The first weekend of my freshman year of college: a culmination of a week’s worth of forced binge drinking with the people on my floor, celebrated by more binge drinking.
I had gone from an all-girl’s boarding school of 200 in rural New England to a university of more than 10,000. While the changes that first year weren’t insurmountable, they were substantial. Gone was the one pizza restaurant and lone gas station; in their place, bars and clubs and good restaurants. Alcohol was abundant, and so were boys. They existed in school for the first time in four years; they lived across the hallway and went to the same gym and appeared in class.
I wasn’t the only one who seemed to notice… my boyfriend did, too.
The first Saturday of the first weekend of my freshman year ended with a crying, drunk boyfriend slumped in front of my door. He was apologizing profusely for kissing one of the people on my floor, Keith.
“Keith?” I remember asking, puzzled. “But Keith is a guy.”
I’d been prepared well by friends, family, and Cosmopolitan magazine about the precarious situation of a high school relationship carried into college. I’d thought that, if anything, I would end up cheating on him or he’d end up cheating on me. Most likely, I thought we’d grow up and out, two seedlings planted side-by-side, intertwined for a season before reaching towards separate suns.
But this? I didn’t know the natural course of action for this situation, and I certainly couldn’t ask friends what to do without outing him. So I turned to Google.
“Boyfriend bisexual advice.”
“Is my boyfriend gay?”
If Google were a person, they would’ve sent me directly to a therapist after this rain of queries. Even worse, after every fervent Googling session, I emerged empty-handed. There simply isn’t that much online about this subject.
Meanwhile, IRL I told him repeatedly that if he wanted to go try new things, he was absolutely free to do so. I wanted and continue to want nothing more than his happiness. I suggested he should try dating men, hooking up with other people, specifically men… all ideas he shot down immediately.
Statistically speaking, his behavior wasn’t irregular: a 2013 Pew Research survey notes that 84% of individuals who identify as bisexual end up in heterosexual relationships.
Still, I wondered how I could ever be enough. I wondered if he could ever be truly satisfied without at least trying to have a relationship with another man. Would I have to introduce strangers into our admittedly adventurous and fulfilling sex life? Did this mean he was now naturally inclined to polygamy? Would I wake up at 40 to find my husband had run away with a man, realizing after all this time that he was actually gay and not quite as bisexual as he’d thought, wasting my time?
While he confronted his own sexuality, I was forced to confront mine.
“How is this any different from all those times you’ve drunkenly kissed your friends,” he asked, often frustrated, “what about lesbian porn? Checking out other girls?”
According to 2016 statistics from The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 17.4% of women admit to having had sexual relations with other women, compared to only 6.2% of men.
How was my behavior different?
I had to admit the perception of it was. Gay porn is still considered taboo while lesbian porn is considered universally sexy. Not to mention I’ve never had to confront my own sexuality in such boot-strapping, earth-shattering way like my boyfriend did. For me, kissing my female friends and finding girls sexually attractive had never seemed, culturally or personally, strange.
Maybe the key difference is this: for him, being attracted to his own sex had the potential to be ruin a relationship. For me, and for a lot of women out there, same sex relations are considered hot. Maybe even encouraged.
Today, having being together for four and a half years, I’ve come to view his bisexuality as just another aspect of his already complex humanity. These days, I’m worried a lot more about finding a job and paying off my student loans than his running away with a man.
Some words of wisdom: monogamous people will continue to be monogamous people. Your sexuality doesn’t change how likely you are to cheat on someone—your choices do. You don’t have to label the sexuality of others in order to understand them, and maybe most importantly, you don’t have to label your own.
*This post is co-published with Bitter Blush, a platform that strives to discuss topics that traditionally make people blush. You can follow the blog on Instagram at @bitter.blush.