Why does a bisexual marry a straight spouse?

In a perfect world, a mixed-orientation relationship develops with mutual understanding and acceptance as a result of open and honest discussions about bisexual attraction beginning soon after the first date. Due to ongoing societal influences, sometimes this difficult discussion never happens, relationships evolve, and before we know it, the first date has turned into a mixed-orientation marriage without the couple’s ever properly addressing the existence of bisexual attraction. Even if bisexual attraction is discussed early in the relationship, the importance of bisexual needs is often under estimated.

When bisexual attraction is discovered or revealed years or decades into the marriage, the couple must then deal with a variety of relationship issues. Sometimes, straight spouses ask why their gay, bisexual, or lesbian spouse did this to them. The straight spouses are often angry, believing that they are victims of some sort of deliberate premeditated fraud. But a mixed-orientation marriage’s discovery late in a relationship happens because of misguided societal influences; it isn’t something done to someone. I do not wish to downplay the tremendous impact of discovering one is married to a gay, lesbian, or bisexual spouse. But it wasn’t done to the straight spouse out of malice; it simply happened as a result of society’s close-minded model of acceptable human relationships. I know of no man who said, “Bwaahhhahaa! I am gay, and I am so evil I will marry this woman, raise a family with her, and then one day thirty years from now I’ll drop the ‘I am gay’ bomb on her and make her life hell.” It just does not happen that way, yet often that is the reaction we receive.

While many gay, bisexual and lesbian  spouses have at least some awareness of bisexual attraction at an early age ,even as they may not recognise the importance of it,  some  don’t even become aware of their bisexual attraction until much later in life and in some cases the marriage happens with the bi, gay or lesbian spouse honestly not even being aware of their bisexual attraction. . Calzo, Antonucci,Mays, & Cochran in their 2011 study found that married and formally married gay,bisexual and lesbian spouses were 3  times more likely to be part of the group identified as late profiles.. Specifally Calzo et al's study found this late profile group "reported attraction at an average age of 32.74, had their first same-sex sexual experiences at age 37.65, self-identified at age 40.14 (after, on average, their first same-sex sexual experience), and came out at age 43.18."   (Calzo, Antonucci,Mays, & Cochran, 2011) . This is an average so some members of the late profile group awareness can happenveven later. Imagine what it must be like to be happily married to the love of your life and discover that either same sex attraction is more important than you thought or to  newly discover you are gay,bisexual or lesbian, Now what? . This is why so many mixed-orientation relationships cause the bi,gay, and lesbian spouse so much internal turmoil.  We need to accept that sexuality can be fluid over the course of a lifetime and people can change. We need to accept that life is a journey and who we are and our understanding of ourselves evolves with time. There is no premeditated deception here, we are simply dealing with the evolution of variations in human nature.

This is a classic case of, “If only we had known then what we know now.” In the early 1970′s when I came of age, there were no role models for being a bisexual man. I was taught by my church, society, and friends that there was no place for faggots, sissy boys, or whatever other nasty term they could come up with in this world. Living life as the bisexual I was born as was not an option given to me. I was told my bisexuality was a choice, and there was only one choice: to fall in love with a nice woman and be a nice, heterosexual boy, period, end of story.

We are told every day, we must not be gay, lesbian, or bisexual, we may not be ourselves, and others will make our lives hell if we even try. We will be fired from our jobs, ejected from our churches, and thrown out of our homes. In some countries, we may even be put to death. I grew up in this world of hate. I was brainwashed and indoctrinated that there was only one path. It is so sad for so many that this societal bias not only takes away from the bi/gay/lesbian spouse but also damages so many bystanders. Even today, while acceptance of bisexual attraction has made huge strides, those of us in mixed-orientation relationships lack sufficient  models of how to meet our need for relationships with multiple genders. With all this social messageing it is easy to see how we ended up in mixed-orientation marriages. It is why out of the blue, someone of the opposite gender comes along and, by some miracle, our heart starts to flutter, there is a stirring in our loins, and we have found our soul mate, we think, “Thank God, there is hope. I can be straight just like everyone is telling me I must be.”

Noted researcher Lisa Diamond helps explain this phenomenon when she proposes that sexual desire and romantic love are related but independent constructs. Since the majority sexual orientation is heterosexual it makes sense that most people who fall in love romantically with their opposite gender would have a good chance of having the gender of their sexuality also aligned. The issue for mixed orientation marriage couples is they fall in love with the person of the expected gender but their bisexual,gay or lesbian sexual orientation is not aligned. Many mixed orientation couples miss this sign because even as our sexual attraction may be to a different gender than the person we fall in love with Diamond found that romantic attraction also often has a sexual attraction piece all of its own. This explains how a gay man can fall in love with a woman and find sexual attraction to her. In other words we can be sexually attracted to someone we love even if their gender does not match the gender of our sexual orientation. When this happens it appears that we have found the right partner because we have romantic and sexual attraction to a person of the opposite gender. (Diamond 2003) This does not change the fact that our sexual orientation and sexual interest is to a different gender than our spouse. The research by Diamond highlights my long standing premise that we fall in love with who we fall in love with and that person does not always match the gender of our sexual orientation.

I do take responsibility for how I played this stacked and rigged deck of cards. Some of us did better with what we were given than others. The pain that we have inflicted on our spouses , family and friends as we struggled with our bisexual attraction varies as well, but if there had been a proper place for us in society, perhaps we would have had a better understanding and acceptance of our sexuality.

I totally get that many straight spouses’ lives have been changed forever by our coming out or discovery of our sexual orientation, and the straight spouses feelings are just as valid as the gay, lesbian and bisexual ones, but these are two different issues, and they need to be addressed separately. I am addressing why it happened, here in this chapter. In addition to societal pressures, I want to emphasize that many mixed-orientation marriages result from finding the love of our lives, our soul mates, with everything being perfect except for the sexual orientation piece. That creates a dilemma of what to do.

Once we discover the truth that we can, in fact, be the person we were born as, the journey of self-actualization and picking up the pieces begins. The hard work includes somehow rebuilding our relationship with the one we love. Sometimes, that is easier said than done, because sadly, the previous forced, fake life had manifested in all kinds of psychologically damaging ways. One of the keys to success is to process the recovery of the relationship as partners and friends. There is plenty of hurt to go around, but two people who love each other can work to heal each other’s wounds.

In the kinder, gentler world I envision, before the marriage proposal is even made, the discussion of “I’m bisexual but love you and want to spend the rest of my days with you” should be had before marriage. Then everyone can enter into the marriage with full knowledge of what that means. If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that those of us in successful mixed-orientation marriages need to be role models for those who follow. Mixed-orientation marriages can be wonderful, but the work to make them so needs to start closer to the first date than the silver anniversary.  

References

Calzo, J. P., Antonucci, T. C., Mays, V. M., Cochran, S. D. (2011). Retrospective Recall of Sexual Orientation Identity Development Among Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adults. Developmental Psychology, 47(6), 1658–1673. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0025508

Diamond, L. M. (2003). What does sexual orientation orient? A biobehavioral model distinguishing romantic love and sexual desire. Psychological Review, 110, 173–192. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.173

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