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So you tried to play it straight and that didn't work. Then you went gay and something was missing. Finally you realized that you liked both sides of the fence. Now what?
What happens when you love your partner, bi, gay or straight, and they accept you for who you are, bi, gay, or straight? Does the rest of the world have even that? Shouldn't that be enough? If so, why would you want more?
:cool:
To be loved by someone who accepts you for who you are or vice versa is something a lot of folks dont have. Im glad to be accepted by the one I love and know from other experiences that its important to me. SO some dont have it, others are afraid to find out if their respective partners will accept them if they know. As bisexuals we have it hard from others, we need the straight partners to understand and we need the gay ones to do so as well. We do have it interesting though. But humans are wierd creatures we are never content we always want more and more, and if we get what we want we are no longer happy/satisfied, Kant said something to that respect. :bibounce: :flag1:
Ahhhhhhhh - that thing called "love", so often confused with lust.
"You may not always get what you want but you may just get what you need"
You highlight what, as bisexuals, are the two things we are most looking for, and they are the two things that appear so very hard to find.
"Love"
and
"Acceptance".
The Gay and Hetero communities do seem to find the very idea of bisexuality hard to understand.
I guess we just have to learn to live with it.
If we, as individuals, do find love and acceptance - we have it made!!
And world - it can just go and mind it's own business!!
Love and Peace
Rupe :)
Great questions Mountain Man….My initial response would be to answer the question with another question… “Why wouldn’t I want more?”Quote:
Originally Posted by APMountianMan
Want versus need. It seems most of my life has been spent trying to obtain those things that bring happiness and a sense of well being to my life. The challenge has been first to identify just what exactly what my needs are and how they differentiate themselves from my wants. The second challenge is how to coexist within my culture of origin in this time and place that I am continually finding myself at odds with. Only now as I take those final laps towards the end of this journey do I begin to comprehend Love and Acceptance. Love and acceptance are needs at the soul level. Could I exist without them? Yes, I’ve already proven to myself that I physically can and have survived without either, but not without the happiness and sense of wholeness that my soul desires.
Failed marriages, failed relationships failure, after failure, after failure. The problem either lies within me, outside of me, or both. I survived my early years by looking at my world and determined, it wasn’t me, and it was the rest of the world that was screwed up. I had pretty good company, it was the latter part of the 60’s and our culture did a swing towards trying to change those restrictive and prejudiced ways of looking and doing things within our culture. It was both a want and a need at the cultural level.
The world continues to change perhaps the only constant in the universe is that change itself is ever changing. In my late thirties and early forties after above mentioned failed marriages it dawned on me that the problem might be me. This is where the desire to determine my own wants and needs became necessary. I had to die and come back in order to discover those things. You can read a thousand self-help books or books on discovering yourself or this or that spiritual path, written by people who have helped themselves, but to own it you have to do it yourself.
During this reconstructive phase of my life I discovered many things about myself but as it relates to your questions I discovered that I didn’t love myself and that I was bisexual. Love is both a want and a need. I’ve always maintained and still do that it’s possible to love more than one person at one time. I’m fortunate to have found my soul mate. I know the term sounds cliché’ but there is no other way to describe the sense of completion that she brings to my soul. I had to learn first how to love myself and I still work on that, but she has and continues to teach me how to accept love from another and how love is reciprocal in its nature.
Being bisexual isn’t a need and when I consider how much of my life I have spent in denial and how ardently I’ve avoided acknowledging that part of myself I’m not sure it’s necessarily a want either LOL. It does however fall into the “ learn to love yourself” category. When my wife and I decided to enter into marriage, we discarded the traditional vows because they didn’t fit the way we defined our relationship to one another. At the top of that list was the commitment and encouragement to each other’s personal growth. Without her commitment and encouragement, I wouldn’t be here exploring my bisexuality. We distinguish the difference between expressing our sexuality and expressing our love and although the two enhance one another, they are by no means one and the same. We are both bisexual and understand the desires and joy of exploring those parts of ourselves. Our enjoyment of same sex interaction poses no threat to the stability of our relationship and we’ve engaged in enough activity together as a couple with other bi couples and individually, to prove this to our satisfaction. When we’ve been asked why we allow this or pursue this, her reply has always been, “Because we can.”
I end this response with where I began. “Why wouldn’t I want more?”
Ambi :)
The simple answer is that people ALWAYS want more. AND why not? should everyone be accepted for who they are by EVERYONE??
Granted this is an ideal but one well worth striving for...
APM,
I'm in the same boat as you, just in slightly different order :
was straight with only a few curiosities until age 19
at age 19, got dumped by a girlfriend of 1.5 yrs, had heartbreak
at 19, a few months after getting dumped, came out as "bi"
at 19, a few weeks after coming out as "bi," was told I must be gay
19-21, fought the "gay" label and said I was bi, but no woman would date me
22-27, surrendered and said I was gay, but slept with women secretly
27- came out as bi again, as a way to explain to my gay friends what I was doing, and to explain to my female partners why they'd hear people refer to me as gay
27 - met the woman who would become my wife
28- engaged to her
29 -- married my wife
35 - here i am!
I have a theory that the feeling I have, which is similar to the feeling you have, isn't about sex. It's about the various cultural identities we assumed as we moved back and forth between worlds. If you still feel like something's missing, it might not be sex. It might just be wanting to get away from the domestic confinement of heteronormative life.
Love,
J
:2cents:
My chronology was a bit different. My first real sexual experience was when I was 13, and a guy called m into a bathroom stall to suck me. For the next several years, I made myself available to men as often as possible, but never reciprocated by blowing a guy.
At 17 I entered the Army and found out that homosexuality was a no no. Besides, I was then in Italy and it was easier to find wiiling women than men. At 19 I met an older (25-yo) woman who allowed sex without demanding payment, and still extremely naive, we later got married. She taught me to lick her clitoris, but would not reach an orgasm that way because it wasn't "proper."
After 22 years of a miserable marriage (and 3 children) we got divorced and I went back to gay men. But this time I found the joy of giving sexual pleasure to another man. I also found that some women really enjoyed being licked and had great orgasms that way. I was in heaven! I could please either sex with my mouth.
Eventually I met my second wife and we shared both male and female lovers for several years until the advent of AIDS made an open life-style unadvisable. We have been monogamous (except for a few JOs in porn theaters). We would have liked to find a male love to live with us, but that never happened.
Now at 77 when I am winding down and there are no male lovers available to me I am really missing them.
I don't know about anybody else but when I am filling out a form, application, survey etc. and they ask your gender, I always feel a twinge of disappointment that there are only two choices. Sigh. ;)
From my buddhiat beliefs i have come to understand that it is "human nature" to constantly want and strive for more, we are restless beings and find contentment near impossible.
Always has to be the new car or the better clothes or a better love, searching, searching, sarching all the time
My trick.............stop, i mean really stop........look at ur life.....disect it completely and look at the happiness and great things that are in it, ull be surprised what love and friendship and happiness u already have. Then be thankful for them, appreciate them, love them and watch them grow......be it love for a partner, watching a lill relative grow up....seeing ur friends lives move on....whatever......
As for the sexual labels, i have struggled with those, but trew them in the bin, best place for them.
Now i am Huney, just Huney, and F what anyone thinks about that, i know i am a good person, and try not to hurt,,,,,so i am happy with my lot...
I wish u the very very very best
be happy
Huney
:bigrin:
HI all,
this is my first post on this site - I'm really excited to have discovered this site, i felt something was missing on a 'straight' and 'gay' site so to have this i feel like i have come home...
Anyway, on with the post...my first sexual experiences were:
Age 14 - Oral sex with boy in school dormitory/ toilets...
Age 16 - Girls arrived at school, but felt awkward sexually (fumbling in dark!)
Age 19 - Met woman 3 years older, amazing person & glorious sex!
Age 25 - Decided to come out as gay (felt like childhood feelings coming back and better do something now b4 it's too late...)
Age 26 - Decided to be straight again...being gay don't feel right
Age 30 - Got married to woman, monogamy - depressed, go into transvestites as perfect answer...
Age 32 - Separated and being 'bi' feels right and starting to accept myself after being v. confused for my whole life!!!
That's it for now - at 32, open minded and exploring all sides to myself...
Cheers for listening,
Later,
Alan