We finally heard from our site’s founder and after reading about why she’d gone missing and for long as she had, whew, yeah, no wonder she had to step away from a lot of things as her situation began to devolve.
I remember reading something many years ago now that suggested that bisexuals were more open and/or likely to be polyamorous which, um, given the duality of our attractions, made sense to me but not all bisexuals even want to be bothered with polyamory because, as I’ve written at times over the years, this is way harder than merely being married.
I read her story and got transported back in time to my first wife and I having that conversation that changed our lives forever and the thought that got implanted into my mind that… this wasn’t going to end well but without any specific evidence or proof of this, we both agreed to set aside the monogamous part of our marriage – or, really, modify the shit out of it – so that we could learn to keep loving each other without having to throw the baby out with the bath water, which is what usually happens when infidelity either comes a-knocking or it has already crossed the threshold and into your life.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em – really, what could go wrong? Well, I’m glad you asked because the thing that can go wrong is… people change. You see, in my experience in this, it was in my head that one of us – me or her – was going to eventually change our minds about opening up our marriage and, in the early days, I was sure it was going to be me but I might not have been optimistic but I was willing to give this a try despite having that tiny nugget of “impending doom” sitting amongst my thoughts and feelings. We even talked about this and agreed that, yeah, the shit could hit the fan in some big and not so good ways but we were willing to give it all a shot because the alternative – dissolving the marriage – wasn’t an option either of us wanted to invoke.
By the time we got to being poly, we both had changed and the night she challenged me about my ability to handle both of them – her and the woman she had fallen in love with – I knew where the point of failure was going to be and now it was on me to do my best to prevent a future I knew was going to be an inevitability and, yep, I pretty much failed and all because of change and the resistance to it.
It’s one thing when both people in the relationship are eager to break a bunch of rules so that they can be better together and, even if for their own personal growth, they are willing to explore the possibilities that being bisexual and not a fan of monogamy can present and, of course, the couple in question are working together to make sure that this is going to work for them as individuals and as a couple and… it’s all fun and games until someone changes their mind – and that appears to be what happened with our founder’s hubby and, as I recall, he was leery about stepping out of this particular box to begin with but was game to make it work.
And it stopped working for him, I’m guessing – but that didn’t surprise me because if there is one thing about all of this that can be damned sketchy, it’s not knowing if someone is going to change their minds about any of the stuff that’s going on in the relationship and they’re going to throw in the towel. You just cannot look into the future and say that, nah, I don’t see myself changing my mind or I don’t see her changing her mind but change is a constant in our lives or, as I used to say to fuck with some folks, “I’m not the same person I was ten seconds ago…” just to illustrate how change isn’t really about big things: It’s also about little things, too. It doesn’t help when communication begins to break down because a change is gonna come; you really don’t want to bring up something that’s going to throw a moldy blanket on things but all it takes is for one person in the relationship to not be on the same page with things for this house of cards to come tumbling down.
And now, it’s engaging in damage control and like you’ve never seen before in your life. It can wind up being a very hard reset; an immediate cease and desist order so that an “investigation” can be started to find out what happened and it happened… and then what, if anything, can be done to stave off disaster and, welp, for our site’s founder, it was stepping away from the site and, really, I don’t blame her for her absence (and now that I know why she was gone) because I, too, knows what it’s like when the tone and dynamic of the relationship changes and… it’s not going to be a good thing.
Something for those of you who are contemplating bisexuality and how it can, might, could, etc., impact your relationship. I’d ask that you keep in mind that for myself and our site’s founder, it took years to reach a point of failure and I do mean a lot of them so it’s not a given that if you take things down the poly path and in order to take care of the needs that monogamy (and the static nature of being straight or gay) cannot do a damned thing about, that you’re going to epically and categorically fail – but, if you don’t try, you can’t fail and, in these things, not trying is a failure in and of itself and more so if, by chance, you love your partner as much as you say you do.
Yeah, it can sound fucked up because it is, in a way, very much like, “If you love me, you’ll do this…” – and, hopefully, without having to say that but the sentiment is, at the least, implied if not spoken directly to because this is about love and what that means to the individual and how it all relates to the relationship and… did I mention that this is a lot worse than being married? Bisexuality can show up in a relationship – or it was already there – and to say it’s a game-changer is a gross understatement and we have always presumed that in this event, there’s nothing that can be done about it without invoking infidelity… and that’s not entirely the truth.
You can sit with your partner and plan and propose things to the nth degree so that, together, you can cover all of the bases and avoid a lot of the obvious potholes but the one thing you can’t do anything about – let alone predict – is that moment when someone changes their mind about what’s going on in the relationship and, yeah, even more so when said partner wasn’t really feeling certain aspects of this new relationship all that much. Yes, I could be wrong in my interpretation of things and that’s fine but it must be illustrated that change is something you really can’t prepare for since you might not have a clue about something changing and, really, when you get things up and running and reveling in all of it, the last thing you’re thinking about is someone changing their mind about all of this and, yeah, even if that person is you.
When you sit down to have this conversation with your partner – and whether or not sexuality is a part of the situation – you have to be aware of change showing up at some point “down the road” and that can be minutes or even years from now. Change is slow to happen but in these things, change can be like having a door slammed in your face when the need to change becomes apparent – but do you invoke change and kill the relationship – and you already know that whatever change you have in mind is going to do just that – or do you work to find a way to delay the inevitable – and I say it like that because nothing is forever.
So, you step way back; shut down all non-essential activities so that damage control and corrective measures can be affected – and if it’s even possible. Hope for the best but expect the worse and… what the hell just happened and, importantly, why didn’t you see this coming and, to make things even better, why didn’t they say something before now and at a time where we could have fixed this so that our house of cards won’t implode?
Whether you make the save or not is something else. It serves as a remind that communication is a must and something that cannot be taken for granted and especially if/when one partner or the other is feeling some kind of way about something – and remaining silent is not the thing to do at this point. Change is slow; it is inevitable; humans, well, we don’t seem to like change all that much, you know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fuck with it but in these things, failure comes because change can start things breaking and you might not even be aware that it’s starting to break – at first. I don’t remember how many times I saw things about to break and waved them off as not being worth a “family meeting” over – I’ll just mention it… or I won’t but let’s keep an eye on it… and maybe I’ll remember to and where did I put my car keys…?
When you’re dealing with someone who is proving to be resistant to change, I… don’t know what to tell you about that. This is yet another one of those situations where the logic of the situation cannot stand up to whatever emotional stuff is feeding the change and can be rather confusing because the emotional stuff very much feels like logical stuff because “it makes sense,” well, right up to the moment logic tries to right the ship – and that’s how you know the difference between the two.
Being non-monogamous is a game-changer; bisexuality is an even bigger game-changer within the relationship. You can make this work but you gotta keep doing the work and at almost every turn and every moment of things because you never know when something is going to change and not necessarily for the better. You can’t really plan for it; we usually say that we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it but, sadly and more often than not, by the time we get to that bridge, we’ve already screwed the pooch and to the extent that there’s no fixing things – or they can be fixed but it’s going to take a supreme effort to do so.
At best, you can only be aware of this aspect of things. I know that this is so damned complicated that it appears to be impossible to do and since so many people tend to fail to make this work, we presume that it won’t ever work – but if the need for this change persists, then it’s time to invoke another change: Throw away the relationship.
In order to not have change blindside the shit out of you, you have to keep your finger on the pulse of the relationship; you gotta talk about how things are going – or how they aren’t going – because, as I once said, “If I don’t know what’s wrong, I can’t know what we can do about it!” It taught me that silence is not all that golden and, yeah, what you don’t know can hurt the shit out of you – and kill the shit out of your relationship.
It’d be nice if our site’s founder would grace us with some more insight about what kept her away from us for so long, not that it’s really any of our business but for those who are bisexual, in a relationship, and wondering what, if anything can be done about the great need to do something, we can all learn something from her experience. Sometimes, it’s not that something is going to change; it’s what we do about it when we notice it, or it eventually comes to our attention – and hopefully before the baby gets thrown out with the bath water.
LivingBi/BiWifeLife 