Bisexual mums??

[abulford13]

Hi all

Any bisexual mums on here? I'm a SAHM and would be nice to talk to someone who knows how I'm feeling!

What a thoughtful response fusion. You sound lovely. I think my discomfort with it is partly due to feeling even more female-identified than in the past, including stronger physical attraction to women. Used to be a once in a blue moon thing for me - now, not so much. I don't know why that has happened but it has. I love my DH dearly but if I was to be alone again, I don't think I would seek out a relationship with a man. I don't really have anyone I can talk to about that without it sounding like I am rejecting DH.

And the whole PTA 'baking, mumsy thing' practically brings me out in hives. Or at least makes me want to dye my hair purple and start wearing nose studs and Docs again. Its the heteronormativity plus stereotyping femininity combined. Just ugh. But I do care very much about my DS' school and the community he grows up in.

Sorry, three posts in a row is a bit much but I just wanted to add how great it is to hear from all of you. I would very much like this to be the beginning of a community . Its made me realise how isolated I have felt. Even tho my DH is very accepting (he knew before we started dating), he doesn't really get it because he is straight.

ocelot, can I join? or is this a community for bi women in monogamous relationships with men?

I actually felt a huge amount of pressure to 'pick a team' and identify as a lesbian when I first got together with my gf. I remember my mum, who initially had a hard time accepting any of it, saying that I might as well say I'm gay because I'm now in a relationship with a woman and it was clearly a long term, hopefully forever, relationship. I think some people see bisexuality as a disrespectful identity when in a relationship. Like you're being almost unfaithful to your dp by not being solely attracted to their sex.

I know my dp would prefer me to be gay, but the reality is, I can still feel attracted to a man, as well as a woman. That doesn't mean I am more likely to cheat. Because I'm bi, it doesn't mean I'm attracted to everyone! Sadly, many people think that it does.

I've heard people say that you're being greedy but wtf does that mean?! And that usually comes from other gay people from my experience. You don't choose to be bi, anymore than you choose to be gay. That's it isn't it?...

Hi Toblerone, you are more than welcome as far as I am concerned. But I not in charge of anything! How does everyone else feel?

All bi people can be welcome here in my view.

I've definitely had my fair share of 'greedy' or 'I couldn't date a bi woman' from both women and men. Luckily I have always been comfortable with my sexuality so just tell them to sod off! I do however think that my own parents would probably prefer me to be either straight or gay, I'm not sure they quite 'get' bisexuality. But I see it as mostly achedemic as I'm happy with DH - but it is fun to drool over certain celeb women together!

All bi people welcome here yes!

My parents have decided that bisexuality is a "phase" which I am now "over" because I married someone of the opposite gender

Another 'bi and married to a man' here.

I don't find my sexuality 'irrelevant' at all. I find it exhausting. As i get older I am presenting as more and more butch and I guess it's because I hate the assumption that I am straight. I miss the LGBT scene that I was part of as a young woman and feel I have no place there now I'm in a long term het relationship. The loss of this makes me incredibly sad, although I am happy in my relationship.

Your messages make me feel like I'm not alone in all this... maybe it's more common than we think. I also feel really lucky that my journey to here, although not completely free from pain and heart ache, seems comparatively smooth to what some of you have been through. It makes me sad.

I arrived at finally realising my feelings through meeting a woman, she was (is?) a closeted lesbian, mum of two. She'd never had any experiences with women either. I told DH who was initially alright with it, then he wasn't, then he was, then he wasn't again and now he is. What a roller coaster.

AllTheFluffyAnimals, you say you are now in a polyamarous relationship with a man and a woman? That's basically where I am too now. Lots of stigma around that as well! I'm really interested to hear about your experiences. How did you get to that point? How long has it been? DH and I have been to counselling and the guy was really fantastic about the whole thing.

Gotta go, more later.

I feel everyone is welcome who wants to be here.

I am curious about your polyamorous experiences. I can see the appeal very much so but I don't think it would work well for me unless I was prepared to be a much less jealous person, because I don't think I could ask dh to be if I wasn't also willing to allow him to be open.

" I think some people see bisexuality as a disrespectful identity when in a relationship. Like you're being almost unfaithful to your dp by not being solely attracted to their sex." Toblerone, this is it exactly I think. Because of course no married het or gay people ever feel attracted to anyone ever again, they have given up their individual sexual identity by being married and God forbid they ever do or say anything to the contrary (thinks of all the men, straight and gay, going to bloody strip clubs and gay bars and that's all cool.. sigh).

And also the "infidelity" trope that goes along with it as a given is such a pain in the arse. I got to know someone through work who is bisexual and in a long-term relationship, about to be married, with a woman and I have been married to dh for such a long time but when I told her, in passing, that I was also bisexual it completely changed her partner's responses to me as I was clearly now unsafe and trying to bag her for myself.. because why else would a married woman say that they were bisexual, if they were happy in their relationship they would keep it well hidden...

I mean if you step back from that and think about the implications there, it's ludicrous. I didn't suddenly turn on Barry White, slip into something more comfortable and flutter my eyelashes at her while telling her my favourite girl on girl sexual positions. I mentioned I was bisexual in passing because she did and it was the most contextually normal thing in the world in the specific context of our conversation about same sex marriage... and it is awful because I really liked them as a COUPLE, just as PEOPLE, and now it is all weird because I had to go flaunting my sexuality, you know, by mentioning it with both of them there....

I also find it exhausting midcentury. I spent nearly all my teens and early twenties in LGBT spaces even though I wasn't really self-labelling then.. but I met people I got, and who seemed to get me, and just in terms of friendships it was much richer. I know I said that on some thread here once upon a time and was flamed from on high as I was breaking some rule about how you can't say you have anything in common with people who share your sexual orientation as that is somehow othering people on the basis of sexual orientation, but it was very much my experience. I found it easier to meet my tribe in those places. I have found it pretty hard to do in adult straight life but again, I feel like I don't belong in LGBT spaces now.

I dont feel I belong in LGBT spaces now

Yes, this. I miss it. The community stuff, was never a Scene Queen.

I'm bi too. I came out as lesbian when I was 19, well I tried to come out as bi but apparently bisexuals didn't then (it was a while ago now!) and gradually lost most of my heterosexual friends, then started to see a man at the age of 28 or so, and gradually (or sometimes suddenly) lost my lesbian friends. It makes for a disjointed life and now puts me off seeking a relationship with a woman again. I too don't very often mention my relationships with women in the very heterosexual world I live in - though this thread makes me think maybe some of my "heterosexual" friends might actually be bi!

I miss the LGB scene (there wasn't really any T when I was involved). I asked a lesbian colleague recently whether she went to any LGBT bars now she was older, as I thought she knew I was bi and used to identify as a lesbian and she snapped back at me no, did I go to any straight bars! It made me feel crappy and a bit fraudulent, but really she was making assumptions about me.

The thing is if you are in a same sex relationship you can come out by mentioning your partner. If you aren't then it's more difficult to get it into the conversation, and then you find you haven't mentioned it for so long that it becomes awkward that someone you know well doesn't know something about you that would potentially be a big surprise to them, so you've not only got the fact that you're bi to deal with but also them feeling aggrieved that you've neglected to mention it in the five years you've known them!

I relate to the feeling of getting on better with people in the LG (because TBH there is never much overt B or T IME) community, not the scene but the community, but essentially have always felt the same awkwardness but in a different way. People are so freely and openly biphobic and I always have a background feeling of being some kind of fraud, or being secretive, that nowhere really feels comfortable.

TBH I was not remotely shocked re Christopher biggins because IME some of the most vocal biphobic discrimination I have experienced comes from gay men and particularly middle aged women. I don't know why.

Straight men usually fetishise it, which is no better at all, just different.

I think I understand why bisexuality makes people feel angry, it is just very sad and very unfair because it is down to the very personal fears of the angry individual and not down to anything real about being a bisexual person - and how do you overcome that? I have no idea.

I don't really get why it makes people angry. I can maybe understand why it might freak them out a bit with the common representation that we're out to shag anything! In the lesbian circles that I moved in in the 90s there was quite a separatist thing going on with lesbians not wanting "second hand" contact with men. Also the fear we were going to run off with a man, the converse I've had from boyfriends!

Because many people are very emotionally attached to the idea of exclusive attraction and it challenges that, sometimes makes them feel inferior/deficient or afraid, sometimes subconsciously undermines their own understanding of their identity and often threatens their understanding of sexuality as a whole. Many people react to fearful or anxiety provoking situations with anger as a first and defensive response.

That's what I believe anyway.

I don't know and I never really will know. All I do know is that in situations where the topic of bisexuality provokes anger I just feel sad and wish it wasn't such a big-important-thing to many people, that it was just unremarkable. Probably that's why I get on with LG people very often, because we often already have that feeling/experience of other people's innate discomfort with our sexuality in common.

I find a lot of "straight" women have a story to tell about a same sex incident or desire, which is perhaps something they've kept to themselves before.

I feel more like a theoretical bisexual these days! I had started to identify as het but another bisexual woman persuaded me that being bisexual was about who I am rather than what I do. Since I am now middle age, although I'm single, I'm rarely in the position of meeting anyone I'm attracted to or being drunk enough to go to bed with someone even if I don't find them attractive (this is a good thing I think!), which is why it feels theoretical.

The gay people who "have a problem with the bisexuals", like Christopher Biggins, need to ask themselves, is what they're saying really any different to when they were in the process of coming out and were told that sexuality is a choice? Most, if not all gay people detest that notion, so if you accept that bisexuality is real and not a choice and it is possible to be attracted to both genders, then why would you ask someone to lie like you probably did for so long? Why should we "pick a team"? Why shouldn't we be free to love either sex? Why do you want us to become less accepting and discriminate?

It just all feels like we're going backwards. It's seriously messed up.

No sexuality is a choice. That includes bisexuality. My sexuality is just as real as a gay or straight persons.

It is a bit shit really when you put it like that..
On a different group I'm on they've been talking about fostering binormativity this week, and how tiring it is to respond to biphobic statements...

So they took this tumblr pic that said bisexuals don't cheat, bisexuals aren't confused and bisexuals aren't looking for attention and turned it into
Bisexuals are allowed to want multiple people
Bisexuals are allowed to be confused
Bisexuals are allowed to look for attention..

I think the greatest part of my own self-stigma is that I do want multiple people on some levels. And I know you can argue that's about being polyamorous or non-monogamous or whatever vs being bisexual but this is what the experience of being bisexual is and always has been for me.

I have absolutely no intention of behaving in harmful or non-ethical ways sexually or relationally but the truth is I live in a world and a context where realistically I won't have a relationship with a man and a woman simultaneously, and where even if the opportunity arose for me now, I would find it very hard to follow that for a whole host of reasons related to my own history.. I came from a very unconventional family and my father was very unfaithful in ways that were anything but ethical and I have always been very clear within myself that if I had children I would not take that path.

But if I had a magic wand? It would not be stigmatised to have a polyamorous relationship by the verbal community we live in and would be at least as accepted as being in a gay relationship now and ideally just accepted. I would be able to continue to be with this man I love and also I would be able to have a fulfilling sexual and emotional relationship with a woman without hurting or harming anyone in the process.

How I realised this, ironically, was by having an extremely negative reaction to someone living in a polyamorous context on MN.. and I feel quite bad about that now.. but I hadn't realised people actually had these relationships and I still have a certain amount of shame and self-stigma about even a part of me wanting it.. I have that internalised biphobia and I feel a bit depraved/deficient/wrong/unstable/difficult/broken etc... and I know it would be very hard to pull off in the context I am in...
but it is hard.

I love my husband, I am attracted to him and when a certain woman so much as likes a facebook picture of mine, I actually blush.. and as it so happens she's not available to me anyway, and even if she were I would never do it to my husband as I know he wouldn't want it, but it isn't easy to live with sometimes. And I didn't choose this and I wouldn't choose this.

And actually you know what part of it is the implication that even wanting such an out-of-the-norm set up means you are this immoral wild sort of person, when I really am a very average sort of person, watching Netflix and considering making a Sunday roast and realising it's time to pick up the toys.

It's the extrapolation from having a particular way of interacting with the world in terms of what might feel most fulfilling sexually or relationally means that it's this big huge display of decadence and chaos and selfishness. The very point is that I don't want any of those things, quite the opposite.. I want what everyone wants, ease and peace and happiness and connection in ways that make sense to me, and a community that accepts me just as I am without rejection and horror and judgement. Very ordinary, average things.. but for whatever reason, and beyond my choosing, I do have this longing for both/and not either/or. And very often I just hate myself for that.

Fusion, I haven't time to write much (and a part of me is very guarded about giving much away in case I'm identified on here as I haven't nc'ed and internet history can sometimes have a way of making me paranoid) but I just want to say that there is SO MUCH of what you say here that I agree with and related to. It is making me feel so much better about stuff and I hope it is of some consolation to you that there is someone else out there (and if you knew me you would be so flipping surprised!!) that is nodding along in agreement and feeling quite moved by the eloquent summarisation that you are offering in thoughts that must be shared by many others! :-)

Sorry relate to (present tense, somewhat unfortunately...)

Thank you Ojos. Sometimes I really do feel alone with it too. The suffering that arises from it is predominantly this feeling I am somehow depraved contrasting with the complete ordinariness of my life. The mindfulness helps though. I also remind myself this is what it was like for all lgbt people for a long long time and is in so many quarters of the world only worse, where people would be beaten or raped or even killed, imprisoned or fined for wanting what's outside of the cultural norm. I don't want to hurt a soul.. Do anything in any way harmful.. And that entails sacrifices in the specific context I live in. And yet in the bi facebook groups I'm in I can see some of the younger people are walking a different road and in healthy respectful non-destructive ways... I would very much hope in the future there would be more scope for this for lgbt youth. Meanwhile for me I am always reminded of Eliot's Prufrock -
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

I see polyamory and bisexuality as different things completely and not the former as any kind of 'solution' to the latter. However, I believe I'm both. DH and I always had the theory of an "open relationship' but the realities of young kids, jobs etc meant we never really pursued it. I've never been jealous, DH has had experiences with other women which I've known about and it's never bothered me. People find that hard to understand, myself included. There's a pressure to be proprietary, like if you're not, you don't really care or love your partner which isn't true at all. I think relationships, emotional or otherwise are the stuff of life and I don't think having the capacity for more than one is wrong. Love is not the limiting factor. Time is. If you want to have a polyamarous relationship, you really have to have your shit together as a couple or or won't work. I think my relationship with my husband is better now, we don't take each other for granted, we work hard to be together in a meaningful way and support each other to be our authentic selves. It's not for everyone but it is (so far) working for us.