(This was published in the Cork Pride guide 2016. Paula wrote about being bi+ living in Kerry)
What is it like to be married to someone who is bisexual? It is something I am still processing but thus far I can describe it using four key words.
The first word is challenging. I consider myself to be a very open minded and cool dude. Or as open minded and cool as a middle aged man who uses the words cool and dude can be i.e. cool in theory but never tested. I grew up in a rural area and despite living in Dublin for ten years, I’d met precious few people who were gay or bisexual. I never imagined I’d meet, much less fall in love with and get married to someone who’s bisexual. I’d have considered it a ridiculous notion. And yet that is what happened.
The second word is titillation. The shortest unit of time known to our species is the gap between a man meeting a bisexual woman and the prospect of a threesome entering his head. OK, perhaps that’s just me, but I’m hoping I’m not uniquely juvenile.
The third word is inconsistency. When my partner glances at another woman I experience the deep satisfaction of knowing I’ve died and gone to heaven. If it’s a man, I suddenly feel my knuckles dragging along the ground and itching for a crude club with which to assert my unbridled manliness.
The last word is pride. I’d assumed when we met, I’d assumed when we began dating, I’d assumed when we moved in together and I kept on assuming when we married, that I got it. That I understood that sexuality was a spectrum. I knew my place on it and I knew her place on it. Then I watched her, already married, braving the scorn of strangers to campaign for marriage equality. I watched as her sexuality was side-lined by those she was supporting. I watched her persevere, a minority within a minority, identity erased for the greater good.
I’ve never required pride. I am a straight, white, male. The only thing I can be proud of is not being quite as dickish as my privileges demand. I watched her slog and the spectrum began to lose its significance. She is at once someone who is bisexual and she is a bisexual. She is attracted to both men and women*. She has to be proud of that because there are so many people who would insist she feel shame. There are people who see her as less, as not legitimate, as selfish, as confused.
She never hides who or what she is and I am left feeling nothing but pride. Whatever unspoken misgivings I may have had about telling people in my part of the world her full story, are gone. I may be still adjusting, or more accurately my feelings may still be catching up to my thinking, but I am fortunate to have such a self-possessed guide, helping me to grow the fuck up.
*meaning all genders and none
