..to ask about bi-sexuality?

[ArsenalsPlayingAtHome]

I want lots of traffic, hence I'm posting it here!

A couple of weeks ago, a family member came out as bi-sexual. He's male and still a teenager.

I have huge admiration for his honesty and the courage (imho) it takes to do this.

Needless to say, my feelings towards him haven't changed. Actually, that's not strictly true, they have changed: I feel even prouder of him, and my respect for him is greater than it was.

Anyway, I have no one in RL I can talk to about this. I have talked to my DH, but he's as clueless as I am.

What I would like to know is, and forgive my ignorance, if you are bi-sexual, can you be completely sexually satisfied if you choose to be monogamous, or will you always feel that you are missing out on something, iyswim?

TIA

I personally feel we are all bisexual on some level. I am not ashamed to admit that I am, I am attracted to both men and women and wish that bisexuality was the only preference and totally socially acceptable in all scenarios and religions!

KnitFast my response tends to D) that's nice. Now which piece of cake do you want?
Is that allowed? :)
(Straight with friends with a variety of gender preferences)

if you're bisexual in an opposite sex relationship, you "pass" as straight and avoid a lot of the issues which face same sex couples.

This is true - and one of the reasons I make a point of being out. I don't need to be, I want to be, because it's part of who I am.

Haha cardibach that's definitely the most usual response among nice normal people! Perhaps I should have caveated with 'shitty responses from a minority of twerps'
And since you ask, i will have that nice crusty end bit of a lemon drizzle cake, please...yum

Gladly KnitFast I don't like crusty end bits of cake, only the squidgy middle bits! Good job everyone has individual preferences, gets all the cake eaten :)

I'm going to use the cake analogy to explain sexual orientation to my future small children

Knitfast fetishized is exactly the word I've been looking for! Thank you. Also agree with your three flavours. Explaining that you're bi seems to be interpreted as 'please as me personal questions and doubt my ability to know my own sexuality'

OP I think its great that you want to find this stuff out.

I'm a bi woman married to a woman, totally faithful. Totally satisfied :) I can be attracted to both men and women but have chosen to spend my life with a woman. You say you have no one in rl to talk about this? Why don't you talk to your family member who has just come out and ask him how he feels?

Thanks for each and every post. Apologies for causing offence, but I think this post sums up better than my own post what I was questioning, and wanted explaining...

To be fair to the OP, I think she was confused and was assuming that bisexuality meant that a person needed to have sex with both men and women to feel sexually fulfilled not that she thought only heterosexual people could be monogamous.

There have been a fair few posts with this tone:

I'm bisexual, monogamous and married to a man. The implication that I will cheat on him due a crazed lust for the ladies is kind of insulting, to be honest. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but the assumption that all bi people cheat is a bit like the assumption that all gay men are promiscuous - it's damaging and untrue.

In response to the above post, I wasn't implying that. I find your suggestion that I implied that equally insulting, tbh. Being monogamous is a choice regardless of sexual orientation, just as choosing to cheat on your partner is also a choise.

I said this: if you are bi-sexual, can you be completely sexually satisfied if you choose to be monogamous, or will you always feel that you are missing out on something, iyswim?. I genuinely don't see how that can be interpreted as me suggesting that you'll cheat on your DH, no matter how many times I re-read my OP.

It is also untrue and insulting to presume that bisexual people fancy EVERYONE because they are attracted to both genders! I agree. It's also insulting to me to say that I have presumed that. I haven't!

Thanks to everyone, but I really feel strongly about this so...

Warning rant to follow!!!!

As usual on MN, there are genuine people who try and understand and help, and read the OP carefully and take it at face value. And then there are those who read it, and then revert to their own ideas of what people are thinking. If the OP doesn't fit, just twist it, and then you can carry on regardless, accusing people of making assumptions that they haven't made, and being insulted by things that have never been said!

Some people on MN are just so fucking determined to be insulted, aren't they? Even if it means they have to make stuff up to justify it!

By the way, I now understand a lot more than I did before, so thank you again to everyone who has posted.

Wow

Next time I won't bother. Glad it was useful to you.

OK I'll try and explain...

If you're bisexual/gay/black/disabled/whatever, it gets very frustrating having to bear the responsibility of educating other people. I don't think anyone was implying that YOU personally assume anything - it's just that I've spent my entire life explaining, justifying and dissecting my sexual orientation and it's quite a personal thing to do - so when someone throws it back in your like you just seemed to with your last post, because the life experience of bisexual people hadn't been explained to you in a way that's comfortable for you, it's hurtful. A lot of bi people shared some quite personal stuff in this thread, me included.

I agree with everything Knit says. You can't start a thread asking bisexual women if they are 'sexually satisfied' in a monogamous relationship, then get pissed off when they answer. I have no idea what you want from this thread, or why you need to know if your teenage relative is sexually satisfied.

Imagine if we went around demanding to know how monosexuals could possibly be sexually satisfied with one sex then got all snippy when told that it's perfectly possible.

Ok Knit I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be snotty.

It just happens a lot on here that things get twisted. I thought that people thought that I had said/implied/suggested those things.

Thanks for sharing. Someone upthread suggested speaking to the member of my family in question about this...I just couldn't do it for the reasons you have mentioned.

I don't want him to have to explain himself, I would never want to make him feel uncomfortable. Besides he isn't sexually active to my knowledge...it would just be so inappropriate.

I thought by posting on here, only people who didn't mind explaining to me would respond, and that people who weren't comfortable with that would just avoid my OP like the plague.

I have tried to put myself in the shoes of a person who is gay or bisexual and imagined coming out..ie: trying to imagine how I would feel if the whole of society was geared towards gay and/or bi-sexual couples, and being heterosexual was not the accepted "norm" whatever that is. I can't even begin to understand how it must feel to have to explain yourself to anyone and everyone.

Anyway, apologies for my last post. I've read it back and it's not pretty!

So ... why did you ask if you didn't mean to ask?!

Your question was (unintentionally) insulting. Ok, I get it, people have innocently ignorant misconceptions, but why fly off the handle when people point out that they're upsetting and incorrect?

Christ Arsenals, you may have made the OP, but responders just might have been talking to the many readers your thread is likely to generate. Your question has opened a topic of discussion. Come to terms with it. You've had your answer: bisexuals find either sex attractive, but monogamy is down to the individual, the same as heterosexual or homosexual people.

mm x post

CaptainHolt

I wasn't get snippy about the answers people were sharing.

I was pissed off because I thought that people were misquoting me, accusing me of making assumptions that I hadn't made, and being insulted by things that I haven't said.

I didn't, for example, suggest that bi-sexual women married to men could not be faithful to their husbands. Nor did I imply that bi-sexual people fancy everyone.

I don't need to know if my teenage relative is sexually satisfied. As I have said, to my knowledge he is not in a relationship with anyone. I had already got what I wanted out of this post before you joined it Captain. Several people have kindly and sincerely answered my questions and I now have more of an understanding and am a little less ignorant.

Thanks anyway, though!

To be fair op, I am bi and I went through a stage of 'no one is enough'. However, that was just me at the time, not a part of my sexuality. I've only had one 'proper, in love, grown up' relationship, and that's with a man. To be gooey, the want to sleep around went as soon as I fell, quickly and deeply, in love with my partner. I regret nothing though. It also doesn't mean I've 'stopped' being attracted to women, heck I can even have the odd fantasy at times, but I don't feel I'm missing out on anything. I am in a happy, loving, fulfilling relationship - anyone lucky enough to be in the same situation wouldn't be 'missing' anything, straight, gay, bi or other.

Oh, and I think it's better to question and get a correct answer, than live in naivety and ignorance. How are we to better our understanding of the world and people if we don't ask and educate ourselves?

if you are bi-sexual, can you be completely sexually satisfied if you choose to be monogamous, or will you always feel that you are missing out on something, iyswim?

Your OP included this question, querying whether bisexuals could be happily monogamous. So, yes, you did ask whether bisexuals were incapable of monogamy, and yes, it is an offensive question. I get that you obviously didn't mean it to be so, and perhaps didn't realize that it's a cliche. But it is rude.

If you'd asked 'is it true black men can't be satisfied sexually by white women?' or 'if you are asian, can you be sexually satisfied without anal sex', you'd have been asking the same kinds of question. Does that give you some sense of why it's rude? It's making an assumption that one category (in your example sexuality, in mine race) is naturally linked to another unrelated category.

No, Jeanne I didn't!

I asked if a bi-sexual person can be completely satisfied in a monogamous relationship. I did not ask if bisexuals are capable of being monogamous.

Millions of people stay in relationships that aren't sexually satisfying and stay faithful, I'm sure that applies to people of all genders and sexual orientations.

Whether it's a cliche or not, I just didn't understand.

Thanks Mrs.

Well, that's a damn sight ruder, frankly.

I was mildly insulted by the things you had said, both in your OP and your following rant, not the things you hadn't said. The 'how can you be completely satisfied if you are monogamous' chestnut being particularly tedious and unanswerable within your strict confines of not talking about polyamory or cheating. I was more insulted by the assumption that bisexual women should blandly answer your questions about their sexual satisfaction without any hesitation, repetition or deviation that could possibly make any heterosexuals feel uncomfortable or unduly criticised.

HTH

X-posts

Thats much worse