Flavor of the Week: Bye Bye Bisexual

I SHOULD HAVE known something was up when he slapped my vagina during sex. Yes, slapped it. This was clearly not the work of a man who liked vaginas, who enjoyed sex with vaginas, who had uncomplicated feelings about vaginas and the women attached to them.

But then, I shouldn’t have been surprised; the guy I was dating was bisexual. Around 1.7 percent of men claim to be bisexual, which is a way smaller number than the vast array of college girls and drunk twenty-something females who like to lock lips with the same sex (2.8 percent according to a lesbian page on about.com).

My bisexual boyfriend was very open about his sexual proclivities from the start. On our first date, toward the end of the night he confessed to me, “I like men. I like fucking men sometimes. And if we’re together, even if we’re committed, that’s going to happen.”

And that was OK with me. My thought was, if he liked guys, it had nothing to do with me.Those feelings existed long before I was around and our relationship could and would be independent of that. Unless he felt like sharing one of his boyfriends with me—which I wouldn’t mind at all.

Truth be told, it was kind of exciting, this idea that the guy I was with was open and honest enough to pursue his desires for other guys. How many men, after all, might want to but never try? And how many women had the fantasy of two men at once, but might never have the opportunity to see what it was like?

I relished checking out boys with my dude.We were a new couple, and still tentative on how to proceed, but I loved when he told me he thought a guy was cute.We’d be at a party, or walking down the block to his neighborhood bar, and he’d lean over and say, “That guy is really good-looking,” and I’d have a glance back at the goods. Our tastes were surprisingly similar—I liked guys that looked like him and so did he.

But looking and touching were entirely different things.

He believed in the primacy of our relationship and a heterosexual partner. His plan was to primarily date women but always have a “guy on the side”—it was the way he envisioned his life, and the way his strong Irish-Catholic family would best accept him.

It seemed like a strange and difficult balancing act to me in theory. And in practice, it was just as bad as I imagined.We discussed the particulars:Would I want to know when he was with someone else?

Would I want to be a part of it? And then I realized that there’s a big difference between checking out guys with your man and watching your guy get a blowjob from someone else.

His bisexuality made our relationship extra fraught, too: Now rather than wonder if my guy was flirting with other girls, I also wondered if he might be prowling around for men. Everyone in a room, at a party or bar or restaurant, might be a potential draw for him. It was exhausting in that way. No one was off limits.Was that guy he was talking to his friend or someone he used to hook up with? An old classmate or an ex-boyfriend? I wasn’t the jealous type, but his bisexuality made me perceive everyone around me as a potential relationship foil.

And still our bond and our conversation about him sleeping with other men went over so well that I believed we were really building a connection. And then one day he told me the other half of it: He’d also be sleeping with other women. “I care a lot about you, and if we’re together, you’re more important than anyone else, but I don’t see anything wrong with sleeping with other people.”

To me, that was absolutely not kosher.

If he wanted to sleep with men, that was fine—it was something that I couldn’t provide for him. But sleeping with other girls, well, that was just slutty.

I began to realize that this was more complicated than I was ready for. How would it work long term? How could I reconcile my boyfriend’s notions of sexuality and sexual freedom with my own? It just seemed like a crappy, confusing math equation that didn’t all add up. Surely bisexuals had fulfilling relationships and committed romantic partnerships, but maybe not with me.

In the end, we broke up because he said he just “wasn’t ready” for a relationship. I think, in reality, despite learning the language of acceptance, he hadn’t really, actually, come to terms with his sexuality. And until he’s willing to accept himself completely, the gay and straight together, he should probably stay away from sex— with anyone. C

Lydia Lincoln is an editor and writer living in Brooklyn.