Jessica replied to our post, Your Call: I Can’t Handle My Boyfriend’s Bisexuality with some sage advice delivered via her own personal story:
Unlike a lot of people on this thread I have not had any real traumatic experiences with my relationship.
My boyfriend and I had been together for 7/8 months when I found out about is bisexuality. We live together and have done so for the entirety of our relationship. I was using his laptop to study (he spilt his tea on mine) and [while I was procrastinating by] reading articles on the Black Friday shopping disasters, I lost my page, went into the history, typed black, and was swamped with a myriad of black porn. [I was shocked and] curious if he only watched black porn (something I had an issue with as I suspected this meant he preferred black woman, something I am not).
I then searched porn, and found that his porn tastes were predominantly split between big cocks and small women, black porn, and gay porn. I was quite surprised after seeing his search history and didn’t quite know what to think. He would much rather watch sites like gay fuck tube rather than the average hardcore porn which was surprising.
At first I didn’t understand (I was still reeling at the black stuff) but when I asked him about it, he told me he was bi. It wasn’t horrible at this stage: I was shocked, a little sad (I didn’t really get male bisexuality yet), I asked him about it, and he told me he had never slept with a man, but enjoyed gay porn.
A few days later I had managed to upset myself over it, and during the discussion he admitted that he had slept with a man whilst traveling in South America, in a scenario that sounds more like something from twink movies xxx than from real life.
At this point I was more upset that he had lied. This to me was an admission of repression (my underlying fear was “bi now, gay later”) and that by failing to tell me everything, he was repressing the part of him that was gay (his true self).
My boyfriend is unbelievably attractive, manly, uncommonly kind; he’s an athlete, a doctor, smart, funny, and faithful. He is a one ‘person’ man.
But my greatest concerns at that point were:
- he is repressing his homosexuality (he is Irish – they’re not big on this sort of thing)
- he has lied about his porn habits and his sexual experiences and I can’t trust him.
- he is not manly anymore
- he will leave me when we are older because he will finally realize he is gay.
For a while (a year or so) I chose to bury my head in the sand: he loves me, he would never cheat, I can just pretend he is straight.
Unfortunately my boyfriend saw this and sought to help me by hiding his habits and further repressing his sexuality.
This eventually caused a rip roaring argument where I found out he had been lying about his porn habits (he told me he stopped watching gay porn). I realized I no longer trusted him, and we broke up.
This lasted no more than a few days. The truth is we love each other unconditionally, and would do anything to be together. He said he would wait for me when I said I couldn’t be with him, be it weeks, months or years. He loved me and wanted a future with me and it didn’t matter what gender any other being was or wasn’t because nobody could ever replace me. Breaking up with someone you hate, has cheated, or you have grown apart from is easy in comparison to breaking up with someone you love so desperately for no better reason than they have the capacity to be attracted to both genders.
So we sat down: I understood that he hadn’t told me because he didn’t want to hurt me or drive me away. He rarely watches porn (I watch it 5 times more often than he does: gay, lesbian, shemale, granny) but when I’m away for long periods of time he does. I understood that I had failed to address my concerns and that I had inadvertently forced him to repress his sexuality.
After a lot of reading and soul searching I have finally come to this conclusion:
Yes, he is not ready to tell others about his sexuality, but he told me. He has never told a single being and he may never have needed to but he told me. This allowed him to talk about it. He is content with his sexuality, he knows himself and is happy. He is repressing nothing. Maybe one day he will tell others but so long as he is honest with himself and with me, that is not my issue.
He has promised to never lie to me about his sexuality and I believe him. In return I will not be ignorant about it.
He is the manly, football, rugby, hockey playing athlete he has always been. He is in no way my gay best friend, and our rough play, lustful relationship and high sex drive is a constant reminder of that.
If he leaves me when I’m older then it makes no difference if it’s for a man or a woman, either way I’ll end up hurt and alone, and bisexuality has nothing to do with that.
This probably doesn’t help you, but it helps me to have shared it.
The thing that got me through it: he’s not dying and he doesn’t ever want to break up with me. What’s a bit of bisexuality compared to that?
I have read so much material on sites relating to bisexual women. i was rather surprised at the majority of women really have an expectation that their men accept and be supportive of their bisexuality. It is interesting to see the negative line of thought when the man is bisexual…Just saying!
Two pairs of friends found themselves in the same situation. Both resolved it by opening up the relationship and letting the husband find male companionship. Eventually the wife also found an additional lover. In their cases the odd sexual dynamic minimized (but did not eliminate) jealousy and kept the marriages together. It wasn’t easy; they worked out rather detailed rules as to what was and was not acceptable.
I do NOT think this is a solution that will work for everyone–and I know, second hand, of people for whom it failed–but attempting to keep one’s husband/lover from experiencing a very basic part of his sexuality is unlikely to work over the long run.
There are excellent on-line support groups for women in exactly this position; I’d suggest you look into them. There is, unfortunately, no simple risk-free solution to this situation.