Being Bisexual

Being Bisexual

Here’s a real live problem from an agony aunt letter to the newspaper this week.

“I am a 45-year-old single woman and really confused about my sexuality. I have had two long-term relationships, both with men, but was not in love with either of them, and didn't enjoy the sex. Sexually, I much prefer women. However, I have never been in love with a woman – the only people I have fallen for have been male, and unavailable. How people fall in love with someone who reciprocates is a mystery to me, and I don't even know where to start, or which sex to start with. How can I fall in love only with men, but find sex arousing only with women? Am I gay? Bi? Straight but bicurious? Just totally messed up?”

There are probably a few essays in this small letter from a woman who could really do with some useful advice. Sadly, some of the contributors of aforementioned advice on the website are not the people that this woman should be listening to.

Take this delightful comment for an example of someone who doesn’t “geddit”.

“I don't believe in Bi-sexual people - as Phoebe from Friends knowingly sings about Bi sexual relationships ..."but I think they are just kidding themselves". Amen. The couple of Bi's I knew at Uni became gay after Uni.

You are gay as you like sex with women - that is the "sexual part" of being hetero or homo sexual, but there are loads of heterosexual men and women who have better relationships with the same or different sex - I am straight but have great, very close, non-sexual relationships with some male friends - I would say you just need to find the right woman.”

And then there is someone thankfully counteracting this.

“I think sexuality can be very fluid for some. Perhaps it could help for a moment to lump together men and women as just 'people' - you would then be saying something like 'I have great sex with some people', 'I stay in relationships with bad sex', and 'I have fallen for unavailable people'. I think it is important to ask yourself why? - with regard to each of those statements, irregardless of the persons gender.”

But even this doesn’t really cover the issues.

In my opinion, for what it is worth, there are a variety of issues going on for this woman at the moment and I would like to deal with these questions separately.

1.       Is she bisexual?

2.       What does she mean when she says “falling in love”?

3.       Is there any correlation between “falling in love” and the unavailability of the people that she has allegedly fallen in love with?

4.       Can you have fabulous sex without being “in love”?

5.       Do we have to label ourselves sexually for life?

There are more questions that I would like to pose from the two responses that I have chosen to comment on.

·         Does an attraction for people of the same sex make you gay?

·         Does she really need to find a ‘woman’ or just a ‘someone’?

·         Does she really need to ‘find’ anyone?

·         Does bisexuality automatically lead to homosexuality?

·         Why do people stay in relationships with bad sex?

·         What is so enticing about the unavailable?

·         Irregardless????

For what it is worth, I don’t think this woman is gay. I think she needs some serious help on discovering herself and her sexuality which is not dependent upon other people, be they male, female, gay, straight, bi or even transgender. She needs to differentiate between sexual desire and being ‘in love’ but then again, don’t half of the population suffer from the same lack of understanding? And I hasten to add, this is a difficult one because good sex is certainly enhanced by feeling an incredible intimacy with the person that you are fucking.

So let us look at those questions that I have posed individually.

1.       Is she bisexual?

I hate labels. They are conformity’s chastity belt. They constrain and perpetuate the status quo. They are the anarchist’s nightmare. Why does she have to declare herself as gay, straight with a bi-curiosity or bisexual? However, as the question has been posed, I might respond as thus – Aren’t we all darling?

Obviously, there are some people who are more heterosexual than others, i.e. that they simply would not even consider the thought of being attracted to someone of the same sex but I would suggest that some of these people, particularly if they are women, are possibly suppressing bisexual tendencies.

There is nothing wrong with admitting that you like to look or even feel the body of someone who is the same sex as you but this does not necessarily make you bisexual. Wouldn’t it be such an easier world if we could get people to admit and appreciate that they are sexual in the first instance? Once people have accepted that they are sexual beings and what that entails, the need for additional labels such as bi or gay become irrelevant.

However, we are not there yet. The sexual liberation has stagnated and a new sixties is required. I just hope we don’t have to wait until 2060 for it to happen.

So, is this woman bisexual? Highly likely, and so what? If she were to declare herself as bisexual, she might actually find herself more attractive to the very men that she seems to want. Good, sexually honest men love a bit of bisexuality and despite the quote from “Friends” bisexual people are not kidding themselves. They are possibly far more open and honest with themselves as sexual beings than the rest of the population.

2.       What does she mean when she says “falling in love”?

We use this phrase so readily without truly exploring what it means. If you look at her actual writing, you could think that she means “being aroused” when she uses the phrase in the first instance. She has been in two relationships but has not been in love (sexually aroused). When she talks about never being ‘in love’ with a woman, perhaps she means that she has never had a relationship with a woman though has been aroused, which means that the phrase has already taken on a new meaning.

On the news today, they were talking about Kate and Wills being “in love” because they have declared their intention to get married and the photographs by Mario Testino apparently capture their “in-loveness”. Who are we to say whether they are in love or not? I don’t know William or Kate and neither do the royal correspondents for all their trekking around the world to take insignificant and unimportant photos of the unimportant events that they attend. What the hell do they mean when they say they are “in love”?

It’s actually quite a dangerous phrase.

There are some people who think that being in love is a false and transient state of being; an alleged natural high that is unnatural and unsustainable, an image of intimacy rather than intimacy itself, a dependency that can be destructive where you lose yourself into a relationship that has no grounding.

There are others who think that being in love is the pinnacle of companionship; that being in love is the coming together of mind, body and soul that goes well beyond a marriage or a relationship but do they use the phrase “in love” correctly? Or do they just mean that two people love one another?

It’s a flippant phrase. It captures nothing about the extent and value of relationships. And it is a judgment that nobody other than the people involved in a relationship can comment upon. It is a stock phrase that is supposed to demonstrate to others that a couple (another label) are together, committed.

If I am honest, I would much prefer someone to hear someone say that they are completely themselves when they are with me rather than saying that ‘we’ are ‘in love’. I think that says far more about the strength of passion, intimacy and feelings than this silly meaningless phrase that is easily banded around and is so open to interpretation.

“How can I fall in love only with men, but find sex arousing only with women?”

You can’t lady! You cannot possibly be ‘in love’ without the utter brilliance of sexual arousal.

If we are hopeless enough to think of being ‘in love’ as the pinnacle of a relationship, then how can you possibly be ‘in love’ without physical passion being part of that.

Loving someone, as I think she possibly means here, involves everything; sex, passion, loving kindness, desire, companionship, compassion, equity, balance, trust, respect and so the list goes on.

If one aspect of this is missing, the love cannot be there and it certainly cannot grow.

I suspect that what she really means is “how come I have only had relationships with men but find sex arousing only with women?”

Maybe she, like others, may find that living with or being in a relationship with men may only ever hit certain buttons and having sex with a woman may also only hit certain buttons.

Doesn’t this reiterate the issue of exclusivity, reminding us that declaring an intention to be with one person solely may not actually be the right thing to do?

3.       Is there any correlation between “falling in love” and the unavailability of the people that she has allegedly fallen in love with?

I am going to keep this response short but it probably needs a revisit all of its own.

“Falling in love” suggests something that is unattainable. Ergo the people are unavailable!

But seriously, this woman seems to be under the impression that there is this ideal of falling in love and being with this special person for the rest of her days. The fact that these people are unavailable reiterates the stupidity of that phrase once more.

It’s all a dream! Imagery gone awry! It sounds as though she is a hopeless romantic with a preconceived notion of what to expect from a relationship. What she cannot seem to understand is that the unavailability of the people she thinks she is in love with shows that the ‘in love’ is the wrong thing to aspire to.

Falling in love with “someone who reciprocates” means NOT falling in love with them!

Loving someone who reciprocates is a different issue.

4.       Can you have fabulous sex without being “in love”?

I suspect that you can have excellent sex with someone that you are not ‘in love’ with. I have fucking brilliant sex with someone I am not ‘in love’ with. However, I love him passionately and intimately, whatever “love” means.

Sex with someone that you have an intense passion and respect for has to be the most brilliant sex of all. Togetherness like that, where the mind is being fucked as much as the body, where the spirituality and the sensuality is intertwined with the physical, where the passion does not stop with penetration is the most incredible thing that I have ever experienced.

In some ways, I never want sex again without that.

However, I also recognise that sex is sex. It is a physical thang! You can have rather exciting, energetic, arousing sex with someone you do not have feelings for because sex is fun in its own right.

If you want to pinnacle of sex, then in my opinion, it cannot be bettered than when it is intelligent sex that combines the physical, emotional and spiritual in mind, body and soul.

5.       Do we have to label ourselves sexually for life?

There is a short response to this.

No!

Why is this woman so hung up on labelling herself in a certain category of sexuality?
I do not consider myself heterosexual. I do not consider myself bisexual. I do not consider myself gay because I fucking adore big cocks in my needy cunt!

Seriously, I have spent most of my life fucking men. I adore being fucked by a man who knows how to arouse me. I like sex. I like penetrative sex. I want cock and I cannot imagine being totally fulfilled without it. However, fingers excite me too and it is not only men that have long fingers that can reach inside my pussy and make me cum.

I love looking at the beautiful curves on a woman. I love breasts. I adore full bushes of pubes. I love the roundness of hips and the prettiness of faces.

I happen to enjoy male company probably more than female company but I do like women and would happily kiss and cuddle and fuck another woman. That is immensely exciting and arousing.

But I do not really want to put a label on all of that.

As I said earlier, it is time we labelled ourselves as one thing and one thing only – as a sexual being. The rest loses significance once we have done that.

And so penultimately, to the bullet points

·         Does an attraction for people of the same sex make you gay?

·         Does she really need to find a ‘woman’ or just a ‘someone’?

·         Does she really need to ‘find’ anyone?

·         Does bisexuality automatically lead to homosexuality?

·         Why do people stay in relationships with bad sex?

·         What is so enticing about the unavailable?

And I shall be brief.

Firstly, no. Finding a woman attractive does not make you gay if you are a woman. It is the most pathetically generalistic and useless thing to say. There are plenty of women who look at other women, see their beauty and would never feel comfortable licking another pussy. They are not gay or bi. They just appreciate the look of other women, and may even be excited by them.

Secondly and thirdly, I am beginning to think that this woman just wants a special person, be it male or female. My only advice to her would be find yourself before you go searching for others and you may come to the conclusion that you don’t actually want another.

We are indoctrinated into thinking that the only way to live is in coupledom.

Maybe this is the very first piece of advice that this woman should be given; that this is not the thing to which she should aspire.

In true Zen fashion, she should be encouraged to find her path, live her life without searching but constantly keeping her eyes and other senses open for the possibilities that life can give. Seekers will not find, and even if they think they have, the fulfilment may be lost in the ‘finding’.

It is wonderful to have a special person in your life. It feels damn good but it is more important to find you first. If that ‘you’ happens to enjoy another ‘you’ without losing either of ‘you’ in the process, then congratulations!

Fourthly, no!

Fucking other women is not going to make me into a lesbian. Not in a month of Sundays. I am not ruling out the possibility of, in the future, having my most important relationship with another woman. I actually don’t think this is likely but I am not ruling it out. My sexuality, as I stated earlier, is fluid (very!!).

A friend of mine recently said to me that she was not attracted to a man or a woman. She was attracted to caring, loving and gorgeous people irrespective of their gender.

What a sensible woman she is!

In response to the fifth bullet point, what is the point of staying in a relationship with bad sex but there are millions who do. Let’s not dwell on this. There are reasons why people stay in relationships irrespective of the sex but I cannot now understand why people do so if they have the means to get out.

And what is so enticing about the unavailable? I think I have probably already covered this but I do think it is to do with people’s misguided views on what to expect from a relationship.

Having a vision of a perfect relationship is setting everyone up for a fall. Living in a falseness of expectation is not going to make for true happiness.

Appreciating individuality and not dancing around with impossible expectations has to be the way we should live.

Finally, I have been looking at these ‘problems’ in the newspaper for a few years now. Even though the specialist agony aunt is an intelligent and unconventional person, her responses are often very traditional.

Let’s stop labelling. Let’s start living. Let’s embrace sexuality without dependency.

Isn’t this the message that this woman could really do with hearing?

An Alternative Royal Wedding

Charlie Boy said that he was delighted but they took their time (pot and kettle). The wicked step-mother said it was “wicked”. Peter Broadbent, better known as the Bishop of Willesden, said that he gave them seven years and then they would start itching. Not very Christian, so some people said.

Public ooos and aahs have only just started. My hope that they get married in the Spring rather than the Summer has been realised. At least we do not have to endure more of the wedding build up than absolutely necessary.

It’s going to be a long few months regardless.

And we love the fact that they are getting married on the same day that Eva Braun married her ‘beau’.

So Wills and commoner Kate have decided to go the way of monogamy after eight years or so of courtship.

Courtship – what a peculiar phrase that is. Courting favour? Courting lust?

All people entering into marriage should think long and hard about what they are actually doing. This is allegedly a life-long commitment to one another, forsaking all others and remaining faithful as long as ye both shall live.

Can someone in their twenties really make that commitment when they have yet to develop and fully evolve as a human being? I’m not sure they can. All they can realistically do is live in the moment, believe that there is trust and hope that a relationship can withstand the day to day pressures of life, the making of babies and nurturing of a family and understand the notion that people are like sand; constantly moving, always developing and changing, never stagnating – hopefully.

So Charlie Boy is probably wrong, as ever. They have taken their time and I suppose they have considered this monumental decision but then again, isn’t this all about expectation and custom? Even though we all know that Wills and Kate have clearly had sex with one another, there is the expectation that those who hold high office, or are part of The Family Firm, should be married and not merely living together. Apparently, that marriage vow makes someone respectable, virtuous, honest.

Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour Party and there are some that are pressurising him to stick a ring on his partner’s finger for the good of the party, to make him a more respectable leader. I hope he sticks his fingers up to such a suggestion, prominently and vociferously, showing quite clearly that a commitment to another human being does not have to be accompanied with a band of gold and such a commitment will not make him a better leader.

But let us return to the happy couple of the moment. Let us consider what is happening and what is going to happen to their relationship or what could happen to their relationship if they were the enlightened folk that we would like to be head of our nation (and let us ignore the fact that there are many of us who have more republican tendencies and find it all abhorrent that this family has such a privilege).

On the radio the other day, people were discussing fidelity and the fact that the Princes of Wales’s down the years have always had mistresses. This is a common factor for many of them, allegedly. In fact, all monarchs have had their flings as have their partners.

Edward the Seventh was a right randy whatsit. Lily Langtry was his most famous beau but he took lovers left, right and centre. The court of the time knew this. It was one of those open secrets in the post Victorian era.

The good queen herself obviously never had such dalliances, such was her commitment to her dead husband, but then there was the ‘weird’ relationship with Mr. John Brown. Apparently, they had adjoining bedrooms which some commented on saying that it was “contrary to etiquette and even decency”.

Edward’s son, George V also probably had affairs, maybe to get away from the stringency of the matriarch figure that was his wife.

Here’s the really strange thing. People have commented on all the ‘affairs’ that Edward the Eighth had before he married Mrs. Simpson. Surely he was the mistress! Can you have an affair if you are not married? Or is it just an improper relationship?

According to the person on the radio, only George VI and his daughter, our present queen, has remained faithful to one partner, though obviously the Queen’s consort has played away too, allegedly, though we are not allowed to know this because the thirty year rule of disclosure is censured about those members of the royal family who still live. Madness.

We all know the lurid stories of tampons and Prince Charles’s extra-marital bonking. Some might say that at least he was consistent, and stuck with his lover for decades; finally marrying the person that some thought he should have married in the first place. His commitment to Camilla clearly did not warrant a ring on the finger for many a year.

So it looks as though there is a custom, a trend. It looks as though the Firm has resolutely ignored the sanctity of marriage for generations.

Now the Royal Family survive because of tradition. Those who argue for the constitutional monarchy state that they bring in the crowds and generate a huge income for the country in royal tourism, probably not as much as us taxpayers pay but nobody seems to discuss that properly.

So if we accept this argument, perhaps we should also stick to other royal traditions, i.e. that the heir to the throne can get married and play the pomp and ceremony games but they should also be free to dangle their bits wherever they want.

Only of course, I would never suggest such a thing.

But in all seriousness, perhaps William and Katherine, as we now have to call her (I so wish she had been called Kelly or Tracy), should consider this infidelity question now and have a more enlightened approach to their marriage, keeping all customs going and introducing a few new ones.

In the name of equality, Wills should suggest that if he is free to have his dalliances then so should Kate be free to do what she wants, should the temptation come her way. She’s a good looking girl, in her way, and I am sure that there will be plenty of gorgeous men looking her way in the hope of bedding the future queen of England. It could be quite fun for the girl!

Seriously though, wouldn’t it be wonderful if William and Kate decided to have marriage vows that did not include the lie “forsaking all others”? Wouldn’t it be brilliant if they could explain on a Panorama programme that they are completely committed to one another but they do not rule out sexual relationships with others because there is a difference between intimacy with one and having sex with another? Wouldn’t it be splendiferous if they said that they were both young and did not know what life was going to throw at them, and that although they are committed to procreation and continuing the family line, they might also want to have a more liberal and free relationship with one another that enabled them to grow in all manner of ways, for the benefit of themselves and their subjects, who would benefit from the liberty that they allowed themselves?

It just makes one think that there are possibilities but in this nation of prudish and hypocritical behaviour around sex, the marriage of these two people will conform to the anarchic customs of royal traditions, where expectations of fidelity are borne out, and in a misogynist way, if Wills decides to play away, then that is also traditionally acceptable.

This wouldn’t happen in France. As it was in Edward VII’s time, the public acknowledge that Sarkozy and his wife are not likely to be faithful unto one another. There are other people in the marriage, not three as Diana famously said but four or maybe more.

Nobody bats an eyelid. French society has not disintegrated into anarchy because their leader has sex with more than one person. The presidency is not undermined. Mitterand’s mistress was at his graveside with his wife when they put him in the ground, and nobody really gave a damn.

I’m not suggesting that this has to be the way. If William and Kate want to have a life of committed monogamy, then so be it. It suits some people.

But if they did decide that they wanted other relationships, then I hope that it can be agreed between them. I hope that there is enough honesty in their forthcoming marriage where they can say to one another, “I find this person attractive” and have a talk about what having sex with that third party would actually mean.

And I mean this for both of them, not just the male in the relationship.

More and more women are finding opportunity and desire to have relationships outside a marriage.

I suppose that I should stop talking now in case I am sent to the tower. I am not suggesting that this marriage cannot work. In fact, it is more likely to succeed because they did not rush into this decision. However, I am merely pointing out that they should be mindful of the fact that even in the most traditional of places, there are hidden customs and there are desires and that honesty with one another is far more important than sexual fidelity.

But of course, that is only my opinion, and practicing the preaching is far more difficult.