I like the idea of this suite of threads, and didn’t see one about bi types, so I thought I’d step into the breach.
I’m bisexual. Looking back, I can see the first stirrings of an attraction to my own sex when I was around ten. I didn’t really come to grips with it, though, until I was in college…and I’m still not officially “out” except here on the good old SDMB.
Like the other people who have started threads such as these, I don’t claim to speak for all the bisexuals in the world, but I’ll try to answer any questions forthrightly. As Esprix did in “Ask the Gay Guy,” I would like to ask that no one indulge in flaming or religious debate…other than that, anything goes.
Anywho, a dear friend of mine is bisexual, and, having no understanding of what it would be like to be attracted to a woman (yech), I asked him to explain. He likened it to ice cream - some days you feel like chocolate, some days you feel like vanilla.
Good point. Henceforth, anyone who wishes to may address me as Bi Guy. (I thought of using C.B. Guy, but that makes me sound like a truck driver.) :rolleyes:
I don’t want to waffle on your question, but I’ve been married (to a woman) for over eight years and haven’t had sex with men at all during that time…let me think back…
As I recall, it wasn’t so much that I would think to myself “I feel like sleeping with a woman rather than a man today.” Rather, I found that I responded to people as individuals, and was attracted to some of them and not others completely without regard to whether they were men or women. Even now, although I haven’t slept with a man in years, the attraction works the same way. Aesthetically speaking, I just get turned on by both, with perhaps a slight edge to women (although that may just be the result of being locked off from actually sleeping with men).
I agree with your friend in one regard: my attraction to men and my attraction to women are predicated on different qualities. I like both, but for different reasons.
Yeah, I was gonna say, he’s single. I’m certainly not going to go off on the “bisexuals don’t believe in monogamy” tangent.
I think he agrees with you that he is attracted to people, not sexes. But still, as he put it, “When I was in Boston, for some reason I was in ‘girl mode,’ but ever since I moved to San Diego, I’ve been in ‘boy mode.’” I think it has as much to do with his frame of mind as it does his attraction quotient.
Well, I’ve certainly been in “girl mode” in terms of behavior for years, but I’ve always remained resolutely bi in terms of unconsummated desires.
(heh - as I typed the phrase “resolutely bi,” I had a mental image in the style of those paintings from the early days of the Russian Revolution, showing a square-jawed man gazing dramatically off into space with one powerful arm around a man and the other around a woman, each of them with a hand on his chest, looking adoringly at him.)
I do have friends that switch back and forth like your friend apparently did, but often it’s because they are struggling with whether or not they are gay and alternating periods of suppression with periods of experimentation. I should also admit that since I’ve broken my long silence by coming out in Straight Dope IRC chat and then on this board (MPSIMS actually), I’ve found myself noticing men more and more. Damn, I thought I had successfully locked it down.
BTW, Gay Guy, nice of you to stop by. I was beginning to feel like I threw a party and no one came. (everyone, you should stop by Gay Guy’s website…he’s cute.)
C=(:^{D> )
Mixing your musical metaphors there, Cubby…and in here you should refer to me by my title, Bi Guy.
As for The Crying Game (her name was Dil, BTW, not Adele), I think he DID fall in love, and that was what caused such anguish in him after what I call The Great Weenie Surprise. A lifelong heterosexual was abruptly forced to try to reconcile his growing love and sexual attraction for a person with the fact that she wasn’t plumbed the way he thought. See Victor/Victoria for a rather different treatment of the plumbing vs. person dilemma.
A few side thoughts on The Crying Game… kudos to the great Forest Whitaker as the British soldier who is kidnapped by the IRA and was Dil’s boyfriend, and more kudos to America’s movie critics, who uncharacteristically helped to conceal The Great Weenie Surprise for an amazingly long time, thus allowing more moviegoers to be caught off guard by it.
(Gay Guy, are you asked to provide the “gay critique” for movies like Funny Girl?)
Ahem. Bi Guy, please. Let’s observe the formalities. Just because their names aren’t “Abby” and “Ann Landers” doesn’t mean their readers can feel free to call them Popo and Eppie.
As to your question, what I mean by “attracted” is sexually attracted. In the days before I was married, I was in physical and/or romantic relationships with both men and women (usually not at the same time, but there was occasionally overlap depending on the seriousness of the relationships in question). Nowadays I never act on my attraction to men (nor on my attraction to women other than my wife), but the attraction is there. I still find myself sizing up people as potential lovers even though there is no potential, and also just plain ogling a tight set of buns (regardless of what’s on the other side of those buns).
If I were to find myself single again, something I strongly hope never happens, my next relationship would be just as likely to be a man as a woman. I hope that’s specific enough.
Is your wife aware of your attraction to men? If not, do you plan on telling her and what do you predict her reaction to be?
Personally, I find it terribly terribly sexy.(looking back, I think I actually sought gay men out as potential boyfriends, not to try to convert them, but because I was attracted to that very characteristic)
But I am bi, thereby appreciating the open-mindedness of others, I suppose. (This board has a way of making people share just a BIT too much.)
And I will ask the same question I asked ChrisCTP, do you plan on fulfiling your fantasy, and if so would you consider it cheating? If your wife were aware?
I am curious because I have never been married or in a very committed relationship, allowing me to play on both sides of the fence whenever the mood struck. I am sure it is a very individual issue, I’d just like to get some ideas. Thanks BG. xoxo
Gabba Gabba, We accept you, we accept you, one of us.
Oh, well, that’s definitely not his situation - he’s very comfortable being bi. He just finds himself in “mood swings,” for lack of a better term. But, again, he’s more concerned with the person inhabiting the body, not just the body.
Perhaps this belongs in the Gay Guy thread (and perhaps this is a hijack; if so, sorry) but why are Broadway musicals such a classic gay thing? I ask out of equal parts neutral curiosity and self-interest – I’m also a huge fan of Broadway shows, and go to New York at least four times per year to catch up on new shows.
pashley-Thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious to me.
Chef- Thank you so much for sharing your most personal feelings with us here on the board, I, and I am sure everyone else, greatly appreciates it. You’re descriptions of your feelings were so close to how I feel regarding relationships, I could not have expressed it better. But, looking back at my question, I feel it was out of line and far too personal and certainly not deserving of an answer or even a remark. So I am retracting. I posted without thinking, and I am sorry. Lesson learned for me I suppose. Thanks again Cheffie!! I am curious about the Broadway musical thing though…
I like it here-can I stay?
And do you have a vacancy for a Back-scrubber?
No need to retract your question, psycat. I don’t mind talking about it.
She’s not aware of it. I realize that many people will not approve of my decision not to tell her, and I confess I’m not wholly comfortable with it myself, but…
She and I met when I was 12 years old and carried on a pen-pal, see-you-at-the-dance kind of relationship until she got her driver’s license (I was in military school and she lived some distance away). I was grappling with my sexual identity then, and besides, at military school if you like guys you KEEP IT TO YOURSELF, or you get bashed. A lot. So I was not in the habit of revealing my desires to anyone, least of all a girl! It was too soon, I kept telling myself. The years went by.
And then suddenly we were talking marriage, and it was too LATE to tell her. She would have rightly wanted to know why I didn’t speak up sooner. Besides, when I decided to get married, part of that decision was to vow fidelity, which meant no more men anyway, so I didn’t see what point would have been served by telling her. (disease, you say? Especially AIDS? I was a plasma donor at the time and thus had weekly proof of being clean.)
As to her reaction, I had a preview of what it would likely be a couple of weeks ago, while we were watching “Ally McBeal.” A man Ally was sizing up as a mate revealed to her that he was bi, and Ally reacted in a variety of horrible, prejudiced, and negative ways. It was the perfect opportunity to turn to Mrs. Chef and say, “So how you would you feel in the same situation?” To my inward dismay, she said she agreed with Ally on several points, including “bisexuality is incompatible with fidelity.” I knew then that my decision to keep it to myself was the right one.
Well, hypothetically if she were aware AND supported it (which is different from not opposing it), yes, I probably would. I do very much miss men, and as I said in another post, if I were to find myself single again I would be just as likely to get involved with a man as with a woman…maybe more likely, because of the backlog. grin
However, that will NEVER happen. It would be disastrous enough if I told her that I have feelings for men…if I then followed up by asking for permission to act on those feelings, I would be alone in the house by the next day. I’m not prepared to end my marriage and lose my son over a nostalgic fondness for sex with men, so that’s it.
