MY PARTNER in commitment claims he is straight, always has been straight, and could never imagine himself engaging in sexual activity other than with a woman. He says he did not choose his straightness, this is just the way things are. Further, he prefers the safety of a committed and monogamous relationship to the variety that might be found in a non-monogamous relationship. His sexual orientation is heavily influenced by the need for trust to accompany sexual activity. When asked, he says that if he thinks trust will not form, he doesn’t feel that spark of chemistry which signals sexual possibilities. His self-awareness of attractions, aversions, and other erotic feelings constitute his sexual identity map. It tells him to keep heading straight, pun intended—or at least how to avoid a wrong turn.
Like my partner, I rely on an inner sexual identity map to navigate the world of relationships. Unlike him, I carry a map that does not neatly display the borders of gender that he finds unambiguous. My map is more topographical, differentiating physical terrain rather than county or state lines. There’s a lot of space left to wilderness and mystery on my map—not typically a selling point for atlases! My map is frayed and split on the creases, worn from overuse, from frequent consultations.
I spent many years alone before I found a relationship that seemed suitable to nourish my growth. In part, this solitude was the result of being bisexual. Time alone taught me that being bi is neither an honor nor a curse, just a fact—an ironic and relevant fact, to be sure. Since partnering with a man, I have spent more rather than less time opening and closing my sexual map and find that I’m constantly trying to re-orient myself. I ponder where I am headed as a bisexual far more often than I did when single, free to date both men and women. I didn’t choose to be bisexual but learned that I am over time. Initially, coming out to myself was confusing. Once that problem was solved, I found that coming out to others was an intimidating and awkward necessity that carried a backspin of unexpected repercussions. What’s more, once out I discovered that entering into a committed relationship entailed some loss of ground. When partnered with a man, I’m assumed to be straight, as is my male partner. When partnered with a woman, she and I are both assumed to be lesbians. In effect, once in a committed relationship, staying out is almost impossible. What good was it, then, after all that hard work of coming out as bisexual, only to have people assume that I’m either straight or gay? This is the practical identity dilemma that bisexuals bring to a relationship. The danger in commitment is the erosion of one’s hard-won sexual identity as bisexual. The first three years of my current committed relationship were sprinkled with the conflicts that emerged as my need to assert my bisexual identity grew. With each passing year in this relationship, I seemed to be losing a bit more of my public bisexual identity. GLBT politics just didn’t come up as often. The familial tension that had informed much of my identity since coming out was now almost nonexistent. My bisexuality became a “phase” that we had “thankfully all survived,” if you asked my mother. GLBT acquaintances seemed to evaporate. A few invitations to periodic social events ceased altogether. In part, the change was due to the switch from single status to partnered status, a classic social dilemma for anyone. Yet also, in part, the change was a not-so-subtle political message that you’re no longer “one of us,” a banishment of sorts. I played along in public, but internally I was more bi than ever. I suddenly felt the need to prove to myself once again that I was bisexual. Fortunately, this proof appeared right in front of my partner in the form of a spontaneous and innocent flirtation with a free-spirited woman at a Thanksgiving party. We sat knees touching, faces close enough to get lost in, locked in a wild woman gaze while her lips slowly poured a poem into my wide-open eyes. And when her poem was complete, our noses nearly touching, I took her face in my hands and kissed her elegant mouth. This was just too much for my partner, who, perhaps sensing danger to his own identity, interrupted our besotted, smiling bliss. I began this paragraph with the word “fortunately,” not because I would have regretted more time alone with this woman, but because I would have regretted losing the intimacy and trust that three years in a committed relationship had won. I was not ready to give this up, and so it was that hearing my partner’s wounded protest broke a woman-to-woman spell and instantly brought me back to the earthly business of living in this world. Language quickly carried me from a moment of polyrhythmic sensuality to the dual drumbeat of either-or consequences, and I was awakened to the fact that I was still fully bisexual, on the one hand, but not ready to risk losing the trust of my loving partner, on the other. In these moments of intimate sexual emotions, I ask myself exactly what it means to be bisexual, searching my map for a point below sea level where I might go to uncover the minerals of my truth. I find the male body achingly beautiful and the female body undeniably, matter-of-factly beautiful. Yet, although I stand in captivated awe before the naked human form, I have learned over and again that I’m much more aroused sexually by the forms one’s words take on. Knowing that my bisexual identity results from an arousal mechanism that’s rooted in language—yes, I’m the type that talks and pleads during sex: talk to me baby, tell me what you feel, ooh—helps me to understand what it means to be bisexual and why either gender is sensual as long as there’s an edifying connection with ideas and words. Eventually, I learned that I could survive the dangers that commitment poses to my bisexual identity by maintaining an active channel of expression for both in language. Storytelling is how I work to stay in touch and to stay out as a bisexual woman. Occasionally, every story dries out for lack of replenishing rain. During those mundane, dustbowl periods that every relationship traverses, times that often lead to a misunderstanding in words or, worse, a withholding of words, I have no driving physical attraction that would compel me to dance for rain. Sex becomes impossible for me until language becomes sultry again. Meanwhile, just at the time when the relationship needs most the lubriciousness of lovemaking to cultivate balance between dry compromises and lush oases, a complete eclipse into darkness descends upon us. We retreat in a huff and then patiently wait for a glimmer of daybreak. When it comes, daybreak appears wearing a hat of poetry and carrying a bag of forgiveness. Our salacious mouths reach for one another’s softness once again. I’m not surprised that during times of conflict, my remorse over what was lost in the compromise of commitment encourages me to climb onto that grass-is-always-greener fence that bisexuals are always accused of straddling. It’s difficult not to internalize the burden of stereotypes, and so I find myself wishing that I’d partnered with a woman instead, or that I hadn’t partnered at all. I think about what I gave up in my commitment to this man. I lament that I will never experience that serial softness that I knew only when lying with a woman, and I envision the possibility of crossing the gender fence to select a female partner. On some temporary, emotional level, I assimilate into the gender borders and fences that exist on a stereotypical map. At these times, when I’m most aware and centered, I see not two pastures demarcated by what could only be a rickety fence anyway, but instead one lush prairie loaded with all the botanical variety and possibility present in a field of wildflowers. Sharon Staum is a writer living in Minneapolis.
