Countdown to a (Same-Sex) Wedding #2

6 Weeks to Go

This post is a little later than I intended, but it's been a busy long weekend: we spent 4 days completely redecorating our living room. It looks absolutely fabulous if we do say so ourselves! It's made the place feel properly "ours" and we couldn't be happier.

So this week I want to write about some of the people we've encountered on our wedding organisation journey.

It's always a little daunting when we walk into a shop and the attendant says "so, who's the bride?". Explaining that we both are, and no we're not sisters/best friends, and that yes it's the same wedding, usually takes up the first few minutes of any interaction. There's always a little apprehensive feeling: how will they react? The hope is for acceptance; the expectation is generally tolerance.

What we never expected was enthusiasm!

Without fail, everyone we have dealt with has reacted in a manner indistinguishable to the reaction you would expect as a heterosexual bride. People have been excited, interested, thrilled, engaged, eager to help. A little curious sometimes about how it all works, but never indecently so, and always with a warm and welcoming manner. We have been SO impressed. The attitude of vendors has exceeded all expectations and made us feel truly at home in the wedding supply landscape.

Here's a shout-out to some people and companies who have made our journey so enjoyable:
Christine at Crystal Breeze in Kingston-upon-Thames, where we bought my dress;
Jessy (we think that was her name) at The Wedding Dress Factory Outlet, who found Ellie's perfect dress after we picked up the wrong sizes and were running out of time;
The ladies at H. Samuel in Hemel Hempstead, who not only sorted out our engagement rings but wave and smile at us whenever we pass in the mall; and
Kerry of Kerry Steeden Couture, whose genius as a seamstress is seeing our lovely dresses shortened without losing their loveliness.

There have also been numerous other people, encountered in passing, who have entered into the spirit and made us feel good.

Cynically, one might think that people in the wedding industry know their business and put on a good show for their customers whatever their private beliefs, but we've never been given reason to think that about anyone. Without exception, everyone we have dealt with has seemed genuinely happy for us. We think that's amazing, and it gives us such good vibes for the future.

Lesbian

A few people have privately pinged me about the fact that my info, both here and elsewhere, now says 'lesbian' instead of 'bisexual'.

A lot of pondering went into that change. I identified as bisexual for eleven years (secretly for the first ten years) so it is a label that I had come to find comfortable. However, the more I thought about it the more inaccurate and inadequate it became. Similarly, although I used to feel ambivalent about the exotic, othering 'lesbian' label, it had become familiar and I was ready to accept it. Identifying as bisexual felt wrong, while the lesbian label felt right.

The kinds of questions I'm being asked about this are: Have you changed from a bisexual to a lesbian? Or were you a lesbian all along? If so, what about that 10-year string of heterosexual relationships?

They're good questions, and I have been trying to answer them myself. It's difficult to consider one's own past objectively, but I have tried to be at least critical of my experience so that I can answer accurately.

It's true that until this year I believed I was attracted to men as well as women. I was convinced of this despite all available evidence, that being that my relationships with men routinely sucked and were devoid of physical and emotional satisfaction. (Yes, I do mean all of them. Sorry, any exes reading this, but them's the breaks. And really, if you're smart enough to read this blog you must have realised just how badly matched we were). I persisted with the pursuit of a safe, respectable heterosexual relationship despite proving to myself time and time again that they just didn't work for me. There were other issues at play in some of my poor partner choices - emotional baggage not related to my sexuality - but normalcy was part of it. I didn't want to rock the boat, so I kept on trying, one disaster after another.

I don't think I was ever truly bisexual. The frequency and potency of my attraction to women has been largely unchanged since my childhood (even when I thought I was just desiring a close friendship) and it has blossomed since I accepted that this is the only way for me. Without the red herring of "needing" a normal heterosexual relationship I can't imagine why I ever wanted one in the first place!

I'm wearing the 'lesbian' label with pride and joy today, where once it used to both frighten and tantalise. And I am very, very happy to own that element of myself. It feels like coming home.

Bisexuality, Again...

Usual disclaimer: this is about sex, sexuality and the philosophies thereof. It may contain details. Do not read if you're squeamish about any of the above.

About 11 days ago, when the events began to kick off that led to me becoming involved with my darling girl E, I had a moment of sheer panic. What if all those bitchy naysayers about bisexuality had been right? What if I was just looking for attention or trying to be special? What if I found myself in an intimate situation with a girl and realised that I was in fact not really attracted to women that way at all? I believed I was bisexual and had gone as far as kissing and that felt fine, but for a moment I wondered whether it really was all in my head.

Thankfully the panic was over quickly and turned out to be entirely unfounded. Not only was it great, but it was far, far better than anything I'd ever experienced with a man. That is not to insult the men I've had relationships with - well, not to insult the few of them who actually had decent skills - but being with a girl felt right in a way that heterosexual relations have never done for me.

While potentially triggering another round of 'what is my sexuality, exactly?', this also opened my eyes to the very real difference between heterosexuality / homosexuality and bisexuality. I simply cannot imagine only being attracted to a single sex. I may have spent 20 years of my life being unknowingly bisexual and another 10 largely pretending I wasn't, but it was there in my mind... there to the core. To me the 'either or' mindset is so familiar, natural and comfortable. I had a stark moment of realisation that most people are genuinely only interested in one gender, one way or another. It struck me just how weird that was to me, and equally just how weird bisexuality must seem to those who don't experience it.

The long-awaited confirmation that this really truly is who I am forced me to confront the fact that this is something that most people are not. A very strange moment. A defining moment of identity that was really very meaningful and special, and I don't want it to be eclipsed by the general squeeing over-excitement that currently fills my days.

I am bisexual. Naturally, fundamentally, from birth to death, to the core. This is part of who I am.


And I am proud that I am finally whole.


Welcome to Christine :)

Labels

I have had a stinker of a cold for the past two weeks - the sort that starts with a sore throat and then disappears, leaving you thinking that you've beaten it, only to come back with a sore throat followed by the sneezles followed by a cough followed by being an icky mucus monster (my current point in the proceedings, yay). The joys of working with small children, I guess: they catch everything and pass it all on to their hapless teachers.

The blissed-out realisations of my last post morphed into a blinking confusion and turmoil over the past week, and that too has now settled. It concerns sexuality yet again, so stop reading here if you're sick of hearing about it ;)

I've always believed that sexuality is not static, and that people can move up and down the spectrum throughout their lives. This may be partly due to social pressures and conformity having kept them from finding themselves or coming out (witness the number of middle-aged women who 'become' lesbians after ending marriages they entered into in their late teens or early 20s) but I believe it's also true of people who are very sure of themselves. At different times, we may expand or narrow the range of people we find attractive.

In the past couple of weeks I've become aware of a very definite shift in myself, towards the lesbian end of the scale.

This is not to say that I'm not still able to be attracted to men, nor that I would say 'never' to being with a man again (and indeed there are one or two from my past who I think I would never say no to, provided we were both single!). But when I think about long-term relationships and marriage and kids and all that, I feel vaguely panicked when there's a hypothetical man in the picture, whereas when I put a hypothetical woman in the picture, I feel both relaxed and elated.

I used to dream about this from time to time before I was out, but of course back in Australia marriage to a woman was impossible and arranging to have a family with one was fiendishly difficult, whereas here in the UK both are so mainstream that they barely rate an eyebrow flicker in anyone. That's a dream I can live over here.

I went into a bit of an identification flap this week, not sure whether I was really bisexual, or was actually a lesbian who had gone through bisexuality on her way out of the closet. After going round and round a million times in my head and seeking advice from a forum of friendly bi & les women, I've found that the only sensible answer is "I'm me, doing what I do, whatever that is".

So I'm not going to start slapping new labels on myself tonight, but I am going to be true to how I'm feeling right now, and that's all about looking to a future where I have a girlfriend, and maybe one day a wife.

You have no idea how good it sounds to say that.

Being Bi

A couple of weeks ago, in the throes of election angst, I got into a spat with an acquaintance about whether sexuality is a choice or a predetermined part of one's nature. The context was a meme that was going around that highlights the absurdity of anti-gay marriage sentiments, and in the course of the argument she tried to tell me that my parents' unhappy marriage is the reason why I have chosen bisexuality as an adult.

Surprisingly, for me, I didn't blow my stack and rain down eloquent fire upon her head; just calmly pointed out the fallacies in her assumptions. But it's got me thinking a lot about my experience of growing up bisexual.

I was a very sheltered child, and had very little access to (or interest in) popular culture. I didn't listen to the radio; my TV intake was carefully monitored and approved; my mother read no magazines; and while our house was full of books, those that were not children's books were limited to sci fi, fantasy and old-school whodunnits. In a pre-internet world I simply had no access to anything beyond a vanilla, heteronormative world-view.

Around the ages of 5-7, kids go through a first stage of having "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" as they begin to mimic adult relationships. I had a "boyfriend" during this phase, because I was a girl. But I can also distinctly remember becoming emotionally attached to female friends. If they had been boys, these attachments would have been crushes.

Boy-girl relations broke off for a while after that, as my year group passed through the "boy / girl germs" stage. Around age 10 they picked up again and began to look like real relationships on the upswing towards puberty. Here, again, I knew when I was crushing on a particular boy, but couldn't explain the way I became attached to other girls. There was no sexual or particularly physical element at this age (no more than there was with the boys!), just an overwhelming desire for closeness. I would become enamoured of the way a particular girl looked, spoke, moved, thought; and I'd want to hold on to that somehow.

Sometime around this age I learned about homosexuality. One of my aunts was openly lesbian and my family were accepting of the fact. I was never given any negative or judgemental attitudes about homosexuality, and certainly never remember being bothered by it. I knew I was attracted to boys, so I never considered applying the label to myself.

As I progressed through my (still extremely sheltered) high school years, the boy-crushes and girl-crushes continued apace. I was very shy, anxious and socially inept, and often longed to get close to female friends but had no idea how to manage it. I was occasionally accused of being a lesbian, partly because I didn't have the social skills to attract boys and thus didn't date; and partly because I would often blush and stutter when talking to girls whom, had I known it, I found attractive.

It wasn't until I finally hit university that I learned about bisexuality. Between the liberal-minded university environment, access to my own TV and the advent of the internet, I became aware of the fact that people could 'swing both ways'. Unfortunately, I was also exposed to someone - I don't remember who, or where, or why - opining that girls who came out as bi were just looking for attention. How I wish I'd never heard that!

I can quite clearly remember the moment when I realised that the label 'bisexual' was mine. I was 19. It was the day after I'd had an explicit dream about my then-best-friend, who I had been close to since high school; and it was around the same time as I'd had an overwhelming urge to work a lesbian character into a book I was writing, and write a sex scene for her. I was lying there in bed puzzling over these two facts, when it hit me.

OH. 


DUH.


"I'm bisexual".

Unfortunately for the me of the next 10 years, I decided right away that no-one could ever know. Firstly, I thought I'd be accused of attention-seeking and drama (I felt the same way about asking for help with persistent depression; keeping my head down and my mouth shut was a common theme for me). Secondly, I wanted A Husband And Kids, and I "knew" that allowing myself to become involved with a girl would mean giving those things up for ever.

So I buried the knowledge deep. The crushes didn't go away, but now I actively pretended that they were just "intense friendships". I remember one class in third year in which I had two crushes - "Jolly Tammy" and "Dainty Diana", I called them - and wondering how I could change the chatty in-class friendships into something stronger and closer. I couldn't accept or acknowledge my desire to be with girls, but I couldn't stop the feelings.

This was the status quo throughout my 20s. Crushes, male and female, came and went. I had a few relationships with men (mostly unsatisfying and/or unpleasant), and a few long stretches without. I considered listing myself as bisexual on dating sites; I occasionally described myself as "bi-curious", "slightly more towards the bi end of the scale" or "bi but not actively so" to people I only knew on the internet. But I was far, far too scared of the consequences to ever own up to it in my real life. Or so I thought.

Late last year I made a new friend, who shares many of my opinions and values, and whom I respect a great deal. And she announced her bisexuality on her blog. This began a watershed for me. Another friend whom I'd met at the same time was a young woman I found intoxicating. I really, really wanted to be with her. I had not enquired about her sexuality, and she had a boyfriend besides. But between those two elements, something snapped. It took several months to work up the courage, but I came out. First to the friend who is also bi, secondly to my brother, then here on my blog, and then slowly to friends and family as it became relevant or necessary.

(It's not entirely relevant to the story, but... the intoxicating young lady read my blog, and it turned out that she is bi too [and thought I knew!] and a week after I came out I spent an evening kissing her... it was a brief interlude as I left for London at the end of that week, but it still sparkles in my mind as one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life).

Of everyone I've told about my bisexuality, only one person has had an "aha, I thought so!" reaction. He too is bi, and had picked up, to my delight, the blushing-at-girls thing. I spent so many years disclaiming that as "I just blush when I laugh!" and it was funny and wonderful to find that someone had pegged its true cause.

So here I am, a lifelong bisexual woman who is finally comfortable in her own skin. I've got friends who are fine with my sexuality (having shed those who are not), I have a boyfriend who is also bisexual, and I've got enough confidence to know that my family can like it or lump it and I'll be fine (so far they've been fine or neutral, thank goodness).

When it comes to the question of sexuality being a choice... no. If a sheltered 5-year-old can unknowingly identify as bisexual, then any adult who claims it's a lifestyle decision can go jump in a lake, with my compliments. It's not. It never has been, and it never will be.