Bisexuality: To Tell or Not To Tell
Art by Yelizaveta Rogulina
When it comes to forming relationships with unfamiliar people, “first-time jitters” are nothing new. It’s only natural to be nervous before meeting a Tinder match for the first time, tripping over words at the first coffee date, or ending up blatantly ignoring any potential connections; and all for arguably good reason.
New connections are scary. That’s just how it is. I have yet to meet someone who isn’t even slightly scared of intimacy. But, for me and other queer-identifying singles, new intimate connections involve the ever so familiar and anxiety-filled reality known as “coming out.” Unfortunately, the process of explaining my own sexual identity to others seems almost cyclical when seeking potential partners.
For the last three years, I’ve identified as a bisexual woman. Bisexuality is widely understood as being sexually attracted to people of more than one particular gender. Although this accurately encompasses my sexual orientation, labeling myself as just “queer” lately has seemed to make my life considerably easier. However, the term hasn’t made coming out to potential partners any less daunting. If anything, my sexual identity seems to make it harder to open up to anyone.
The level of honesty I’ve projected about my sexual preference has come in many forms—ranging from telling a few close friends, talking it out with family members, and the occasional slip-up to a random high school classmate digging their way into my own personal hell. In the beginning, I did everything but accept my sexuality. I took every “crush” I had on a girl with a grain of salt and embraced all heteronormative relationships with open arms, leaving queerness on the backburner.
In short, I grew up convincing myself that I was straight. And, when I was finally bold enough to outwardly claim my queerness in high school, it was output with confusion and met with fetishization and erasure. Almost every straight man who I came out to in the early stages of my sexual understanding would show “support” by fantasizing an experience that most often involved a threesome with them, me, and some other mystically-alluring queer girl willing to make a guest appearance. As for straight women, they mostly thought I was hitting on them, even if we had been platonic friends our entire lives.
It wasn’t until I left high school that I became aware of the internalized homophobia I had been harboring since coming to terms with liking more than just cis men. In the first years of my sexual prowess, the degree to which I denied myself of embracing my queerness showed in my pursuit of new partners. This was a time when my favorite outward explanation for my sexuality was “Girls are hot, boys are hot too, but I’m never going to end up with a girl. It’s like 80 percent to 20 percent in likeability. 80 being guys.” Thus, craving normalcy, I convinced myself and others that I would never really be able to be with a woman. The mindset stuck for an oddly long period of time, and I lived my life in denial of my own desires.
Yes, at the time, I was around immature high school boys (and girls), so the bar was set incredibly low in the first place. My external surroundings in high school in no way made my sense of misplacement any easier to deal with, nor did it stop the jokes or sexual advancements from rolling in. I found it inconceivably hard to stray from the “experimental” outlook that sticks itself to bisexuality and shapes its societal understanding because most people around me had followed a similar mindset. Being bisexual as a young teenage girl made it an open playing field to be labeled as “the girl who will get with anyone, no matter what they have in their pants.” And, for a while, I played along with all the theatrics—partially due to internal confusion, but mostly because of the hyper-sexualized reputation that comes with labeling one’s self as bisexual.
Although I’m considerably more comfortable with my sexuality now, coming out in every new relationship is something that I always absolutely dread. I grew up with fear and anxiety surrounding my identity, and that's something I still can’t seem to shake. It’s hard to embrace queerness in a heteronormative world. It leads me toward unavoidable doubt in my bisexuality; perpetuating the idea that I’m “just confused,” or that I’ll “figure it out, eventually.”
It wasn’t until graduating high school and learning more about the concept of sexual orientation and identity that I was able to solidly claim my queerness. Realistically, Emerson College is a bubble of safety. And although many of my queer friends have been able to provide me with a sense of solidarity, I am still constantly reminded of the many difficulties and confusion surrounding bisexuality, and how those obstacles have and will continue to shape my life.