YAY! I've been dying for another SL letter of the day!

I read that summary of the study. It's a little creepy to think of a father/daughter team studying sex together.

As a bi guy dating a straight girl, this letter interested me. There are a few differences with my situation though, firstly I never cheated, secondly, she was on of the first people I came out to, and third, I have never felt the need to mention it to her again. I'd like to think that I'm doing the right things to make her feel comfortable, and I'd be monogamous whether I was dating a guy or a girl, or if I was a straight guy, so it's not a subject that has to come up in our conversations at all, really.

"My problem is that I am still really uncomfortable with the fact that he's attracted to and has had sex with men."

"he has no problem telling strangers who are chatting him up that he's bi when I'm standing right next to him"

So you are in fact a bigot. On behalf of all bi guys, fuck off.

Did he say he was sorry and disappointed in himself for cheating on her? Or did he really just say "I'm bi and I cheated on you with another guy... so, how was your day?"

It seems like she can't move on because of the cheating and perhaps his lack of apology? I'm guessing there was much more to their conversation, but that could be a factor.

@2

Better in the lab than in the shack behind the barn.

She sounds somewhat bi-hostile. I mean, maybe it's because he lied to her more than who he cheated on her with, but she makes pretty specific anti-bi comments for all that she's all "my best exes were bi"...

I dunno, this could be read a couple different ways, I suppose. After all, plenty of women who have been cheated on by het guys react similarly, I suppose.

Doesn't sound like lying so much as withholding. I wouldn't take it personally...

Based on the fact that this guy lied about his bisexuality, cheated on her, and advertises his orientation to other men, I don't think he wants an exclusive relationship with her. She's picking up on this at some level and is rightfully feeling insecure. Only a matter of time before he asks for an open relationship, or simply cheats on her again (assuming he hasn't already). She needs to decide if she's comfortable with him hooking up with men, and if not, DTMFA.

@4: So a woman is a bigot if she doesn't want to date bisexual men? On behalf of everyone who isn't a self-righteous overly sensitive bi guy, fuck off.

DG sounds more mad about the cheating and/or lying than the fact that the boyfriend is bi.

If you are mad about the lying/cheating, then you need to talk about it and work things out. If you are mad that he didn't apologize, then you need to let him know. He will never apologize if he is unaware you are expecting one.

If you're mad about him being bi, then you are just out of luck. You can't make him un-bi, and you shouldn't attempt to. Either learn to accept the reality of his bisexuality, or dump him and move on.

@4 maybe it has something to do with the fact that this guy who cheated on her has no problem blatantly flirting with guys in front of her and has made little attempt to try and make her comfortable with his sexuality.

It sounds to me like she would not have had a problem with him being bi, as some of her exs were also bi, if he had been open and not lied and cheated. He made it something very threatening to her by the way he dealt with it.

Forget all this evolutionary psychology b.s. and talk to him about it. You are only going to be able to come to terms with it if he also makes an effort to help you trust him.

@4, "he has no problem telling strangers who are chatting him up that he's bi when I'm standing right next to him" doesn't read like bigotry to me. It reads like he's flirting in front of her ("chatting him up"), which is just poor form.

Dunno about her uncomfortableness with his attraction to/fucking men, though. She did mention that she's dated other bi-guys and thinks they're kinda hot. It may be, as Dan suggested, a trust issue: she's not so much worried that he likes guys as that he's a cheater and likes guys, so now she has to watch him around everyone. That explains her reaction to his flirting as well.

Per the study, it seems kind of dumb to ask the subjects to predict how they would react to being cheated on based on a hypothetical scenario.

out of the 4 of us who just posted the same thing at the same time, seandr wins...

@14: Agree.

I would think jealousy knows no gender, either you're jealous and deal with it, or it's a deal breaker for you and you move on to someone who is trying to be monogamous (even if that's, you know, really difficult, given our slutty primate nature, heh.) But being squicked out by his "bi-ness" I would think is pretty telling, and evidence that she's not open-minded enough to be with him.

He cheated on her, but they didn't have sex? Ah, another one of those "Oral sex isn't sex" straight people.

He's honest! 10 points! Get out. He's gay.

This is an easy one. DTMFF.

they didn't end up having sex, he was far from sober, it wasn't anyone I knew"

Spoiler Alert! Those are all excuses/lines to test how you will react to a revelation that your boyfriend wants to screw around. Here, let's translate:

"We didn't actually have sex." - means "We tried to have sex, but it was a bit clumsy." Can also mean "We didn't actually have sex that time"

"I was far from sober." - means "That's partly why the sex was a bit clumsy. If I had been sober, you can bet your ass that I would have reamed that hunk."

"It's no one you know." - means "I'll never tell you about the people that I sleep with that you might actually have been acquainted with."

And Seandr, spot on.

As a self-righteous overly sensitive bi guy myself, I gotta pretty much agree with @9 too.

@17: Though oral sex is a type of sex, "to have sex" is a specific expression that usually refers to vaginal/anal intercourse.

Also, we don't even know that they had oral. They could have just kissed. Or handjobs.

Nothing like a little gayness to spice up a tired relationship.

"it sounds like your curious" My peaviest of my grammar pet peaves is "you're/your". Sorry Dan. I'm an asshole.

This couple is doomed. Doomed, I say.

He flirts with other people in front of her, and she doesn't trust him. DTMFA.

I'm as self-righteous a bi-guy as they come, and this guy is just being a douche. He might be a young and stupid douche who will get better as he matures, or he might just be a manipulative douche. But, there's no reason to hang onto a douche.

Or the letter writer might be a psycho bitch who accuses him of flirting with everyone he speaks to. In which case, she should dump him for his own good and find someone with terrible social skills to doesn't speak to other people.

I get a little psycho bitch vibe from her being ok with bisexuals, just not ok with him being bisexual. But mostly it sounds like he's a douche. If, of course, he is a douche and she is a psycho bitch, they should stay together so they mostly just hurt each other.

@9 No that's not what I said is it? She is a bigot because she is embarrassed by him as a bisexual. She doesn't want others to know who he is when she's standing next to him. She resents him for being who he is: a man who has had sex with other men. That's not overreaction.

@26 - agreed on all counts. Wish they would stay together until they matured into sensible people who can communicate beyond lies and body language: "I haven't told him this explicitly, but I'm sure it's pretty obvious." Sheesh. Try telling the person with whom you're in a relationship, before you try writing to an advice columnist!

People who worry out loud about whether they are bigots should start by looking at whether bigoted things come out of their mouths. If someone wrote to Dan saying the things I quote in @4 except about a gay man you all wouldn't be so quick to overlook it and put all your emphasis on the infidelity.

@4 Reread those quotes, dude:

"My problem is that I am still really uncomfortable with the fact that he's attracted to and has had sex with men."

"he has no problem telling strangers who are chatting him up that he's bi when I'm standing right next to him"

I don't think she has any issue with him being bi. I think she has an issue with him CHEATING ON HER and continuing to hit on men IN FRONT OF HER. Which is perfectly understandable, since she clearly expects monogamy. Even if she were a bigot, the issue is not any bigotry she may have, it's the fact that she expects monogamy out of him and his definition of monogamy doesn't include NOT openly hitting on men in front of her. Moreover, he has slept with men while with her. It's demonstrably a valid concern.

As a bi person, I'm more offended by the idea that it's "less bad" (as she says in the letter and as is implied by his actions) to cheat with your same sex than it is with the opposite.

@26, I didn't infer her comment about him openly disclosing to others while standing in a crowd to mean that she was "embarrassed" as you say.

Rather, the criticism[of him] is: Not disclosing to her for 1yr+ of their relationship but ironically being able to....openly tell strangers while standing in a crowd (!!)

Wouldn't that make you distrustful of someone if they did that?

-Just asking

@29: If DG were writing about her boyfriend being gay, we would absolutely overlook her statements about his gayness, and move right on to the DTMFA advice.

What you are apparently failing to grasp is that we are allowed to have sexual preferences, and those preferences do not make one a bigot. I'm a straight guy, and so I will only date girls. That does not make me a misandrist. I may similarly only date blonds, Republicans, Muslims, doctors, women under 5' 6'', Canadians, or Green Bay Packers fans. Selecting one or more of those criteria might make me a touch shallow, but it doesn't make me a bigot.

Similarly, a girl can decide she doesn't want to date bisexuals and not be biphobic, despite what you learned in Oversensitive Bi-guy Academy.

Correction:

Previous comment directed at #27

-Apologies.

@25: You misspelt "peeves". LOL.

Re-read the sentence. If I criticize someone for flirting I don't bring their orientation into it. She doesn't say it's the flirting, she says it's his bisexuality. I couldn't care less about whether they date or break up. She asks if she's a bigot and based on what she says the answer is yes. I don't care if some of her best friends are bi. She gives us 2 direct, unqualified statements that she has a problem with the boyfriend's bisexuality.

oh hey, remember the gay belgium couple who couldn't get their son out of the ukraine? seems that they've finally been reunited with him: http://tinyurl.com/659nx54

@ 35 - except at least one of those statements can just as easily be read as her having a problem with her boyfriend hitting on other people in front of him. It's not like she said "It's okay that he flirts with girls in front of me, but when he flirts with guys, it's a huge problem."

@36 oh that's great news, thanks for posting.

This girl is so not a bigot. To repeat everyone else above, her BF didn't tell her he was bi; cheats on her w/ a guy; tries to rationalize it away w/ qualifiers, AND announces how bi he is to guys, flirting right in front of her. Like, now he's finally told her - after a YEAR!, something I consider like a third-date point of information if you like the person - & she's immediately supposed to roll into being 100% accepting/supportive/etc, while he flirts in front of her? Riiiight.

No ages given, she sounds young. Listen, Miss Letter Writer, call your SO on the inconsiderate behavior of flirting right in front of you after withholding info & cheating. His revelation has freaked you out & made you wonder what else he could be hiding. It's great that you feel confident in his attraction to you. But the fact that you've dated other bi guys, & *now* you're worried/fretful/uncomfortable smacks of the lying & cheating being the issue. Like anyone else who has cheated, he should have to spend some time shoring things up w/ you, before having the nerve to bat his eyes at some hot waiter (or whoever) when you guys are out together. That's basic respect.

If you guys weather this, if there's real trust & affection regained, good for you. Perhaps you can develop new rules for playing w/ same sex partners & each other. If not, you are young, & anyone open-minded enough to admit her attraction to other ladies & be GGG w/ dating a bi guy is gonna be a fairly hot commodity. ;) Luck..!

I was wrong on this one, hah.

@34. Oopsie. :-/. Thank you.

To Bi Guys out there,
Give us a break!!
According to the stats, 9 out of 10 men are mostly straight. One could safely assume in a lifetime, MOST of the men a woman gets involved with are straight.
To find out, more than a year into it, that your vagina-loving guy is not totally straight (I've been there) is a HUGE surprise, no matter how open-minded and equal-rights-and-freedoms-oriented you are. It's a really jarring surprise. Hard to swallow. Not for I-hate-this bigoted reasons, but for wow-I-thought-I-knew-you reasons. When you find it out in the context of cheating, it makes it sooo much more confusing and conflicted, because you're trying not to mix up your politics and your emotions in your head.

If a bi person could imagine being only one or the other, a single sexual orientation, in love with someone who could go both ways, who strayed in the other direction and tried to explain later, you could imagine the insecurity it could bring on.

Dan often deals with fetishes by trying to encourage couples to open their marriage. I'm not suggesting bisexuality is a fetish, it's more widespread and it comes in various degrees. But my point is that Dan sometimes portrays crazy fetishes as something SO IMPORTANT that within a marriage an otherwise solid couple may have to open up in order to allow (say) the man to hire prostitutes to lie in a bathtub full of clay with him, or allow a woman to ... whatever (the female requests are rarely as weird).
So as a logical person, one would have to assume that it would only be basic consideration to open up a relationship with a bi-guy to other guys, since his cock needs can't be met by a woman.
That's the part that hits a woman in the gut when a guy tells her he's bi deep into a serious relationship. It means a lot of important long-term things, and he didn't tell her about it before she got emotionally bound.
That's an asshole move. DTMFA.

@39 I think this would depend on age.

If this is some 21-year-old who has had the occasional gay tendency and then fools around for the first time, and decides he likes it and confesses to his girlfriend, then I'd be rather forgiving. Yes, he may be being a bit of a douche about it, but he could be exploring for the first time. She should teach him manners.

If this is some 29-year-old who has known he was bi, previously had affairs, then he is may be being a complete douche. But, he may have thought he could go only to females and was wrong. She should take stock.

If this is somebody in his 30's or older, he's just a dick. DTMFA.

Approach your bf about opening up the relationship. In one way, I believe that everyone deserves one second chance. On the other, it seems like you'd both be way happier if your relationship was non-exclusive. You want to try girls, he wants to be with guys. I'm sure you can come up with a compromise. It doesn't have to involve a threesome, it could be as simple as fucking other people in privacy but with the full informed consent of your partner.

@ 43: hmm, maybe. When you are younger & figuring yourself out, one's gotta decide how much allowances can/should be made. Manners, yes please. I do wish I knew how old both the LW & her bi guy are. I based my assumption of both of them being young on her starting the letter by saying her BF was the first serious one for her. She says he had sex with men, so the cheating incident wasn't the first time. He knows he's bi, & waited that long to tell her?

I'm having a bit of trouble taking it on faith that she didn't give this guy the impression that withholding might've been a good idea (I mean, you don't tell complete strangers that you're bi but keep it from your girlfriend unless you think that admitting it is a problem). I'm not going to call her a bigot, but there's just something 'off' here.

I mean, she goes to a veritable shitload of trouble to present her 'bi-friendly' cred in her letter, head straight towards 'some of my best friends are black' territory. If this came up in conversation in front of me I'd ask her how often she actually had to acknowledge the same-sex encounters of guys she's been with. She says she's been involved with a 'few' bisexuals, but this is her 'first serious relationship,' which makes me wonder just how close she got to those other guys. When she says she thinks 'bisexuals are kind of hot,' does she mean she likes them in porn, does she like talking to a theoretical boyfriend about his ex-boyfriends, or does she just mean that she likes guys who don't mind sharing her in a three-way? Is it necessarily relevant regarding her feelings for bi guys that she's been attracted to girls?

I'm just getting a lot of red flags from her letter, and I think maybe Dan could/should have asked a couple of these questions (or encouraged her to ask them of herself).

It's clear that this guy has trust issues with the girl and the girl might have to actually do some self-examination about her feelings about bisexual guys. If these folks are under 24-25, then they might be better off wishing each other better luck next time.

(Note that I could be wrong. It's possible the guy couldn't even admit to himself that he was attracted to guys until after the incident -- assuming he even realized it before then -- and he's still coming to grips with it. It's possible she just can't get over being cheated on and is blaming his bisexuality because it's an easy target. But either way, I'm really getting the impression that both of these folks might be better of D-ingTMFA and getting on with their lives.)

No but really. YOU'RE.

@4, @7, @46 The issue's not that she's bi-phobic (clearly not) or has any bias against bisexuals (MythicFox, it looks like you have the chronology wrong - first, he cheats on her, then, he discloses to her, now, he discloses to others in her presence), it's that he's flirting with other men in front of her and advertising that he's sexually available - if not now, then perhaps later.. As far as I can understand, they do not have an arrangement, an agreement, an exception, or a justification for moral cheating.

Dan has answered a variant on this question about a hundred times: "I'm going home for Christmas with my boyfriend/girlfriend, but we're into BDSM. I want to wear my collar/call my partner master/slave/Sir/Mistress/sub/slut in front of my grandparents. My siblings/parents are not cool with that. How do I deal with these bigots who want to unfairly constrain my sexual autonomy?" And the answer is that you don't involve other people in your sexual practices if they don't want to be involved in them, so take the damn collar off and smile when you pass the turkey.

In this case, the twist is that the LW's partner identifies as bisexual (all well and good) but wants to involve her, unwillingly, in his same-sex flirtation/attraction/action/etc (not good). If he wants to renegotiate the terms of their relationship to allow him to flirt/drunkenly make out /fuck other men, the onus is on him to speak up and renegotiate them.

Yes, there's the possibility that he'll end up single at the end of the discussion. Of course, there's the equally likely possibility that he wants to end up single, but doesn't want to be the bad guy/go through the pain of breaking up/have to move his stuff/cut off his access to her lady parts. Which is a shame, because I think that she'd be into a non-monogamous arrangement if she was that she'd be the primary partner. Given the history and the circumstances, she'd have to be insane to make that assumption right now, and he seems to be going out of his way to keep her from getting there.

DTMFA.

Sounds like DG is letting her desire to be GGG about his bisexuality get in the way of holding him accountable for his cheating. She needs to talk to him ASAP about this to find out if he thinks the cheating was wrong and he's willing to apologize and if he is comfortable and able to be in a monogamous relationship (if that's what she wants). If she wants to consider some type of non-monogamous relationship, then she needs to talk with him to agree on a set of ground rules.

Personally, I think she should DTMFA. But beginning the conversation on this is the only way the relationship will have a chance.

@48 -- Okay, you make a good point there. Yeah, I got the order wrong (assuming, again, that his drunken cheating and confession were the proverbial dam bursting), but the point I was trying to make is that it's possible that his not disclosing his bisexuality may have been based off of some signal she was giving him (which he may have been wrong about). But now he's comfortable opening up to strangers in a way he wasn't opening up to her before, and while she has a right to be annoyed by that I just can't help but wonder if something about her is part of the reason why they went a year without her finding out. And for all we know, he's been flirting with guys in front of her this whole time and she just never noticed or processed it because she thought he was straight. Or she just never noticed or thought much about it because he hadn't cheated on her yet -- we never think much of our SO politely joking with a waiter/waitress at the restaurant until we've been confronted with the possibility that maybe it's not politeness but flirting.

That said, there's a good chance he only now feels better about his sexuality now that he's gotten it out in the open with her and as Dan said he's handling it badly. Things are now slightly different between them and they both need to come to terms with that.

But I think that maybe people are making this to be a bigger thing than it is because the cheating and the confession is how she found out he was bi. She might be using his bisexuality as an easy scapegoat (I think @49's got it right, where she's finding reasons not to hold him accountable for the cheating), and I think people (myself included) are using it to blow this way out of proportion. I disagree that this is on par with a need to inflict your kinks and fetishes on perfect strangers, though. Is it the same thing when a straight guy is with his girlfriend and flirts with another girl in front of her? Is he merely being insensitive or getting an exhibitionist thrill out of making people uncomfortable?

For the sake of argument, let's look at what's going on when we remove his bisexuality from the picture (which, really, we should):

He cheated on her and he's being kind of an insensitive prick by flirting with other people in front of her afterwards. She should tell him that he fucked up and if he wants to earn her trust back and maintain this relationship then he needs to knock it the fuck off. Dan would bring out his usual argument that a single indiscretion is not necessarily a sign that the relationship needs to end and that they can work this out together (which, in so many words, he did). People would say "good letter, Dan" and "this again, Dan?" and "you hate fat people, Dan" and we'd move on with our lives.

It shouldn't be any more complicated than that, and if she really doesn't have a problem with his bisexuality then it isn't. They should sit down and have a talk over whether they can move past this. This doesn't necessarily need a renegotiation of the relationship or a sudden need to open it up, just a sensitivity training course and some angry glaring. But if he can't/won't knock it off and she can't/won't fully come to terms with the fact that he cheated on her, then they should go their separate ways and remain friends on Facebook.

She strikes me as not minding someone who IS bisexual until he DOES bisexual. Having a bisexual boyfriend might increase her sense of elan or cachet, and there's perhaps some appeal in the idea of having such great power of attraction that someone with such stereotyped-as-wide tastes would forsake such a broad range of all others for monogamy with one.

But there's too much not given, perhaps even unasked on her part.

"He gets hit on by guys a lot when we go out, and he has no problem telling strangers who are chatting him up that he's bi when I'm standing right next to him. I am glad that he's more comfortable with his sexuality now, but it still feels like a slap in the face."

Does this really constitute flirting? I ask not to suggest it doesn't; I've retired from that field and just wonder why everyone seems to take it as a given that he's flirting. It seems that she's trying to be careful to avoid saying that he's flirting, but likely thinks so whether she'll admit it or not. And I can't get a clear picture of how he does or doesn't acknowledge her when she's standing next to him, whether it's that he doesn't make it sufficiently clear he's her property or whether she wants him not to admit to any MM tastes or whether she just doesn't want to hear it, or even if it's just his being able to be that open with anyone after less than a year's acquaintance is a stinging reminder.

Bleah.

@50

I think that we 99% agree, but I'll go on and on on the 1%. So anyway...

Regarding the flirting with guys, not girls. I can't speak for LW or her (probably now ex-) boyfriend. I won't assume that other people's preferences & motivations are the same as my preferences & motivations, and I won't dive into his motivations - because I don't think his motivations are relevant, just his behaviors. (Thanks, Dr. Wilkie!)

First, flirting with a girl or guy indicates enthusiasm for the individual, who happens to be of the same or the opposite gender. By itself, no big deal, and I'd tell the LW to STFU and count her blessings if that was all. That's 100% agreement with your point, so we're in sync so far.

Second, I see the way in which he flirts with guys as being outside of social norms. If flirting opens the door a crack to be propositioned (a tiny, tiny little crack, given that he's present with his girlfriend), interjecting that he's bi throws the door wide open, in a way that wouldn't be equally obvious if he was flirting with a woman and interjected that he was into women (maybe if he said "I'm into women .. and my girlfriend is out of town next week").

It involves her non-consensually because, since she's standing beside him, she has a nasty choice of either tacitly approving of the pass or shutting him down in public, then seeming like some kind of controlling, unsupportive, sex-negative, homophobic, biphobic monster.

Other than that .. yes, they have to talk about what he wants, what he can do, what she wants, what she can do, and where they stand. Totally agree with that. It's not complicated to do. It's just hard to live with.

@52 -- Well, with the flirting, I think it's just really hard to know what's going on there because the LW hasn't said exactly what's being done. All she says is that he's being hit on and that he has no problem telling people he's bi and his willingness to tell them he's bi is the problem. We're not sure how far this is going and we just might have to agree to disagree due to lack of information.

What @42 said. Totally.

Men hit on your boyfriend. You know he digs it, he has cheated on you, and he (pointedly?) mentions his orientation to these very same men. I don't know about y'all, but none of the people I know, gay or straight, feel the need to tell their orientation to strangers. It sounds very much like, "I'm interested in fucking you. Don't mind the beard, ehem, the girlfriend."

If he can't control himself (see cheating) he's a CPOS. Being bi isn't a handicap that makes it ok for you to disregard the feelings of your significant other. I'd think the bi guys would be first to disavow this guy's behavior - defending him is sounding like this is normal bi guy stuff and she's just not cut out for it (BIGOT!). What's that thing about Christians not speaking up when fellow Christians act like asshats? This IS the reason I shy away from seriously dating bi guys. Maybe they're not all like that, but neither are all hardcore Christian homophobes. I don't date them either.

@53. Certainly - I really do see your point, and it speaks well of you that you're giving him the benefit of the doubt here. That's the main difference between the two positions - you are, and I'm not - and otherwise we're reading it the same way and coming to the same conclusion.

@55 -- That's a fair assessment. Like I said in my earlier comment, just some things in her letter raise some red flags with me. She spends a little too much time focusing on some things (proving she's not bi-phobic) and not enough time on others (the boyfriend's behavior, whether he's simply being open with people about being bi or actively flirting with them). Whether or not he's in the wrong here, it sounds like she could still benefit from some self-analysis.