This is a bit of a vent because I don’t feel comfortable talking about this in literally any other virtual or physical space. I hope that’s ok.
I’m a 28 y/o cis woman in a straight relationship.
When I was 14 I once confided to someone that I thought I was bi. A couple of years later she brings it up in a group setting an I was adamant that conversation never happened and that I was 100% straight.
I grew up in an immigrant community and while unspoken it was always clear to me that there would be hell to pay if I was bi. My parents were already abusive and neglectful and it was hard enough to survive in that environment as is… I was always conscious of not wanting to make that even harder.
And because I was also attracted to men I guess it felt easy enough for me to ignore my attraction to women.
Even in uni I would make out with girls and stuff and my mental dissonance was like “oh, all girls are like that.”
I’m super happy that kids these days are more comfortable being queer but as that happened around me it became clear to me that… Oh, shit, I’m bi.
And it just upsets me? Like I’m in a loving straight relationship. I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I’m going to marry him in a couple of years. I don’t have the opportunity to explore my bisexuality because that boat has sailed.
And I don’t feel comfortable “coming out”. I have this vague guilt that I’ve lived my entire life with straight privilege and still do, being in a straight relationship. I feel like if I came out I’d be virtue signalling and taking oxygen from people who are “actually queer”. I’m worried people won’t believe me, because I spent 15 years not believing myself.
In terms of things in my life that cause me distress this is not the biggest one (I have C-PTSD, MDD, GAD, and am still not sure I’ll survive to my 30s).
But I just feel like I’m stuck being a straight woman, and it’s just something about myself that I’ll never get to be authentic about. And it sucks and it hurts. And I’m ashamed to tell anyone because I’m afraid neither straight nor queer spaces will believe/accept me.
I’m a cishet white male and I can’t really imagine what it was like, all I can say is I’m sorry you had to go through it. At the same time (and again this is looking through whatever privilege I have had) i think it’s worth coming out to your significant other with no other goal but just to have him know you better. It’s scary. They might react negatively. But if you can afford losing this relationship think - would you rather be married to someone who’s against who you are? Do you want to constantly hide who you are at home? I think if you do come out to him you’ll likely feel more validated and have a “load off your shoulders”
You can be bi and not out, or you can come out to your partner. In fact, I think the latter would be a good idea. He sounds like a loving person, and someone close to you saying “I accept you, and I love you.” can mean so much. Coming out as bi to a couple of friends was a huge relief for me. Even though I wouldn’t enter a gay relationship until years afterwards, just getting that off my chest did wonders.
Realized I was Bi 3 years after I married the love of my life in a fully straight marriage. I don’t really feel like I missed out, but it does feel like it’s not allowed to be part of my identity because I never got to take action on it.
Exactly on the identity piece, although I do kind of feel like I missed out. I keep thinking about all the times I felt attraction and ran away from it 😅
But I’m with the love of my life too, so, I guess I just move on.
I would recommend you try to deal with that feeling, purely for your future relationship. I’d hate for that to cause you issues down the line. Marriage can be hard enough without constant feelings like the grass is greener somewhere else. Even if you never do anything, that can still affect you.
Imposter syndrome can be such a weird thing to overcome. Do you experience attraction to more than one gender? Then you’re bi! It’s not oppression Olympics - a fundamental part about intersectionality is that no identity is erased by the presence of other identities, regardless of how marginalized one is in reference to the other. You’re not intruding on a space by sharing an identity, even if you don’t experience the same amount of marginalization.
People have already mentioned that this is also an extremely common kind of biphobic behavior - erasure. Straight people find bi people too gay and gay people find bi people too straight. Both think that bi people are pretending, or are just in a phase. Some people sometimes erase the label entirely, claiming that everyone experiences attraction to both genders.
You’re valid and you’re more than welcome to adopt the bi label. We’d love to have you under our beautiful queer umbrella 💜🌈✨
Like others have said a lot of what you’re feeling may be internalized biphobia. Went through the same thing too personally. But here’s something I realized that I keep in mind that helped put things into perspective: as a bi person your dating pool will always skew towards a “straight” passing one because they’re are simply more straight and bi people of the opposite gender or other genders than bi and gay folks of your gender. That’s just how the math works out. So statistically the average bi experience is a “straight” relationship from a shallow outsider perspective, but that doesn’t change you, your partner, or yalls sexuality at all.
Being Bi is also not defined by enjoying your whole range of attraction simultaneously. There’s a lot of things we all would like to do but realize realistically we just won’t be able to, and that’s okay. I love space but I know I’ll never be an astronaut and go there, yet that doesn’t make my desire to see the stars any less real and valid.
But here’s something I realized that I keep in mind that helped put things into perspective: as a bi person your dating pool will always skew towards a “straight” passing one because they’re are simply more straight and bi people of the opposite gender or other genders than bi and gay folks of your gender. That’s just how the math works out. So statistically the average bi experience is a “straight” relationship from a shallow outsider perspective, but that doesn’t change you, your partner, or yalls sexuality at all.
This is a beautiful point about the numbers involved here
