Can lesbians trust bi-sexual women?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know a sample set of two is pretty slim but I’m assuming this type of breakup happens outside of the entertainment industry and I was curious…

It seems some high profile female/female relationships are going south after the bi-sexual side of the relationship (ie Ethridge/Cypher and DeGeneres/Heche) decides to go back to the x-y side of the fence. Is this a typical problem of lesbian/gay - bisexual relationships and is part of why bi-sexuals piss gays off (ie the non-commital aspect) and might cause them to avoid bi-sexuals as potential serious partners (or not) ?

2

Speaking as a bisexual woman who is now with a man but previously lived with a woman, I would say that being being bisexual in no way makes you more likely to cheat on your partner or end relationships. Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual - behaviour exhibited by people in relationships is simply human behaviour and isn’t defined by which combination of sexes happen to be shagging.

I think that in the majority of cases it has nothing to do with going back to one or other “side of the fence”, it’s just a breakdown of one relationship and the possible start of another. I do grant you that there may be many cases in which a heterosexual or homosexual relationship was a brief “experiment” and therefore it would be possible to say that it’s more risky to have a relationship with someone who is bisexual, but then i would argue that this is to lump all bisexuals together. There’s a vast difference between someone who just fancies giving something a bit different a go, possibly, just to see if they like it, and someone who is and continues to be attracted by both sexes. It’s highly unlikely that a bisexual woman, for example, is going to be continuously attracted to women and then, after going out with them for a while, gets bored or changes her mind and goes back to men.

Speaking personally, if a relationship with one person ends, who knows what sex the next person i go out with is going to be? I think the celebrity examples given in the OP are examples where the bisexual partner’s next relationship happened to be with a person of the opposite sex. The reason these stand out so much is 1) Because they’re celebrity couples, and 2) Because they appear to confirm stereo-types. But with a limited range of options available, often a stereo-type-like situation occurs.

This is a difficult situation because often the stereo-type situations are picked up on more readily, confirming that bisexuals are “untrustworthy” and “non-commital” and somehow more likely to do the dirty on people. This simply isn’t true but it’s a lasting prejudice and one that irks me. The thing that supports the view is that people are think they may be bisexual are perhaps more likely to be confused as to their sexual preference, particularly if they are young and starting to explore. But if one person is considering going into a relationship with another, I would think that relationship is about two people’s attraction to each other regardless of the meta-questions of “which sex am i attracted to?”. If a mutual attraction exists, it doesn’t magically vanish if the bisexual person decides that perhaps they’re more heterosexual than homosexual.

My tuppenceworth, anyway.

Fran

3

Well, it’s always a mistake to look at the behavior of celebrities and try to draw conclusions about the behavior of actual human beings. However, I do think that the deck is often stacked against a bisexual staying with a homosexual. Considering the enourmous bias against homosexuals, sooner or later the idea of being in a relationship where you don’t have to worry about being assaulted for holding your SO’s hand is going to look pretty damn appealing. While I doubt that many relationships are being destroyed solely for this reason, its almost always going to be a factor, and is most likely to be seized on as the “reason” for the break-up. (“He left me because he’s not really gay” being much less ego-bruising than “He left me because I’m a big fat jerk.”)

4

I will admit I have absolutely no experience with lesbians, and have only briefly known one bisexual woman. What follows is just my opinion. And I’m trying to be
a little inflammatory here, too to drive my points home. So what I say may well be ignorant, prejudiced, and it is almost certanly ill informed. But maybe, just maybe, it’s also accurate…

Okay, my take on this is very simple:

If someone gets dumped, then far and away the most overwhelmingly likely reason that it happened is because the other person in the relationship just didn’t like them.

In short, if a bisexual dumps you and goes back to women/men afterwards, it’s probably NOT because they were craving pussy/dick. More likely it’s because you were just a bad partner. Or to put it slightly more nicely, because of factors about you that are unrelated to your gender.

And furthermore, I think that most of the time, the people who sneer at bisexuals who go to the other gender in their next relationship are actually engaged in a (rather pathetic) attempt to throw the blame for the break-up off on something else, instead of admitting their own role in it. They know deep down that it’s at least partly their fault that the person left. But it’s so much more convenient to claim, “Well, those bisexuals are all evil.”

Again, I don’t have any kind of decent sample to go on, but I would seriously doubt there’s any kind of correlation between bisexuality (or any sexual orientation, for that matter) and ability to stay comitted in a relationship. Some people are very comitted, monogamous types. Others are not. Their gender and sexual preference are, at best, only a peripheral factor in their ability to maintain a commited relationship.

So what you need to look for in a partner (whatever your sexual preference) is someone who has a similiar attitude and intentions in regards to commitment as you do. If you’re serious about the relationship, and the other person is the “flighty” type… well, you’re probably headed for trouble.
A friend of mine (actually, two friends of mine - they were a couple) have just been through this. He was interesting in a comitted, long-term relationship. She went through about three lovers a year. (Don’t ask me how I know…)

I’m don’t look down on either of them for the kind of relationships they wanted to have. But in retrospect, it’s pretty easy to see that their relationship with each other was doomed from the start. The fact that one of them is male and the other is female, and they’re both heterosexual, isn’t terribly important. Given their attitudes towards commitment, it would have turned out the same way even if they were both lesbians.

So that’s my $.02…
-Ben

5

A bisexual friend cheated on her girlfriend with me, but I did not know at the time that she and this girl were serious - she always led me to believe that she was just friends with this girl and that the other girl had an unrequited crush on her. She told the girl the same thing about me.

6

Gotta point out that though I repudiate the notion that bisexuals are somehow “inherently” less trustworthy in relationships, it does make some sense statistically that they’d be somewhat more likely than hets/homos to end a relationship because of attraction to another person. After all, their pool of potential mates is twice as big, right? This is, of course, completely useless for predicting what any particular bisexual person will do in any particular relationship, however.

7

If the bisexual woman leans toward being more straight based on the Kinsey (?) scale where 1 = all straight & 6= all gay then the lesbian may feel more jealous when a man is around her date than a woman.

Few ‘bisexual’ people, if any, are evenly seated between the sexes, in that they prefer both equally.

It’s really a complicated thing astro. Let’s try an example.
e.g. A lesbian is interested in a Bisexual woman (who leans toward being gay more than straight) who is with a guy. The bisexual woman may consider that the guy doesn’t count as much as a woman in a relationship & thus may consider dating the lesbian. The guy on the other hand, knows his Bisexual girlfriend prefers women & he might not trust her around lesbians. Does that make much sense? Probably not…

But it’s really a moot point because most people have enough brains to love people as individuals; not whether they are men or women, gay, straight or bisexual–I should hope so anyway. At least that was the case when I was dating lesbians.

8

The term “bisexual” is problematic because it can (fittingly enough) be interpreted two ways. It could mean either a person who is not solely attracted to one sex, or a person who is equally attracted to both sexes (a Kinsey 3). A woman who is, say, a Kinsey 1.5 is bisexual under the former definition, but is unlikely to be able to maintain a serious longterm romantic relationship with another woman.

9

Whoops, sorry for the simulpost, handy. That’s what I get for taking a tea break in the middle of writing a post.

10

Ummm…I’m a bit confused. You dated lesbians? I mean not that you aren’t great guy deeply in touch with your strong feminine side and all that but I though the whole point of being a lesbian (vs bi-sexual) was that lesbians didn’t (as a a general rule) date men. Do you mean dating bi-sexual women perhaps?

11

Of course, straight people do this too.

The only difference between a bisexual and a heterosexual or homosexual is that the first is willing to entertain sexual relations with persons of either gender. Fidelity is orthogonal to preference.

I trust my bisexual lover implicitly. The fact that she has male lovers as well has no impact on my ability to trust her.

12

“but I though the whole point of being a lesbian
(vs bi-sexual) was that lesbians didn’t (as a a general rule) date men”

Oh, sure they do. Lesbianism is in the heart; not the pants.

13

No, wrong. People often make the incorrect assumption that bisexuals have twice as many “potential dates”. Just as a given gay man isn’t going to be interested in just any old man who wanders by, any given bisexual is not going to be interested in just any old person who wanders by. Gays, straights, and bisexuals all have additional criteria for the selection of potential partners; the only difference is that for the bisexual “gender” is not a “make-or-break” factor.

14

KM: *Just as a given gay man isn’t going to be interested in just any old man who wanders by, any given bisexual is not going to be interested in just any old person who wanders by. Gays, straights, and bisexuals all have additional criteria for the selection of potential partners; the only difference is that for the bisexual “gender” is not a “make-or-break” factor. *

Right, meaning that there are approximately twice as many people who meet their “additional criteria” for selection. Obviously few or no bisexuals consider every other person to be a potential partner, and obviously there must be many bisexuals whose “additional criteria” are so numerous or restrictive that their actual pool of potential partners is really much smaller than that for most gays or straights. That’s just part of the huge variety of human sexual attraction. My only point was that on average, bis are likely to meet many more potential partners simply because they’re not constrained by the gender factor, which all by itself closes off half the potential partner pool to gays and straights at one fell swoop.

15

You don’t know that. For all you know, bisexuals have more additional criteria than the average straight or gay.

The common myth that bisexuals have more choices is just false. Bisexuals are able to be just as picky as straights or gay. We just don’t have convenient words for people who won’t have sex with someone who refuses to eat broccoli.

16

Then you’d better brush up on your lingo. I’ll bet you’re not up on the special bi handshakes either. tsk…tsk
The word is antioleraceanullusconnubium.
[humungoid white space edited out. For future reference, falling asleep on the spacebar is a bad idea. :)]

[Edited by Czarcasm on 06-02-2001 at 04:59 PM]

17

The way I have read bisexuals don’t actually like men and women at the same time. Its one or the other so overall while the pool of potential mates is doubled the actual choices are limited by the moment.

18

My girlfriend started a bisexual support group once but everyone tried to do everyone else ( I don’t make this up ) so she stopped having the meetings.

19

Even the least discriminating of bisexuals isn’t going to have that many more potential sexual partners than heterosexuals. While a bisexual woman may find both men and women attractive, the women she finds attractive are only potential sexual partners if they themselves are also attracted to women. Since most women are heterosexual, and since some lesbians (and even some straight men) refuse to get involved with bisexual women, I don’t think the average bisexual woman’s potential dating pool could be said to be significantly larger than that of the average heterosexual woman.

20

On the whole “twice as many potential dates” thing, I have a theoretical contribution to make. I have no actual experience with bi-sexuality, don’t know any (that I know of), but I can hypothesize about their dating situation.

The “selection criteria” argument (that bi-sexuals can be more picky than straights or gays) makes sense but I think there is another factor as well. The other factor is the preference of potential dates. Say you are a bi-sexual man looking for a date. You could try women, unfortunately some of these women are committed lesbians and won’t give you the time of day. You could try men, unfortunately many of these men are committed heterosexuals so you aren’t likely to make it very far with them. And then you are also limited by the people who won’t date you because you are bi-sexual and “untrustworthy”.

My point is that even though potentially your dating options are doubled, they are limited quite a bit by who is willing to go out with you and who you are willing to go out with.

That said, I have a feeling that there is a slightly higher risk of infidelity when dating a bisexual. I believe that it would be hard to predict in individual situations.