Husband came out as bisexual

[TARDISmum]

Been with DH 12 years and married for 6.5 years and recently told me he is bisexual.

It's just so odd.

I know it doesn't change who he is. It doesn't change what it was about him that I fell in love with but it feels like the landscape of our marriage has changed.

I want to be supportive but just don't know where to start. Where would you start with that.

Yeah there is a spectrum and people are often aware and have the implicit knowledge to know that a lot of people won't be open to the fetish and many will probably be turned off.

I can understand that opening up is a process of trust, but at the same time I also feel like it's selfish to wait until a person has feelings for you before bringing up something that you know has a pretty high chance of being a dealbreaker,
And unfortunately many people wait even beyond that time and wait until long after they've committed and intertwined their lives.

I guess the key thing (tho you probably didn’t mean it categorically) is the assumption ‘when they want to try it’. You said potentially and that’s what it is, not inevitable.

I can see why there would be anxiety, as you say, in simple terms women can’t offer what men do and vice versa. However, as I said in a PP, it’s a bit like saying you’ve always had the hots for Eastern European/ South Asian/Afro-Caribbean men/women - should that person be fearful their loving partner is going to become mesmerised as soon as they detect one and drop their current partner automatically? I know I’m simplifying things but I mean to convey that just bc someone finds a certain type attractive, doesn’t mean they are any more likely to be unfaithful than any heterosexual partner, or that they will naturally desire to physically explore that aspect of their sexuality.

To the contrary, this hypothetical Prince Among Men is more than welcome to search for his Stepford Girlfriend and I wish him all the luck finding her because he's gonna need it 😂

By telling me his preferences loud and clear, I can dodge that particular chauvinist pig of a bullet far more easily than if he hides behind a veneer of PC civility.

And yet, there are men who have those preferences and who seemingly have no issue finding girlfriends and wives.

I am convinced my mates husband is secretly bi. Or she knows and ignores it / accepts it. His behaviour is often that of a younger single man, he's got a gay best mate & he often stays out all night

It’s not exactly a hand grenade is it.

OP has said she doesn’t fear that he has cheated on her in the past or has the potential to cheat. She said the only thing that hurts her is the thought of him feeling that he has hurt her with this announcement. She said that she believes he told her of this merely bc he had decided ‘not to hide anymore’. She also says she’s very happy he has felt comfortable enough to confide in her and it gives an indication of how healthy their relationship is. Oh and that it wasn’t a complete surprise! 🤷🏼‍♀️

From what I’ve read it doesn’t sound like OP is dealing with any kind of catastrophic fallout, all I’ve read are messages of love and acceptance and seeking help to support her husband who has chosen to share this very personal aspect of himself with her.

I’m surprised you’ve read it the way you have as she couldn’t really be more clear in her posts.

Yeah I think you can’t assume anything either way but it’s crucial to ask him why he felt like sharing with you. I’d probably come right out and ask if he wants to act on it.

It may just be he felt like he was hiding something if he didn't open up to you but it could be that it’s leading to something else…

I think it’s fine to for a man to say he’s not attracted to fat women, or women above a certain age, or women who don't shave, or women who do not wish to cook and clean.

Women can then decide whether they would want to be with him.

You can have any preference you like. I have a long list. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is just mental gymnastics.
The vast majority of people do know that certain things could be dealbreakers for lots of people. For many people who disclose certain things their experiences of disclosing that information is in line with that, they're always nervous about it and often very scared and have to build up to it.

They're not nervous or scared about telling a partner that they like their neck being kissed.
But they're extremely nervous to say they want to dress up in womens clothes when they have sex.

There's a thing called implicit knowledge you know...and the vast, vast majority of people are aware of the types of things that could potentially be problematic with lots of new partners and they can differentiate between the things that most people are likely to be ok with versus the things that quite a few will have an issue with. No one has to tell explicitly tell people, we just acquire that knowledge.

That page about the Social Delusion? It's part of a satirical "Institute for Study of Neurotypicals" on an autism advocacy website. It gives a glimpse into a "flipped" world in which autistic people are the "normal" ones and neurotypical people are the pathologised "other".

Social Delusion:
Perhaps the "normal" people are suffering from a delusion, a SOCIAL DELUSION. They think (erroneously) that they are alike, that they have already communicated and that no more communication is necessary.

What you call "implicit knowledge" is that social delusion. I'm autistic. By definition, I don't have implicit knowledge. The ability to acquire it requires social skills that I can never have. You might have this ability to pretend that you have communicated already with other people, but you do not have it with me. You have not communicated with me. You need to use your words and ask.

This isn't "mental gymnastics" (I'm filing that term alongside all the other variations of "I don't believe you" and "I don't actually have a valid counter-argument" that I see). Instead, I have thousands of explicit rules that people have sat down and told me after I've done or said "the wrong thing". Post-diagnosis, I consider carefully whether I add yet another rule to the stack instead of reflexively doing so and burning out trying to resolve the conflicts between them.

I am making a deliberate, principled decision not to add the rule many posters want me to add, which is to proactively disclose my bisexual orientation to a potential partner. I'm making that decision because:

• Outing myself to a male partner puts me at nearly double the risk of DV compared to a straight woman and I have the right to refuse to take that risk.
• That rule burdens bisexual people with "outness" in a way that monosexuals aren't burdened, and is hence unfair.
• It likens bisexuality to an STI or prior sexual or violent assault, which are the only things that I believe should be proactively volunteered because of the physical safety implication for the other person. This adds to the stigma associated with bisexuality.
• If people care that much that I might be bisexual, they can ask. Not everyone cares that much and only they can know whether it's a problem to them.

Go out of my way to increase my chance of being battered just in case a man who didn't care enough to ask doesn't like me being bi? Nah, not doing that.

Calling me a liar by omission because I didn't answer a question I was never asked isn't just an offensive slur against my character, it's disablist. I'm calling bullshit on it as of now.

Autistic women are three times more likely to be raped than neurotypical women. This "implicit knowledge" bollocks is part of that too. It's not the autistic women who are at fault or need to change here either.

…

"I am not attracted to black people" - not racist.
"I am not attracted to black people because they cheat on their partners, smell funny and spread diseases." - racist.

"I am not attracted to fat women." - not...fattist(?)
"I am not attracted to fat women because they smell and have baggy fannies." - ignorant, obnoxious and bigoted.

"I am not attracted to bisexual men." - not homophobic.
"I am not attracted to bisexual men because the thought of it makes me sick/they fuck around behind your back/they spread HIV/I'd get my children tested etc." - homophobic.

Thank you! Everyone is of course entitled to preferences. Obviously. Some of those preferences are bigoted in origin. That in itself also doesn't make you a bad person, the systems we grow up and live in support/encourage that thinking.
The questioning to some posters is about unpicking that. A lot of these preferences seem to be based on the fear of being cheated on which has its origin in a biphobic trope. Calling that out doesn't mean we're saying you have to date bi people.

That's fine. But if a man asks you on a date, it doesn't oblige you to volunteer to him your date of birth if you are 31 but could pass for 25, or that you have a Brazilian wax or a full bush rather than a Hollywood, or that you are wearing shape wear or have done a really effective contour. If it's a big deal to him, the onus is on him to ask.

So my comparative mathematically “rarity” means I need to make disclosures the majority don’t? It puts an extra responsibility on me?

I don’t I’ve ever had a man disclose to me that’s he straight….

So he’s known he fancied men as well as women for at least the last decade and a half, but he didn’t know that made him bisexual?
That’s…..unlikely.

Do you have children? The men I’ve seen come out later in have all conveniently realised they were bi/gay after their wives have their children.
Funny that.

Is it not off putting to imagine your partner having sex/anal sex with another woman too? Having an aversion to someone solely due to their bisexuality is the definition of biphobic.

Regardless, my original comment was directed towards the many biphobic statements on this thread.

It's really, really common. I certainly did, along with lots of other people I know. For teenagers, "just a phase" is such a cliche, and same-sex crushes are seen as a common developmental stage for people who grow up to be straight. Then you get into a happy relationship with someone of the opposite sex so it's all a bit academic and anyway, the people around you are talking about "girl crushes" or doing that masculine "no homo but actually quite homo" male bonding stuff so you just think that everyone else has a level of attraction to people of the same sex, too. Calling yourself bisexual would seem genuinely fraudulent.

There is also - and straight people may not know this - a lot of questioning about whether one is “bi enough” to say that one is bi. A lot of bi people won’t have “equal numbers” of experiences with both sexes.

What if you’ve snogged women but never got naked with them? What if you have had a lifelong crush on Gillian Anderson but that’s your only non-hetero experience? What if you were mocked as a lipstick lesbian for kissing and dating a good female friend when you were 17, then you got serious with a guy and everyone assumed they were right and you were straight all along?

(Nowadays, heteroflexible is a term - it wasn’t when I was in my 20s and 30s.)

So, yeah. The feelings might have been there for decades, but it doesn’t mean they were labelled.

These comparisons don’t work though. If someone has a physical attribute you find unattractive (and still you’d be widely accepted and labelled as shallow), you have to look at this every time you look at your partner. That’s physical attractiveness. Bisexuality isn’t visible.

Other comparisons other people have brought up are also all problematic because they are all things that would directly effect you: if someone was in the army they would be deployed for long stretches of time leaving you alone, if someone wanted to go live in Timbuktu and you didn’t want to, if someone wanted to introduce BDSM to the bedroom that would effect your sex life, the list goes on …

Bisexuality is not visible and someone being bisexual does not affect your own life or your relationship in any way. If it negatively effects you mentally, presumably because you have negative assumptions and prejudices at play, then that is biphobia.

@Didimum hmmm, but attraction isn’t just appearance. I still fancy the pants off my ex GF but she votes Tory now and that would be hard to get past 😀

I don't get your point. They're all still characteristics/traits, whether they are physical or not. Some people find sarcastic people funny and attractive. Some people don't find sarcasm attractive at all.

For most people, not finding someone attractive isn't based on negative feelings, but rather just the lack of feelings about that particular trait, or because they have strong positive feelings for the opposite of that trait.

The "-phobia" comes into when hatred, bigotry or disgust is the reason behind it. So, with sexuality, having a preference for straight men isn't bigoted. But having a hatred or disgust for bisexuality is homophobic. Hence, why certain posters have been called out on this thread.

Some people find sarcastic people funny and attractive. Some people don't find sarcasm attractive at all.

Yet again, that is a characteristic you’d have directly in your life everyday. It directly affects you. Bisexuality is invisible – it does not come into a play in your individual relationship. Your partner is with you, they love you, are attracted to you and they look like what they look like and behave how they behave whether they are bisexual or not.

Categorically saying you would never be with a bisexual person, regardless of whatever else they may be, just because they are bisexual, is having an aversion, solely, to bisexuality. And that in itself is biphobic.

I am not saying that woman have to date or be attracted to bisexual men. I’m not saying they have to justify it. I am saying that it is a biphobic attitude.

Hence why I listed the other non physical attributes: what job they might do, where they want to live, what sex they want to have with you.

Someone being right wing and the other left wing can very much affect your life together as a couple – financially, the way you choose to raise children, etc. Someone being bisexual does not effect you.

And if we’re getting down to it, yes I do think categorically saying you’d never date someone who voted Tory, on that attribute alone, is pretty bigoted too. Again, you don’t have to do it and you don’t have to justify it, but it is still bigoted. (Regardless, it’s not a good comparison to bisexuality however because being bisexual does not come with a manifesto and set of social and economic policies to subscribe to).