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February 26, 2010
January 25, 2010
Married & Bisexual-Finding a Solution
Of all the bisexual husbands out there, a few join forces with their wives to find the solution. The following is from an online bi married male group. It reflects an element I think is important if you’re looking to get the most from a third party relationship; the connection. Not likely that it’s love, but it’s in that family of emotions.
Once the hard relationship crisis started to ease after my wife found a copy of something I had sent to an online contact, my wife’s bottom line issues turned out to be: a) she didn’t want to be abandoned and b) she wanted to be INcluded rather than EXcluded in my “whole” personality including the part that had been secretive and fearful. So, it appeared the ball was sorta back in MY court. I didn’t feel experienced in gay issues, but I had more contact and experience than SHE did so it felt to be my role to try to find ways to start bring my straight wife along. We tried to be open and creative…to find things to do that I might have done alone but now we would do them together. We both went to San Diego’s Pride activities, for example. We read a lot—on any related topic. We went to a bisexual support group here in San Diego. Another thing we did was do some online chatting with people together….men who represented they were married but had interests in men, bisexuals, etc.
We got connected with a married guy who said he lived in PHX. He said he had experienced some bisexual activity before he was married while in college and was interested in trying to do it again. He would start a scenario and then send it to us to pick up where he left off, develop the story a bit further and then send it back to him. Not long into the connection he said his job was bringing him to our area to attend a convention, trade show, or seminar. Plans were made to meet. The night before he was to arrive we got an email saying that somehow his wife got access to the email stream that had passed between he and us. Furthermore, his email address suddenly had been deleted. We were upset—not so much that we weren’t going to get to meet him after all—but more from the standpoint that if what he said was true he and his wife would be in a mortal struggle as we had been not so long before. We found out later, though, that what he had described he’d done while in college was kind of “boiler plate” erotic fantasy—that the “bones” of the story he told was familiar. What was new wasn’t the story…but my wife and I! We also came into some fairly reliable knowledge later that supported he had pretty much “chickened out” of the idea of meeting us. Such is life on the ‘net! What we realized, though, was that in passing the fantasy story-line back and forth, and our email exchanges with him had served to “bring us along” in certain ways—ways that we kinda needed at that moment.
January 13, 2010
Coming Out 2010 Style
MTV’s new season of Real World DC has cast a young man I think represents today’s refreshing attitude toward sexuality among his generation. Mike Manning, a twenty-two year old student from Thornton, Colorado is taking time off to be part of the show. He came out just before filming began. The following is an excerpt fr0m his interview with MetroWeekly.
Mike Manning (Photo by Todd Franson)
Interview by Will O’Bryan
MW: When you came out, that was as bisexual, right? You identify as bi, not gay?
MANNING: Yeah. I dated girls. I had my first serious girlfriend when I was 16 and lost my virginity to her. I dated girls all the way until my sophomore year of college. So I was straight.
MW: Were your parents okay with you liking guys too?
MANNING: In the beginning, they weren’t so much. They were nice, and they gave me the whole, “You’re our son and we love you anyway,” things like that.
The way I came out is I wrote my parents like a five-page letter. I tried to include everything. “I am telling you this because you are my parents. I love you.” We’ve always been very, very close. I’d played football with my dad, and we’d go fishing and shoot guns. I can stay in and watch TV with my mom and do whatever she does. My whole family, we’re very close. So I was like, “This isn’t a reflection on you. This is how I was born. I just want to include you in every aspect of my life. I don’t want to lie to you and tell you I’m going to the movies when I’m really going to a gay club.” I was just trying to be honest with them.
I sat them down, they read the letter, and then I was like, “Do you have any questions?” That was it. My dad was like, “Are you sure you’re gay or bi or whatever? Are you sure you like men?” Yes, Dad. “Are you sure it’s not a phase?” No, Dad.
I think the female body is very appealing. I enjoy seeing boobies and everything like that. [Laughs.] I feel the exact same way when I see a [male] Calvin Klein ad. I said, “This is how I was born and it’s taken me a long time to accept that. Believe me, Dad, I’ve thought about the whole ‘phase’ thing, and it’s definitely not a phase.”
My mom started crying. She said, “Does this mean I’m not going to have grandkids?”
December 28, 2009
G0Ys (Spelled with a zero)
Ahh, the joys of being a man . . .
G0YS . . .
Seems like a perfect niche for a lot of guys to me, men who don’t identify with homosexuality, but have deep affection, even physical desire, for other men. G0ys appears to be a movement of sorts, and for a number of reasons I believe a movement in the right direction.
After reading through g0ys.org and a few other sites, the only thing I find issue with is what appears to be a tendency to discredit stereotypical homosexuality. It’s fine to celebrate traditional masculinity in its purest form, but I don’t think it’s necessary or productive to call some men sissies or other derogatory terms. It’s not masculine or admirable to make fun of those who do not see things the same way some of the rest of us do. Celebrate masculinity and male intimacy, but leave the unnecessary baggage behind.
From the intro at g0ys.org
Most of the guys who stumble onto the g0ys (spelled w. a zer0) movement are looking for answers to some serious questions about themselves. Most are shocked when they learn that +60% of all guys have similar questions (the majority)! Most (but not all) of these guys have feelings for women, but also deal with internal issues arising from the fact that they also have affections for other guys, too! And, such guys don’t identify as “GAY” at all!
Don’t identify with “GAY”? No! Guys like us actually find the imagery & stereotypes that are promoted from WITHIN the so-called “gay-male community” to be repugnant to our sensibilities of masculinity & respect. We know instinctively that loving other guys has nothing whatsoever to do with gender-bending, x-dressing or playing the female role! G0YS, -by our very nature reject anything to do with playing inside another person’s butt; -hence we find the entire notion of “anal-sex” to be dirty, degrading & damn-unmasculine. Feel familiar? Know what? G0YS are right!
October 21, 2009
Bisexuality well defined
Bisexuality
Statistically, a vast majority of people have experienced some form of erotic attraction toward both sexes, no matter how brief, whether acted upon or not. Kinsey, et al., stated that exclusive homosexuality and heterosexuality represented end points on a spectrum of human sexuality, with many people falling somewhere in between. Basically, sexuality lies on a continuum and bisexuality is one point on that continuum.
Bisexuality is the potential for sexual and/or romantic involvement with members of either sex. Bisexual people are no more promiscuous than any other group of people, and are just as capable of making a long-term monogamous commitment to a partner as anybody else. It’s myth that bisexuals are non-monogamous.
Bisexual people tend to favour one sex over another, recognizing that they are attracted to both sexes. This does not mean that bisexual people need to have two lovers, two-timing, in order to feel fulfilled. Bisexual people live a variety of lifestyles, as diverse as either the heterosexual or the gay lesbian community. Bisexuality is an orientation that allows for people to be open to immense possibilities, whether acted upon or not.
Biphobia
Bisexual people are discriminated against for supposedly being more sexual, more confused, and indecisive. They are accused of being fence-sitters who want the best of both worlds. These myths, or biphobia, force many bisexuals to conceal who they are, hoping to protect themselves from intolerance from both the gay and lesbian and heterosexual communities.
October 14, 2009
A Marvelous Take on Male Bisexuality
In his witty writing style, Mark Simpson nails the male bisexuality dilemma.
Curiouser And Curiouser: The Strange ‘disappearance’ Of Male Bisexuality
The recent spate of media reports of the commonness of female bisexuality and the ‘non-existence’ of the male variety inclines Mark Simpson ‘father’ of the metrosexual to wonder why we seem to be kidding ourselves about the real, red-blooded nature of the ‘bi-curious’ times we’re living in.
(Originally appeared on marksimpson.com Feb 15, 2006)
Male bisexuality doesn’t exist. Or it’s very, very rare. Or it’s really just gay men in denial. Yeah, it’s official: bi guys are freaks and liars as well as non-existent.
Female bisexuality, on the other hand, is almost universal. It’s as natural and as true as it is wonderful and real and… hot!
Or so you would be forgiven for thinking if you had read the effusive reports in the papers about California State University’s recently published sex-research which claims that women are 27 times more likely to become attracted to their own sex than men.
I haven’t yet been able to study the research quoted, but any sex survey that claims to have interviewed 3,500 people and show that 0.3% of men are attracted to the same sex compared to 8% of women (as quoted in the Independent on Sunday 12/2/06) is difficult to take seriously – except as a measure of social attitudes rather than sexuality.
Maybe it’s because some of my best shags are bisexual men, but I’m beginning to get a bit teed off with this drive to make male bisexuality disappear, either into statistics smaller than a micro-penis or obscured behind a flurry of girl-on-girl action. A few months ago the New York Times published an article ‘Straight, gay or lying?’ which seemed to be a press release for the hilariously cranky research of Dr J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern University, which apparently involves wiring up people’s genitals and showing them dirty pictures and then claiming to have ‘proved’ that male bisexuality ‘doesn’t exist’ and that most women are bisexual. Which seems a much more tenuous conclusion to reach, rather than, for instance: most psychologists at Northwestern University are very strange indeed. (Amongst other extraordinary omissions, the article neglected to mention that Dr Bailey has more than one ‘previous’ in his area: he thinks transsexuals are also ‘really’ gay men and, in a coup-de-grace of his tidy-minded thinking, advocates eugenics to solve the problem of homosexuality).
I hate to break it to you guys, but most of the evidence, historical, anthropological and sexological, suggests that if anything, male ‘bisexuality’ – it’s a terrible word, almost as bad as ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’, but it will have to do for now – is much more common than the female variety. After all, entire civilizations such as Ancient (and according to many accounts, Modern) Greece have been based on it. Not to mention public schools, the Royal Navy and Hollywood….
September 27, 2009
One Man’s Experience with Bisexuality
Come as you are
From www.nerve.com
A personal essayby Neal Medlyn
I think I first figured out that I might be bisexual when I was in college. It’s hard for me to say when or how, as various alternate tales compete in my mind as the “official” truth. The first time I saw gay porn? When I realized my masturbation fantasies involved me switching parts, being the woman, then being the man? My identification with the gay movement? All of them sound equally silly, embarrassing and worse, perhaps just a personality hiccup and not a real “truth” at all. None of them sound like anything that approaches a realization of Identity with a capital I. And that, more or less, is indicative of my entire life as a bisexual: dubious, occasionally embarrassing, obscured.
Being a bisexual guy, as the term exists at the moment, is an exercise in frustration and confusion, and while I stand by that confusion as truthful and great (get me drunk and I’ll say it’s everything from the basis for art that I like to what I’d like America to stand for) I think it’s a basically flawed identity in sore need of some fixing.
Oh, some details might be called for here. The pertinent facts of my life are these: I am twenty-nine years old and incredibly happily married to a woman. I’ve dated and slept with exactly the same number of boys as girls. My feelings about the two sexes break down somewhat like this: I more easily form emotional attachments with women but because of that have found men mysterious and intriguing the way I’m sure my more hetero counterparts must find women. If I were to put it in those terms, I’d say I’m 70% into girls and 30% into boys. There. Done.
Now, back to what I was saying. Bisexuality is a disappointing, suspect, utterly chaotic identity. It seems to exist in only the foggiest regions of people’s brains, like Pol Pot the geographic location of Myanmar. They’re not sure what it is, but they’re pretty sure it’s lame and/or bad.
Gay men that I’ve dated in the past, the most recent being five years ago, were terribly suspicious. Aside from a few unexpected trysts with fellows, the first guy I officially dated was the president of an LGBT campus organization I decided to join. I should have known at the stunned silence on the first day when, delusioned by the supposed redemptive power of coming out, I offered that I was bi. The president of the group still decided to go out with me, but the majority of our time together consisted of long, accusatory conversations on car hoods. I broke up with him a few weeks later and was tearfully informed that I wasn’t able to love, to let myself really commit to a relationship with him, which I accepted as code for my waffling, noncommittal nature as a bisexual.
September 22, 2009
Married Men With Another Life to Live
This article from the Washington Post reflects insight into the minds of bisexual married men, along with the amazing variety of ways they deal with their dilemma.
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Listen to Bill, 71, a retired lobbyist in New Mexico:
“I’m probably the oldest of the callers, and I’ve been involved, off and on with men — discounting my Boy Scout and teenage years — since I was in my forties. I am married.”
John N. Craig of Fairfax runs a phone network and support group for closeted men who struggle to balance private yearnings with their public image. (Lucian Perkins — The Washington Post)
Listen to another Bill, 55, from Boston:
“There’s so many of us out there, it seems like it’s very, very good to communicate and support one another. . . . I feel like a typical male with an extra bonus, perhaps. My wife does not know.”
The Bills (along with Steve from New York, Joe from western Massachusetts, a nonprofit executive from the Washington area who won’t give his first name and a preacher from Toronto who also won’t give his first name) leave three- to five-minute voice messages, once or twice a week, in a “Voice RoundTable” created and facilitated by John N. Craig of Fairfax. Callers also listen to the others’ messages, making this a support group built around an answering machine, where no one interacts live.
That’s not all. Since 1990, Craig has organized dozens of three-day and one-day conferences for more than 200 complex closeted cases, white bisexual and gay men (where, exactly, is the line?) who are predominately in their forties, fifties and sixties. He has advertised for these gatherings — held in California, New York, Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and Massachusetts — in magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic and Harper’s.
Most participants are married.
Many have grown children.
Most hold high-ranking, leadership jobs.
That this is confidential with a capital C is understandable.
Craig, 52, is openly bisexual and holds a master’s degree in social work. “I’m strongly sexually attracted to men. I’m strongly attracted to women,” he says, sitting at a coffee shop on 14th Street NW yesterday morning. He was still trying to make sense of the spectacular disclosure Thursday by New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey — twice married with two daughters — that he is gay.
September 18, 2009
Bisexuality 101: How many bisexuals are out there?
I’ve asked this question a thousand times. This article from examiner.com gives you an idea of how difficult it is to arrive at a consensus. I personally believe, as far as men are concerned, if we could take the entire male population and strip away a lifetime of indoctrination, if men were allowed to perceive and react to what comes natural to them, the numbers would be astounding.
From examiner.com
By Mike Szymanski
No wonder we bisexuals feel so alone–we don’t even know how many of us exist. Estimates range from zero to tens of millions in the United States alone, depending on which study you believe.
It’s not easy to find hard numbers on this. To quote scholar and activist Loraine Hutchins:
Newer Kinsey Institute studies found both more evidence of bisexuality, and more denial. A late 80s study, for instance, showed 46 percent of (self-labeled) lesbians, not bisexuals, reporting having sex with men since in the ’80s”
Time Magazine said any statistic is unreliable because people who engage in such behavior don’t consider themselves bisexual.
Here are other reports:
* 0.3% of women and 0.7% of men engaged in sexual activity with both males and females within the previous year-”Sex in America,” University of Chicago, 1992
* 1.5% of women and 0% of men defined as bisexual based on sexual and romantic attraction-National Institutes of Health, 2002
* 5% of women and 10% of men fall solidly into a middle level of the Kinsey scale of sexual preferences. However, when accounting for people’s actions and attractions, as many as 25% of women and 46% of men could be labeled as bisexual.-Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, director of field research for The Institute for Sex Research
September 16, 2009
Cristy’s Concern About Her Bisexual Boyfriend
Many bisexual males ultimately opt for traditional marriage, which is usually to a straight bride. Many of them keep their sexuality secret, in some cases their entire lives. A growing number are telling their prospective wives about their bisexuality, which is often shrugged off by the woman, only to rear it’s psychologically intrusive head further down the road. This problem is related to society’s overall attitude toward sexual diversity.
The following is a typical scenario
BY Sasha, From Eye Weekly.com
I thought your take on why so many people believe bisexuals to be less monogamous was thoughtful and interesting. However, as someone who’s been in long-term, monogamous relationship with a bisexual man, I think you missed the real reason for these insecurities. I thought I was completely fine with my boyfriend’s bisexuality but what started to gnaw at me after a while was the fact that by committing to me he would never be able to enjoy that other side of himself. Sure, I could give him all the vag in the world but I could never satisfy his desire for cock. It creates an insecurity that really is twice as dramatic as a heterosexual couple. Where before I only had to worry about women hitting on my man, now I have to be worried about guys as well. Not to mention that the longer one goes without something, the stronger their desire for it becomes. I’m not saying these fears are rational, but it’s where the mind goes sometimes, especially when trust is not a strong part of the relationship.
He can’t just turn off his attraction to men – I mean, can he really ignore those feelings forever or as long as we’re together? I think it’s more about feeling you can never fully satisfy your partner and for many, cheating is the next logical step in that equation. Cristy
The Reply:
You bring up a salient point about how, when we pursue a traditional relationship model with an atypical partner, we behave as though we are entitled – obliged, in fact – to feel insecure. Andrea Zanin, who conducts workshops internationally about non-monogamy, speaks to this tendency eloquently: “Most of us are raised within and completely immersed in the institution of heterosexuality. By this I don’t mean the sexual orientation per se; I mean the paradigm that has us all believing a certain package deal of sexual and gender-related feelings, identities and behaviours is normal and right. Within that paradigm, the prescribed set of behaviours is more or less as follows: you are appropriately gendered for your sex, feel sexual attraction to people of only one sex/gender (the ‘opposite’ one), engage in monogamous or serial monogamous partnership with such people, marry, reproduce and so forth. Sometimes we encounter people or situations that fall outside that paradigm but as long as we can normalize them, we can sort of incorporate them into the paradigm so that they remain comfortable for us. So for example, if your guy likes other guys, that can be seen as something that makes him unique or unusual, but you can still be ‘fine’ with it as long as it doesn’t disturb the rest of the package deal. The problem is that sometimes those unique or unusual people or circumstances are just a bit too hard to normalize, for whatever reason, and that causes us a great deal of anxiety.”
