Validation. How do you prove that you’re feeling the way you are and that you’re just not imagining things or that great sense of unusual horniness isn’t causing you to hallucinate about the object of your lust… and an object that you, most likely, never considered would fall into your worldview?
Once I got into the adult years and really dug into all things bisexual, one of the things that kept showing up was… validation and the things guys (in particular) would do to gain the acceptance of others which, um, as some of know, isn’t the easiest thing in the world to get from someone else. I’d see all manner of problems this would cause guys and I’d be asked what they could do about it and, for quite a bit of time, I didn’t have an answer because I didn’t know that there was one.
Looking at myself didn’t do a lot of good or, honestly, I didn’t think it had until one day, I’m sitting on my steps and watching the world go by and not thinking about anything in particular when it suddenly hit me that the reason why I wasn’t all that eager to get others to accept me as a bisexual male was that… I had already accepted that I was.
Well, now – that was easy, wasn’t it? In a rush of thinking, it now occurred to me that when it comes to acceptance and validation, first, you have to accept that this is how you feel or, in my case, this is how it all went down and as a result, oh, hell, yeah – let’s go crazy with it! Of course, it all begged a plethora of questions and some of which I’m still trying to answer today but I had accepted that this is how I felt and that I liked what I was doing when it came to having sex both ways and I self-validated – nay, justified – my behavior even though I was well aware that I was surrounded by a lot of people who, if they were to learn this thing about me, wouldn’t accept me, let alone like me a whole lot.
It’s one hell of a blow to one’s sense of self to become aware of this and then to spend years thinking about how to overcome this, only to keep coming to the conclusion that there’s nothing you can do about what someone else thinks or feels about this and while it would be nice to have them on your side in this, you have to be on your own side first and foremost because if you sit around waiting for the approval and/or validation to come from others, you may be greatly disappointed or you might prove to be a glutton for emotional punishment as you run around coming out to friends and family, only to find out that you didn’t know them as well as you thought you did or now you’re seeing a side of them that you may have believed only “other people” have.
To thine own self be true. This, on the surface, doesn’t seem to be all that difficult a thing to do except for that little fact that you’re not quite like everyone else around you (that you know of) and, again and again, don’t we all know about the great angst toward homosexuals? Being aware of this can get in the way of accepting that, okay, you might not be all that straight… and you might not be as gay as you think you are, either, but let’s keep this simple for now, shall we? I know what it felt like to have it firmly in my head that I was the only one who was like this – and giving myself a huge head slap a few years down the road to realize that, um, no, among the Band of Horny Brothers, I sure as hell wasn’t the only one who like and wanted to go both ways, which was a great comfort and, I dunno, proved that I wasn’t as crazy as I thought and felt like.
And I accepted it. Had already been doing stuff to validate my thoughts and feelings and, yes, found out the hard way that the people you think is going to understand, accept, and be ‘on your side” about this are going to want to put a lot of distance between you and them and, yeah, that shit hurts and I know that I’m understating it. That was about the time I realized that as long as I’m okay with who and what I am, that’s what really matters.
So now I had the answer to the question. I’ve never really understood the compulsion to tell everyone you know that, um, you’re not straight. I understand (or I think I do) that getting kicked out of the heterosexual box is such a shock to the system – and, often, a strangely pleasant one that is so different that you just want to share this revelation with others and even if this has hit you at a time in your life where you can almost reasonably assume that, say, telling your girlfriend that you have sexy thoughts about men, too, is going to result in you not having a girlfriend.
Self-acceptance and validation, in my opinion, doesn’t make coming out any easier and this scribble isn’t so much about coming out as it is about giving yourself permission… to be yourself and that includes being bisexual and how important it is to understand that you’re not alone in this and, no, you’re not trying to live two different lives – one person, one life, dual interests when it comes to love, sex, and relationships. It’s not what you feel; it’s what you do about those feelings and understanding that you don’t have to do anything about them… but it can feel pretty damned good if you can convince yourself that taking the plunge is really going to be worth it…
And you can do it without being plagued by what others are going to think about you. Junior high school had taught me that as an individual, you have a need to be liked and accepted by your peers; you want to belong, to be a part of the whole except, oh, yeah, there’s this ‘little’ thing about you that sets you a bit apart from the crowd: You like boys and girls and, no, it doesn’t really matter to what degree you do, whether it’s more sexual than emotional (or the reverse). This is how you feel; you know it and whether you actually do anything about it and… you have to accept that this is how you feel, what you think about and, yeah, want to do something about as well.
Accepting doesn’t make doing any easier, either, but once you take the plunge – and you find it to your liking – oh, hell, yeah… where has this been all of my life? Junior high school, again, really taught me how vicious teenagers can be and, well, you really do learn who your real friends are and painfully so but it’s okay – they don’t have to accept this bisexual thing about you as long as you accept it about yourself, which I learned is the first thing you have to do and not run around trying to get others to accept this about you first or seeking validation from sources that you may or may not get anything from other than a world full of grief and angst.
You almost wind up going back to feeling like you’re the only person on the planet who is like this. Why don’t others accept this about you? Well, that’s easy – they’re not supposed to. So much heartache and emotional pain to find yourself rejected out of hand and all because (1) you’re not exactly straight and (2) you find yourself surround by a bunch of people who truly believe that you’re really gay and, yeppers, things really get messy at this point but I found that the thing that ‘saved me’ from being depressed over a general lack of acceptance was… I had already accepted this about myself and, yeah, buddy, I sure as hell had already validated myself and proved that my liking it wasn’t a fluke or a flash in the pan and, no, it sure as hell wasn’t an experiment as much as it was an exploration.
But as I’d seen in other guys, if you can’t accept that this is the way you are, yeah, that could be a problem. I’d tell guys this and they’d ask, “How do I accept it about myself?” and, well, that’s kinda easy: You tell yourself that it really is okay for you to be yourself and the logic is sound because, really, who are you supposed to be: Someone that you aren’t? Someone that others believe you’re supposed to be and in their eyes? Again, all of this comes into play and things get even messier, but I had found that as long as I maintained my belief in myself and all nicely accepted and validated, yeah, it was fucked up to lose friends… but I was staying true to who – and what – I was.
It wasn’t easy for me to get to this point even though I tend to make it sound like it was but I got there and learned the lesson that just because I could do it didn’t mean that everyone could do it – but if you don’t try, you’ll never know and I helped a lot of guys through the self-acceptance part of this and the part that says if this is how you want to have sex, it’s really okay even if no one else thinks that it is and, yeah, you still have to stay true to yourself, don’t you? We… curry favor from those around us; we still have that innate need to be liked, wanted, and to be a part of the whole and to the extent that we will suppress this bisexual thing about us and in favor of not pissing someone else off or, um, you’re being who they want you to be and not so much who and what you know yourself to be.
Again, this isn’t about doing the deed; this is about giving yourself permission to be yourself because if you’re not going to, who’s supposed to? A lot of the guys I’d talk to about this would be presented with this specific question and they found it ‘easy’ to answer, while others continued to struggle with being able to answer it because they were too focused on what someone else would think or say about them even though, logically, it doesn’t make sense to be focused on this and almost to the exclusion of all else… but this isn’t an exercise in logic as much as it is an internal and emotional thing that goes on inside of us. You want people to like you for who and what you are but you wind up growing some thick skin and begin to not give a lot of fucks if they don’t like or accept that you’re not straight and you’re not exactly gay either.
Best of both worlds? Yeah, sure it is… but it’s also being between a rock and a hard place, too, and the only buffer/cushion you have is… you’ve accepted this about yourself and have done whatever you needed to do to validate your thoughts and feelings because if you don’t, do you really expect and believe that someone else is supposed to? If you’re not going to give yourself permission to be yourself, who’s supposed to provide this for you? A friend? Girlfriend or wife? Think that your family is going to have your back in this and come hell or high water?
And the many men and women I know of who learned the hard way that if they don’t do this, it’s not going to get done. This isn’t about being in a relationship and needing to beg your partner for permission to take care of a need that you have that they can’t do anything about; this isn’t about getting your partner involved in some sexual shit that they may not be interested in so that you can legitimize the fact that you want to suck cock and swallow cum and/or get all into the anal sex thing and like I see a lot of guys do and my opinion that this ain’t the way to go about things or, nah, I wouldn’t do that but, then again, I didn’t have to because I’d already given myself permission to be myself.
Okay. Being in a threesome with a man and a woman can validate whether or not you can do all that shit you think you can do – and with both in the same setting and I’ve seen way too many people find out that this ain’t as easy as it seems or, it’s not a guarantee that your bisexuality will be validated and more so when, at first, you have to convince two other people that this would be a fun thing for them to participate in, let alone including some sex that we still consider to be taboo here in 2024 and, yeah, there’s some other psychology that goes with the whole threesome thing that I am not going to get into because I don’t want to give myself a headache – but I know about it just the same and like I know that failure in this can go a long way toward eroding one’s self-acceptance and my contention that this should be immutable and proof against any form of erosion.
And it’s not easy to conceptualize; it’s not easy to wrap your head around because this particular rabbit hole is the abyss that can wind up looking back at you and not likely in a good way if you can’t accept that if you can’t or don’t accept this about yourself, it’s not all that likely that someone else is going to do that for you or that they’re supposed to and, as the song goes, what’s love got to do with it? Nothing, as it can turn out, but this is more of our social messiness.
I’d get asked how I did it and my answer would be, “I did it because I had to…” and that was the easiest non-answer possible because even today, I cannot explain to anyone exactly how I learned to accept this about myself and to validate my existence as a male bisexual – I just did it because I had to and I saw, early on, that if I didn’t, no one else was going to and in this, my parents were right about the things they said about this particular thing (not the sexuality thing).
To thine own self be true. Accept that as improbable as this may seem, this is how you feel; it’s what you find yourself thinking about and that it’s okay to think and feel – doing, yeah, a whole different thing but something you have to also decide to give yourself permission to do since, um, you’d be lucky to find someone who’d want to give you that permission – and that very human thing that says if they can give it to you, they can take it away from you, too.
You could be thinking, “Who thinks of shit like this?” and, obviously, I do – because I had to if I really want to be able to understand my bisexuality and the bisexuality of all of those other men and women around me and seeing that, at the root of this is self-acceptance. I am bisexual. Didn’t exactly try it and liked it but I sure as hell liked it – and I accept that I did even at a rudimentary level. If it feels good, do it; it felt good, and I kept right on doing it and with near reckless abandon because, really, who knew going both ways could be so… rewarding in a great many ways? I didn’t at first… but I found out and the good part is that I’m not the only one who found out and found that, yeah, self-acceptance and validation and being true to yourself isn’t that hard of a thing to do… just don’t ask us to explain it how we did it.
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