once you get a taste of it…

And the “it” is polyamory and with or without bisexuality being a part of things; once you get that taste of it, it is hard as hell to go back to being monogamous and even more so when you’ve known that you have the ability and capacity to love the one you’re with… and so many others.

However – and as mentioned in my last scribble – once someone changes their mind and decides that things would be better by going back to the way it was, hell, I can’t readily think of a word or phrase that would describe how hearing this can make you feel and especially when one of the conditions set for entering into what I call the ultimate relationship was that either of us could call it off and at any time… and my thought that you just do not expect this to happen.

Once you’re able to let your bisexuality “run free” in a polyamorous environment, it’s damned hard to go back to being monogamous but there’s the pact you made with the partner who has changed their mind as well as whatever impacts that has affected the core family as a whole (and especially if you have children – and children who have figured out what you and Mom/Dad have been up to here lately) and priorities have to be reorganized and it’s not all that unlike being on the wildest rollercoaster ride you’ve ever been on but now, the ride’s over, you have your feet back on ground that’s not moving and you’re trying to get reoriented to determine what’s going on and where are you going from here.

The question had occurred to me of, “What if one partner doesn’t want to give this up?” I’m like two years into this new relationship and it’s been one hell of an insane ride and I’d found myself sitting and thinking about stuff regarding the relationship as a whole but even then, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was going to go south at some point and I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop (even though it took 22 years before it did drop). It’s too good to be true and almost hard to believe and the three of us had settled into this very major change a lot better than I had thoughts but I did consider how things would turn out if any one of us decided that, nah, this isn’t for us – can we go back to the way things were before?

One of the things I thought was… there’s no going back. Oh, for sure, you can go back to being monogamous, but it never feels… right. It might make the person who called it off happy but now, well, they got what they wanted and if they wind up having to deal with a partner who is now unhappy that this got called off, yeah, it kinda makes you think.

One of the other things I was aware of that could be problematic was anyone spending more time thinking about “me” than “us” and more so when “us” has been expanded and now, anything that you do is going to affect the whole. I think it’s not a matter of someone not being aware of this but they are deep into their own thoughts and feelings about being in this situation that maybe they don’t see that throwing in the towel is going to cause… problems. Some are easy to deal with and some aren’t, oh, like now you’re living with someone who was the best person they could be in this new relationship and now… it’s back to the same old stuff and being put back on lockdown.

What do you do? Do you take one for the team and roll it all back to where monogamy ruled the roost? Do you argue to keep it going even though the person who shut it down has valid reasons for doing so? Do you say, “I don’t know what you’re gonna do but I know what I gotta do…” and run the risk of trashing things more than stopping this has already done?

Decisions, decisions. On the real, no one wins if this gets shut down and especially if it gets shut down for something that, if we could have talked about it, things could have been remedied, adjusted, etc., so that the duration endures, and everyone involved remains happy and loved like they’ve never been loved before.

Yes, when you’ve been exposed to loving and being loved like this, going back… I can’t describe it. In my own experience with this, I had made it clear to my wife that if she didn’t like how things were going, then do what we agreed to do: Call it off and we go back to the way things were. Except, she didn’t want to do that while complaining about being unhappy – and unhappy about stuff that she had the power and freedom to do something about… but she didn’t. Now there’s four of us involved in this and three of us sat down and decided that… we had to keep going even if it meant going on without her “coming along for the ride” because once you get a taste of this, you don’t want to give it up.

I look back at the moment everything “died” and wonder what I could have said or done differently to prevent it from happening but, at the same time, I knew she would be the one to kill it all – and I knew it from the very first night. I realize that there was nothing I could have done, all things considered, and it all went down the tubes and, yeah, a stark remind that nothing is forever… not even the most amazing love you’ve ever experienced in the whole of your life.

Once you have the taste of it, going back to the way it used to be just isn’t the same; it’s like you’re used to being outside and just having fun being there and then, you get grounded and confined to your bedroom and all you can do is look out the window and it can be so damned frustrating and it seems so unfair that you’ve been grounded and not allowed outside to play.

How do you deal with this? I would suppose that couples therapy would be one solution, but I also suppose that there aren’t that many therapists that specializes in this kind of relationship and, I dunno, maybe they’d be more in favor of the partner who called it off since, you know, we’re not supposed to be anything but monogamous. I’m kinda sure that the things that should have been talked about can come to the surface but at a time when talking about them now… serves no purpose as far as having that taste of… freedom again. I don’t know how you compromise with someone when you know, deep down inside, that you don’t want to be grounded and you really don’t want to go back to the way things used to be – but you’re also not of a mind to throw away a relationship that’s been going on for a lot of years, either.

I go back to something I’ve always said about this: You have to be seriously grown up to do this; you have to be able to set aside all the negative thoughts and feelings that are going to show up and, to be honest, if you know that you can’t do this at the time you’re being asked if we can do this, um, yeah, you should have said something then and not remain silent until you pulled the plug.

Being poly – and no matter why or how things got to this point – is harder than being married and monogamous is… and don’t we know how not easy being married and monogamous is? Yeah, we do. Like I said, it’s all fun and games until someone changes their mind and takes their balls and goes home. And then the partner who has now been grounded is sitting around wondering what the hell went wrong and even if they happen to know what went wrong, beating their head against many walls trying to figure out what they could have done to prevent things coming to a screeching halt… and maybe realizing that there was nothing they could have said or done because it is a communication failure when you’re talking to each other and… someone isn’t really listening because they’ve already made up their mind that nothing you can say or do is going to get them to change their mind back so that the grounding gets lifted and everyone can go back outside to play.

Once you get that taste, you just cannot imagine not being able to keep right on tasting it….

what really happened?

I’d like to thank K Daddy for his insight into how bisexuality, poly life and how ‘all the fun and games’ can lead to the demise of relationships. He posted some really good examples of how things can go awry even when we think they’re good for the long haul. Navigating different personalities is always going to come with challenges.

Dynamics change, people change. We must be adaptable, or we can risk our relationships. Staying true to ourselves as a bisexual human while navigating a long-term relationship or more than one relationship can be a bit much to handle for some. For others despite the effortlessness of some situations, variables can happen and change entire dynamics.

No matter one’s sexuality or gender identity, it is always important to listen to and respect your partner’s feelings. Open, effective, honest communication that leads to understanding, trust, increased love and respect for each other is what keeps relationships alive and healthy. If those components change or are absent for any reason, relationships can get prickly, lol.

Let’s also thank K. Daddy for the nudge into sharing more around my particular situation. So here goes.

I first need to emphasize that sexuality and poly life had NOTHING to do with the changes in my marriage. Conflict around very new cultural differences and my husband’s changing communication style has everything to do with it.

After asking my husband “Are we suddenly hetero monogamous now?” he jokingly answered, “I guess so.” and I told him “My sexuality doesn’t work like that.”, that was the last conversation on the topic. It was short, sweet and non-confrontational.

It was playful but we both understood that understanding was understood. Play time was over. We were monogamous and that was that. Ours was a religious marriage first and foremost so I didn’t feel a way about that change in our marriage. With the pandemic we both agreed, it was not that serious to risk our health for ‘fun’. It was safer at home with each other.

We had a poly marriage for nearly 10 years. We had fun through those years. We have a lifetime of amazing memories and experiences. I guess those were just the ‘heydays’ of our marriage. We’ve both been cool with that time period being just that, a time in our marriage.

I have several biwife friends and family members in various stages of their relationships (new moms, newlyweds, long term wed, newly bisexual, closeted bisexuals) who are experiencing situations where their suppressed desires are problematic and/or they have varying girl situations, and the topic is difficult for them and their partners to discuss. I have a male bi relative that goes through SO much with women when in long term relationships and dating. He’s very open about his bisexuality. His experiences are very eye opening around bi stigma.

They are what brought me back to this space despite not really having anything to blog about personally. Supporting community, family, friends and all the other bisexual humans navigating life in and pursuing long term relationships and marriages is what this space was created for. It’s not my personal blog but I drew from personal experiences for subject topics at times.

Not everything I have and will blog about is my situation.

In my marriage, it looks like our play days just phased out of the relationship and it’s not even a topic discussion or an issue. It hasn’t been important. We had lots of fun when we did, so maybe that satiated us. Who knows?

For the past couple of years, my husband has been developing new cultural differences that have become centered in our marriage and working those out are most important. It was our bond that made our play days our heydays instead of breaking us apart. That bond is what we’re working to save amid shifting cultural beliefs.

As I’ve said before, he completed me as a partner despite my bisexuality. Although I’ve never been in a monogamous relationship before, the past few years I’ve had no time to focus on sexuality. I’ve been losing my person!

Bisexuality is as inherent to me as my skin color. I don’t stop being a brown woman because I have a long-sleeved shirt on.

Since we mutually agreed to stop dating that was that and it hasn’t been a topic discussion since. I am still bisexual but I’m not dating, looking for a female partner or for sex with anyone but my husband. My focus has been on navigating the stability of our relationship while watching the changes in my person happen, thus my absence from this space.

I don’t have to be actively seeking a partner or sexual intimacy with a woman to be bisexual. I don’t have to have repressed sexual desires to be bisexual. I liked boys and girls from the time I started ‘liking’ people as a single digit kid. I had no idea what bisexual was or meant. As far as I know, I’ve always just been bisexual.

Just because I’m in a hetero monogamous relationship doesn’t mean I’m not bisexual anymore.

There are ebbs and flows to sexuality as with anything else in life. All of life is transient. Nothing is static.

Our marriage is like any other marriage with trials and tribulations. Marriages can be impacted by many things including finances, career, in-laws, children, religion, politics, all kinds of situations and differences. We’ve dealt with and overcome a bit of this and a bit of that over the years and we’ve come through it all by using strong communication and implementing strategies within our shared beliefs.

My husband’s views are now polar opposite of all we’d shared together over the years. Every part of his being has changed and I’m still here loving a version of him that doesn’t exist anymore. In many ways, he just looks like the man I love(d?). In ways he is the man I’ve always loved, just a new version.

In even more ways, he is so different some days I wonder how will we ever move forward? I did not fall in love with this new person. Can I? I’m not sure, I’m still in love with my person! That’s tough because this new person, he’s in my husband, my person’s body!

My husband is a new person that I didn’t choose to marry but one I’m married to. He’s not bad, he’s just VERY different and I didn’t get to choose this person to spend my life with. I just woke up with him one day, it looks like this is the new ‘him’ and ‘he’s’ here to stay.

I’ve had no space to think outside of my marriage, no desire to do so. My focus has been the health and longevity of our marriage if we can find that. To have him as my life partner was more valuable than to have any other person in the world as my partner, which is why I married him.

We’re doing our best to work through our differences and save our marriage. However, communication is a huge part of making it work.

As I’ve said in my previous post, if he doesn’t want to talk about something he doesn’t. That doesn’t leave room to resolve differences. That’s very new and very difficult for me to deal with from him. He’s always been very emotionally open, listened and communicated very well with me.

Only time will tell what will happen in our marriage, but sexuality, bisexuality and polyamory had nothing to do with the changes we’re experiencing.

He loves me and I him and our sexualities are the last thing to negatively impact us. Communication is key. Culture is what it is, and conflict due to cultural differences have to be worked out for any interpersonal relationship to be sustainable. Conflict can be healthy and build stronger relationships or conflict can ruin relationships.

Without open, effective, honest communication that leads to understanding, trust, increased love and respect for each other, how long can a relationship really last (even with mind blowing sex and getting along around shared responsibilities)?

What do you think about conflict around cultural differences in relationships and communication? What about one’s partner changing in very different ways and the longevity of the relationship? Is bisexuality a constant state of actions or is it inherent to one’s being?

Please, don’t forget share your thoughts and insight below,

As always, I wish each of your relationships open, effective, honest communication that leads to understanding, trust, increased love, longevity and respect for each other!

-Jay, Founder

It’s All fun and games and a Great Idea until someone changes their mind

Let’s open our relationship so that we both can explore sex and sexuality and while we’re at it, let’s open things even more and embrace being poly so that not only can we have sex with anyone we care to, we can love as many people as we can and even make them family and a part of our everyday life; it not only benefits us, but it benefits those who would join with us and more so when being trapped in a monogamous relationship… isn’t working for either of us.

Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? To many, it sounds insane because social norms and morals have mandated that (1) you be 100% heterosexual and (2) be 100% monogamous in any relationship you enter into and (3) don’t you dare want anything or anyone other than you already have – but if they’re not getting it done for you and they’re even preventing you from being able to grow as a person, well, it sucks to be you. Dump them and start over again and no matter how much it costs to do that.

At some point, it makes no sense to take an otherwise good relationship and throw it away because norms and morality says this is your only recourse… when it never was but taking the steps I opened this scribble with isn’t as easy as it sounds and, as I like to say, I know this is an understatement because it’s even hard than you can ever imagine. I think those of us who dares to buck the system in this was knows that things can change and we kinda expect them not to once things get off the round and running and, as such, we tend to get blindsided when the partner who agree that, yeah, we should and can do this decides, “I don’t wanna do this anymore!”

One of the signs that this is going to happen can be seen when you put this outrageous proposal on the table for consideration and this usually comes up in the “how can we spice things up/rekindle the flames” moment in the relationship and it’s not like two people can’t put their heads together to find things they can do together and with each other in the bedroom because a lot of people… and a lot of people quickly find out that the flame can reignite and gutters out not too long afterward and now you’re right back to where you started from but, okay, babe, let’s be seriously honest with each other and you need to listen carefully to what I have to say – then you can tell me if you think this is a good idea or not.

And the sign that things are definitely going to change is your partner’s initial resistance to taking everything they believe about love, sex, and relationships… and you’re proposing to toss it all away so the two of you can redefine what these three very important things mean and what can be done to, um, kick it up a whole lot of notches that will allow us to explore love, sex, relationships – and sexuality – together and with others who are of the same mind as we are.

Even though that one partner might be reluctant and even speaks to this, sure, baby – what’s it going to hurt if we give this a try? And it really is all fun and games until someone changes their mind and to the extent that they don’t want to be on that same page with you anymore and nothing you can say or do is going to change their minds since, um, they didn’t really want to do this in the first place – and you knew it because they did tell you but you convinced them to trust you in this and trusted them to be right about the great benefits that can be had and realized.

I found that in this… rearrangement of things, the lack of communication is a fatal wound and the beginning of a very slow death of the relationship because while we’re okay with talking about the good stuff going on, we’re not often all that thrilled to talk about the stuff that’s making us unhappy in this new arrangement – rocking the boat isn’t a smart thing to do and you definitely don’t want your gung ho partner to think that you don’t care about their happiness but, damn it, you do need to let them know that you’re sacrificing your happiness for the sake of their happiness and… the walls start to crumble and will eventually fall…

And leaving the partner who proposed all of this wondering, “What the hell just happened?” And then they find out what happened and, again, the initial point of failure is a lack of communication or as I like to say, this is the part of the program where you find that silence is not golden and what you don’t know is going to hurt the shit out of you and everyone around you.

I’ve found that a lot of people who give non-monogamy a try never make it past two years of giving it a try. Being non-monogamous with a side of bisexuality is one of the most complicated things I have ever experienced in my life – and I’ve experienced some stuff, let me tell you! It takes a lot of work, a lot of constant monitoring of every aspect of the revised relationship and if one little thing isn’t right – but such things should be talked about just the same – eh, just keep quiet, don’t rock the boat, it’ll be okay… until it isn’t.

It doesn’t help that we never learn how to be non-monogamous; you can read about it in a book but, yeah, go ahead and give a try and find out for yourself that even though it can logically make a lot of sense to be non-monogamous – and to explore one’s sexuality – the resistance is emotional; it goes against everything you were taught, everything you believe in – and the benefits to doing it isn’t just a lot of mad, crazy and juicy sex – there are some serious financial upside to creating a poly family that is an extension of the existing family.

It’s all fun and games until someone find that this isn’t working for them any longer. It gets worse when the person who is now feeling like is isn’t of a mind to mention their growing dissatisfaction with their partner, who is, likely, still running with things and having the time of their life because the dissatisfied partner already knows that the moment they voice their displeasure and their desire for things to go back to the way they were, shit hitting the fan doesn’t come close to covering it.

Once the thrill is gone, there’s no getting it back and now all of your time and energy is being put into damage control so that, hopefully, the core relationship does not get lost because, obviously, once that’s lost, it’s game over man, game over.

It can and does happen to the best of us and if you learn nothing from this, it’s that nothing is forever and it’s almost inevitable that somewhere along the line, someone is going to wake up one morning and it hits them that… they don’t wanna do this anymore and they want to go back to the way things used to be… and is that even possible? And even if it is – and, honestly, I tend to think that it really isn’t – now you’re right back to where you started… and with a partner who is, once again, unhappy about being just and only heterosexual and monogamous and…

Oops.

I knew, the night I got hit with our marriage going from open to poly, that my wife was going to be the one to change her mind even though she was the one who wanted this and, might I say, argued eloquently and logically for it… but I knew her and knew that all it would take would be for something to not go the way she expected it and… time to put on the foul weather gear. From my perspective, it wasn’t a question of whether or not I could deal with this major change – it was could she deal with it and, ultimately, she proved to me that she couldn’t, and a 32-year marriage went down the drain but not for a lack of trying to save it:

She didn’t want to do it anymore because it wasn’t going the way she wanted it to, and she changed her mind. Once you get a good taste of living and loving this way, oh, my – you do not want to go back to the way it used to be but something that was complicated and complex from the moment it was proposed gets even more this way when someone changes their mind, doesn’t want to play anymore, and wants everything to go back to the way they were before – and the way things were that got all of this started to begin with.

I admit that I made my share of mistakes in this; I admit that after the first week, I was seriously considering changing my mind about agreeing to this because I immediately saw how complicated this was going to be – and the two of them had dropped this in my lap and said, “Handle it and handle us…” and no help was coming from that direction… but I wasn’t going to quit or give up and, yeah, once I got that taste of it? No going back to being monogamous or just being open – being poly is, hands down, the ultimate relationship albeit one that makes being married and monogamous look stupidly easy.

And I’m not the only one who’s learned the lesson of what can – and will – happen when someone changes their mind and wants to take their ball and go home. We lasted just over 20 years as a poly family and that’s quite the accomplishment but doesn’t take away from the fact that our fall from grace came when she changed her mind and, sometimes, I think that, invariably, there’s always that one person in the relationship who just cannot stand or hold up to the amount of work it takes to be in an extended family and one that has the sexuality component firmly in place or, really, try to convince your man that it’ll be okay for him to find out what it’s like to suck cock when, eh, that just might be something he fantasizes about when he’s hiding in the bathroom and jerking off – and you just proposed to him that not only is this possible but many more possibilities exist and like having sex in ways you never dreamed to be possible.

And do not ever kid yourself into believing that the sex that is possible isn’t important because it sure as fuck is… but at some point, someone could very well change their minds about that and unless it gets spoken and some in-depth communication takes place so that things can keep going, that change will inevitable become more pronounced and… it’s all fun and games until someone changes their mind… and there will be no changing it back.

In a lot of ways, this failure is society’s fault because we all get shoehorned into a state of existence that, for so many, is untenable or, as I’ve read, humans weren’t meant to be monogamous and that being this way is abnormal for us – and there seems to be a lot of evidence to support this. It might be an “easy” thing to agree to but it’s an even harder thing to actually do and, yeah, you might go into this thinking that you’re not going to change your mind and go back to the way it used to be… until that change happens and there’s no telling what’s going to make you change your mind – and remaining silent about is, ultimately, not a good thing.

You just might succeed in taking things “back to the beginning” but that also means finding yourself with a spouse or partner who doesn’t want to be back at the beginning and in a condition where their needs are no longer being taken care of; you gave them the keys to the city… and took them back, locked them back into the cage you didn’t really want to leave in the beginning and now you’re locked in there… with a very unhappy partner.

Social and moral norms set us up to fail in these things. The good news is that a lot of people – and couples in particular – are finding that not being monogamous – and being able to openly and freely express their sexuality – is a good and smart thing to do… but it takes a lot of work to keep the ship afloat and working well and communication is the key and if you fail in this, well, I’m sure you know what’s eventually going to happen, don’t you?

Nothing is forever. We like to believe that love conquers all but in reality? No, not really, not when someone finds themselves trying to exist in a situation and set of conditions that might have sounded good on paper but it’s not working all that well for them and on the real and now, they’ve changed their mind; they don’t wanna do things like this anymore and why can’t we just go back to the way things were before?

Maybe you can. Maybe that’s not going to be possible. It is not my purpose to scare anyone away from wanting to change the rules so that they can, with their partner, make their relationship the best it can be instead of expecting it to take care of itself and having us believing that we’re wrong for wanting more than what merely being heterosexual and monogamous can bring to the table.

This is me sharing with you something that I learned and that our site founder learned: It’s all fun and games until someone changes their mind and now, they want everything to go back to the way it used to be or they’re willing to throw it all away…

Bisexuality, polyamory, and things just change

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.

WHY HAS IT BEEN SO LONG???

To be honest, I’ve thought of you all here, in this space I created so long ago. I’ve tried to come here, to post, to interact with folks but my life was changing in ways I couldn’t understand and manage at times. So, I refrained from writing until I could figure things out.

It was our amazing @KDaddy who has been keeping this space going. Let’s take a moment to celebrate and honor his commitment to us and our community. Show some love below with a comment for him if you’ve had the pleasure of engaging with his work. Disclaimer: I haven’t read all of his posts but I trust his opinion to be his own. I find him to be very insightful, thought provoking and informative.

Kudos to KDaddy!!! Thank you for providing a space and platform for folks in my absence. Your dedication to this space is absolutely amazing and I’m grateful you’re here. We all are 🙂

My life was so different when I started this blog. I’d been happliy married about three years.

My life was complete and growing. As the years went by, our marriage began to change gradually. A few years ago, just before the pandemic, my husband’s perceptions of sexuality began shifting.

By the time we were told to ‘shelter in place’ during the pandemic, I knew everything would change. My husband’s sexuality is rooted in a dichotomy of things. He wasn’t taught to be okay with himself. He was taught fire, brimstone & reinforced toxic masculinity (that he never embodied) & homosexual/bisexual stigmas.

I was taught those same things by family but raised by a strong lesbian woman who just happened to have two kids.

My mother has always been masculine presenting. I was raised with an amazing stepfather from age 2 to 11 years old. He still is an amazing stepdad. My mother was always free to be herself, as was he.

They were a love story for the history books. All the whimsical things a girl could imagine. My mom had the sweetest courtship experience with him, a whimsical romance with a hardworking, funny guy that was (still is) great with kids. They were two young people in love with a growing family.

Why they broke up is not relevant but the impression my mom could be herself despite being in a relationship with a man stuck with me for life. She was wholly and completely loved by him in the most authentic of ways, because she was her. He loved her for who she was and who she wasn’t.

Being bisexual does not mean that lying, cheating or doing things that would make our partner uncomfortable is okay, not even if they going along with or ‘allow’ it. Should your pleasure be centered at the expense of your partner’s comfortability? What kind of relationship damage could that potentially cause if any?

Being bisexual does not mean it’s okay to do things our partners don’t know about because of our sexuality and urges. Justifying cheating because of bisexuality has always irritated me. Remember the simple youthful adage we were told, “Do unto others as you’d have done unto you.”? Yea, nobody wants to get cheated on, with any gender.

I idealized having a partner who honors transparency, authenticity, and in some cases bravery. A partner that understands all the many aspects of who I am and loves each tiny piece that makes me unique and special. A partner that I can have open, honest, effective communication with. I get these ideals from their love, or what I knew of it.

My spouse was that person from the moment we met to the day we both understood, that’s no longer who he is.

My stepfather loves my mom the same way he did when I was a little girl to this date. They haven’t been together in over 30 years, but his eyes still light up with love when he talks about her. I still blush and get butterflies thinking about these two dancing in the living room to Lionel Richie or hosting a family picnic and feeding each other fruit on the blanket while we played in the grass.

Back then it looked strange to people.

People thought a Black guy (stepdad) and a Mexican guy (mom) were on a date in the park with kids, back in the 80s! Then they’d look closer and see her double D’s mashed down with a sports bra under her favored lumberjack patterned button down shirt. The confusion on people’s faces as we grew up was always humorous to us. Like, she’s just my mommy. Nothing to be confused about. True to kid’s natures’ we called her name ‘mommy’ several thousand times a day. Somehow that confused people also, lol.

I ‘came out’ as bisexual when I was 11 years old, my mom was very disappointed I was interested in men. She’d hoped I’d be a lesbian. I’ve been married to my husband since 2011. He was only the 2nd guy I ever dated that was mom approved. 🙂 The first one I also married in 2004. He passed away in 2009 after being married only 5 years. I remarried in 2012.

Mom couldn’t understand how I could marry a man. Her and my stepmother have been together over 25 years now. She wanted the same for me.

I was sent my other half, and he happened to be a male. I was happy, mom was happy for me. However, she really wished I would have married my long-term girlfriend of 2 years who I was with when I met my current husband.

Mom wondered why not her instead of him. For me at the time it was religious reasons. Also, I believe I should have the right to marry a man and a woman as a bisexual human which would complete my bilife but that’s a huge uphill conversation, so I chose one, the one that was religiously and politically correct (pc).

I know, I know, I shouldn’t have bought into the social bullshit, but I did. I also married a man I loved wholeheartedly and fit me just right, so it wasn’t just a pc move but didn’t hurt either of us that we look very pc.

During my current marriage we’ve had two long term relationships with women over the years and other experiences. In this space I don’t tell his story, that’s for him to tell. However, we had a robust lifestyle.

Then something happened to my husband which I can’t explain. He began to change just before the pandemic. He became uncomfortable with any sort of homosexuality. He would become visibly uncomfortable at the topic. Speaking about it was not easy anymore. He’s a quiet guy and if he doesn’t want to talk about something, he doesn’t. He already doesn’t say much to begin with.

Around the Fall of 2019 the communication began to break down in our relationship. Not around seeing others or bisexuality, just period.

If you’ve followed this blog or visited any archived posts, you’ll see I’m BIG on Open, Honest, Effective communication.

Just because I am, doesn’t mean my spouse is. He used to be.

About a year into the pandemic, I asked him, “Are we suddenly hetero monogamous?” he laughed and said, “I guess so.” I told him that’s not how my sexuality works. I can’t settle into a relationship and gradually just not be bisexual anymore. He asked did I want to see other people, was I already talking to someone, etc. I told him of course not, it’s not about other people, it’s about us being okay with each other and how we identify.

After 13 years together, we may not have many more tomorrows as partners due to our shifted compatibility, our now absolute incompatibility in so many areas of life, including sexuality.

I’ve covered this before in this blog, getting into a relationship does not mean a bisexual person is heterosexual or homosexual. It means we found a person we are compatible with.

If a bisexual person elects to become involved in a long-term monogamous relationship, that’s great.

If a bisexual person (or any person) is poly that should be stated up front. Polyamory isn’t an automatic thing because someone is bisexual either.

Monogamy can include sexual experimentation outside of the relationship as a couple, individually or not.

It’s up to the couple’s agreed preferences.

Mono meaning single or one is just that.

When bisexual people commit to ONE person, monogamy, being bisexual doesn’t go away.

Some emotional, physical and mental desires are repressed, unfulfilled. Some parts of self are denied, sacrificed in the process of loving and committing to one person, excluding all others.

It’s a communication thing that has to be aligned with the couple’s preferences and boundaries. As I’ve gotten older my perspective on my sexuality has gotten much more complex also, but I’m still bisexual.

I haven’t been intimate with a woman since 2018/19 maybe…? Ah yes, a playboy bunny at a swinger’s party we went to…. or was it when we accidentally fucked a Trumpster couple at the NYE Swinger’s ball?

I can’t recall exactly but all I know is that the man I married has changed in ways that has made us extremely incompatible in ways that are completely unrelated to sex or sexuality.

We still have regular mind-blowing sex (that has changed, A LOT but is still toe popping freaking amazing) and that’s mind blowing. It’s mind blowing that sex is the primary area that we’re still very compatible in despite dramatic changes to that area of our lives also. It’s even more mind blowing that he still completes me in that area despite our overall incompatibility. We’re still okay with conducting mutual business and great with the kids, but outside of that, we’re just not compatible in any other ways and it’s heartbreaking. I miss my person to share & enjoy the fun parts of life with. Not just the obligations.

No marriage survives on sex alone.

Open, honest, effective communication keeps marriages alive.

I’ll still be a BiWife, even if I’m not a wife anymore.

Him and I had over a decade of experiences together to recall, reflect on and unpack to support the relationships of others.

Maybe one day soon, I’ll just be LivingBi.

I don’t have any plans to date anyone, male, female or otherwise. I love/d my person, he was a perfect balance of male and female. He completed me. I didn’t need a woman to feel complete with him. Which is how we probably settled into monogamy for the past 4 or so years.

Again, bisexuality didn’t break down our marriage, but homophobia is a factor. I don’t tolerate homophobia in any form whatsoever.

I began defending the rights of LGBTQAI folks because my mother deserves to live a stigma free, full, peaceful & safe life no matter how she looks or who she loves.

In previous posts I talk about how our hetero-normal appearing marriage and family made homophobes feel like they could hate speak freely around us. We have gotten more than an earful over the years and have deflated many a hetero-inflated ego with a simple “We’re both bisexual.”

Being in a long-term marriage with a multi-generational family & still bisexual allowed me a unique platform to advocate for destigmatization of bisexual humans involved in long term relationships and I am grateful.

I saw forever with him but maybe I’ll have more to blog about as time unfolds.

Who knows?

I hope this space continues to thrive in support of each other until next time.

With so much love for you and your partners.

-Jay, Founder

Catching A Bad Break

From my earliest awareness, girls who liked girls caught a bad break because they were told to only like boys/men and anything else was them being a bull dyke lesbian. Because I had sisters, I was privy to what they were being told about us boys and staying away from sex including not touching themselves “down there.”

Most of the girls I knew and grew up with had the fear of God laid on them and boys were being set in the role of “Satan” and would do all kinds of horrible things to them so that we could hurt them and make them bleed with our nasty, dirty, pricks and, yes, get them “in trouble” – pregnant – and leave them to raise a child alone and having their life ruined forever.

In 1964 and the year of my emergence as a bisexual male, I became aware of the many girls who were, well, like me and willing to explore what it was like to have sex with someone who was the same sex as we were. We had a few tomboys in our tribe who were “on par” with the fellas when it came to doing “guy things” and that, I saw, included chasing girls and with the hope of being able to have sex with them.

I felt that a lot of the girls who were bisexual were kinda “forced” to be bisexual because they were to stay away from us boys – not that all of them did, mind you – but when puberty landed on them and their own unique hormones kicked in, well, if boys were off-limits, where was the real harm in exploring things with another girl and especially one that they felt close to emotionally?

I remember my older sister asking me, “Do you really believe that when we have sleepovers, all we do is gossip, talk about boys, and do our hair and nails and then just go to sleep?” and the funny part was that I did believe it even though I knew what us guys were capable of when we had sleepovers. But we were being taught to hate any girl who was even suspected of liking girls and the adult version of myself would cringe to think about how we were all totally mindfucked into a lot of things and while it was bad for a boy to like boys like that, it was deemed to be worse for a girl to like other girls like that and now, let the slut shaming begin.

Some girls would tell us, when we would try to talk our way into their panties, that they didn’t like boys – they liked girls so go away. Yeah, sometimes, it was a lie but one of necessity since there was great onus on them to remain virgin and, well, she just didn’t like the guy hitting on her enough to want to give it up to him. Personally, some girls were afraid that I wouldn’t like them because they liked girls, too, and had been having sex with their female friends but since I was a guy who was having sex with my male friends and girls, I was okay with this… but I was probably more the exception than the rule.

Girls who didn’t show any interest in boys caught yet another bad break and causing parents to start assuming that “something was wrong” with them and what was wrong had to be… them being lesbians and the man-hating kind. While us guys had that one gay dude in our troupe, there were a couple of girls who let it be known that they only like girls so… don’t even think about asking them to have sex. One day, I watched a girl’s mother beat the shit out of her because she kissed her best friend on the lips and being called all kinds of whores, sluts, dykes, etc., during the very public beating.

Yet, it didn’t “make sense” to me that a lot of parents wanted their daughters to have girl friends instead of have a boy for a friend and, I thought, because of the potential for that friendship to become sexual but, hmm, couldn’t the same thing happen between girls who were really good friends? Yes, it could, and it did and like us guys who went both ways, girls took their romantic/sexual interests in other girls deep underground and deeper than us guys had to.

They not only had to hide this from their parents, but they also had to hide it from guys who were being taught what a female’s role was supposed to be and any other behavior from a female… had to be severely punished. They also had to hide this from other females who were firmly… mindfucked into what a woman is supposed to be like and what she’s supposed to do and I would, too often, see a gang of girls attacking a girl who liked girls, liked both, and either proven or merely suspected of not being “a real woman” and using their pussies to get a man and keep him and even with the purpose of emptying the guy’s pockets and giving nothing in return and…

Seriously messy shit. And then… relationships. Today you can go on social media outlets and read about bisexual women being subjected to domestic violence and it’s not a lie because I knew of and had seen men beating on women in public because she was suspected of having sex with other women or the poor woman had the great misfortune of getting caught in the act.

Just like a lot of guys I knew, a lot of bisexual women I knew were suffering from great bouts of depression because they couldn’t – and didn’t dare to – be the woman they knew they wanted to be and as far as being able to express themselves romantically/sexually with other women. I knew guys who went out of their way to break up a woman’s friendships with other women and give them all kinds of grief if she “defied” his edict and continued to associate with her female friends. Some guys didn’t do this but would tell her, “You better not be giving my pussy to those bitches!”

And, well, the idiots who said such shit should have told her to just go ahead and do it… because that’s exactly what some of them did and a lot of guys learned that it’s not wise to accuse a woman of doing something that she actually didn’t do because you just gave her a reason to do it and out of spite. Even in this, a bisexual woman would and could wind up paying a price for not being 100% heterosexual and like she’s supposed to be and, yeah, because “God said so.”

Even the girl I would eventually marry went out of her way to hide the fact that she was bisexual from both her parents and me. Years later, she would tell me that she had to hide it because she didn’t want to be beaten and/or having the fear of not being accepted by anyone and, again, that included me and… this shed a lot of light on the plight of bisexual women.

I was aware of that moment when women said, “You gotta lick it before you can stick it!” and that upset a lot of men who were taught that men do not eat pussy. Not only did those guys find out that his girlfriend would dump him for a guy who did eat pussy and to their liking, it was “easier” and a lot better to do this with another woman because only a woman knows what a woman needs… and sometimes, dick isn’t what they need.

I applauded the women who chose to buck the system and just like I’d been doing; I considered them to be quite brave and daring to express themselves in this way when society at large wasn’t fans of those man-hating lesbians but, no, they really weren’t lesbians. One bisexual woman told me, “You just get tired of some two-hundred-pound guy on top of you and mugging the shit out of you; sometimes, you need the touch of a woman because, well, you just need it and I don’t have a problem getting it when I need it and if my man doesn’t like it, he can go fuck himself.”

Such women would sometimes pay an awful price for this “defiance” and while a lot of bisexual women I knew had their bisexuality ripped from them, many more were on the down-low and getting theirs and in the way they wanted to and for those women in a relationship, it was better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. To this end, I learned a lot about why people cheat on their partners: If she has needs that are not being taken care of or flat-out ignored, um, what do you think she might do about that?

You see, being bisexual myself, I understood how being bisexual was a part of who I was as a person and that we all have a built-in self-preservation instinct and, okay, dude, if you’re not going to let me be the woman I know that I am or want to be, I gotta look after myself first and foremost and if you’re going to keep holding me back from this, well, guess what I’m going to have to do to save my own sanity?

I understood this but there were still a lot of people who didn’t… because they were taught not to understand it. A lot of women were now of a mind that they were going to “get theirs” and no matter what anyone else had to say about it. Mind your own damned business. From my rather biased perspective, this was a good thing because I knew how I behaved; baby, I love you and I love having sex with you but when I need a dick, you don’t have one – but I would learn that being bisexual isn’t bad – but being bisexual and in a relationship sure the fuck is and bisexual women in a relationship continued to catch all kinds of hell and grief because the rules of monogamy just trumped everything else.

I was there when women started burning their bras and starting the fight to not be seen as a second or third class citizen and, yeah, relying on a man for the things they needed in life and, yes, some of the things they needed was… the touch of another woman. They were immediately labeled as man-hating lesbians and things really got ugly at this point in time but if I had the right to be the person I needed to be – and that included being bisexual – then women did, too.

The fucked-up part was that society and other cultural norms had something else to say about that and forced bisexual women deeper underground and with a lot of unnecessary baggage because we – society – refused to believe that there was, in deed and in fact, something between being straight and gay and stupidly holding onto the notion that all a woman needed was a nice, hard dick.

Bisexual women are still catching a bad break in this because, on the whole, we remain ignorant about a great many things about what it means to be human and our built-in need to be social and, yes, sexual with each other. A lot of women aren’t of a mind to just sit on their cute backsides and wait for the world to change; if this is the way they need to express themselves as a person, then that’s what they’re going to do and because of what I called Rule Number One: Look after your own ass first. True enough, this totally defies many of the ways things are supposed to be where women are concerned but there came a time when bisexual women, again, chose to buck the system and do what they had to do and men, in particular weren’t liking this one bit but I’d remind them of something I learned as a teenager:

If you don’t take care of your woman, someone else can and will and that also meant that if you weren’t going to let her be the bisexual woman she needed to be someone else would be 100% okay with it and tell her to just go for what she knew.

Guys knew that if girlfriend wasn’t going to suck them off, there were guys who’d do it and not bat an eye but with me “being on the inside of things,” I knew that, again, those guys who refused to eat her pussy were idiots because women knew that there were women who’d not think twice about doing that and better than men could do it.

Bisexual women were now the mythical and mystical “unicorn” and are the most sought-after women ever… and for all of the wrong reasons and, yeah, some guys are just total assholes about a woman’s bisexuality and arrogant enough – or stupid enough – to believe that her bisexuality is about him and as such, just adding to the bisexual woman’s dilemma.

A lot of the horror stories told by bisexual women are true. Being cast out by both men and women because they dare to be different and made to suffer a lot of emotional and physical abuse by those who are too goddamned stupid to see that the way it’s supposed to isn’t the only way things can be.

What do we do about this? Not a whole lot because change is slow to happen… but things are changing slowly but surely and, yeah, some bisexual women aren’t of mind to wait for change to take a hold on society.

Or like one vulture said to another, “Patience my ass – I’m gonna kill something!” And a lot of bisexuals, both male and female, aren’t of a mind to be patient and wait for the world to change because they don’t have to but there are still too many bisexual women who cower in fear and are suppressed, repressed, depressed, and just too afraid to let it be known that they like men… but they also like women, too. Not always for sex and it’s well-known that women need emotional content and who can do that better than another woman? And if it leads to sex?

Even bisexual women say, “I won’t tell if you won’t…;” some don’t give too many fucks if you know that she’s bisexual and I applaud the many bisexual women who are, today, standing up and defending their right to be the way they need to be and more so when if that’s what I’ve been doing all of my life as a bisexual male, they can, too…

And they should. There’s always that fear of loss; the fear of rejection by one’s peers and society at large and… we just need to be better about this and sooner is better than later. A guy asks me what I would do if I found out that my woman was sleeping with another woman and I said, “I’d ask her if she was having fun…” and he thought I’d lost my mind and just more proof that when it comes to bisexual women, society isn’t their biggest problem:

It’s the men who just do not fucking get it. Some get to complaining about that double standard that says it’s okay for women to sleep with each other – but not okay for men to do it and most men do not know why it exists… and I have my own ideas about that and beginning with how men totally devalued women across all of time and, as such, they have a reason to sleep with other women but, nope, dudes can’t and better not… and all because we believe some religious shit that reality totally debunks and points out all of the fallacies.

There is so much to being bisexual for both men and women but, yeah, women catch a lot of very bad breaks over being bisexual because we cannot learn to be better about it. “Sharon” is openly bi and… so what? If you don’t like it, you just don’t like it – but it doesn’t give you the right to “whup her ass” over a choice and decision that she made for her life.

Conquering fears

I grew up knowing girls who were bisexual. Boys were scary demons with pricks that would hurt them badly and put babies in them and that was to be avoided at all costs but “girl logic” suggested that other girls don’t have pricks so avoiding us scary boys was taken care of, but some found that we weren’t all that scary and our pricks weren’t all that bad but a lot of girls felt that the best way to protect and preserve their virginity was to not have anything to do with us… but, ah, girls weren’t off-limits.

They probably were since I do remember my mother admonishing my older sister to not play with herself down there and the same warning I’d gotten and right along with my brother so I can’t
“confirm” it but I think it’s safe to say that they, too, were told not to have sex with each other.

Not that this particular edict was obeyed all that much. A few girls were “legit” tomboys and some could “out-boy” a lot of guys in the things that we were known to do and they liked girls like we did… but not boys all that much. I definitely remember my older sister asking me, “Do you really believe that when we have sleepovers, all we do is gossip, talk about clothes, do our hair and all that stuff? Really?”

And like a dummy, I had believed it even though I was very much aware what us guys could get into during sleepovers and, okay, duh. But along with the imposed fear of homosexuality being pounded into all of us, girls had to deal with being called a dyke and especially if they rejected a boy’s sexual advances and along with being called rug/carpet munchers and many more unkind things and, of course, we learned these epitaphs from the adults around us who, I dunno, never considered that we could hear them or even cared that we could be within earshot of them.

I’d learn that if us guys had a hard time being seen as gay, girls were having just as hard of a time being seen as lesbians and even if it could be proven that they weren’t having sex with each other. Some girls would tell me that they wanted to find out what it was like to have sex with another girl, but they were afraid to. Afraid of getting caught at it but, I think, very afraid of being “a man-hating lesbian” and, of course, the word getting out that she was one and, yeah, once you got that reputation – earned or given – getting rid of it was damned near impossible.

Going into the teenaged years, a lot of girls were kinda flaunting the fact that they liked girls more than boys but some of them were lying because they knew that by saying this, it was like “boy repellant” and their virtue could be maintained and unsullied… but some of them weren’t lying and while a lot of guys had major issues with these girls – and because of what we were taught about “what girls are for,” I didn’t because, well, they were like me – bisexual.

Into adulthood, my God, bisexual women were being hated on from two sides: Men and… real lesbians. I’d see that they were being subjected to the same “stereoscopic” bullshit because women hated us guys who went both ways and gay men had reason not to like us either. But women were getting that added pressure like, infamously, guys begging them for a threesome but not for her benefit; bisexual women looking for a friend they could be that close to wasn’t all that easy, either, and if I thought that bi guys were frustrated in these things, bi women were even more frustrated and dealing with great dislike from men, straight women, and lesbians.

The woman who’d one day be my second poly wife told me, when we first met, about her ex-husband who begged her to have a threesome because she told him that, yeah, sure, if she could, she’d have sex with a woman. He made it happen and she said that once her and the other woman got over any nervousness and got into it, he got mad because they were ignoring him and… he broke her jaw and beat her pretty badly.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of shit like this, and I understood why the bisexual women I knew gave up or sacrificed their sexuality in favor of what someone else thought or believed; many were literally scared to death to let their bisexuality be known but many weren’t going to let all the dumb shit flying around about women take their bisexuality away from them and I saw a lot of them getting pretty bold and letting men know that, well, we ain’t as all that as we think and this was about the time I first heard that, “A woman knows what woman needs.”

And a lot of guys were quick to slap the “bulldyke lesbian” label on them. What I knew – and because I was married to a bisexual woman who had a lot of fear about telling me that she was – that it wasn’t that these women were lesbians because they did… like dick but, well, let’s say that we were being seen as not being all that skilled or considerate when having sex with them – and the women who were lesbians were either “born this way” or had damned good reason to turn their backs on men and relate only with women.

One of the things I’ve always said about bisexual women is that… they’re a lot “cooler” about it than men are. I overheard a woman telling a dude that, yeah, it’s true: She has sex with women and… so what? Not so much in a defiant kind of way but very much in an “It’s not that big of a deal!” way that I thought some bi guy would do well to adopt because the reality is… it’s really not that big of a deal but when you consider everything we think, know, and say about sex and sexuality, yeah, it’s a big deal and one because no one really cares to try to understand it.

My first poly wife, after having her first experience with my wife and early in our poly relationship, told me that she’d been curious about it but was afraid to check it out… because she didn’t want to be known as a lesbian and she was a bit afraid that now, she’s a lesbian and… I had a bit of a difficult time convincing her that, um, no, baby, you aren’t a lesbian but if you let what someone else might think or say bother you, well, don’t let it bother you and it’s not like we’re going to tell everybody about what happened that night.

But I knew that once people would see us in public and tell that the three of us were an item, they’d look at the two of them and assume that they were having sex and the “funny” thing is that those who assumed or suspected that they were thought it was okay but I was being accused of making them have sex with each other so, in this, I was catching more hell and shit about this than they were.

So many other women who came to the conclusion that the touch of another woman was what they needed; there had to be more to having sex than relying on a guy to “get it right” for them and, yeah, I tell people that you haven’t lived until you have three women tell you that, yes, you’re seriously good at eating pussy… but not as good as they are with each other. I knew that a lot of women were telling guys this and guys weren’t taking this bit of truth well at all and, indeed, had been told this way back in the teenaged years but instead of this getting men to step up their lovemaking game with women, things got ugly for them and word of this would get all over the street and those women who wanted to find out what it was like to be with a woman would be sorely afraid to.

A woman I was friends with had a female friend who wanted them to have sex… and my friend was not only very afraid because of what she’d been hearing about this, she actually asked me how to have sex with a woman. It took me a couple of months of talking to her about this (and outing myself as a bisexual in the process but it was necessary) and helping her work through her fears and especially the same fear bi guys carried: Worried sick about what someone else was going to say about it.

“Other than me, um, who else is gonna know that you did this?” I had asked her. “I don’t even know the people that you know – and we live in different states to boot – so I’m thinking that the only way someone you know finds out that you did this is if your girlfriend says something… or you do.”

“The only way you’re going to know if this is right for you is… to set your fears aside and learn something about women that I’ve learned,” I said.

A couple of days later, she called me and… spent a few hours telling me about her first experience and, importantly, she shouldn’t have been as afraid as she was. At this point, I will point out that this friend of mine was married and, oddly, wasn’t concerned about cheating on her husband and a guy who, as I understood it, wasn’t all that interested in being intimate with her. It really didn’t surprise me all that much because I knew a lot of women who were turning to sex with other women because their man, bluntly, wasn’t giving her the kind of physical and emotional intimacy that she needed.

The “rule” was – and still is – if you can’t take care of your woman, someone else can and will… and that someone just might be another woman. I would say that as time went on, a lot of women were very determined to “get theirs” and if that meant getting it from another woman, well, that’s how it was gonna happen and if you didn’t like it, too bad. I applauded this stance but the problems women had in their bisexuality seemed to be getting worse and in the areas of being able to find a woman they could express themselves in this way and many of them being with a man who they either knew or assumed would not be all that supportive in this.

A guy asks me what I would do if I found out that my wife was sleeping with other women and I said, “I’d tell her to have fun with it…” and he thought I was crazy. Told me that I should beat my wife’s ass for disrespecting me like that and damned near every hateful and violent way I’d heard about and understanding that in some bisexual women, this fear was very damned real and one not easily conquered. I knew that even if a woman told her man that, yeah, you know, I’d like to check it out and he didn’t lose his shit and go all Old Testament on her, he’d forbid it; he’d try to insinuate himself into things; if, by chance, she was given permission, he wanted to control everything she was doing and including approving what women she could be involved with and…

Yeah. This shit. A guy is livid because he caught his lady in bed with another lady and, thankfully, he was so upset that he left the house but, yeah, he had to vent about it and there were a lot of things he said that he couldn’t understand and… I explained them to him and beginning with, “Dude, if she wants some pussy, you don’t have one and you can lay the dick on her all you – and even she – wants to but it’s not going to make that craving for another woman go away.”

I said some stuff about cheating. People cheat because they have wants and needs that aren’t being met or taken care of and just flat out ignored and while a lot of bisexuals in this situation… just give up on their bisexuality, many… can’t. Yeah, I know what the rules say but I also learned that the rule do not and cannot account for such desires being present or showing up and the urge to do this is… pretty damned powerful and not all that easily suppressed or repressed and when you leave or put someone into the position that they have to do something about this, well, guess what’s gonna happen?

Alas, women fear loss just as much as we do; many women feel that it’s not worth exploring this for herself when the price could be getting thrown out of the relationship, divorced or, yeah, subjected to emotional and physical abuse and they’d rather suffer with it. I’d tell guys that, yeah, you must be a glutton for punishment because there’s nothing worse than living with a woman who needs this and she’s not getting it and many of them couldn’t see how denying this to them was destroying their relationship or, yeah, putting her in a position that it was either do something about this or, literally, lose their mind.

For bisexual women, the fears they have are very damned real and I’ve seen the things that they’re afraid of. It’s easy to say that one has to face and conquer their fears but doing it? Not all that easy and, yeah, as a bisexual man, I know all about that because I had similar fears I had to face and conquer as well and, no, being a man does not make this any easier.

And being able to conquer that innate fear they can feel when, hmm, damn, girlfriend over there looks good and… why is looking at her getting me all excited when I’m not supposed to like women like that? Well, I kinda hate to tell you but this is… 100% normal. If that’s how some women make you feel, that’s the way you feel and no one gets to tell you how you should feel about anyone… but the way it’s supposed to be seeks to do just that and monogamy, yeah, well, it lends itself to just fucking up a woman’s perceptions of her sexuality, too.

A guy is griping about his lady just going ahead and getting with her girlfriend and like so many other guys, he doesn’t understand why he’s not enough for her and I said, “You don’t know a whole lot about women, do you?” I know what he knows… because I was taught the same bullshit. I tried to explain to him that because she was doing this, it didn’t have to mean that she was dissatisfied with him in any way but, yeah, dude, you’re not female; you can’t… make that emotional connection with a woman and like they can do with each other and you gotta know that women these days might ask for permission and if you refuse it, well, don’t believe that she’s just going to roll over and obey and like women were supposed to do and way back before my grandparents were born.

It just doesn’t work like that anymore, but it remains true that a lot of bisexual women have a lot of fears they must conquer so they can be the woman they know they are and want to be and, yeah, if it’s something she really wants to do, she’ll find a way to do it, which is actually true for all of us, isn’t it? Bisexuality is more than sex and I maintain that being in a same-sex relationship is… optional but not as mandatory as a lot of bisexuals think it is. The sex… is easy; accepting bisexuality and then conquering the associated fears isn’t but it can be done because an untold number of women have done it.

There are people that a bisexual woman should just keep this away from because… people are inherently stupid when it comes to this and, in a way, it’s not their fault: It’s what we are made to believe that’s at fault. Men can be assholes about it and I’m glad that I’m not one of them but as I heard one bisexual woman say, “Yeah, what they don’t know won’t hurt them and, besides, it ain’t all about them!” Men are infamously known as cheaters and women who cheat, well, it’s not okay but it’s kinda understandable because… men are assholes and can be worse because they don’t believe that a woman needs anything other than a man and his dick… and many find out the hard way how wrong they were about that.

My first wife cheated on me… with another woman. I know a lot of women who’ve cheated on their man with another woman and the reason why she did… had nothing to do with him but, crudely, dude, if she needs the touch of another woman, unless there’s something very special about you, you’re not a woman and that’s just the facts of the matter.

We… need to be better about bisexual women and learn to not make them so fearful to be who and what they need to be. And, yeah, a lot of bi women in a relationship take the same stance I know a lot of bi guys take: It’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission and I tell guys who are with a bisexual woman that, honestly, it’d be in their best interest to let her find herself in this because when she can and does – and she’s shed her fears – she’s going to be happy and he’s going to benefit from her happiness but, hey, if you like living with a woman who is always miserable?

Go for it – and lemme know how that’s really working for you. Single bisexual women catch all kinds of hell for being… fake; behaving like they’re bisexual so they can get a man and all that dumb shit and the bad part is there is some truth to this – but as in all of this, it’s not the whole truth but if we keep making women fearful to be bisexual, well, no one benefits from this and I’ll tell someone in a heartbeat that if they’re not going to be part of the solution, don’t be the part of the problem and, really, if you don’t know, you’d better ask somebody.

If you allow others to make you fearful, hmm, that’s a problem, isn’t it? And a lot of the fears bisexual women have are sourced by others who don’t or can’t believe that it’s okay for a woman to be bisexual. It doesn’t mean that she has to have the sex because bisexuality, again, is a lot more than that… but I’d be lying if I said that the sex isn’t all that good or lacks importance and meaning because it sure as hell does.

To bisexual women I say… find a way to conquer your fears. It won’t be easy but know that many women just like you have done this and in the face of all the shit women have had to endure because they’re not 100% into men – but not 100% into women, either. If others don’t want to be educated in these things, educate yourself. People aren’t going to like you for this and some – men, mostly, are going to like this about you and for all the wrong reasons and that’s just the way it is and always has been but I beg you: Do not fear this because not only is a life lived in fear isn’t a life worth living, you never let anyone or anything steal your joy of… being yourself.

It’s all easier said than done and I know this all too well because I’m bisexual, too. Been there; faced the fears and the hatred displayed by others; not even going to give someone the satisfaction of knowing that they defeated and lessened me because they believe in some shit that… isn’t the whole truth and, again, being a man does not make this easy… but it can be done just the same if you’re not afraid to.

Empowering Women

A powerful subject and topic. When I was in school and started learning some stuff about how women had been subjugated and devalued as real people, it explained why girls – and later, women – reacted to me in a not so positive way and hearing, “You men are all alike!” used to rub me the wrong way because as a bisexual man, um, no, there are a lot of guys who aren’t like me, don’t think like me, and don’t value women and as I was taught to.

As a bisexual man, I got to learn a lot of the same things women do when it comes to men, sex, sexuality, and even relationships to a degree. Women have been denigrated “from the beginning;” being called “the fairer sex,” assumed to be submissive to the point of being a slave and, yeah, that “barefoot and pregnant” thing that, once I learned what that meant, made me feel pretty shitty about being a guy and because if one of us was guilty of doing some rotten shit to a woman, all of us are guilty.

Not to really be all that crude, but I learned that if you wanted to have sex with a girl, you treat her as nice as you can – or as nice as she’s going to allow you to – and that also meant that she had a say in this as well as trying to understand some stuff about her and especially if it’s like, okay, she wants to but the last guy who got to have her wasn’t all that concerned about what she wanted. And if, by chance, this was her first time, now I found myself competing against everything her parents told her about us and our scary penises and how we use them to mistreat women, hurt them, get the pregnant and leave them without caring one bit about now having messed up her life.

As a young bisexual, I wanted to learn all I could about it and it didn’t take much for me to figure out that if I could “go both ways,” girls could, too. Indeed, some of the girls I grew up with and around made it clear that they’d rather have sex with a girl before having sex with me or any other boy and… I was “excited” by this and more so when I knew how us guys did things but how did girls do it? Well, um, er, after I learned about and how to eat pussy, it was like that famous lightbulb going off over my head. I now had a bit of understanding about bisexual girls but just having a “bit” wasn’t good enough for me as far as learning about bisexuality went – and as much as one could way back in the mid-to-late 1960s.

Growing up into my teenaged years and hearing so many girls asking, “What about me? What about what I want in this? Why don’t guys let us do what we want to do?” And… this ain’t just about you, dude. This is at the point where girls were telling us dudes, “You gotta lick it before you can stick it!” which was fine with me but there were a ton of guys who wouldn’t but I also noticed that some guys would get dumped because (a) they believed that they weren’t supposed to that, (b) girls had no right to ask us to do that and (c) she’d find someone who would… and even if it was another girl.

It’s like my older sister told me one time: “Do you really believe that when we have sleepovers, all we do is gossip, talk about boys, clothes, do our hair and stuff like that? Really?” The “bad” part is that I did kinda believe it and I shouldn’t have since, um, I knew all too well what some of us guys did when we had sleepovers. Girls who were either known or suspected of sleeping with other girls caught a lot of hell from guys who were indoctrinated in the “school of how to treat women” and, sadly, how women were supposed to obey men and without question and, yes, just like I was learning in school and… in church, too. I used to wonder why girls would ask, “Are you gonna respect me after we do this?” and then I found out why: Guys are taught not to respect women all that much and, again, they didn’t have much in the way of value and as I learned that a good farm animal had more value than a woman did and were no more than chattel in the eyes of those early men.

If a girl/woman wanted to empower herself and her sexuality was the engine that drove this, well, about damned time. I will again, and a bit crudely if I may be allowed to, say that the moment a girl realized that she had great power to bend men to their will between their legs, that dynamic took a huge turn in their favor. When the feminist movement got started and women were burning their bras and raling again patriarchial norms, one of the things – warnings, really – given unto men was, “Y’all need to get in touch with your feminine side!” “You got to have a J-O-B if you wanna be with me!” became a bit of a mantra and, in other things, women were starting to push up against glass ceiling and breaking them and letting it be known that, not counting being able to have babies, there are a lot of things that women can do just as good as – or better – than men can do.

Today, I can go on Facebook or Twitter and see women asking, telling, and even demanding that fathers teach their sons how to value women and for more than what’s between their legs and as a father to two boys, yeah, I did that… because my mother pounded this into my head and would say, “Don’t ever be that man who doesn’t value a woman.” She didn’t have to add that she’d kick my ass if she even thought I was being that guy because I knew she would.

Okay. How do you deal with a bisexual woman? You let her be bisexual and especially when her being this way… ain’t about you, fella. When women started letting it be known that this is their body and you – men – can’t tell them what they can do with it – and who they could give the pussy to – they were serious and while I was okay with this stance – because I felt the same way about people telling me that I couldn’t sleep with men and then have the nerve to sleep with women – there were men who scoffed at this and continued to treat women as less than equals and in all things and, yeah, it would make me ashamed to be a guy.

There’s always been a double standard in this. Bisexual women… get a pass and I learned that one of the reasons why they do has everything to do with men and perhaps you’ve heard this one: Only a woman knows what a woman needs. I know how I felt when I heard this and having known bisexual girls/women, well, they were right – but our morals and social norms said that men still aren’t allowed to have sex with each other and those who went both ways – and, yeah, putting women in grave danger – well, something’s wrong with those dudes.

Women, um, okay, look. We should empower women because they bring more to the table than being sexual objects. But a lot of women I know/knew took it upon themselves to empower themselves and when they said, “I’m gonna get mine!” it wasn’t just about things sexual but in the realm of bisexuality, I realized that if guys sexed each other because of what gals weren’t going to do, it made sense that women could and would do the same thing for the same reason and more so when I learned that women are better at emotional things than we are and that we are emotionally closed off because that’s the way we’re taught to be.

If a woman gives another woman the emotional succor that, if you were a smart dude, you knew they needed, then another woman could and would and as far as I was concerned, this was all right and proper and more so when my girlfriend and the woman I’d marry and have children with… was just as bisexual as I was but since men tended to react very badly to women who slept with other women – and it was within their right, power, and ability to do so – she wasn’t of a mind to admit to something I had suspected for a long time. She… empowered herself when she hit me with that ultimatum, and I knew she was cheating on me and was 90% sure that the person she was cheating on me with was… another woman.

She wanted what she wanted and needed, exercised her right and empowerment and… okay, baby: What can I do to help you in this? The girls/women I knew who were bisexual were people I’d encourage to not let some dude steal their joy from them but, yeah, they were in precarious situations because many of them relied on a man to take care of them and, as such, had to play by his rules and I’d even warn guys that if they didn’t treat their woman better, ah, don’t be surprised if she cheats on you or leaves you for… another woman.

Guys again would scoff at this and make statements designed to continue to devalue women and, as I would call it, be all Old Testament about what a woman is supposed to do and, namely, obey men without complaint or question and… I’m sighing at how stupid a lot of the guys I knew were. A woman saw that she needed to get a job because (a) a second income was needed and (b) before she met the guy she was with, she had wanted to start a career, go to a school or college to get a degree that would help her with her dream career and he squashed all of it; told her that the only thing she needed was whatever he gave her and if there was something – anything – she wanted, do not ever expect to get it.

She left him for another woman. This woman discovered her bisexuality… with my wife. Her former man found out why she left him and who she left him for and… almost had a stroke and by the time he wore himself off ranting and raving in the Old Testament way about that ungrateful bitch and whore, I said, “Man, you’re an idiot because if you weren’t going to let her be the woman she needed to be, this isn’t her fault – it’s your fault.”

Some dudes thought I was crazy because I “let” my wife sleep with other women and I’d say that I didn’t “let” her do anything but I did give her my blessing and encouraged her to openly explore her bisexuality and as I encouraged her to get a job, get more schooling, stuff like that because she had the right to these things and… I wasn’t going to be that guy.

As men, we… have to be better. Some of us are but, still, way too many of us aren’t because they believe in some seriously archaic shit about a woman’s role in life. A guy finds out that his lady likes women, and he tells her that she doesn’t have the right to like anything but dick and, man, did she lay into him and as she should have. And, of course, she left him to be with another woman who, according her, was better in bed than he was but had no problem with her being the woman she need to be.

If you do not stand up for yourself, who’s supposed to? If you’re bisexual or feeling this way or even wondering if it’s a… better option that might work better for you in your life, if people are telling you that you cannot be this way, please, tell them to kiss your ass and do what you gotta do because, honestly, the road to empowerment… starts with you. If no one – and especially a man – isn’t going to “allow” you empowerment – and he should if he were smart – then you… take it because it’s yours to have and if he’s not feeling that, then by all means: Find someone who is and, yeah, if it’s another woman, so be it.

As a male bisexual, bisexuality… empowered me to… be who I wanted and needed to be. Bisexuality opened my eyes to a lot of things that “the way it’s supposed to be” didn’t want me to see or even know about. A girl I’m having sex with tells me that I’m good at eating her… but girls do it better and… I wasn’t mad about that because I understood that only a woman knows what a woman needs and men are so… arrogant to think and believe that the only thing a woman needs is a man to run and control every aspect of her life…

And women ain’t having any of that. “You ain’t the boss of me!” is something I’ve heard a lot of women tell men and just being willing and able to tell a man this is… empowering. Taking control of your own life is empowering but empowerment, I think, should never be a stick to beat someone with and like I’ve seen some women do and, well, girlfriend, if you’re wondering why your man is sleeping with another man, chances are it’s because you’ve misused your sense of empowerment. Yes… she who has the pussy makes the rules and there aren’t too many men I know who doesn’t know this but there are a lot of men who are clueless enough to not understand how terribly true this is and, homeboy, if you’re wondering why your lady cheated on you with another woman, it might be something you did or didn’t do but it might not have a damned thing to do with you but she had a need and one that, being male, you couldn’t do a damned thing about and… it’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.

In a very weird way, a woman who cheats to get what she needs is… empowering herself because if a man can do this, women can do it and society at large would be wise to understand this and let women… be the women they need to be and in all things. And by the way: If you’re not helping her be the woman she wants and needs to be (and in all things), what the fuck is wrong with you?

And if you don’t understand how sexuality can empower her, well, make an appointment with me so I can school you about some stuff and to also disabuse you of that ancient mindset that has only served to subjugate women and “keep them in their place” and… dude, how fucked up are you to keep believing in this shit when women everywhere are slowly but surely exerting their power and right to be who – and even what – she needs to be? If you don’t see her as an equal partner in a relationship, welp, it might suck to be you down the road.

Your lady’s bisexual? Let her; encourage her because if you don’t, one day, she just might empower herself to get what she needs because, well, bluntly, you’re an idiot. In these things, jeez, I’ve heard and seen guys lose their mind because their lady said, “I want to find out what it’s like to be with a woman…” and… Old Testament time. All kinds of accusations hurled at her and, yeah, guys are stupid to accuse a woman of doing something she didn’t do… because you just gave her an excuse and reason to do it. Now she’s all kinds of bitches, whores, and sluts and she doesn’t give a fuck about you and that might be the truth but, sometimes, it isn’t. She loves you; loves being with you and loves having sex with you but if she needs the touch of another woman, um, unless there’s something very special about you, last time she peeked in your boxers, you’re not female.

This is her needing to empower herself and you’d do well to run with it and, again, encourage her because I happen to know what it’s like to have to live with a woman who’s miserable as fuck because she can’t get what she needs in life and believes that she wasn’t going to be allowed to pursue these things, well, until I saw that I really had no choice in the matter; my choices were to, well, act like an idiot about it and divorce her – and throw away everything we’d built together… or go with it and encourage her and for me, the choice was easy (nah, not really but comparatively speaking).

If she – any woman – can empower herself to be herself, chances are damned good that you, my man, are going to reap some benefits that includes not living with a woman who is one miserable sister and she’s that way because she knows that you’re going to give her shit and drama about the things she knows, thinks, and/or believe she need to be the person she has to be.

It’s not totally a sexuality thing but as I learned, bisexuality opens your eyes to certain realities that our morals and social norms would prefer one not see, let alone empower themselves to see them, embrace them, and live them. Feminists, I would learn, aren’t man-haters; they “hate” the system that made them third-class citizens and still, today, seeks to keep them in this submissive and subjugate place in things and… that’s a mistake.

Women have great power and now, they are more of a mind to not only use it but to let society know that if it’s not going to empower them, they are going to empower themselves and, yeah, for some, bisexuality is the gateway and road to self-empowerment.

If you don’t know, now you know; if you don’t know, you’d better ask somebody who does or… welcome to a hell you had no idea existed and, in many cases, has been sleeping next to you all along. You deal with a woman’s bisexuality by… letting her be bisexual and in the way she feels she needs to be because, husbands/boyfriends, if you don’t, it’s a safe bet that she going to find someone who will… and that just might be another woman because they do know what a woman needs and, jeez, don’t even think that she’s a lesbian – those ladies are a whole different critter.

And, yes, I’m a bisexual man who’s telling you this so if this doesn’t tell you something, you might need more coffee and think about updating what you think you know about women and their role in our lives…

IF you don’t ask for it…

Hi there! I know it’s been quite a while since I last posted something here and for that, I apologize.

My mother used to tell me and my siblings, “If you don’t ask for it, don’t expect to get it. If you ask – but you don’t get what you’re asking for – it cannot be said that you didn’t ask.” Life teaches you that something like this has a lot of common-sense truth to it but when you’re married and bisexual – and it doesn’t matter if you were bisexual before you married or you discovered it afterwards – if you want to be able to express yourself as a bisexual, well, you can’t. The rules of monogamy say so and official marriage vows gets you to swear to keep only unto yourselves and… that’s a problem and one that isn’t totally a sexuality thing but, yeah, it can be.

The reason why people in a relationship cheat is that they have needs that aren’t being met or even addressed because getting permission to attend to those needs isn’t likely to be given and, as such, so many bisexual men and women in relationships (a) know not to ask but (b) find themselves in a position where they have to take matters into their own hands and… it’s better to beg forgiveness.

I’ve often mentioned my first wife who I had, almost from the moment I met her, suspected that she knew about girls like I did but she’d categorically deny it although she did tell me about a situation with a female “babysitter” that sounded horrible… but I suspected that it was anything but for her. Eventually, she didn’t ask for what she wanted: She told me, via ultimatum, what she was going to do to get what she wanted and with or without my permission or blessings, which put me in a very bad spot because, like most people, I totally believed in the sanctity of marriage and faithfully staying true to the vows we both took.

In about ten minutes, everything I believed about relationships and marriage got pulverized. The end result was that we opened our marriage and I had felt that something else my mother had told me – and the day I told her I was getting married – resonated with me: “Your marriage is only going to be as good as the two of you are willing to make it.” So, when we changed the rules – and because divorcing each other wasn’t an option – this was us making our marriage as good as we could make it for ourselves.

And a powerful lesson for her in being careful what you ask for… because you just might get it and you might not like it. But if you don’t ask, you can never really know, can you? I was learning that when it came to asking for permission, the people wanting it wouldn’t ask for it because they automatically assumed that the answer is going to be, “Oh, hell, no!” and… lawyers could be involved but when you consider that people cheat on their partners because of a severe lack of attention to one’s needs, well, really: What did you think was going to happen?

Or, in an “infamous” conversation with my #1 poly wife, who was giving me some grief about me going out to have oral sex with a guy, when she asked why I had to do it I said, “Because, baby, when I want to suck a dick, you don’t have one. It’s not that I don’t love y’all; it’s definitely not because I don’t love having sex with both of you and I don’t have a single complaint about how you two give me head but you misunderstand: It’s not about some dude blowing me – it’s about my need to blow him.”

And she still didn’t understand why I went and sucked that guy’s dick. Conversations like this are… dangerous because this – and trying to broach the subject of gaining permission to be bisexual – always runs up against that which the other person believes and, yes, what they don’t believe and as can be seen in such situations, the person whose beliefs have been challenged “always” wins this argument and permission denied. I’ve seen this in other couples so many times that I’ve often scratched my head thinking, “Why don’t they see the obvious solution to this problem? If you believe that rules are made to be broken or changed, why not break or change them so that the two of you can stay together and happy with each other… and yourself?”

A guy asks, “What can I do to get permission from my wife to have sex with men? and my initial answer is, “Ask her.” He looked at me like I’d just called his mother a whore and said that he wasn’t going to do that because she was going to say no and then she’s going to be pissed off and make his life a living hell.

“But if you don’t ask, you won’t know one way or the other,” I pointed out to him. “I get it – you’re afraid to ask her because doing so doesn’t usually go well but your alternatives are to wind up suffering with your desires for a hard dick, cheat on her, or just divorce her – and none of these, as I understand it, are viable options.”

The thing about asking for permission is that you need to have a damned compelling discussion with your partner; it’s not totally about what you’re going to say that you have to think about: You also have to think about what you’re going to give them in return for this permission because, as I’ve learned from others in this predicament, at some point, the person asking the question is going to be asked, “What’s in it for me?” and if you don’t have a damned good answer to this – and already know what you’re willing to give them – you’re hosed.

The ironically funny thing about this situation is that anyone who’s been a relationship and/or are married knows that… monogamy doesn’t work the way we’ve been told it does and that there is that dominant partner in the relationship who sets the tone of things and it’s their way or no way and if there’s something you want/need that doesn’t fit their agenda, don’t even think about asking for it because you won’t get it… but you will get a lot of grief for standing up for your right to… ask for something.

And when you’re up against someone’s beliefs, getting them to see things your way is a long row to hoe and, even funnier, intelligently, they understand what you’re saying to them, but the resistance comes into play because the response is emotional and even, I learned that logic… doesn’t stand much of a chance against the more powerful emotional response. If you don’t ask for what you want, you’re never going to get it and, again, you’re not going to know… much of anything and while it’s normal to not ask because you know that they’re going to say no, well, um, how do you really know?

A woman is feeling some kind of way because she wants to be with another woman who she was having sexual and emotional feelings for. She doesn’t want to cheat on her husband but, in her mind, she believes that she has no other choice.

“Why don’t you talk to him about this and ask him?” I asked – and even though I know the question is rhetorical.

“Because I know he’s going to say no and he’s gonna leave me,” she said.

“But how do you really know?” I persisted.

Come to find out that… she didn’t really know. She girded her loins and talked to him about this and asked for permission and she got it… because he already knew that she was bisexual and aware of her close friendship with the woman in question. During their negotiations, she found that there were some things she wasn’t willing to give up to get his permission and she wasn’t going to concede them and I said, “That’s a mistake and more so when you’re asking him to forego everything he believes in. If you’re not willing to give him this – and I think that it’s not that big of a deal – then you’re not going to get his permission. If you want something from him, you have to give him something in return for it because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

It took her a couple of months before they came to terms with each other. They figured it out and they made it work because the alternatives – her cheating on him or divorcing – wasn’t a viable option for either of them.

I understand that asking for what you want and need in this is perilous, fraught with danger and very damned scary, but it remains true that if you don’t ask for it, you’re not going to get it and you miss an opportunity to find out something about your partner that, perhaps, you didn’t know. And, really: If you’re not going to stand up for yourself, who’s supposed to?