Come out, come out, wherever I am...

A long time ago I wrote a post about being queer and said the following:

The reason it's hard to post about this is because, well, it doesn't really matter. I'm married to a man. I'm done with dating. And that's that. Who cares if the celeb I'm crushing on right now is Hannah Hart and not MANnah Hart? (I am on a roll today!) Do I try to make up for my very heterosexual life by being involved in as many lesbian stereotypes as possible? Like coaching and playing women's hockey, going to gay marriage rallies, and watching women's basketball? Maybe. Maybe I'll even buy a Subaru one day. But unless Ethan kicks it, or we discover that we're actually raging polyamourists, I'm pretty settled.

Well, hold on to your hats folks. Turns out I am a raging polyamorist after all! Well, maybe not raging, per se, but I am poly! I have two fantastic partners now, Ethan and Kristin. We all recently moved in together into our big love-filled poly house.

I know a lot of people don't "get" poly... yet. But you can learn (maybe I'll even make a post about it one day)! And I also know plenty of people out there don't "believe in" bisexuality. But it isn't a phase or imagined, or any of that. It's actually probably more common than you know. Be kind to your bi/pan friends. It can be a whole world of NOT FUN to be constantly questioned,  fetishized, and erased. Being bi can so super totally SUCK. I used to hate it a lot of the time. Just the fact that I thought it didn't matter hurt. Yeah, I hurt my own feelings over it. I think it would be more bearable if people understood. So here I go with a bit of a rantsplanation...

My mantra: Both? Both. Both. Both is good.

It can SUCK to be bi. If you tell people you are you'll find out that nobody wants to know; it's treated like unwanted, unnecessary, and sometimes 'fake' information. Or they want to know way too much. I'm often asked to "prove it" by telling people about my sex life with women. "Whaaaat?" you ask. "People can't seriously be asking about your sexual history!" Yup. It's true.

The basic premise seems to be that you can’t be bi if you haven’t had sex with both men and women. By this logic, nobody can be anything ending in -sexual until they’ve had sex and that is just absurd. Nobody says to a heterosexual that they aren’t really straight because they’re a virgin. I’m guessing that homosexuals do get the “are you sure” question, especially when you’re young. Bisexuals always get that question. Forever. It hurts and sucks and kept me up at night for years.

TMI alert! I didn’t have sex with the first several girls I made out with. I also didn’t have sex with the first several boys I made out with – hell my first boyfriend and I didn’t kiss at all in three months of dating. But nobody told me I wasn’t attracted to him, although I wasn’t particularly attracted to him, he was just the first person who’d ever asked me out. No girls ever asked me out. It turns out a large number of my close female friends were bi too, we were just all too scared to talk about it. That kills me because I dated some loser dude I didn’t even really like when I could have been dating a girl I really cared about and thought was beautiful? Fuck that sucks. And I know homosexuals go through this too. Being NOT STRAIGHT in high school was hard. I hope it is easier now for high schoolers now.

I met Ethan during my first semester of college. He asked me out. 3 years and 9 months later I married him. And that was it. I’d chosen, right? Being bi was no longer relevant because we had a heterosexual marriage. The end. But it never stopped me from being bisexual. I love him to death but the one thing that kept me up at night – that I LITERALLY lost sleep over for YEARS – was that I hadn’t had the chance to really be with a woman before I “settled down”. Alone in my head, I questioned myself constantly about my sexuality. Am I really bi? Why the fuck should it matter? But it DID matter. Because I wasn’t straight and I didn’t like pretending to be.

I was so jealous of lesbians back then. It sounds irrational because I liked my life and loved my husband but I was still so fucking jealous because I felt like I was missing something they had. When I say being bi is hard, I am not saying being gay is easy. I know it’s not easy. Everybody in our society is pushed toward living a straight life. When you’re bi it’s easier to pretend to be straight, but it isn’t comfortable and can be quite painful.

When I started actively looking to date women it was not just because I believe in polyamory (which I do, obviously), but because the self-doubt over my sexuality was eating my soul. It sucked that I had those doubts, but I was lucky enough to have some great experiences that helped me reaffirm who I was. And even luckier still to end up with Kristin. (I think our story merits a post all its own not squashed in with this particular rant.)

The point I am trying to make is this: My old post was both right and so very wrong. I am queer and it matters. It mattered then and it does now. I am the same person I always was and so are all the bisexuals out there in monogamous relationships. And I apologize to myself and the rest of my bi brethren for having ever said that it didn't matter.