I’m a girl, and at some point realized that I’m attracted to other girls. My boyfriend and I met and started dating about five months after I realized I was bisexual. I told him about this right out of the gate, as I didn’t want to have to hide something that I’m not ashamed of. I didn’t think he’d easily accept that part of me, what with him coming from a conservative, Catholic background; to my surprise, he was completely fine with it, and even said that it was all right if I had sex with other girls (or brought them into the bedroom with us). His rationale behind this was that, since I would have no emotional attachment to any potential female partner, his relationship with me wouldn’t be threatened. This struck me as being a little bit of a double standard. It’s totally possible that I could have “just sex” with another guy, and this wouldn’t endanger the emotional component of our relationship any more than sex with a woman would. In addition, people are people: having casual sex with a woman isn’t fundamentally different than casual sex with a man…is it? I’m certainly not complaining; the arrangement is pretty good for the time being.
The whole thing has gotten me curious about how the significant other of a bisexual person “handles” their partner’s interests. If your SO is straight or gay, is he/she okay with you having sex with people whose gender is the opposite of theirs? Or does the other person’s gender matter at all? Does he/she assume that you can’t form an emotional attachment to whichever gender he/she isn’t, and that it’s “safe” for you to get involved with them? Does he/she ever get jealous of you being with others, or is it more of a “sleep with who you want, just don’t get too attached to them” thing? Something in between? If your partner is bisexual, what are your “rules” for them being with other people? Do they agree with you, or does this aspect often cause tension and hurt feelings?
What exactly is there to handle? If you’re in a standard relationship, why would I “allow” them to have sex with someone else just because they’re attracted to both genders. I don’t get it.
Bi female, married, monogamous. Monogamos? One on one, anyway.
Anyway, to me monogamy is monogamy. I’ve had a couple of exes with your fella’s attitude, and I always found it rather insulting - he didn’t take my feelings for other women seriously. “Real” relationships were hetero, was the attitude, or the idea that anyone who didn’t have a cock couldn’t really be a threat to him. It eventually became a red flag.
But that’s just my experience. Needless to say, sexyfuntime (or deep emotional involvements) with anyone else of any gender are not OK in Oni no Marriage.
The girlfriend’s bisexual. I let her do whatever she wants with other women for the same reason your boyfriend lets you- other women are no threat to me. It’s inconceivable that she would ever leave me to have a relationship with another woman. That’s just ridiculous. So what have I got to lose?
I find that I want her to have sex with women more than she does, though. It seems like every time we’re at a party, I’m like “What about her? What about that one? Her? OK, her then.” I mean, that’s just an untapped gold mine right there. I get the benefit of having a committed girlfriend while still having casual stranger sex. How could I not want to cash in on that?
This made me laugh out loud b/c it’s the same way with me and my b/f. As soon as he realized I was serious about wanting to play with girls, he’s been really proactive in finding one for me Whereas I’m not willing to get rejected over it, so I would be content to let one fall into my lap, er, so to speak.
My brother in law had that relationship with a former girlfriend. She left him for her girlfriend. Who left her for her boyfriend.
Regardless of what your sexual preference is, polygamy needs some ground rules. I wouldn’t be open with someone who let me have sex with other women (particularly for his amusement - how disrespectful to my other partners) but not with other men. As someone else upthread said, does he think that a relationship with another women is only sexual? That seems pretty dismissive of same sex relationships.
Of course, I’m monogamous - I’m not having sex with anyone else nor “allowing” my partner to do so. But the point I’m trying to make is gender shouldn’t matter.
To answer the OP: no. We’re in a monogamous relationship. I miss women, but made a choice when we got serious. We’ll check out women together and that’s as far as it goes.
My partner and I got together when we were both young, and I finally came to terms with the idea that I was bi afterwards; a bit academic, really, since we’re in a monogamous relationship. It’s never come up in discussion, so my contribution might not fit here.
But, to me, monogamous is monogamous. Saying “sleeping with girls is ok, but not with boys” seems to me to be sort of misunderstanding the nature of bisexuality. (And yes, I know, everyone can define their own relationships, and not everyone is 50/50 bisexual.) Were I to find myself single, my next relationship could be with a girl or a guy - that’s kind of the point of bisexuality - and the idea that sleeping with guys would be cheating, but with girls is fine just seems bizarre to me. I wouldn’t see it that way, for my own behaviour; I wouldn’t expect him to see it that way either, because that would imply that my attraction to women doesn’t count as much as my attraction to men.
To those above who don’t see other women as a threat to their relationships - would you see other men as a threat to your relationships? If so, why the difference? Is it because your partners have a strong gender preference (that you’ve talked about, not just that they happen to be with you, so “obviously” have a preference for your gender)? I’d be interested in if this varies by orientation, too - whether bisexual people in same-sex relationships commonly get the same “permission”; I suspect not.
Hetero, former poly woman here, and I don’t get this. You are not taking these girls back into the marital bed for threeways with your husband, right? So what is in it for him? The odds of the girl that falls for you also falling for him are very small, and it leading to a threesome are even smaller.
When I was poly, I had a boyfriend on the side once or twice, as did my husband, but we kept those relationships separate from our primary relationship. At most, the men (or me and my SO’s girlfriend) would meet once or twice for dinner.
To the OP: your BF is a horndog hetero male. He is currently incapable of thinking that you could develop an emotional relationship with another woman that would threaten his relationship with you. He thinks its cool that his girl is into chicks.
Start dating another woman more than two times, without him there, and watch his defensive antennae shoot up.
Especially if you form an emotional connection and start seeing your girlfriend for more than sex. Like to complain about your boyfriend. THAT never happens in situations like this.
You’re not getting that your bf wants to live out his fantasy of being with two chicks at the same time. He’s giving you his “permission” to make that fantasy real for him. It has nothing to do with your needs; you are merely the enabler.
My partner is bi-/tri-/quadri-sexual, and we are in a long-term committed monogamous relationship. He doesn’t sleep with other men for the same reason I don’t, and he doesn’t sleep with women for the same reason. I can’t imagine any circumstances in which either of us would “allow” the other to sleep around. It has nothing to do with “permission” and everything to do with being happy with each other.
It’s nice to know that I’m popular enough around here to garner drive-by insults. Touching, really.
As I’ve recently said in another thread, there are a hell of a lot more faux lesbians than actual lesbians. Female bisexuality is almost never “I could have a relationship with a woman” and almost always “I could have sex with a woman.” You, a real bisexual, are a very small minority. My girlfriend is the latter category, a product of her days in theater college, where the men are gay and the women are smokin’.
There’s the old addage rings true in my experience: “When a man says he’s bi, it means he like guys. When a girl says she’s bi, it also means she likes guys.” So I’ll say it again; It’s inconceivable that my girlfriend would leave me for a woman.
Intellectually, the difference is that I can compete with other men, and possibly lose. I can’t lose out to a woman, though. Picture this: You’re a baker and you enter a cake contest. You make vanilla. Now would it hurt more to lose to another vanilla cake or a chocolate cake? The vanilla, right? Because you had all the ingredients they did, but you didn’t measure up. But the chocolate cake used different ingredients- if the judge likes chocolate, you lose. Not your fault, it’s just the way it is.
If I lost my girlfriend to another man, it’d make me an inferior man. That is NOT OK. If I lost her to a woman, then I’m…an inferior woman? I can live with that.
I never understood this kind of reasoning (or rationalizing). If you lose your girlfriend to another man, why does that make you inferior? It could just mean she’s more compatible with him; it has nothing to do with the other guy being “superior” to you.
Good thing you’re not gay. Every time you lost your bf, it would be to another man. How could you go on living, with all that accumulated inferiority?
What does being gay have to do with it? Every time I lose a gf, it’s to another man. Some girls I’ve wanted to keep. Some I’ve said good riddance. In the former case, I wanted something (her) and wasn’t good enough to have/keep it. Someone else was. How is that not inferiority?
I always took it as given that the root of sexual jealousy was a superiority/ competition/insecurity issue. Am I wrong about that?
Men’s dicks think differently than anything else on the planet.
Of course, monogamy should be the same whether you’re bi or straight, but straight men’s dicks love the idea of their woman getting it on with another woman. Maybe they should feel threatened emotionally, or maybe they shouldn’t. They should probably be consistent, at any rate, with letting their partner have casual sex with other men, but they’re usually not.
The big question is, so what? If you want to have sex with another woman, and he wants you to, does it really matter if it’s not quite logical? You’re only young once. Maybe it’ll be amazing, or maybe he’ll find out he does get hurt by you having sex with another woman. Do it or don’t, but please don’t put a lot of effort into worrying about it.
Whereas I’m not willing to get rejected over it, so I would be content to let one fall into my lap, er, so to speak.