Married and Bi
7 May 2007
I have several gay men friends who keep me informed about gay culture. This is a good thing otherwise I’d be a total ignoramus apropos other ways of being in the world.
Until we’re prompted to think about it, we can easily overlook or ignore the fact that human sexuality is not as simple as we’d like to believe. Appropriately, my gay mates keep me thinking.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about something one of my mates, Max, shared with me. He said it’s not unusual for married men to log-on to the gay chat rooms looking for casual sex with other men.
He went on to say that he’d met someone online and that he’d had a fling with this bloke.
Turns out I know this bloke. And I also know his wife.
It took me a few to get my head around this. Not sure it’s around it yet. I mean it’s one thing to learn that a women’s husband is having an affair with another women, but a husband hooking up with another man for casual sex?!
Max informed me that the married bloke is bi, though his wife doesn’t know this. She doesn’t know he hooked up with men before they got married, and she doesn’t know that he’s still hooking up with men.
As a heterosexual woman this made me feel anxious. The reason: Can you ever truly know someone, as in trust that the man you’re with is who he says he is?
When the world that we live in demands of men adherence to sexual stereotypes that are in effect crazy making, particularly if you’re a man who’s sexuality deviates from the norm, how can a bi-man trust that the world is safe for him to be authentic.
And if a man can’t be in the world authentically because he’s fearful his love of both women and men will reap negative consequences in every area of his life, well then, I can understand that he’d feel compelled to lie about his true sexual identity to his female partner(s), and others.
But dishonesty as a means of protecting oneself and others from the truth is just as damaging as the sexual stereotypes that create the unsafe environments that cultivate the lying.
I came away from my conversation with Max feeling a bit naïve but with an acceptance and appreciation for the variegation of human sexuality.
However my understanding didn’t alleviate my anxiety associated with that question: Can you ever truly know someone?
