Me & my partner are both bi and poly, though functionally pretty monogamous at this point. They don’t necessarily go hand in hand, though; it’s not like being bisexual gets you a special Get Out Of Monogamy Free card. It needs just as much negotiation as a monosexual open relationship.
I’ve never understood the attitude that other women aren’t a “threat”, even, putting aside the obvious double standard…for one, from what I’ve seen in my circle of friends it’s hilariously wrong, and for two, if you’re worried about your SO’s other partners being “threats”, why are you in an open relationship to begin with?
To answer the question of why a woman sleeping with another woman is no different than her sleeping with another man, well… duh! Not only would I want to be the biggest dick in the relationship, I’d want to be the only one! Plenty of room for more pussy, though.
Not that I’m in that kind of relationship, but if I was, I’d figure that if we were truly monogamous, then she’d be living only half of her sexuality. I wouldn’t like if if she were getting M-F activity elsewhere (hey, that’s my job), but wouldn’t she miss F-F activity? I’d hate to cut her off from that. Of course we’d have to agree that her extracurricular activities are physical only, and that I’m still the main person in her life. If either of us couldn’t handle that dynamic, then it would be a bad idea.
It has nothing to do with thinking that homosexual relationships are “less than” regular relationships. It’s about both of us being satisfied and fulfilled.
Instead of being bisexual, what if a white girlfriend of a white boyfriend had a strong attraction to both white men and black men? Would you, the white boyfriend, be OK with an open relationship where she could have casual sex with black men outside the relationship? You wouldn’t want to cut her off from that, would you? If you were a monogamous couple, she would be living only part of her sexuality.
Because my girlfriend and a black man aren’t an attractive thought to me. Her with another woman is. Also, the black man can potentially replace me whereas the woman cannot. Lastly, the black man might be a better partner than me, both sexually and emotionally, whereas the woman is sexually and emotionally incomparable. I refer you back to my cake comparison for explanation of that last point.
It doesn’t work like that - at least not for me, or the (admittedly few) other bisexual people I know. Being bi means there are more people we find sexually attractive - in the same way that gay and straight people find lots of people who aren’t their partner attractive. It doesn’t mean that we need to sleep with them all - bisexuality is not the same as non-monogamous. You can have an open relationship, of course, but that’s a) not something I have experience with, and b) no different to any other open relationship, as far as the mechanics go, I would think.
The comparison above to skin colour is a good one - I’ve used hair colour before. In the same way that hair colour is a characteristic that most straight and gay people find relatively unimportant in their partner, though they may have preferences, gender is one of those things that bisexual people find relatively unimportant, although they usually have preferences.
To answer the OP. Whether you are hetero, bi, or pansexual doesn’t really anything to do with whether you are monogamous or polyamorous. You get to pick one from the former group and one from the latter group to define your relationship.
It seems that a lot of what is coming up in this thread has to do with one aspect of polyamory (an aspect sometimes looked down on by more freely polyamorous people) called the one penis policy. Though this method can be arguably unfair to women, I don’t think there’s really anything wrong with it if you both agree that is how you define your relationship and you’re happy.
If that’s truly the case, then I guess the skin/hair color thing is a fair analogy. But I’m going to agree with Chessic Sense that there’s not a one size fits all type of bisexuality.
A month or two ago I had a brief fling with someone who identified as bi. When I asked her more about it, she claimed to be completely straight, “But sometimes you just need a girl, you know?” Yeah, I know. Girls rock. Girls are the best.
She doesn’t think of men and women as interchangeable. Sex with one is completely different than sex with the other. They’re different experiences. And I don’t think that women (or men, for that matter) like her are all that rare. And in cases like that, the skin/hair color analogy is way off.
If I were to get involved with someone like her, I could see us having a relationship that’s loving and monogamous “but sometimes you just need a girl, you know?” As long as she’s not hiding it from me, I think I’d be OK with that. I might even find it hot.
Any time two people agree to monogamy, they mutually consent to “cutting themselves off from parts of their sexuality” and agree to “live only part of their sexuality.”
If you* are truly concerned about your partner’s ability to explore her full sexuality without the confines of monogamy, then you should be willing to (1) not be monogamous in the first place; or (2) carve limited exceptions to general monogamy based upon whatever strong sexual desires your partner has, whether those desires are due to attractions rooted in bisexuality, race, hair color, fetish practices, or whatever other desires you cannot fulfill for your partner.
I still don’t get what makes you so much more compatible than a woman. If your girlfriend is bisexual, she’s attracted to women as well as men. What makes you so freaking awesome that she might never choose a woman over you?
Honestly, the double standards in this thread are astounding to me.
You should have just come out and said this in your original post. I have a strong suspicion this is more the issue at hand than whether you feel ‘threatened’ by her being with other women.
I also think Stauderhorse’s boyfriend, being from a conservative upbringing, is probably more likely to just be confused about what exactly bisexuality is. It’s the potential to be attracted to both men and women and to enjoy sex with all genders. It’s not the need or desire to do either one. (And no, I don’t mean to say by this that everyone is bisexual, just that I’m still bisexual if I’m in a committed monogamous relationship with a cisgender individual - and only attracted to that person! Which usually happens, as I have a habit of being blinded by love that way. g)
My wife is bi. We have had a couple threesomes in the past, but we have our ground rules:
If she wants to have sex with another woman, it has to be a threesome involving me and my wife at the same time. No hooking up alone, even if we’ve already had a threesome with that girl.
Women only. My wife and I have to participate at the same time, and I’m a hetero male. I don’t want to be in that close proximity with another dick.
She has to pick the girl. If I came up with a suggestion, it could come off as me using my wife’s bisexuality as an excuse to hook up with another woman.
I have final approval on anyone she picks. I get to weed out anyone that I think would try to steal her away from me.
Either of us can call an end to sexual relations with a particular partner at any time.
So far this has worked out for us pretty well. And yes, I have turned down women she has wanted to bring into bed.
Monogamy is not the ultimate goal in our marriage. We both feel that sex can be just for fun. With our ground rules, we both feel that we are getting what we want out of our relationship. We get the love and support anyone would expect from a spouse, but we can also have fun with women that turn us on.
The fact that I have a penis. And I can fix things. And like meat. And sports. And I have muscle. And lead when we dance. And can protect her from danger. And can raise our sons to be men.
In other words, I’m a man.
My girlfriend would never, ever date another woman. If I blinked out of existence, she’d go date another man. Not a woman. A man. Because she dates men, not women. That’s why no women are a threat to me.
But she likes to have sex with women. So she’s bi. I don’t understand what’s so hard to grasp about this, or why you think there are double standards.
Oh, don’t sit over there all smug like you just discovered some hidden truth. I provided a bunch of reasons for our situation, and you go and pick out the least important one and hold it up like it’s the end-all-be-all explanation.
The fact that I find it hot is because I’m not threatened by it. If I were threatened by it, it wouldn’t be hot.
So howsabout you go be judgmental somewhere else, eh?
Sometimes women with low self-esteem–women who derive their sense of self-worth from their perceived sexual desirability to men–will engage in behavior that they don’t particularly enjoy in order to titillate men. And some men, who also have low self-esteem and who worry about their ability to be sexually desirable to women who have positive self-images, will latch on to these women and make them engage in an asymmetric sexual relationship in order to feel better about themselves (the men). Typically, this will involve making the relationship open to multiple female partners for the man without any kind of reciprocity for the woman.
Now, some of these women will protest that they are actually engaging in behavior they enjoy and that it is conforming to outdated sexual mores that is pathological. Two things can be observed with respect to this point: (1) it is possible to think one is happy while engaging in self-destructive behavior that does not actually make one happy, and (2) these women never seem to engage in same-sex intercourse outside the confines of titillating their male partner and engage in same-sex emotional intimacy not at all, a fact that appears to belie remonstrances that one enjoys same-sex romantic relationships.
From what I gather, the situation at issue in this thread is basically one where a straight person gets involved with a bisexual person. The bi person wants an “outlet” for the bisexual nature. The straight person generally wants and would be satisfied with monogamy but is willing to generously provide the bi outlet to the bi person as a limited exception to the monogamy. The rationale is that a straight person can be satisfied monogamously with a partner of the other sex, but the bi person cannot.
So … why should the straight person also have sex with the third party if the third party only exists to satisfy the bisexual nature of the bisexual partner?