Coming out as Bi to DH

[Scorchioo]

Just over a year ago I came out as bi to DH. A family member who had divorced her husband was now in a relationship with a woman. We were on the subject and I told DH I believed myself to be bisexual. When we first met DH knew that I had some attraction to women and that I had kissed women in the past.

It did not go down well. DH was almost sickened by what I told him and immediately started to text his mother as he “needed someone to talk to” I told him I wasn’t comfortable with his mother knowing and that if he needed to talk to someone I would be happy for him to confide in a friend instead. He said I can’t “control who he talks to” His mother is the type to use this information as a weapon against me.

DH then used graphic sexual language grilling me about all the stuff I would do to women. Would I ….. a woman etc. He kept saying he felt sick and if I was really bisexual he couldn’t remain married to me. He felt betrayed and acted like I had cheated on him.

I ended up backtracking and told him I was just confused and that my sexuality is fluid instead.

He then a few weeks after became hugely suffocating, physically touching me all the time and almost “love bombing” me.

We have not mentioned it since.

Has anyone got any experience with this sort of situation?

How can being bisexual be a big part of your identity if you and DH didn’t speak about this before getting married and he didn’t know? Why is being bisexual/gay or straight a big part of someone’s identity

It’s what you discuss early on in a relationship way before marriage is considered. To suddenly put it out there years down the line will inevitably change the status quo, how could it not?

I don't think a lot of people really get what's meant by it being part of your identity. It's an inner thing, nothing has to change on the outside. A lot of bisexual women get to a point in their adult lives where they just think, oh shit, I didn't actually realise that was what I wanted/would have liked to explore/that it was possible for me. So they're in the position where they're now married, maybe have kids, and only now feel comfortable enough to talk about it. And who do they talk to? The person they trust most in the world.

It doesn't mean anything other than, I was re-evaluating this bit of myself, these thoughts that were half-formed in the past and the vocabulary is there now for me to talk about it (for example nobody ever used the word heteroromantic in my youth, would have been useful). It doesn't mean a woman is planning on experimenting or leaving their partner.

Same goes for men I suppose but I only really know about women because a few friends have been/are going through this.

Someone said that Mumsnet is biphobic but I would say it's more deeply small-c conservative and people tend not to be very imaginative, they like things very simple and delineated, but human sexuality really isn't like that.

Seriously? You don't consider someone's sexuality to be a big part of who they are?

I mean, that's the preference yes - I understand that. But then aren't you then assuming that the other person is straight by default because they are dating you, a person of the opposite sex - that isn't right. If OP's DH wouldn't have married her if he'd known, then it's his responsibility to ask and hers to answer truthfully, surely? Genuine question.
Or to put it another way - I wouldn't 'announce' it to my partner, because it wouldn't cross my mind that they'd just assume I was straight, because it's 2024 and we live in a society with gay and bisexuality people just out living their lives. If they asked, or if it came up in conversation - but it wouldn't occur to me that I needed to announce it because it's just a normal part of life. It would feel like announcing I have a dog, or a hay-fever allergy. It's just... me? If that makes sense?
Some people do feel like they need to/have reason to announce, and that is also okay, but I'm honestly not sure it would cross my mind that in 2024 I personally would need to, if I was dating a male partner and they had an issue with dating a bisexuality woman I'd expect them to check. I wouldn't date a smoker/vaper, so I would check - I wouldn't assume?

For some people it wouldn't! That's worth keeping in mind here - there's a lot of people out there for whom it makes not a jot of difference.
If you are someone for whom it would make a difference for, then I'd argue the onus is on you to check - otherwise you've just assumed someone is straight, havnt you, which is a bit silly. OPs DH also knew she'd been involved with women before so it's a bit weird he's acting like a bombs been dropped.

Oh OP, I can see why this is so difficult for you. You thought he knew, and all of a sudden he's reacted to something you assumed was already accepted. I don't get why everyone is asking why you had to tell him, because it's not about a need^ to come out-^ surely nobody would want to lie to their partner if it came up in conversation?

If she thought he knew she wouldn’t have officially announced she was coming out as bi. It’s completely incoherent.

Imagine it the other way around! 🙄

Her husband married a woman who he believed was heterosexual.

Now he discovers she is bisexual and his faith in her has been shook.

Why can't people be honest before they get married.

I actually stated that my position was different in my post. I was responding to her other point about people assuming bisexual equals unfaithful. The first sentence was just context.

Again, I’d strongly urge you to try to find someone gay/bi to talk about it. MN is horribly homophobic at times- Don’t ask, don’t tell is very much the vibe… I’m gay, so speaking from experiences and also I understand why you don’t want to hide this side of you.
I have bi friends - married to men- who are open about it and have partners who are grown ups about it. They are in monogamous relationships but don’t have to hide this aspect of their lives. Why should they?
their partners are secure enough to not be bothered.

All you will get here is people questioning why you are bi, why you told him and making the common biphobic assumption that you aren’t to be trusted.

fliptopbin, I know, I misunderstood at first, then rushed to edit very quickly - posted in triumph having edited it in time - and now realise that there was zero point to my post in the first place.

Yours was perfectly clear. Sorry!

If someone tells a partner something that throws their world off kilter, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to want to discuss it with someone close to them. You can’t dictate how he processes the information you’ve given him and it’s whom.

The thing is he knew you'd kissed women but then you'd picked a side and stuck with a man - so unless you wanted to go back to women again what was the need for the big declaration?

Waaay too much navel gazing IMO all this obsessing over labels and 'identity'. And I say that as someone attracted to men and women.

Your DH obviously doesn't know what to make of your sudden 'coming out' - and now you're back tracking and lying to cover it up. Honestly you need to sort yourself out because you give bi people a bad name IMO.

I’m bisexual and it’s only part of my identity in the sense that I have previously had and continue to have sex and relationships with both men and women. In what other senses is it a part of someone’s identity, that’s important for anyone else to know about?

You can’t say it’s something you’ve recently discovered and that the previous reply you said he’s always known since he first met you?

This is exactly the way I see it. Your post really resonates because I'm probably in a similar position myself. But I'm mid 50s, long-time married with kids and happy with DH. It's only in the last 5+ years that I've realised that if I were growing up now, my life might have been very different wrt identity (if I believed in gender ideology I'd definitely be NB, and there have certainly been some women I've been extremely attracted to/fantasised about). But realising this now? If I wanted to talk about it, the only person I could consider is DH. It's something I've never explored, and because of my marriage, now never will. But when you realise something fundamental about yourself it's not always easy to stick it in a box and ignore it.

How does it change the status quo?
The status quo of a marriage is that you're committed to each other, and you have made agreements on parts of your lives that affect each other eg attitude to kids, money, where you want to live, boundaries with faithfulness and the sex you have with each other. People do change their minds on these during marriage and often work through it even though it's a change to the status quo.

The gender of the people you could hypothetically be attracted to doesn't make any difference to your partner, unless you assume bisexual people are more promiscuous or you're so disgusted by bisexuality that it would change your relationship with your partner. And in this case, OP's husband knew she had kissed women and been attracted to women so it's only using the term bisexual that's new.

Straight people cheat all the time.
Being BI and having sexual relationship with a woman while married are not the same thing.

I assume OPs husband has seen his fair share of porn involving girl on girl action as he was able to explicitly describe it. Quite a hypocrite.
OP go and enjoy your BI fantazies if you have them and tell your DH not to lecture you on moral issues as he wasn't sick when he watched womwn go down one on another.

Are you deliberately misunderstanding what the op wrote? She told her husband recently that she is Bisexual not at the beginning of their relationship or even just before they got married. After years of being together!

That's needlessly offensive. She only 'picked a side' in that she picked her DH, who she's still committed to, it sounds like. Committing to one person isn't saying you now only feel attraction to that gender, it's choosing one person.

I understand what you are saying.
But let's walk through this 'what you portrayed yourself to be' to try and illustrate.
Bisexuality people exist, and can be in monogamous relationships with either gender throughout their lives. That's a baseline here.
So if I'm a woman in a relationship with a man, I'm either straight OR bisexual. If someone (who is aware of the existence of bisexual people and knows the above baseline to be true) assumes I am straight, then they have done so in error. A common error, sure, but its still an error, because they have disregarded information they do have about sexuality and made an assumption without including that fact in their reasoning. That's not a dig, or me casting some moral judgement, that's just fact.
In a flippant comparison, someone has seen me eating a salad for lunch and assumed I'm vegetarian.
I understand that OPs DP is shocked! Clearly he thought one thing and has discovered that it's not true. He clearly has strong feelings about this, which he is entitled to (as long as he's not basing those feelings on easily disprovable myths about bisexuals or an insistence that this must mean his wife wants to cheat when she has confirmed that isnt the case) But (unless there's a big reveal here) he knows bisexual people exist, so any accusation of betrayal or covering up is unfounded, as he is the one who has made an assumption not rooted in fact. It's okay he's shocked that he didn't know, but the finger can't be pointed at OP because he made an assumption that turned out to be wrong.

Why can't people be honest before they get married.

@ManilowBarry broadly speaking I agree, but given who you've based your username on, I'm seeing a certain irony to this statement. As in: A person's sexuality can change.