Am I bisexual? I really don't know what to make of my feelings. Can anyone relate?

[amibi]

Hi

Ok, so i've always been attracted to women, but very seldomly and it's a very specific type. My first sexual experience was with a woman, well a girl really.......I was only 14 and assumed that I was just experimenting. I've heard that loads of women's first kiss was practising on their best friends, which was kind of what my first sexual experience was. However, I can't seem to shake this need to go all the way. It was only a bit of a fumble when I was a teenager, but recent events have made me want to pursue my feelings more.

I confessed a month or so ago to DP that I find some women sexually attractive and that I get turned on with the idea of two women together. He said that he kind of already knew and if I were to act on these feelings, he wouldn't see it as cheating and so kind of gave me his blessing.

Since he's told me this I can't stop thinking about having a fling with my ideal woman. I feel like I really need to get it out of my system, but then if I like it, it wont really be out of my system will it?.....

Does anyone understand this? Should I just leave it as a fantasy? Or should I act on it?

Really appreciate your words of wisdom

Thank you!

I would have to agree that it's not cheating if the dp has given the go-ahead. The word "cheating" to me implies that the dp is kept in the dark

And there's nothing actually wrong with the concept, IYKWIM! I just know that for some people, the concept of something and the reality of that thing can work out to be very different things.

I just know that for some people, the concept of something and the reality of that thing can work out to be very different things. Yes. The danger is that the OP could find herself getting emotionally involved when she didn't expect to - and that would be a threat to her marriage, because I doubt her DP would be thrilled about that.

But she knows her own mind & has to figure through that herself.

Well, if she knows her own mind, why did she post here?
And why are we bothering to reply?

Looking to see if anyone else has been through the same thing?

By "she knows her own mind" - I meant she knows herself better than anyone on here does, and only she can really decide the likelihood of emotional involvement. Doesn't make any of us wrong from alerting her to all the pitfalls. What's wrong is assuming that because person A feels a certain way, person B also should. We don't come off conveyer belts.

I didn't say it was cheating.

I also didn't say you are not bisexual who. My point was that having a sexual experience within your relationship where you have physical relationships with other people is not related to bisexuality as such. It is important because wanting to bring in an extra sexual experience to a relationship is an entirely different thing to exploring your own sexuality if you have some confusion about what you actually feel. It is just a different arrangement to what the op gave the impression was being asked here about exploring her sexuality. That's all.

I'm single at the mo, but I know I absolutely couldn't cope with the idea of any partner of mine wanting to be physical with someone else, male or female. But that's just me.

And what I was trying to get at is him saying he doesn't think sex with a woman is cheating (why is he not threatened given what you have right now is a monogamous relationship? Why would he be threatened by a man) is not a guarantee that he won't feel cheated or bad or full of blame at some stage whether or not objectively speaking he has agreed or you would be considered to be cheating or not. I'd like to remind you that I have never said "don't do it, it is cheating".

Some of the things on this thread make me really uncomfortable like "it isn't cheating with a woman", like it is fine to not care if he gets hurt as long as it isnt cheating, like that the implication is that in order to be bisexual you are able to say your sex life in your agreed monogamous relationship is unsatisfying because you can't experience both, like the implied thinking that if you are bisexual you have to prove it.

Where this particular thing is starting from is a relationship where there has been an agreement of monogamy up until now. There is no reason at all why this can't change and work successfully in a myriad of ways for any reason important to the couple but I dont think it is fair if one person wants it to change and as long as they are not cheating they don't have to consider the others' feelings any further. That's just not very considerate and a way to make trouble IMHO.

I don't think being bisexual means wanting to actively pursue sex with both genders necessarily, I think it is more about being attracted to someone irrespective of gender. I have someone I get hung up on precisely because someone told me something about him that put me off him that I have since found out wasn't true, I might wonder if we might have had a great relationship and wonderful experiences together and feel irritated that was taken away. Realistically I have a number of options having made a commitment to monogamy - end things with DH and pursue a relationship with him, speak to DH and see if he will concede to suspending monogamy or ignore it because actually I'm happy with my choice of partner. If we suspended monogamy we could do this in a variety of ways that were more or less considerate of each other.

That's all. If it were that I felt I wasn't experienced enough with women or with men and I wanted to act on it then I think I'd have to ask what I was in a monogamous relationship for, either change the terms of the relationship or leave it but I would want to make sure if the relationship continued the other person was actually involved in the choice. I don't think it is actually any different at all just because you are a woman who has up until now only had relationships with men and wants more experience with women. And no I'm not saying it means there must be a problem with your relationship now.

Oh dear, I was hoping it wasn't going to get heated. Offred, you did say it was cheating i'm afraid. However, if that's what you really believe, then you're entitiled to your opinion. I just don't think it makes sense.

Where?

But offred, I already explained why he didn't see it as cheating(apart from the fact he's said it's fine for me to pursue) was because he knows that I wont be in a relationship with a woman and so it's not a threat because it's purely sex..................if this were to ever even be realised that is! You keep saying that you never said it was cheating, but you just said it again. I don't think you realise that you're contradicting yourself. I understand a lot of what you're saying though.

where did I ever say i thought it was cheating?

Why does he think that you would never be in a relationship with a woman? Why does he think if you slept with a man that you might be in a relationship with him? This is all wrong to me...

Are you asking about exploring a sexuality you are confused over, or are you asking to have sexual experiences with women within your current relationship? Because I think they are different things.

You said on page 3 that "cheating is cheating irrespective of gender", why would you mention that word over and over, if that wasn't the point you were trying to make?

Because I am quite offended by the homophobia of the statement "it isn't cheating if it is a woman". Cheating is cheating whether it is with a man or a woman it is not determined by the gender of the person you have sex with. It implies having sex with another woman is inferior to having sex with a man.

Offred has a point.

Because I am quite offended by the homophobia of the statement "it isn't cheating if it is a woman"

I'd be offended too if that was a blanket statement. But it's not. HER DP (not necessarily anyone else's), by all accounts, would not feel cheated on if she slept with a woman rather than a man because he feels reassured that it wouldn't be an emotional relationship & therefore a threat to theirs.

You're quite right to point out that cheating is cheating and being with a woman rather than a man does not negate that. But the issue of "cheating" is not really relevant at all here, since her DP has given her the green light. It would be exactly the same if she wanted to experiment with another man & he was OK with that (as a few men are, from time to time).

It is an issue, because it suggests her DP is not being realistic. If OP sleeps with another woman she may or may not fall in love with her. Her DP has not considered the second scenario, and really needs to.

Thanks, had to happen one day!

I don't think there is anything bad about any of the things actually I just think that these are the kinds of things you need to be sure of when you are discussing making changes to the status quo. Please don't fly into it all gung ho, what people think often differs from what they feel and I don't think cheating or not is even an issue. It is about how you feel, are you happy and are you really prepared? Is it an informed decision. If he thinks he wouldn't have this if you wanted to sleep with men because you would get feelings about them but not women I think that's not real consent. You can't actually tell until you do it.

Yeah, again, I get what you're saying and actually I put this point to dp the first time we spoke about it. He asked me to be 100% honest, which I was, but no, I can't 100% guarentee that I wouldn't fall for another woman, I just really really can't imagine it. So yes, there is a risk. When I say I was 100% honest, I'm saying that I can honestly say that the thought of being in a relationship with a woman seems alien and unappealing to me.

Have you asked how he would feel about it it you did get feelings?

Well, reading through the latest developments here Amibi, I think you should be really pleased with the outcome, MN has been a safe place for you to explore the finer nuances of your emotions.

To me it seems glaringly obvious after your latest postings that you are not bisexual, in that you cannot imagine falling for a woman, or be in a relationship with a woman. This points in the direction of a fetish for having sex with a woman, which is shared by your dp, within the safety of a relationship with a man.

In which case, arguing gender or bisexuality is by the by and does not apply to you.

Now you just need to find a willing woman who are on the same page as you, so you dont risk hurting her by her falling in love with you.

That is just my humble opinion.

I disagree with quint actually. It is hard to tell without experience which is why you want to but I think it is a very different thing including women into your relationship as an experience when you are confident of your sexuality (like who) and bringing women in as an experience to find out. Your early attraction suggests to me you probably are tbh.

Quint Surely sexuality & sexual inclinations are all about, er, the sex? You seem to be saying that you can only be bi-sexual if you feel an emotional attachment to a member of the opposite sex, and I really can't agree with that.

Amibi I would advise not getting bogged down in trying to label yourself. You are just you. Sexuality is such a long, long spectrum and we all sit somewhere along it. I've had vague fantasies about other women, but in my case, I have found that I've never actually found myself attracted to any real life woman and can't imagine myself getting together with one, so I'm probably not bi-sexual. You may be, and there's truly nothing wrong with that.

The ONLY thing that should give you pause is your DP, of course, and making really, really sure he's comfortable with everything. But you already know that :)

X1 used to have sex with other women when he was away on trips. I wouldn't be sanguine about it now, but I was then. I believed that, as he only saw these women for a maximum of 2 nights, his adventures were 'just sex' and not a threat to our relationship.

I was wrong because, over time, it became increasingly clear that he was trying to push me to be more like one (or some) of these women - both sexually and in things like my appearance. The deal also meant he was always somewhat detached from "us". Being with me wasn't the whole of his sex/relationship experience, which I believed we had bought into at the beginning.

It could be relevant that, when he eventually got involved with a more geographically available woman, he genuinely intended for all three of us to live together. He was an absurdly narcissistic twerp, but I wonder whether my earlier compliance had blurred the boundaries of our relationship - for him - to the extent that this looked to him like a reasonable proposition?

As a not completely irrelevant aside, I once slept with another man while X1 and I were together. He went ballistic. How will you feel when DP gets another woman (or man)?

OP, if you're serious about pursuing your sexual explorations, it might be worth showing your partner my post and some of the other less-bombastic ones. He really might not have thought it through, beyond unrealistic conditioning to think of lesbian sex as an adjunct to hetero.

I think you are confusing sexuality, with the desire to just want to "try something out".

You need to be careful. As an open marriage if that's your thing great. But it needs thinking through. A lot of men may think "my mrs has sex with women" great.

However not many can deal with the reality. After a while, they realise having sex with a man/woman. It's no different. The effects of the relationship are still the same.

Why if you do fall for a woman. If its "just sex" then what's to stop you having "just sex" with a other man. Once the boundaries change. What's to stop him having "just sex" with anyone else?