Enlightened Male2000

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.

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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.”

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