Female reaction to male bisexuality.

One of my most popular posts was a piece entitled “How to talk to your bisexual boyfriend” and it attracts a lot of comments from women seeking to deal with their boyfriend’s bisexuality. I thought it would be interesting to analyse the female reactions to discovering they have a bisexual boyfriend and to see if we can learn anything from it.

I apologise in advance if this article comes across as sexist. I do have a prejudice in so much as  I have experienced these situations for myself as a male who has come out as bisexual to several girlfriends. But I do think this perspective and my conclusions will be helpful to women, so if you can get over my wounded male bias and reach the end of the essay, you’ll hopefully find it useful.

Based on the comments my earlier article attracted and on emails I received privately, it would seem that generally speaking you can characterise the sentiments of women who have just discovered their boyfriend is bisexual  as some or more of the following.

1. They still love their boyfriend
2. They are angry/hurt he didn’t reveal his bisexuality sooner.
3. They are worried he might decide he is gay.
4. They want him to be true to himself.
5. They don’t want him to sleep with men on the side. (The monogamy clause).

Lets briefly deal with each and then I’ll take a more holistic discussion of the points.

(1) Women still love their bisexual boyfriends. Good! Happy days! This is an excellent and fortunate place to start. From here all things are possible.

(2) They are angry and or hurt that their boyfriends didn’t reveal their bisexuality sooner in the relationship. On this point I see varying definitions of “sooner” ranging from “before he even asked her out” to “before he asked her to marry her”. What’s more the definition of “sooner” appears to be proportional to the length of the relationship up to the revelation. Men can’t seem to win on this one, because they can never tell their girlfriends they are bisexual soon enough.

Whilst its understandable that women are going to feel hurt, particularly if they have caught their boyfriend being unfaithful. I have never heard from a woman (even one who has not been cheated on) consider all the social barriers, shame and fears a man might have about revealing his bisexuality. In our hetero dominated world, few people outside the LGBT community understand how hard it is to come out. Girls you need to be more understanding about this, especially if you and your boyfriend live in a very heterosexual social environment or have a religiously conservative background.

(3) They worry their boyfriend might decide he is gay. I’ll analyse the motives behind this fear later, but for now, I’ll just say two things, (a) we can blame every gay man that ever tried to be straight for creating this stereotype [Joking] and (b) it singularly fails to understand bisexuality as a distinct orientation to homosexuality.

Its worth noting that for many bisexual men, the last two points (4) & (5) are impossible to reconcile. A point seemingly wasted on some of their girlfriends. Due to the logical inconsistency, I tend to dismiss point (4) as tokenism or at least as being very low on the list of priorities. In fact what is far more over-riding in these circumstances isabandonment issues.

Personally, I find its telling that I have never heard from a woman, who has dumped her boyfriend because she found out he was bisexual. They all want to save the relationship, they often are unsure how to do this or whether the relationship can survive. They are often confused and hurt, but I have not heard from a woman who instantly gave her boyfriend his marching orders just because she found out he liked boys.

So I don’t think women want to leave their boyfriends. More over their objections to him sleeping with men (the monogamy clause) and their fear that he might decide he is gay, are actually two sides of the same coin and centre on their fear that their boyfriend will leave them, not vice versa.

This is what leads me to think that abandonment fears are actually at the heart of the whole issue.

Bisexual men tend to keep their sexuality a secret because they fear their girlfriend will dump them. Something I have seen no evidence of. When they reveal their bisexuality, their girlfriend then fears that their boyfriend will leave them. Again if he is bisexual there is no evidence of this either.

The unfairness about these respective fears is that the male fear of abandonment is falsifiable and can be demonstrably shown to be misplaced, ie: by coming out and discovering that your girlfriend doesn’t actually want to leave you. In contrast the female fear of abandonment is (in the short term at least) unfalsifiable and there is nothing the guy can do to show her it is misplaced.

The problem is that this female fear of abandonment tends to manifest itself with trust issues, resentment and insecurities. These become a destructive force in the relationship before sufficient time has elapsed to allow the abandonment fear to be abated.

One guaranteed cure for female abandonment fears is long-term monogamy. Some women might be able to gradually accept an open relationship whereby they allow their boyfriend to have casual male partners providing of course that they always return to their female partners afterwards. But each takes time to accept and the abandonment fears actively work actively against allowing this to happen.

I seemed to be working towards a conclusion that you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. However, I don’t think that’s helpful or proactive in terms of relationship counselling.

The solution as I see it rests with the ability of women to quickly get over any feelings of hurt and anger they are experiencing and to rapidly resolve any abandonment fears they might have. This is easier said than done and places a heavy burden on women, but I do believe that if more women can take a cognitive approach to the situation, better outcomes ie: a loving and trusting relationship will result.

An explanation of how this might work will have to wait for another article, and whether or not you think I’m being fair towards women is also open to debate. However, I think we’ll agree that abandonment fears are a major destructive force in relationships, they cause men to lie and women to lose trust and feel insecure. Getting over abandonment fears is therefore central to a happy relationship.

Girls! Empathy and understanding is important.

I want to carry on from my last post about Female Reaction to bisexuality, which dealt with how straight women respond to discovering their boyfriend isn’t quite as straight as they thought he was. I also highlighted that central to many fears are abandonment issues and in my last post I promised a to discuss how we might get over them. But before I get onto that I wanted to explain in a bit more detail why I think this needs to be tackled instantly.

They say time heals all, but often there isn’t much time, here’s why:

Upon learning their boyfriend is bisexual, women are generally hurt and afraid, but all too often they make the mistake of focussing on their own feelings rather than recognise the difficulty this presents for their boyfriends.

After coming out with a big personal admission, men need reassurance too. If those admissions, especially concerning someone’s sexuality are not greeted with universal acceptance, then we put ourselves in a very emotionally delicate and vulnerable situation.

We bear our souls to our girlfriends, only to be told we are liars (often only by omission), cheats (often only because we have fantasies) and that we have “ruined everything”. How do you think that feels?

A little more empathy on the part of women would go a long way here. Even if you can’t accept the revelation, to at least empathise and acknowledge the difficulty we must have over-come to come out, to be grateful for the trust we have demonstrated in sharing our darkest secrets.

If this isn’t acknowledged it creates an emotional chasm between the two parties which can be difficult to bridge.

This same chasm can cause wild and incoherent responses from men. This is because of the intense confusion, rejection and condemnation we have to suddenly rationalise whilst the woman we love stands there telling us we are inadequate.

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t acknowledge women’s hurt and women’s feelings in all of this. Of course we should. In particular if they have been cheated on or deceived. But we need to know are partners are capable of moving on and won’t keep returning to square one. Wounds don’t heal overnight, but they don’t heal at all if you keep picking at the scab.

If a woman doesn’t seem to be able to move on, or keeps throwing her hurt back in the face of the man, then the relationship is on borrowed time, particularly if the woman failure to empathise earlier has created emotional distance.

We wont wait very long for women to get over something if they singularly fail to recognise they have hurt us in the process.

Yes I know that women might be having to come to terms with infidelity, but frankly compared to coming out as bisexual (or being outed as bisexual) that’s something which is relatively common. A Durex Global sex survey found that 22% of people have had extra-marital sex, that’s not counting affairs from unmarried couples. Infidelity happens very frequently, its hurtful and difficult to handle but most of us have to deal with it once or twice in our lifetimes.

Whereas coming out as bisexual, is a once in a lifetime experience, for about 2% of the population. Its bigger. There is more at stake. Thesocial barriers, fear and shame that men have to over-come whilst coming out or being outed is far more intense.

Failure to recognise that puts your ability to rescue your relationship in serious jeopardy.