Empathy and Balancing Needs

Empathy works best in a marriage when it is shared.

Empathy is an important element of mixed-orientation marriage 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.

Ride the Seesaw 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.

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 cooking and home care, and providing more personal care for his wife. Perhaps an extra ladies nights out with friends gets added to the list. 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. 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. 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. We can try and help our spouses feel that having a bisexual spouse is a good thing. We can try and be an amazing husband in every other way. Why? Because if we are successful   we get to live our lives as the person we are born as. 

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 his being bi/gay.”

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.