re making a mistake and being your own worst enemy.  Yes, I know what it’s like when you’re bisexual and you want to share this and, ah, biblically so; you want, need, and crave that carnal knowledge but being able to obtain this knowledge isn’t that easy; it’s frustrating, kinda depressing, and can just make you feel some kind of way and I say to you all, don’t let this mess with your head.  Some people can do; some people can’t and it’s a for-real bummer but know that you’re not alone even in this because there are a mind-boggling number of bisexuals who want to gain that carnal knowledge and they can’t… or they haven’t yet.

I know it’s easier said than done but be at peace with yourself about being bisexual.  Understand that being bisexual – and when it comes to being social and even intimate – isn’t any different from being straight or gay and trying to find someone you can be with, whether it’s just friendship, a relationship of some kind and, yeah, just to scratch that itch when it has to be scratched so any sense of frustration and even loneliness you may be feeling isn’t just you – it’s millions of people all over the world.

You were never alone in any of this.  Right this very moment, there are an untold number of men and women who ache for that same-sex touch, to be able to talk to someone who is like themselves and take care of that need to be understood and, yes, to get that confirmation that you’re not alone in any of this.  Bisexuality, and as I’ve said many, many times, isn’t just about doing – it’s about being and that means, by and large, just being yourself, going about your life doing the things you normally do and being aware that there are few places on this planet you can go where there aren’t any bisexuals other than yourself; you’ve probably walked past quite a few every time you’ve left home to do something – you just didn’t know that you did and, even in this, you’re still not as alone as you might feel.  If you’ve always been a outgoing and friendly kind of person, being bisexual should never, ever, stop you from being that kind of person. If, by chance, you’re not the type of person who makes friends easily or otherwise have problems being social, well, maybe it’s time you find a way to change this so that the feelings of loneliness and the emotional pain it causes can get kicked to the curb, huh?

No, it’s not “that simple” but it can be done and many people have found ways to do it because they know that being alone and isolated just ain’t cutting it and that a life lived in fear isn’t worth living.  And, yes, even in this, you were never alone because there are way too many people who feel that just being social is beyond them.  For decades of my life, I have said that the worst thing about being bisexual isn’t discovering that you are or trying to have the sex that’s possible:

It’s not having someone to talk to about it.  And, yes, you’re still not alone because there are untold numbers of bisexual who doesn’t have someone they can talk to about being bisexual and not just talk about it – being understood in this and accepted.  We know that there are people who can’t understand and sure as hell won’t accept this thing about us… but there are many who will – you just have to do something to find them or, if you can and dare to, get the person you’re with to face some facts that, perhaps, they don’t want to face.  Daunting, yes, I know, but I maintain that if you’re not going to stand up for yourself, who’s supposed to?  Go Google sites for bisexuals and join in the discussions or just sit back in the cut and see what other’s are saying and/or doing.  Write a blog and, you know, if you’re worried about it being discovered, well, WordPress has an excellent password feature that can be employed but if that still makes you paranoid, start a journal and write about being bisexual – whatever’s on your mind about it – and then, at times, go back and re-read what you’ve written to see if you’re feeling better or worse about being bisexual because, um, if you can’t “talk to yourself” about it, who else is gonna listen?

Not alone.  Never alone.  Clearly and obviously not the only bisexual on the planet because there’s another bisexual telling you this.  Duh, huh?  I say to all of you that you shouldn’t despair or otherwise make yourself crazy over this and that, again, you’re not the only one going through this – it just feels that way and this is the part where I’d suggest that you let your intelligence be in charge of things rather than to let any negative emotions you may be feeling drive the bus since, um, eh, those emotions just suck at driving.  Do not be afraid or continue to be afraid to be yourself even if you have reason to keep your bisexuality hidden from those who would look down on you for not being straight because, again, a life lived in fear is a life not worth living.

Yes – it’s easy for me to say but know that I’ve been in that lonely, miserable place, have felt that I was the only one who felt like this, and that others would see me as a freak or a sex fiend – well, okay, I am a sex fiend because sex is so much fun.  But I learned that I was never alone and that being lonely in this is a choice a lot of people make when it comes to this and it doesn’t make sense to do this myself – so I don’t.

You shouldn’t, either.  By reading this, know that there’s at least one person who’s on your side – me – and if there’s one person, there are many more should you seek them out so that you can confirm that you’re not as alone as you think you are and I will tell you in no uncertain terms that if you need to find someone – even just to have someone to talk to – and you’re not doing it, well, that’s your fault, isn’t it?  It’s not your partner’s fault, not your family’s fault, not the fault of anyone you know – it’s 100% on you because you decided to hide yourself away just because you’re bisexual and you probably don’t want anyone else to know that you are.

And, yeah, still not alone, even in this kind of self-destructive kind of thinking.  Maybe you can’t do anything; still not alone in this.  But I say to you all that if you’re feeling alone, the only real reason you are is that you’re doing it to yourself.  Can’t talk to your partner about this?  Okay – it is what it is… doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t find someone you can talk to and if you think that you can’t, well, ya might want to give some thought about that because the last I heard, it’s not illegal or immoral to talk to other people other than your partner.

You’re not alone.  You were never alone.  Whether being bisexual is working well for you or not, you just aren’t alone in this and you really need to take this to heart and be lifted up in spirit knowing that you were never alone in this.

KDaddy 23 – Fellow Bisexual and Contributing Author

The Fear of Loss

I can’t begin to tell you how many women I’ve met who would like to explore bisexuality with another woman and it ain’t happening because of the fear of loss.  Most have a man – married, shacking up, etc., and losing the security in being in a relationship is of great concern and in some situations, finding themselves having to do some major damage control should homey decide to put her on blast for the relationship and then make everyone believe he was the real victim.

These two things, alone, will stop most women from cheating and, frankly, you can’t blame a woman for not wanting to put her situation in jeopardy.  Still, a lot of women have this fear of loss, fear some damage to their reputation… and decide it’s worth the risks to, at the very least, test the waters to see if getting the girlfriend they need is doable and how things are gonna have to work in order to pursue a clandestine relationship and, hopefully, without homey being the wiser.  Yes – it all sounds pretty messed up and more so when a lot of women would not look at it with much kindness if homey were to cheat on her so now it’s thinking about why you’d want to do something that you’d crucify homey for.

Believe me – it can and has been justified and the fear of loss be damned.  As such, there are three choices available:  Ask for permission, proceed without permission, and to do nothing… and any of the three can be problematic and this is almost immediately apparent when a woman is sitting and thinking about what she can do with the way she’s been feeling.  It’s enough to put a woman in a very funky mood to see that she can’t win without losing so they choose to do nothing and winds up in even more of a funky a foul mood and tends to find out – and what many bisexuals in a relationship find out – that this being married/hooked up ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

While many women will not step to the side to scratch their itch for the touch of another woman – and because of the fear of loss – many often become aware of what they’ve already lost and high up on this list is her individuality and followed by losing her right to make decisions for herself without hubby’s approval and I’m talking about “simple” things like one woman I know wanted to go to college and get the degree she always wanted… and her husband slammed the door on it so hard the “frame” cracked; he told her she didn’t need to this and there were things around the house she could do to keep her busy.  If she had a lot of female friends prior to getting married, chances are she’s gonna lose a lot of them, not because she’s now a married woman but because her husband will drive them away and with the thought that she doesn’t need anyone else in her life but him and sometimes that includes alienating her from her family.

If she’s retained her friends and under the “You ain’t ever gonna tell me who I can be friends with!” rule, maybe she can hang out with the girls, maybe she can’t because he’s gonna raise all kinds of hell so to avoid any further arguments, no hanging out with the girls.  There really did used to be a time when a man didn’t want his woman working but these days, two incomes are very much needed so at least a woman can go to work and interact with her coworkers and all that but making new friends at work, eh, that might be a problem all by itself and telling him that you and a couple of the girls at work are gonna make a pit stop for a drink after work might make him feel some kind of way.

A lot of women in this situation feel as if they don’t have a life other than the one they voluntarily conscripted themselves into.  The loss of individuality.  The loss of that sense of freedom to act on anything that may be of benefit to her.  The loss of social interaction with other women she may resonate with.  And losses that are magnified by their fear of losing him and even vilified because she has the utter gall to want more than he’s able – or willing – to give.

The bad news?  I don’t know what to tell y’all about finding a remedy to this predicament.  As a husband, well, I know what I’d do but I’m a special kind of guy and I know not all guys are like this.  I’m a bit of an advocate for female bisexuality as much as I am for male bisexuality and I kinda hate it when I have to backpedal and tell my fellow bisexuals who are trapped by the fear of loss to do their best to prevent loss… but do what you gotta do.  Being monogamous?  I’m no longer a fan and while there are benefits to being monogamous, there are more downsides to it so it’s not only bad to be trapped by that fear of loss, the trap tightens under the guise monogamous bliss which, depending on how it’s being interpreted, can result in those other losses I mentioned earlier.

Historically, women have been of a mind that if you can’t accept me as I am – and you’d better know that I’m subject to change more than the weather – then you need to keep on walking.  And the mistake guys make is that we do say that we accept a woman as they are… and in that moment… and not give a single thought to who she might be at any other point in time and, again, just forgetting and even ignoring that she’s liable and capable of changing her mind faster than the speed of light… and then, perhaps, being foolish enough to believe that we can deal with those changes.  I mean, if you’re a guy, meeting a woman you like is also like sitting on a hand grenade that has its pin pulled – you just don’t know when it’s gonna go off and some guys compare this to trying to walk through a minefield and knowing that one wrong step is gonna be a bad one.  Some of us are also stupid enough to really believe that because we’re husband, wifey is just gonna do whatever we tell them to do… or not to do and, yeah, a lot of times, that doesn’t work all that well for him.

Telling a woman what she can’t do is usually the fastest way to ensure she’s gonna do it – and sometimes out of sheer spite.  How dare you!   You ain’t my daddy and you ain’t the boss of me!  So telling her that she can’t do something that she thinks is going to benefit her, well, that’s not going to go over very well with her and especially this bisexual thing.  I’d like to say that I don’t know why more men are not of a mind to let their woman be the woman she needs to be but I’d be lying – I do know and some of it is a man’s own fear of loss which, by the way, is why so many guys bring up the much-dreaded threesome or try to put whatever she may want to do on lockdown as much as possible because he might not say it but he’s very much afraid of losing her – and losing her to another woman.

The whole model of what it means to be in a relationship needs to be seriously revised.  That “keeping only unto yourself” thing works for some, not so much for others and instead of couples working together to make their relationship the best it can be, they wind up working toward making sure they remain stuck in place and with no changes allowed.  We never, ever account for the fact that as a person, we have things we desire but one of the foibles of being in a relationship is the contention that to be in a relationship, sacrifices must be made and in the form of giving up a whole lot of things to ensure that your partner doesn’t leave you.  We all know what marriage is… but we don’t all agree on what being married means – and I’ll point out again that if you’re in a non-married relationship, the same rules apply.  Instead of a relationship being the partnership it was probably meant to be, it usually winds up being a dictatorship where one person decides that their idea of being in a relationship is the only way to be in one and, to that end, their word is law and if you don’t like it, get out.

It’s no wonder that bisexuals have the bad rap of being cheaters because the tenets of monogamy just does not allow for these kind of changes to occur without dissolving the relationship which, time and time again, I tend to point out isn’t always the smartest thing to do.  People cheat because their needs are either not being met or are being ignored… and they feel that they have no other choice than to go this route – it’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission – because doing nothing about this can be a lot more damaging than the loss of a relationship can be.  I personally just do not understand why a man who knows his woman wants and needs another woman in her life won’t let her go about this given that a woman who gets denied this freedom tends to get… bitchy – and that’s being nice about it.  You’ve now scorned her… and you’re gonna wind up paying for it and usually along the line of the death of a thousand cuts and, oh, yeah – if you were worried about losing her, you just pretty much set yourself up for that dreaded loss to occur.

In this, there is always honor to be considered and it’s not to be taken lightly but some real-deal truth is that honor doesn’t hold a lot of water when there’s a reason to invoke Rule #1 – Take care of your own ass first.  It’s self-preservation, actually, that need to save yourself from a potentially damaging situation – and it can be an emotional need to save your ass (just as much as a physical one).  It creates a conundrum:  You don’t want to be… dishonorable but if you don’t do this, the damage to your self-esteem can be great and unrepairable… but if you do go behind homey’s back, yeah, you could lose him and it’s not in your best interest to suffer that loss.  So what do you do when doing nothing just might be quite harmful to you and your mental health?

This is where it gets iffy and perhaps a bits risky.  Ask for permission but before you even bring this to his attention, be ready to present a good argument on why you should be allowed to do this and be ready to make some concessions and some that, bleh, you might not want to make.  Don’t let him tell you that there’s no way you can be feeling the way you do; this is not some phase or silly shit like that and if you accept this, well, ladies, he’s minimizing you and implying that you don’t know how you’re feeling – but he somehow does.  Don’t let him make this all about him and know that he’s gonna do just that and don’t make the mistake in presenting this as just being about you; it’s really about the both of you and what the two of you can do to attend to this need.  Relationships aren’t just about sacrifice – they’re about compromise, too, and wanting to have a girlfriend is about compromise – giving something in order to get something and if you’re not prepared to entertain anything he might want in return, don’t say anything to him about this.

It’s not going to be easy – duh – but you can’t give up after one conversation and the smart move is to wait for a period of time and bring it up again and, yeah, pointing out some stuff that he just might be aware of, oh, like how much less you’ve been interacting with him and what being denied this is doing to your state of mind.  If you fold up like a house of cards after the first conversation, well, you’ve failed yourself and have further contributed to giving up your sense of self.  He’s gonna be pissy but you might even remind him that his job is to make and keep you happy in all things and not just the things he thinks you need.  So if you’re of a mind to ask permission, get ready for a fight and be ready to be in this fight for the long haul.  A lot of women do this because this is so important to them that giving up on it isn’t a viable option…

So guess what happens next.  Yep, you know – she does it anyway and despite the fear of loss and reprisal and the legalities be damned.  I don’t encourage women to cheat – I just know that if they have reason to, they will and I’m the guy who will tell other guys that if you don’t want her cheating on you, your best bet is to give her permission to be the woman she needs to be and learn to deal with your own sense of loss and get it out of your head that you know what’s best for her…

Because you really don’t. I say to all of you that you have the power to effect change in a situation that, by design, does not and will not allow for such changes.  I don’t know about any other husband or boyfriend but I’d rather be with a woman who is happy being the woman she is than to be with one who is supremely miserable and because my own stubbornness and, dare I say, ignorance, is responsible for the way she’s feeling and behaving.  I say to every woman reading this that if you’re not gonna stand up for yourself, who’s supposed to?  Him?  Well, you almost know how that’s been working for you, huh?

The fear of loss is powerful… but losing yourself is even more powerful.  It’s human nature to do anything that can be done for the sake of self-preservation and this is no different.  Women don’t want to cheat any more than men really want to; I know why cheating happens and the biggest contributor to needs not being met, address, or ignored is a massive failure to communicate.  If hubby asks you what’s wrong and you say, “Nothing…” you’ve failed.  If you tell him what’s wrong and he pitches a bitch about it, he’s failed to do the one thing he needed to do:  Listen to what you’re saying and why you’re saying it.  If you’re afraid to say something to him about this because you “know” he’s gonna say no, well, hmm – he might not because you think you know him… and you might not know him as well as you think you do and no more than he thinks he really knows you.

If you don’t try, you fail.  If you don’t keep trying, you fail.  If you’re not willing to concede some stuff to get what you want, you fail.  Because in any of this, yes – it’s about you… and not really since what you do affects him as well.  And if it comes to pass that negotiation continues to fail and more… extreme measures are called for, all I can say is that I hope you have a plan and a damned good one because if you get busted, that fear of loss will become a very real thing.

 

To Continue…

That first night was hell for me.  Do you know – can you guess – how it feels to find out that you don’t know someone as well as you thought you did?  We tabled the conversation, which started around 7:30pm, close to 3:00am.  There were a lot of tears shed and my anger wanted to come to the front of the line but I knew that being angry wasn’t going to do anything toward dealing with this.  In between handling parental duties and normal home stuff, we talked… and like we’d never talked to each other before.  Secrets were revealed and to listen to how many women she’d slept with – and many right under my nose – wow; as much as it said a lot about her, it said even more about me because I never picked up on it, never questioned her when I thought something wasn’t quite right… and I believed whatever she told me.  She was my wife – why would she lie to me and keep things from me?

The days went by in a blur; in that first week alone, I maybe got a total of ten hours of sleep as I continued to process everything I had been told while trying to figure out what to do about this and leaving her and our family wasn’t an option… but I also didn’t want her running around doing stuff that I didn’t know about and be worried about whether she was safe and, yeah, what she was doing whenever I couldn’t see her.  I ran the gamut of emotions with myself and none of them felt good and the emotional strain was worse than anything I’d ever experienced.

We decided to open our marriage and it wasn’t that easy of a decision – but it was the only viable one.  We spent days hashing this out and as we did so, I knew that I still loved and needed her in my life, that throwing it all away – and starting over with someone else – wasn’t going to work for me so, in my mind, I had no other choice than to “give her permission” because I also knew that I would rather know what she was doing and who she was doing it with rather to not know.

We came up with some rules – after we had an “argument” about equity:  If she could do this, then I should be allowed to do it, too.  She insisted that this was about her but I insisted that this was about us, our love, our relationship, our future as a couple and as a family.  In my mind, we had to make this work and made it clear to her that what has already happened can’t be remedied but I wasn’t going to tolerate any “selfishness” on her part.  I know she didn’t like it but saw that, like me, she had to accept the new conditions.  The rules:

Take care of home first and this was non-negotiable.  Husbandly and wifely duties – as well as the parental ones – had to be dealt with first and foremost and without exception.  Next, well, this one was kinda simple:  Don’t bring anything home that you’re not gonna accept responsibility for, from something icky and nasty to, um, finding out that you’re gonna be a parent again.  That one was mostly on me since she couldn’t have any more children.  Next was all about communication:  If one of us has an outside encounter, it had to be talked about and in detail.  To me, this was very important because as we talked, I got the sense that this wasn’t going to go as well for her as she was thinking, especially if/when she slept with other men.  I had stressed this and told her that just talking about how good something happened was easy; the problems would be any time an encounter didn’t go well and now some damage control was in order.

This rule was also non-negotiable.  We allowed that there might be times when a spontaneous situation would pop up and it wasn’t like we’d be able to call home and tell each other what was about to happen but that made full disclosure after the fact even more important.  The communication part wasn’t just about whatever we might get into; the reason this whole thing became an epic fail was because we weren’t talking about everything that mattered and that could not be allowed to happen going forward – no more of one of us asking, “What’s wrong?” and the answer is, “Nothing.”

Next was not doing any “dirt” at home and mostly because of the children.  However, we allowed that there would be times when they wouldn’t be at home so, okay, shit happens… but let’s try to not let that take place if at all possible.

One of the things we recognized about making these rules was the need for them to be changed except for the non-negotiable ones.  We both understood that while we could control our own actions and certain situations, there are always exceptions that come up or something needs to be adjusted so the rule was if changes were needed, we had to sit down and talk about it.

Other than that, we both had a responsibility not only to each other and our family but to ourselves.  We tossed around a bunch of other rules that, under further review, didn’t make sense – I don’t remember what they were exactly but they were pretty stupid.  So with the rules put in place, there was nothing else to do but to see how this was gonna work… and I felt that at some point, this was going to bite one of us in the ass… and I wasn’t the one going to get bitten.  I knew it like I knew the back of my hand; I knew I was going to be spending a lot of time with damage control because she wasn’t going to get everything she said she was looking for and the way she wanted it.  I tried to tell her this, to warn her about this but she insisted that she could handle anything that might go sideways…

And I just didn’t believe her.  Despite all the stuff I hadn’t known about her, this was something I did know and I was very worried… but we had to see if this was going to keep us together; it had to be proven that our love for each other was, indeed, strong enough to deal with whatever happened.  I knew I had a whole lot of “growing up” to do; I mean, really – can you even begin to imagine your partner being with someone else, being pleasured and all that?  I thought that hearing about all the stuff I didn’t know was bad but hearing about her “adventures” was even worse. She tried to tell me that, eh, she did whatever and she really didn’t enjoy it and I knew she was full of shit and called her out on it, reminding her that telling the truth was paramount.  She’d tell me what she did, who she did it with and, importantly, how it made her feel and, my god, it was beyond painful and sometimes humiliating to hear her relive her moments with someone else.

I discovered something about myself:  If she didn’t have a good time, I would be totally pissed that she didn’t.  But, if she had a good time, I was strangely happy that she did.  That gave me more stuff to think about on top of all the other stuff that continued to run through my mind.  One thing had to be fixed, though:  Whenever I’d have an encounter with someone, man, did she get pissed off while I obeyed the new rules and told her everything about it.  I had asked her, “If I’m not getting pissed off with what you’re doing, does it make any damned sense for you to be pissed when I have a good time with someone else?”

She actually said, “You’re not having any fucked up situations!”  And she was right – I wasn’t.  One of the things we talked about was the greater potential for one or both of us to fall in love with someone else.  I knew – and because she told me – that she was also looking for more emotional content, not that she wasn’t getting it from me but, as she said, “I need it from someone who isn’t you.”  It took me some time to, first, not get bent out of shape about her saying this, then to understand what she meant by it.  That led me to tell her that while she’s now gonna find all the sex she can handle, finding more emotional content might not happen the way she needed it to.

In the early going, it seemed that I was having “more fun” with this than she was and as our conversations bore out.  For me, eh, it was just sex and, yes, I was having fun… and sometimes not because, you know, people just bring different things to the table.  But I wasn’t worried about having “bad sex” as much as I was very worried about the impact any bad sex would have on her and it would break my heart to hear her tell me how someone had sex with her and it didn’t make her feel good.  One other rule we had was that this openness could stop at any time – all one of us had to say was that we weren’t doing this anymore, explain why, and this would be over and done with.

And I’ll admit that I was just waiting for her to put a stop to this so I could look at her and say, “I told you so, didn’t I?”  But even though there were moments when she had to admit that I was right about the motives of others, I had to give it to her:  She was determined to do this and make it work for herself.  One day, oh, maybe a year later, we were sitting and talking about the state of the relationship and it came to light that she had had more encounters than I had… a lot more.  It wasn’t a problem but it was curious and I had asked her, “Have you found what you’re really looking for?”

She said that she hadn’t and that every time she thought she had, she was just a piece of ass for someone – and she didn’t like it one bit… but I had also warned her about this, too.  I didn’t think this bothered her as much as realizing that in this, I had been right all along but, again, she was determined to keep going with this.

And I was still waiting for her to call it quits.  I spent a lot of time comforting her in those times something didn’t go the way she expected or wanted; I’d point out where she went “wrong” in her decision making process and, importantly, kept trying to impress upon her that having such expectations were more of a problem; if you don’t expect anything, you can’t be disappointed by whatever doesn’t happen.  I just don’t think she was able to not let her expectations run things for her.

I had my hands full with this and there were times when I’d find myself just sitting and questioning the decision to do things in this way.  Don’t get me wrong – our lives were actually better because we agreed to do this and she was happy… most of the time but when she was unhappy, that just made things harder on me.  I don’t recall any other time in my life where I spent so much time inside my own head and to the point where it would often distract me, like the one time I drove right through a red light because I had all of this heavily on my mind.  Nothing bad happened but still – I had to get a strong grip on myself just the same.

And it just wasn’t easy.  My mind would often slip back to “the way things are supposed to be” even though I’d learned a very hard lesson that the way things are supposed to be doesn’t mean shit when faced with the way things can be.  Our marriage vows?  Pretty much set us up to fail since those vows don’t make any room for something like this to happen.  What eased my mind a lot of times was remembering something my mother told me the day I told her I was getting married:  Your marriage is only going to be as good as the two of you are willing to make it.  She had went on to say that if you two really love each other as much as you say you do, you will make being married to each other work – because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

We found a way to make it work… by trashing every rule in the book about being married and all that “keeping only unto yourselves” part.  It still hurt me to the core to know that I wasn’t everything she could ever want and need and I felt like an idiot because I really thought I was everything she was ever gonna want and need… and I was wrong.  I could have left her, forced a divorce on her but in an odd way, this was a matter of honor for me.  As I previous said, I swore to her that short of doing something that would land me in jail, I would do everything in my power to make and keep her happy so for me to not go along with this open marriage thing would have been a major hit to my core beliefs and what it meant to me to be in love with someone.  What had happened wasn’t fair to me but, okay, even if she wasn’t going to be “true and faithful” to me or herself, I had to be true and faithful to myself at this level.

None of this was easy in the beginning… but giving it all up was the worse thing we could have done.  And our lives went on with this new thing in place but there was never a time when how we got to this place wasn’t bouncing around inside my head and most of the time, it didn’t make me feel good.

I’m sharing this moment in my life to send a message to all of those husbands, boyfriends, and fiances that there are some promises that, if made, should never be broken, like telling your lady that you love her and you’d do “anything” for her because if she comes to you with her need and desire for another woman, telling her that this is something you ain’t gonna do pretty much means you lied to her and you didn’t really mean what you said about loving her and wanting to take care of her needs… because she has a need that, as a man, you can’t do a damned thing about.  I’m sharing this to let you know that I know what this feels like, what it makes you think – you just wanna get away from her and, yeah, even think about doing her some kind of harm and if you do, well, you’re an asshole of the highest order.  To the bisexual women, I’m sharing this to illustrate that if you don’t stand your ground and ask for that which you need so you can be happy and more of a complete person, yeah – it might get you in trouble with your man – but the damage to yourself even much worse than him getting pissed off because you hit him with the truth:  He’s what you want and need… but he’s not everything you want and need.

If you don’t stand up for yourself, who’s supposed to do it?  I get it:  You bring this to him and bad stuff could happen like he dumps you and you’d rather not want that to happen.  I get it:  If he starts that threesome shit, eh, maybe you’re feeling it, most likely you’re not; you’d like this better if he kept his nose out of it and not try to run your life when it comes to this.  But understand that there are a lot of guys who feel they have to do this and because they’re afraid of a lot of things, like you leaving him for a woman, that he’s gonna feel inadequate and even angry that, again, he’s not all you need.  Understand that, sure enough, he’s gonna “put his foot down” and forbid you to even think about this and you’d better not mention it again.  And I know there are a lot of you who are gonna fold like a piece of paper and do as he’s ordered you to do because your own fear of loss is running wild and out of control.

I get it.  Been there.  Experienced it.  Hated to learn the truth about someone I thought I knew very well.  Loved her just the same.  Unwilling to throw her away because I couldn’t adjust my thinking and, again, importantly, unwilling to go back on my word, promise and vow to make and keep her happy no matter what.  This didn’t start out as being about me… but it was very much about me as well and I knew that I wouldn’t have been able to deal with not knowing she was out there doing whatever and any time I couldn’t lay eyes on her or otherwise didn’t know where she was.  My trust in her was shattered but I knew that if we were going to stay together, I had to relearn how to trust her and trust that she was going to do the best thing for herself… and us.

And I still have to live with the fact that I screwed the pooch just as much as she did.  I’m sharing this to, in a way, confirm that this is about as bad as anything can get in a relationship but to also send a message and an important one – and it comes in the form of a question:  How do you keep your partner from cheating on you?  The answer is to remove those things that allows cheating to come about… and some of the things that has to be done takes the rulebook on being in a relationship and throws it away… because you both have a responsibility to make your relationship as good as it can possibly be and no matter what gets in the way of this.

It’s about you… and it isn’t.  Don’t get it into your head that she doesn’t love or need you but, yeah, she needs something you’re just not equipped to provide but, yeah, you could give it to her and because your love for her almost demands that you do.  All that crap about what being married is supposed to be?  It is crap; it’s someone else’s idea of what it means to be married and that idea just does not allow for things like this or, really, any other things one or both of you might find that you need to be a better version of yourself and, in turn, being a better husband.  I’m sharing this to tell all of you that this ain’t even close to being easy; it will test the strength of your love for each other, invalidate everything you thought you knew about being in a relationship and, I think, importantly, will let you know just how grown up you are… and maybe that you’re not as grown up or open-minded as you believed yourself to be.  Think you know all there is to know about your partner?  I know that you don’t and I even know why you don’t and, basically, it’s because she afraid to tell you and she won’t because she’s pretty sure you’re gonna act like an asshole, get all insulted and try to make this about you.

I get it – that’s just really a normal reaction but I’ve shared this and I’m here today to tell you that if you love her and you want your relationship to stay intact, change the way you look at things and those changes will not be easy.  If not, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re gonna find yourself living with a very miserable person – and that’s being nice about it.  By denying her, she’s gonna change the way she looks at how, how she feels about you and none of it is going to be good.  And do you really want to lose her and over something that is within your power to prevent?

Most people will not do a damned thing and let the relationship die… and you gotta ask yourselves if this really makes sense.  I learned that it doesn’t.

KDaddy23 – Fellow Bisexual and Contributing Author

From a Husband’s Point of View…

…I can understand why a lot of husbands and boyfriends/fiances lose their mind when they find out that their lady needs more than what they’re already getting.  Yesterday, I told you a bit of what I experienced and today I hope to give a bit more insight to my thoughts and emotions in the moment that, first, my suspicions about her sexuality were confirmed and, second, that I really wasn’t enough for her.

It’s like getting kicked in the crotch by someone wearing steel-toed boots.  Promises were made, vows were sworn to before God and company and staying true to these things are traditional and expected.  The only bit of comfort came when I could push my emotional trauma aside long enough to pick up on that what I was being told didn’t have anything to do with me other than the stone-cold fact that I’m not female.  I mean, how dare she prove something to me that I was “happy” just suspecting!  I even saw a flaw in my perceptions because that prison thing I told you about?  It was, indeed, proof of my suspicions even though, as I had said, she wasn’t a “willing participant” and I even totally bought into her explanation of why she didn’t report it.  So with a plausible explanation, I just put that particular thing out of my mind, just to get kicked in the crotch with some harsh reality.

Beyond angry.  Confused.  Ego pulverized into unrecognizable pieces.  My mind was a storm of thoughts including some rational ones:  Whenever I’d ask her about this, why wouldn’t she just tell me what was going on with her?  Why wouldn’t she believe me when I’d told her all those many times that she can talk to me about anything and even if something makes me angry, I will keep my cool and listen and because that’s what you’re supposed to in those kinds of situations.

She liked women and pussy!  What the fuck?  Wait, that’s a good thing, ain’t it, since you’ve suspected it for years.  But, damn – how could she cheat on me like this?  You knew something wasn’t right, too, and you didn’t do enough to find out what wasn’t right; you just let her give you some half-assed explanation for what you’d been seeing and let it go so, in a way, this is just as much your fault as it is hers.

Yep… think about that one for a moment.  My gut had been telling me all along that she was doing some stuff she shouldn’t have been doing and the one time I should have trusted my gut 100%, I didn’t – I trusted her to tell me the truth – and she didn’t.  We both failed and the more I sat there listening to her finally telling it all, the more it hurt, the more angry I got – at her and at myself – and, man, I had one hell of a headache to go along with the terrible heartache I was now feeling.

Not enough for her when we vowed to only be all that each other would ever need.  That echo of male ego ranting and raving inside my head about being dissed like this, feeling the fire and brimstone of Old Testament stuff burning me alive on the inside as well as that “Me Tarzan, you Jane” shit that for as long as I can remember, married men tended to hold over their wives’ head even though I never really believed in that rubbish but still.  She promised to be faithful… and she wasn’t… and was being unfaithful right under my nose.  And the greatest pain of understanding that just when you think you know someone well, you find out that you didn’t know a damned thing.

Because I didn’t know this.  Well, I did.  But I didn’t.  As she talked, everything that, at the time I thought about it, didn’t make sense was now making a whole lot of sense.  A detached part of myself is watching her; she’s clearly upset but determined to have her say, tears running down her face out of whatever sense of frustration she felt.  I felt… inadequate.  Helpless.  And the pain kept coming to find out that one of the women she cheated on me with was someone I went to junior high and high school with and someone else I thought I knew well since we were in the same classes and all that.

I could feel myself calming down as I began to think about whether I was being furious about her… or being mad with myself by not being more assertive – not aggressive – with her about my suspicions and being more and effectively communicative.  Still, I felt defeated, betrayed, everything I thought I knew about her was proven to be from way off based to down right wrong.  This ain’t the way things are supposed to be… and this is the way things are.  Was she wrong?  Sure she was – she broke the faith and trashed her vows and for what?  Pussy?  Even a chance to sleep with some guy who caught her eye and got her juices flowing?  What did this say about me as man and husband?  Inadequate?  Unequal to the tasks at hand?

God, I wanted to… be violent.  Crawl under a rock.  Something – anything other than to sit there and listen to her telling me that I had completely ignored all of her needs, even if I merely suspected she had that other need.  I should have done something, should have said something, shouldn’t have taken her “explanations” at face value and, in an odd way, shouldn’t have trusted her to tell the truth and only the truth… but she was telling me the truth now so that had to count for something, didn’t it, even if it was closing the barn door after the cows had already hauled ass?

Yes.  No.  Damn it, I don’t know anymore.  She had stopped talking and I thought that now’s my chance to give voice to all I was feeling and thinking… but she wasn’t done talking… and now I got to hear the very painful and humiliating facts that while she still believed that I was good in bed with her, I wasn’t all that good when going down on her.  Not even close.  The anger returned as she went into great detail of every damned time she slept with a woman and how it made her feel and while she probably spared what feelings I had left by not doing a direct comparison in that sense, I could tell by what she was saying and how she was saying it that, compared to the women she’d been sleeping with, I was a rank amateur and maybe worse than that when it came to giving her that kind of sexual pleasure.

Was this the end of all that we had together?  Was she gonna leave me for someone else?  You kinda accept the fact that you could lose your wife to another man… but am I about to lose her to a woman?  What was left of my ego couldn’t begin to fathom or accept this “impossibility” but as the details kept pouring out of her, my mind said, “Well, I guess it’s true:  If you don’t take care of your woman, someone else can and will… you just didn’t think that it would be another woman, huh?”

The pain.  The agony.  Proof that the truth hurts and more than one can begin to imagine.  I was now so much inside my own head that I wasn’t even listening to her and, as such, didn’t even realize that she had stopped talking until she shook me and asked, “Are you gonna say something?”

You’re damned right I’m gonna say something!  I took a deep breath, ready to unleash all the hurt and pain I was feelings and in no uncertain terms.  My mouth opened and I heard myself say, “What do we do about this?”

Huh?  That’s not what I wanted to say!  I wanted to cuss her out, let her know how much she had fucked shit up between us!  Make her hear my pain and anguish, and “hit” her with all the threats my mind had lined up to deliver… and that is just not what I did and, now more worse, I was asking, “What do you want to do about this?”

Why didn’t I lose my ever-loving mind?  Because I loved her despite all that I’d been made to listen to.  Loved her with all my heart and soul, well, what what heart I had left since it had just gotten chopped up into little tiny pieces.  This wasn’t totally her fault – it was mine, too, and I knew it and that, believe it or not, messed with me more than what I’d been listening to.  I failed – period.  Saw the signs, didn’t do much of anything about them.  Failed to communicate.

Damn.  And if things weren’t bad enough, when I stood up to stretch, she flinched and literally jumped back… because she actually thought I was going to hit her!  That made me feel lower than low because I’d never hit her – real men do not beat on their woman.  I need to let go of my anger, to let my intelligence come back to the front and work the problem so that a solution could be found; violence and ugly words were not going to solve anything and I needed time to think, to get my head back on my shoulders and I knew saying something like, “We’ll talk about this later” would be yet another huge mistake on my part so to get the time I needed to organize my thoughts and to settle myself down, um, I went to the bathroom… because I really had to pee.

To be continued.

KDaddy23 – Fellow Bisexual and Contributing Author

Just Chill, Bro…

It was the summer of 1978 and I’m sitting on the front steps of my house, enjoying the summer heat and the fact the the kids were with their grandmother and giving her more grey hair.  My wife was hanging with one of her girl friends and it was kinda nice having so much alone time.  As I watched the traffic on the very busy street go rushing by, I happened to look up the street to see the husband of the woman my wife went to visit headed my way and he looked like he was in one hell of a hurry.

I wondered why and more so when he just stepped off the curb to cross the street and almost got hit by a car; something must be very wrong.

“You know you almost got hit, don’t you?” I asked as he first stopped, then sat down next to me on the step.

“I did?” he asked.  “Look – we need to talk.”

“Okay, so talk,” I said – whatever was up with him must have been terribly important for him to gloss over the fact he almost became roadkill.

“I don’t know how to say this,” he said.

“Just say it,” I said.

“I saw your wife having sex with my wife!” he blurted out.

“Okay…” I prompted and while I hadn’t known that’s why she went to visit, well, I wasn’t surprised.  We were into maybe our third week or so of being open and with her new-found freedom, that she was “making up for lost time” just really didn’t surprise me.

“Okay?  Is that all you have to say?” he asked.  “I didn’t know any of this was going on!  What are you gonna do about it?”

“Nothing,” I said.  “I didn’t know either but I’m not surprised since they do get along quite well with each other.”

He looked at me as if I’d just stepped off the first alien spaceship and asked him to take me to his leaders.  He was angry and confused and I’m pretty sure my nonchalant answers and attitude wasn’t making him feel any better about what he had apparently stumbled upon.

“Nothing?  Dude, they were eating each other like there was no tomorrow!  I didn’t even know my wife was into that shit!  How can you let your wife do shit like that?”

“Because I can’t stop her from doing it,” I said.  “Believe me – when I found out she was cheating on me with other women, I had a few kittens myself,” I said.  “I’ll give you the short version:  She gave me an ultimatum – let her do this or she was gonna do it anyway and I decided that I’d rather know what she was doing and who she was doing it with than to not know, and then find myself being paranoid and worried any time she was out of my sight.”

“I don’t believe this shit,” he said.  “You mean to tell me you allow her to have sex with other people?”

“Yep, I do,” I said.  “Like I said, she made it clear to me that she was gonna do it with or without my permission.  Hey, do you want a beer?  You look like you could use one.”

He said that he did and I went inside to get a couple of beers and thinking about how I could settle him down before he decided to go back home and do or say something he was going to regret, that and I was now concerned about my wife’s safety.  I returned with the beers and handed him one; he downed maybe half of it before I even got mine opened.

“So what the fuck am I supposed to do about this?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.  “You could go home and raise all kinds of hell with her but I think that instead of her feeling chastised and all that, you’re probably gonna give her a reason to do more of it.  Look, I know this is one hell of a shock for you but one thing I can tell you is that if our wives are doing the deed with each other, it doesn’t have anything to do with you.  It’s not that she doesn’t love or need you and I think we both know how much she loves having sex with you.”

And I knew this because she told us one time when we were at their home for dinner.

“It’s not like the two of them are gonna run away with each other,” I continued.  “And, yeah – chances are good that your lady has either always been into this or wanted to be; otherwise, you wouldn’t have seen what you saw.”

“But what about me?  Man, this shit hurts like a mug!” he said, crushing the now empty can in his hand.

“It’s not about you,” I said again.  “I know it hurts and I know what it feels like.  Is she neglecting you?  Not doing the stuff she needs to be doing?  Has she been kinda edgy, you know, like maybe she wanted to talk to you about something but you’ve asked her what was wrong and she said, “Nothing…”?”

He sat up straighter and blinked a few times before asking, “Yeah… but how do you know this?”

“Because when I had a chance to think about it, my wife was behaving the same way,” I said.  “I just didn’t connect the dots and I didn’t push for any answers because I knew she’d just keep stonewalling me.”

“How’d you find out?” he asked.

“She told me,” I said, remembering my own shock when she just came out and told me what she’d been doing.  “To be honest, though, I suspected she was messing around on me – there was a lot of things that weren’t making sense to me, that and I had always suspected that she liked girls – but I couldn’t prove anything.”  On my part, that was a bit of a tiny white lie because I knew, when she had to go to prison, she was getting busy with her cellmate but went out of her way to tell me that it wasn’t all that voluntary – and I didn’t really believe her but, again, no proof.  But I wasn’t going to tell him that, though.

“Shit,” he said, shaking his head.  “Weren’t you pissed off?”

“Of course I was,” I said.  “Pissed off, hurt, confused – pick something.  And the more she talked, the more it hurt.”

“How come you didn’t leave her or throw her out?” he asked.

“Seriously?  And throw away everything we’d built together?  Get separated from my children?  Go back on the promise I made to listen to whatever she had to tell me?” I asked.  “Don’t get me wrong – it crossed my mind but I had to hear her out before I made a rash decision.”

“You’re a better man than I am right now,” he said.

“I don’t know about that but what I do know is that it really is better knowing what’s going on that not knowing,” I said.

“I guess you have a point but, dude, they’re still in bed going at each other!  How does that make you feel?” he asked.

“Pretty excited and horny,” I said truthfully.  “I can’t wait for her to get home so I can hear all the juicy details!”

“What?” he asked, sitting up so fast he almost fell off of the step.

“Yeah, that was part of the deal we made:  If and/or when she does something, she has to come home and tell me everything,” I said.

“Jesus…” he said.  “How can you listen to that shit?”

“At first, it wasn’t easy,” I said.  “When it comes to this, you just know that you’re rocking her world in bed and it’s all good… then you find out that while she loves having sex with you, well, let’s just say that I wasn’t equipped to give her all the satisfaction she needed.  It cut me deep to listen to her tell me about how good some babe ate her out and made her feel and can you imagine how I felt hearing her telling me that while I was good at going down on her, nothing I did could compare to what a woman could do?”

“And you were okay with that?” he asked.

“At first, no – I can’t even start to tell you how badly my heart – and my ego got crushed and pulverized,” I said.  “But I had to put it out of my mind and focus on the really important thing.”

“What was that?” he asked.

“She was happy,” I said.  “She was more… energized, really getting into dealing with the kids more, not being all moody and grumpy and biting me in the ass over little things or for no good reason.  I might not have liked hearing about what she was doing but I had to admit that I very much liked the results.”

“I don’t know how you can deal with this shit,” he said.

“Because I have to.  I love her and because of this, I love her even more than ever before.  Back when we fell in love, I told her that I’d do anything for her – as long as it wasn’t gonna land me in jail, mind you – and for me to go back on that promise just didn’t make sense to me because if I did, it would tell her that I don’t love her as much as I say I do.  So I deal with it.  I’ve gotten over the pain of listening to her tell me about having sex with other people, both the good and bad of it.  It’s not easy… it just has to be done.”

“What do you get out of it?” he asked.

“Whatever I want,” I said.  “What’s good for the gander is good for the goose or, if she can do this, then I should be allowed to do it, too.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“Every chance I get,” I said.

“Holy shit, man – are you for real?”

“I have no reason to lie to you about it,” I said with a shrug.  “You’re now aware of the same thing I became aware of so lying to you about this ain’t gonna help you one bit, is it?  My brother, I know this is hard to hear and to know about but if I were you – and I was you at one point – I’d just go with it.  Sit with her and y’all need to talk like you’ve never talked before and, just saying, if you love her as much as you say you do, you’ll find a way to be okay with this.”

“But aren’t you worried that she’s gonna leave you?” he asked.

“It’s a real possibility but one I don’t worry about,” I said.  “I know what she’s doing when she goes out and who she’s doing it with… but the most important thing is that no matter what she does or who she’s doing it with, she still comes home to me each and ever time.”

“Damn…” he said.

I heard a horn blow and turned to look in that direction – and saw my wife and his coming down the street.  I thought, “Okay… shit is about to get real…”

Our wives approached us, took one look at him and somehow knew that something wasn’t right; I gave my wife a “he knows” kind of look and before anyone could say anything I said, “I think the four of us need to go inside and have a long talk…”

The four of us spent almost eight hours talking and it wasn’t pretty… at first.  Lots of yelling, tears being shed but I finally managed to settle things down so that the real conversation could take place and before they finally went home, they’d hashed out their own rules for being open.   At one point – and the point where his wife said that if he wanted to get some on the side, he could, he said that he didn’t think he could do it; I told him that he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to – just understand that if you did, you can – and it’s not going to trash your marriage like you’re still thinking all of this will.

We saw them almost a month later and the specifically came to see us to give us a report on how they were doing with this being open thing – and they were, to my surprise, doing very well.  The other reason why they came to see us was to ask if we’d be interested in having sex with them, something my wife and I had anticipated and talked about.

But that’s another story for another time.  I shared this with you because being able to do something like this can happen but it’s not even close to being easy getting one’s head around any of it.  I gave him huge props for coming right to me to tell me what he had seen that that – makes sense since he had no idea that I knew what I knew.  I gave him bigger props for chilling out and listening to what had to say, more and more props for not totally flipping out when the four of us sat and talked.  Oh, he was hurt big time but still more props for keeping his cool enough to understand that his wife – and mine – had needs that, as a man, we couldn’t do anything about… except to “let them” have what they needed while understanding that instead of ruining things, it can make things better, bring them closer together and, importantly, love each other more and the odd comfort of know that there are no more secrets between them.

Not all situations like this go well – but I’m not here today to share horror stories and I’ve heard a lot of them. No, I’m here to relate to everyone here that with the right mindset, the impossible can be made possible.  It’s pretty simple:  Sometimes, a woman needs something no man can ever give them and denying it just isn’t going to do her any good.  How do you keep your woman from cheating on you?  Give her permission to explore things and, yeah, negotiate to do some exploring of your own and then make very damned sure that you both work toward being like this to make your relationship better because this shouldn’t be just about her or even you:  This has to be for the both of you so that you can grow together and, yes, love together.

We made it work because we had to make it work; this couple also made it work for them.  It can be done.

KDaddy23, Fellow Bisexual and Contributing Author

What Problems Do Bisexual Women Have?

Most of the time, I hear about all the problems men have with bisexuality – and there are a slew of them, from the social stigma to those a lot of guys create for themselves.  What is not more… widely known are the problems bisexual women have and I guess we don’t hear a lot about them because many women aren’t of a mind to talk about them, that and, eh, it’s just assumed that women are okay with it anyway so what problems do they have?

Having been married to a bisexual woman, whew!  I used to think that as a bisexual man, I had a lot of stuff to deal with but in talking to my wife, whatever problems I thought I had were insignificant by comparison.   First, there’s the common problem of finding another woman to be with but, okay, while most people think that women have it easier finding someone to be intimate with, it’s not that easy; my wife would tell me of all the times she knew another woman was bisexual and they’d agree that they should do something… then nothing happens.

Guys have this problem, too, and despite what many think about bisexual men.

I know how my wife got put on the bisexual path and to hear her tell it, it was traumatizing to be made to have sex with the girl who, by my wife’s admission, “turned her out.”  She liked it – just didn’t like how it happened and as in most traumatizing situations, getting past it became a great inhibitor.  She’d tell me of all the times (after that first time) a girl would hit on her, she’d want to do it – and didn’t… then how pissed off she was because she let the opportunity go by untouched.

Was she worried about being seen as a man-hating lesbian?  Yep!  Indeed, the boyfriends she had before we met got totally pissed off because she wouldn’t have sex with them so in their minds, she was just another one of those man-hating lezzies and they dumped her, which explained why after we met, she was hesitant to even admit to me that she knew something about this.  But we did and I was finding out all kinds of reasons why she wasn’t getting jiggy with other women as much as she wanted and needed to, including both self-esteem and body image issues.  She wasn’t fat – she was just chubby, big-breasted, and she wore glasses but somewhere along the line someone got it into her head that nobody would ever want her.

I can’t begin to tell you how long it took for me to disabuse her of this and how angry I was that some unknown folks had messed her head up like this.  But this was only scratching the surface.  We were talking about women and she said, “You know there’s a reason why women are catty and bitchy with each other, don’t you?  It’s because we’re competitive, we can be two-faced – being your best friend in the whole world but will talk about you like a dog behind your back and, worse, they’ll put your business out in the street just for the fun of it.”

I knew this but, yeah, I could see how this could get in the way of getting to know another girl enough so that maybe some sex could happen.  She told me of the heartbreak and shame she felt when she had a “relationship” with a girl and it was all good… right up to the moment when the girl told everyone she knew everything they had been doing and, of course, she found herself being called a lesbian and otherwise ridiculed even though some of her peers that were tormenting her knew their way around a coochie, too.

Boyfriends and husbands.  Even though I was the first guy she’d ever met that was okay with her liking women, my god – she would tell me horror stories about the other girls she knew who were like her and how their boyfriends treated them and I found out more about husbands after we got married and now we had more married folks in our circle of friends than single ones and the picture that was painted was, for lack of a better word, ugly.

Indeed, some time later, I’d meet a woman who told me that she wanted to find out a couple of things:  What it was like to have a threesome and what it was like to have sex with a woman.  The threesome with her husband happened – at his insistence – and she was having one hell of a good time making love to the woman who joined them, something her husband took great offense to because, of course, he though the threesome was about him and the end result?  He beat her and broke her jaw.

I don’t know how many women I’ve come across who wanted to explore their desire for women but couldn’t… because that wonderful, understanding guy they got involved with proved to be anything but – and I know a lot of you here knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Slut shaming.  It’s bad enough that our childish society is of a mind that a woman who freely and frequently engages in sex – and for the sake of getting laid – is seen as being a slut; add being bisexual to the mix and not only is she more of a slut, chances are she’s really a “fake bitch” and pretending to be bisexual to get their hooks into a man and with the assumption that men just love women who love women as well.  Yeah… not so much, actually although for a lot of men, yep, that’s some pretty hot shit… as long as it’s not their woman engaging in such hotness.  I’ve heard women talk about having this discussion with their man and wind up being told, “Ain’t I enough for you?”

Um, hmm, apparently not, homey since you’re not a woman and you’re stupid enough to believe that all women only need a dick to make and keep them sexually – and emotionally – happy.

This combined with social stigma – and there is some even though we readily accept that if “Grace” is with a man but she’s got a female lover, well, that makes sense since men are historically inept at taking care of all of a woman’s needs in this… unless she’s man-chasing “fake bitch” and maybe even a lesbian who’s in denial.  Tack on the horror stories that abound as well as any trauma a woman may have experienced in this and, well, women just clam up about it.  They keep their wants and desires bottled up and decide that they’re never gonna be able to do anything about them and many are aware that by taking this stance, they’re not doing their mental health one bit of good.

Just like a lot of bi guys in a relationship, bi women aren’t going to ask their partner for permission to take care of this other need they have – they just know the answer is not just gonna be no but hell, no! – and followed by warnings and threats about leaving them.  This is disheartening and a lot of women will just give this up for themselves… and, realistically, some women are of a mind that what he doesn’t know ain’t gonna hurt him and, if it does, it sucks to be him – he should have given her permission when she asked for it.

No one really wants to cheat… but people will when they have reason to.  That’s why my wife cheated on me with another woman – quite a few women, as it turned out – but it also led to us having an open marriage because I would have preferred to know what she was doing and who she was doing it with than to not know.  When all of that got started, my goodness – she was a very happy camper – well, when the person she chose to sleep with wasn’t a guy (but I had told her some stuff about that).  For her – and I think for a lot of bi gals – it wasn’t just about the sex but having that special bond with another woman that most men cannot begin to understand.  So while she was getting a lot of coochie, she was still missing that emotional component and that made sense to me given how more emotional women are than men.

And it bothered her that a lot of women would find she was great to sleep with… and not much more than that.  It pained me to see how much this bothered her and there wasn’t much I could do or say about it other than to tell her to keep looking.  She eventually met a woman that she fell in love with and, holy crap – invited her to join our family by sending me to her one night to make love to her.  It didn’t take very long for my wife’s desire to make love to our new girlfriend/lover – and a woman who had never given a single thought toward being with another woman – and the night that happened, I just knew the shit was going to hit the fan – and it didn’t.  Our girlfriend/lover told me, at one point, that she was, indeed, in love with my wife and I thought that, finally, my wife’s emotional needs in this were finally taken care of.

And I was wrong about that… and things got messy going forward and over a span of twenty years.  Oh, they were very much in love with each other and they would have sex with each other… as long as I was present.  It added another thing to the list of problems bisexual women have I was becoming aware of and one to this day I never figured out how to address.  I understood that when a woman has another woman as a lover, well, some “just us” time is expected as a matter of course but if that doesn’t happen as expected, yeah – problem.  It amazed me to see two women so much in love with each other have such turmoil between them, not to mention the affect it had on the relationship and how stubborn they both were about resolving this issue between them.

If nothing else, I got to understand how difficult it can be for a woman to be bisexual even when all the “right pieces” are in place.  Lots of self-doubt, more self-esteem issues; boyfriends/husbands who say that they’ll do anything for the woman they love… except allow her to explore her desire for women – unless he can be involved in the now much-dreaded threesome.  Even in this, eh, some women actually don’t mind having one… as long as they can feed their need for the other woman without homey getting between them too much and since guys are assholes like that – most, but not all to be for real about it – they’d rather go about this in that “just the two of us” way… but homey ain’t likely to want to hear or agree to this.

I’ve seen some of the problems with my wife and other women I personally know… and while I’m a pretty smart guy and pretty good at finding solutions to things, I just do not know what a bi gal has to do to not have the problems their sexuality is going to present to them.  There’s always that fear of rejection:  You meet this one woman who pushes all of your good buttons, drop some hints (or whatever) about being intimate… and then get summarily rejected.  Some women – and just like men – can discover bisexuality later on in life but, again, now she’s in a relationship with a guy who isn’t very damned likely to want to hear about this new thing about her, let alone give her the freedom to do anything about it – and then berating the daylights out of her because she needs something he’s physically incapable of giving her.

To cheat or not to cheat?  Tough question because most women aren’t willing to put their relationship in jeopardy but wind up making themselves even more miserable and, as previously mentioned, some women make the hard decision and pretty much say, “Fuck this shit – I’m getting what I need before I really do make myself crazy…”  That finding a woman problem?  For the longest time, my wife wouldn’t even try to find a compatible girlfriend, making me ask her, “Do you really expect such a woman to just fall out of the sky and into your arms?  Why won’t you look for her?”  Again, tons of self-doubt, fears of rejection, rehashing self-esteem and body image issues – the list goes on and on.

And it makes me ask women why they’d want to keep beating themselves up about this – but I know why and it just breaks my heart and eats at my soul to see so many women being deprived of that which can make them a more whole and complete person, even if she’s in a relationship.  It makes me tell husbands/boyfriends that, look, for you to think that you’re all she’s ever gonna need is pretty narrow-minded and naive, dude; if you love her, if you care about her feelings and those other things that makes her happy, you’d be smart to let her get what she needs because if she can get it, she’s gonna be happier and you’re still gonna benefit by having a happy woman… instead of one who is totally pissed off and who’s gonna make living with her your worst nightmare.

So what’s the answer?  I really don’t know and I don’t like that I don’t know.  It’s easy to say, “If you want this, ladies, go get it!” because, again, that’s not as easy as it sounds.  Again, many women are not going to put their relationship at risk by asking for permission or, yeah, getting a chick on the side without that permission.  Past trauma?  Women have a hard time getting past such stuff and you can’t just say to them to get over it or just because it was fucked up back then doesn’t mean it’s gonna be fucked up now.  Self-esteem and body image issues?  Yeah… good luck dealing with that one and even when, at least on the surface, there’s nothing wrong with you – you just think there is and because you do, you believe that no other woman is going to find you desirable.

Guys go through this, too – and there are still no easy answers or solutions to the many problems bisexuality brings to the table and, some inside information for ya:  Guys really do make themselves insane over this and really take it to the extreme. Being bisexual brings problems and now it’s a question of what a bisexual woman is willing to do in order to solve those problems so that she can be happy about herself… and the sad part is that the answer is usually…

Nothing.  But I say to all of you who are having problems being bisexual that you – and you alone – are responsible for your own sexual and emotional happiness and that, yeah, by any means necessary, you need to take ownership of that responsibility because, duh, there are very few people who are of a mind to handle it for you… because they’re not supposed to.  If you choose not to address any of the problems, you have the right not to but there are consequences, like being a very miserable puppy and that misery winding up infecting and affecting your relationship.  It can lead to great bouts of depression, being angry, edgy and can even steal your joy of having “normal” sex because while it can be good, shit – it’s not everything that you really need.

I see the problems and I have few, little or no answers except to say if you value yourself – and you should – do what you gotta do.

KDaddy23 – Contributing Author and “fellow” bisexual.