Mixed-Orientation Marriage Success

I am constantly amazed by the number of bisexual and straight spouses in mixed-orientation marriages who are surprised that staying together is an option. “You can do that? Who knew?” they say. This lack of knowledge about mixed-orientation marriage success is due to a lack of role models and examples of positive outcomes, One of the reasons for a lack of role models is the large number of bisexuals still in the closet, which is why hiding who we are is so detrimental to society.

Our goal is to find a pathway to success so that marriages don’t end needlessly over differences in sexual orientation. There is a reason why we married each other in the first place, and variations in sexual orientation do not necessarily change that reason. I don’t know any couples who say the only reason they got married was great sex. So one needs to ask oneself: Why, now, have sex and sexual orientation become the overriding measures of a successful relationship? While  sexual intimacy is an important part of many relationships there are many different ways to fit our differing sexuality into our marriages and relationships.

We can change attitudes about mixed-orientation marriages. It starts with learning from others who have found success and saying, “Hey, I want one of those too!” and then setting about to make it happen. One should not get caught up in the negative statistics showing a high rate of failure. As one wife said to her husband, “What makes you think we won’t be one of the ones that make it?” Indeed, there was nothing preventing them from becoming yet another success story. And there is nothing stopping anyone else. Simply look for one of the many ways to make it happen. Many mixed-orientation marriages have lasted 10, 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years; it is worth moving mountains and parting seas to make them work.

When a bisexual spouse can lead a self-actualized, fulfilled life with authenticity and integrity, it can bring that person unbelievable personal happiness. That personal happiness then permeates the relationship, and the mixed-orientation marriage can emerge with both partners happier than before.

Building a happy mixed-orientation relationship based on honesty and integrity does indeed require hard work, and in the rawness of a newly discovered mixed-orientation marriage, it may seem like we will never get there, but in time and with the proper steps, when a couple is committed to work together happiness can be greater than ever.

A huge part of the development of our sexual orientations is being able to live our lives honestly and authentically as the persons we really are, not the persons others wish we were. Acceptance of one’s gay, lesbian, or bisexual self is a core component of a successful mixed-orientation marriage. Note that accepting sexual orientation is very different from accepting sexual activity. Being bisexual is who I am and not just about what I do. What I do sexually with my bisexuality  is a separate issue and mutually agreeable ways of satisfying my sexual needs  is a challenge that also needs  to be  resolved, but it is not part of this core acceptance.

Growing up denying the part of oneself that is sexually attracted to one’s same gender is exhausting, and it eventually wore me out. No wonder so many gay, lesbian, and bisexual people battle depression, alcohol abuse, and even suicide. We eventually get tired of being sick and tired. I have learned this was all so unnecessary. All that is required is that we throw out the shame and guilt and accept ourselves. Then we need to support those who love us to do the same thing. Acceptance of our sexuality by those we love is one of the hardest struggles we face in our mixed-orientation marriages, yet it is at the very core of our pathway to success.

I was very lucky that eventually my wife realized for herself that having a bisexual husband really didn’t change things except for the better. That change for the better didn’t happen until she could fully accept who I am. This acceptance included the trust to let me have bisexual and gay friends so I could celebrate my gay side. We all have different needs; one of my greatest needs is simply to have friends who understand what it means to live in the world being sexually attracted to men along with a wife who embraces that part of my journey. These friends add to my life and take nothing away from my relationship with my wife.

In the early days of a couple’s adjustment to a newly out-of-the-closet bisexual, gay or lesbian spouse, huge questions are understandable and to be expected about how the new relationship dynamic is going to work. But eventually, the acceptance must follow, leading to mutually agreeable ways to live our lives authentically and with happiness.

I struggle with what to tell others in newly discovered mixed-orientation marriages about what they can expect in their own relationships. In some newly evolving mixed-orientation marriages I see that the straight spouse’s initial response is “It is fine you are bisexual but forget about living life that way.” What does living life “that way” mean anyway? Determining how we are going to live our lives is one of the challenges to be met, and that takes time. Each person needs to decide how long is long enough to give to working out these challenges, as well as how much change is needed. But ultimately, personal happiness and fulfillment require a point of mutual happiness to be found. If after all our efforts the differences cannot be reconciled perhaps it is time to acknowledge those differences and try something different for our lives, such as ending the relationship and moving on but I believe it is worth trying everything else first. Life is not a dress rehearsal; it took me 53 years to realize it, but I did, in time, and I am thrilled that my wife is joining me for the rest of the journey.

Our pathway to success comes down to whether both the husband and the wife desire more than anything else to make the marriage work. If they do, then they can, but if one spouse wants it to work “my way or the highway,” then it becomes more difficult. We need to approach our mixed-orientation marriages from a success and acceptance perspective. A can-do attitude will beat a woe-is-me attitude every day. Looking back, it is clear to me that acceptance of all of me was essential to our success.

The secret to a successful mixed-orientation relationship is to find a solution that has both partners happy and in a better place than before the differing sexual orientation was known. We want the classic win-win solution. The concept of a partner’s feeling happy when their partner is happy is essential, but it often will require a change in basic thinking. In our society, we may be raised to expect our partner to meet 100% of our needs. This is simply not realistic. When one partner likes to sew and the other to climb mountains, or when one likes to fish and the other to play tennis, we don’t say this marriage will never work. Yet when differences in sexuality come up, many relationships enter the all-or-nothing, “throw the baby out with the bathwater” mentality. But often in mixed-orientation marriages, the partners provide each other with love and friendship, share hobbies and family, and feel they are soul mates and there is no one they would rather be with. The only issue is their sexual orientations do not match. It strikes me as very odd that anyone would want to throw away all that good just because one of the partners is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Instead, ideally, they should work toward understanding and accepting each other’s needs and preferences.

Such understanding and acceptance are needed because both partners in a relationship should be allowed to lead self-fulfilled and self-actualized lives. Expecting people to deny their sexuality is asking them to abandon a part of themselves and not live their lives to the fullest. Demanding this of one’s partner does not speak of love. More positively, couples who recognize that their husband or wife is the person they are most supposed to be with can be inspired to work to accommodate their differing sexual orientations and sexual needs.

Each couple needs to work out for themselves their own pathway but  at a minimum, the gay, lesbian, or bisexual partner should be accepted as the person they are. In addition we need to understand that each gay, lesbian, or bisexual person has unique needs and  the couple should find, over time, mutually agreeable ways to satisfy the various needs  of their nonheterosexual side. This  process of course needs to include the feelings and needs of the straight spouse.  As partners and friends, the couple should work out solutions from a position of love.To be clear I am not  asking either the straight spouse or the LGBT spouse to give up who they are or their own personal happiness,  instead I ask that they work together to see if together both can create a happier more rewarding relationship. The solution needs to be one that says, “I’m happy, you’re happy.”

 

Empathy works best when it is shared.

Empathy is an important element of our pathway to success. Empathy for others’ feelings is what friends provide, and our wives and husbands should be our best friends and partners in this journey, so of course, we need to go out of our way to be kind.

When we first come out of the closet, there is often this sense of a need to make up for all those years we repressed who we are and that we were a long-suffering victim. This attitude can result in self-centered, adolescent behavior. We feel we have suffered injustice for so long, and we believe it is our turn to make it right; it is time for us.

The problem with this thinking is we are not coming out into a vacuum. Our spouses also are impacted by our coming out. In some cases, we are way ahead of them because our coming out was preceded by an extensive contemplative stage. Our spouses end up paying the price for the millions of people who put us in this place to begin with. We need to remember it is not our spouses who forced us into the closet, yet they have to deal with the consequences, and they need our empathy as much as we need theirs.

It is imperative that, at every step of the journey, we ask ourselves how our spouse is feeling about this. Both partners need to be aware that, during a period of change, our needs may very well be at cross-purposes, especially if our respective lines in the sand are currently far apart. We might think, “Haven’t we given up on our needs long enough? How do we resolve this conflict between our respective needs?” We should recognize that the creation of a successful, mixed-orientation marriage is going to require compromise, communication, and a willingness to take the tiniest of baby steps as the new relationship dynamic evolves. It takes time to learn the components of a successful mixed-orientation marriage. In the beginning, we need to look at each other’s needs and determine whose is greater today. We then need to be willing to help or allow our partner to meet that need.

The straight spouse must find a point of strength that makes it possible to feel and show empathy for the other spouse’s need to find a way to live a happier, more fulfilling life. Empathy enables the straight spouse to understanding that suppressing the other’s identity is a form of slow death, so change does need to come. So the best possible way for positive change to happen is for each spouse to develop empathy for the other’s feelings and to learn how to communicate what is needed for a solution together.

Balancing needs in our relationships.

In addition to empathy, we also need to learn to balance the often-conflicting needs that occur in a mixed-orientation relationship. Having a bisexual husband or wife in a marriage adds demands to the relationship, and it is easy for things to get unbalanced. My wife has given me the greatest gift I could ever ask for because she accepts my bisexuality and is happy that I am living my life authentically. It is a two-way street: In exchange for this gift, a gift I never thought I would see in a million years, I do everything in my power to make each and every day the best it can be for her. With something this amazing happening to me in my life, it is my pleasure and joy to return the favor to my wife.

A discussion about the seesaw might be in order at this point. In this analogy, we have the bisexual husband’s stuff on one side, and enough of the wife’s stuff gets piled on the other side to make it balance. I would guess it takes quite a lot on the wife’s side, such as the husband’s taking on more child care and home care, and providing more personal care for his wife. Perhaps ladies nights out with friends while dad plays dad gets added to the list. At first, the husbands might read this and say, “What the heck, Mark, whose side are you on?” but once a couple’s lives are brought into balance, things can really change for the better for everyone. Then, if the bisexual husband needs a gay night out with the boys, instead of resentment, he might just get a wife who is genuinely happy for him because of all the joy he brings to the marriage day in and day out.

It is very hard to be resentful when your bisexual husband or wife is the most amazing person you know, regardless of sexuality. So that is my goal, to make myself an amazing and awesome husband so that a little thing like my being bisexual isn’t even a blip on the radar. Bisexual spouses make great husbands, and wives, our mission is to prove it.

I never would have been happy doing anything related to my bisexuality if my wife hadn’t been happy for me. One of my favorite expressions is that it is not the events that cause upsets, it is our reactions to them. When my wife’s reaction to my bisexuality was, ”You married me, and that’s that,” I honored it, but subsequently, she saw how much I struggled; she saw the brooding. Through baby steps, she said, “You know what, I don’t see what’s wrong with your going out to dinner with some of your bi and gay friends.” She genuinely was happy that I was happy, and so I went. Each step of our journey has included an “I am happy you are happy” kind of moment; we each want the other to spend their days better because they are with us. And that is how our mixed-orientation marriage has evolved.

We cannot control our partners’ feelings, but we can work together to help those feelings develop positively. I struggled with what I can do to make my wife truly feel that having a bisexual husband is a good thing. As it turns out, she started seeing it for herself. I try and be an amazing husband in every other way; when she says, “Jump!” I say, “How high?” But the reality is, I jump before she even asks. Why? Because she has given me the greatest gift any bisexual husband could ever ask for: I get to live my life as the person I was born as and still spend my days with my wife, best friend, and soul mate.

This whole mixed-orientation marriage thing can be like a tape recorder; press play, and “Woe is me, my life is over.” Keep playing the same tape, and it is going to be the same sad song. In our case, we learned to play a new and better tape, much better and happier all around.

Perhaps there is a way to look at the events of your own mixed-orientation marriage differently; perhaps there is a way to make a list of all the good things in your marriage, add on a few more good things you would like to see, and then, just maybe, the attitude could be, ”My husband is so amazing, I couldn’t possibly hold him back for such a little thing as his being bi/gay.” This is the seesaw effect; we need to pile so much good stuff on one end of the seesaw that it balances the nonheterosexual stuff on the other end. As my wife says it is a two-way street; if I can make her happy, then of course, she will make me happy even if it is in unconventional ways.

A successful mixed-orientation marriage is one where both the husband and wife feel they are happy and self-actualized. Success and happiness may not seem possible in the beginning, but many of us find the way, especially when we go out of our way to show empathy for each other.

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