Category: Bisexuality and Conscious Living

Bisexuals and Trump

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)Like most bisexuals, I truly hate and avoid being political when it comes to my sexual life.  Like most bisexuals, I get my pleasure when and where I can, struggle with being honest with myself and others, and prepare myself as best I can for facing the consequences of my actions. As a bisexual, I do not judge others because I do not want them to judge me. But it is time to leave the cocoon and speak out, to be compassionate, and to care for the well-being of my brothers and sisters in their LGBTQ communities.

Make no mistake, Trump and the extreme-conservative movement is a threat to the rights and freedoms of some American citizens, and if some of us are affected, we all are effected in the end. I was most troubled, and therefore motivated to say something, by a news story today about four journalists who were arrested for covering the so-called inaugural day riot in Washington. We need the truth. Journalists are not always angels but at least they need to be able to present their views of the truth so that we have their information to use in our own decision making.

My wife is German and when she sees what is happening, it takes her back to her roots in Germany that led to the deaths of two uncles as soldiers in the German army, the loss of health for her father, and the imprisonment of her grandfather in a concentration camp for his socialist views. I am also reminded of the imprisonment and subsequent deaths of thousands of gay men who did not fit the mold of the macho, Aryan, German male.

Make no mistake – hate is a vicious master that will gobble up everyone in its path including the ones with the guns.  We have to stop hate now before it is too late. There are two ways to stop hate – by fighting it or by loving it to death. I prefer the second method. This means being aware of the problem but looking past the actors and role players to the root cause. We are all fragmented and played like a fine violin into believing there is “us and them”. But we are all part of the same family. We need to show compassion for our fellow LGBTQers on one hand while engaging in honest and caring dialogue with the conservatives on the other hand. We are not enemies – we have nothing to fear from each other. We have to persistently state our case in a caring and loving way and eventually the truth will break through the covering of lies and hate before us.

Bisexuality and The Virtue of Truthfulness

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)

“All our sacred traditions reveal that our life is inherently meaningful because we are the expression of Divine love, justice, kindness, and truthfulness in the world”[1].  In her book, A Pace of Grace, Linda Popov talks about how focusing on our virtues is essential in maintaining a joyous and productive life. I believe it is time for us bisexuals to take our focus off of what we do, and all the shame and guilt that goes with it, and focus on what we are and all the virtues we possess.

I would like to start with the virtue of  “truthfulness”. Throughout my first marriage, I lived a double life.  I was dishonest with myself and my ex-wife. It lead to heartbreak and grief for both of us and a mental crash and thoughts of suicide for me. In order to prevent heartbreak and depression, we have to be honest with ourselves, take an honest look at our actions, and search our feelings. Does our way of life really reflect the values we care most about? Does our life bring us joy? According to Popov truthfulness requires that we, “reflect on the meaning of what is happening in your (our) life and determine the guiding virtues you (we) need to do the right thing and to live more consciously”[2]. Truly this is the way, and perhaps, in the long run, the only way, to truly live a happy and meaningful life.

So how does the virtue of truthfulness apply to bisexuality? Here are my five thoughts on the subject:

  1. First the big one, we have to deal with the thoughts that are preventing us from being truthful with ourselves. The greatest source of these negative thoughts is shame. To deal with shame we have to first understand what it is and where it comes from. It is part of our subconscious mind developed during early childhood by the disciplinary system of our culture.  When we, as children, do something that our parents disapprove of, they try to make us feel remorse or shame. Then, as we get older, we feel this sense of shame whenever we do something that we feel our parents would not approve of.  This then generalizes to our relationships with others, including teachers, peers, and society at large. As bisexuals, we automatically fall into the shame category because our society does not understand our behavior and thus disapproves of the way we live our lives. We have to realize that our bisexuality is our own individual biological predisposition or orientation. We have to recognize that shame is coming from an outside source that is trying to make us conform to its standards. We have to realize that we are free to recognize the source, state our truth, and then respond and behave in a way that is true to ourselves and our orientation.  To live in truthfulness we must not feel forced to conform to  anyone else’s view on our own behavior and morality.
  2. Speak only the truth. This means being truthful with ourselves as well as others. We need to learn how to listen to the inner voice from the higher self that is telling us that there is something wrong with the way we are perceiving things. We have to let the voice speak without interruptions or excuses and then act according to that truth.
  3. We do not have to justify, or feel we have to justify, our thoughts and actions. We simply state the truth to ourselves and then to others as needed. It really is on a need to know basis. If someone inquiries about our actions, we should respond honestly and from the heart and give them only as much information as they need to know. If they want to know more they will ask.
  4. We should not impose our truth on others. Our virtue of truthfulness is never intended to put others in their place or to shock and hurt. We do not have to parade our thoughts and feeling before others who have no idea of where we are coming from and the truth of our inner thoughts and feelings. Truth is a private thing between us and our inner selves and the significant people in our lives. If you want to get involved in LGBTQ politically do it for good reasons but not to follow the crowd or to justify your actions to others.
  5. We must focus on the basic truth. The virtue of truthfulness should lead to a greater sense of being, purpose, and joy. If we are not experiencing these feelings there may be something wrong with our interpretation and practice of our inner truth and our development of the virtue of truthfulness.

[1] Popov, Linda K. . A Pace of Grace. Plume. 2004 (Page 25).

[2] Popov (page 25).

 

 

 

Finding the Higher Self

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img_1394-1In the past, fighting against the desires of my bisexual soul used to drain all my energy. I don’t fight it anymore; I just accept it as a beautiful part of me. Much of the growth has come as a result of getting older. Getting older has its blessings. I no longer chase after fruitless dreams that keep me busy with no real rewards. I choose to see and enjoy the moment and the things of my soul instead of the things of my mind.

Autumn Again

My west deck,

Reaching for the blue sky,

Sitting near the top of the laurel hedge,

Surrounded by trees,

A sea of green, delicious green,

That nurtures my soul

With the vibrations of living things.

The sun pours in its autumn warmth

In golden rays of pure light,

As the silence gathers and spreads,

Offering healing to a tired mind.

 

It is a new age,

The age of not yet old,

But no longer young,

An age where everything fits together,

And I choose to do those things

That offer peace and contentment,

And I choose to give my soul

To a God who does not judge,

But spreads a blanket of love on those who seek,

And I choose to give my heart,

A response to the love energy that surrounds me,

A gift from my higher self to my conscious self,

A gift that keeps on giving and never ends.

The Kinsay Scale and Bisexuality

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)I finally found an easy to do on-line test based on the Kinsey Scale.  I have been interested in doing one for a long time but had difficulty finding one. This was my reading:

 

“At times, you’ve found yourself drawn to different types of people: gay, straight, male, female, and whatever else. Your sexuality is about as fluid as it gets, and it’ll probably remain so as long as you’re having sexual impulses”[1]. Yes, I am definitely bisexual.

In curiosity, I checked another scale.  This one dealt with figure ground pictures involving naked women or something else.  I came out “straight as an arrow”[2].

Now I was a bit confused (typical state for a bisexual), so I took a third test.  This one seemed more scientific [3]. It was called the Epstein Orientation Inventory (ESOI). It has a range of 13 with a mean of seven. This time the results indicated that I had a mean sexual orientation of 7 (right smack dab in the middle), a sexual orientation range of 11 (really high), a sex drive of 11.5 (really high), a same sex attraction of 12 (really high), an opposite sex attraction of 11 (fairly high).

So what does this all mean. Well, first of all, it means I am bisexual with difficulty analyzing figure ground due to weakness in visual processing where I tend to focus on the dominant figure by color and intensity. According to the other two scales, yes, I am bisexual. So what? I knew that already. To me there are only two questions:

Have you had sex with a man and enjoyed it.

Have you had sex with a woman and enjoyed it.

If you answered “yes” to both questions you are bisexual. If you answered yes to only one you are either heterosexual or gay or lesbian. If you answered no to both questions you are either too young to take the test, or as Hamlet said to Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery,” or perhaps a monastery. I would also guess (very unscientific of me) that most experienced bisexuals like me would have a very high sex drive with a slight leaning towards same sex attractions but backed by a healthy drive towards the opposite sex.  I would also guess that most active bisexuals tend to have an opposite sex partner but frequent or occasional desires and perhaps experiences with same sex acquaintances. The opposite is also true but I would guess the difference to be in the range of 1 to 8.

If we know we are bisexual, why take the tests?  In my case, it was curiosity, a desire to know more about myself, and that is a good thing. We should be curious about our bisexual nature, not out of fear or doubt, but just to expand our knowledge of ourselves and our sexual natures. The more we know about ourselves and our sexual drives, the more we can enjoy our bodies and the experiences we can have through our sexuality.

[1] Greenring, Tanner. Buxxfeed.( https://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/lets-talk-about-sex?utm_term=.juDp2XoZ2#.vbLlVzOjV).

[2] Walker, Kate. How Dirty is Your Mind Accorcing to the Kinsaey Scale. Playbuzz. (http://www.playbuzz.com/katewalker10/this-test-will-help-you-place-yourself-on-kinseys-sexuality-scale).

[3] Epstein, Robert.Straight, Gay, or In Between. (http://mysexualorientation.com/)

Bisexuality Scientifically Supported

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)A friend of mine and a fellow psychologist, who is married to a woman but considers himself as strictly gay, has told me emphatically that there is no such thing as a bisexual. According to him, science indicates that you have to be either attracted to men or women but biologically you cannot be attracted to both. He bases his beliefs on the rat studies of the 1980’s involving the use or hormone injections and  more recent studies that seem to link gay or heterosexual orientation to the mother’s hormone production during pregnancy.  In either case, to him,  it seems to be either or, but not both.

However, nine million Americans who claim they are bisexual, or at least feel attraction to both men and women, cannot all be wrong. In a recent study (2011)[1] conducted in Northwestern University, researchers found “evidence that at least some men who identify themselves as bisexual are, in fact, sexually aroused by both women and men.” These findings overturn their earlier studies (2005). Using more stringent guidelines, the researchers recruited subjects from online bisexual venues. The  participants had to have had sexual experiences with at least two people of each sex and a romantic relationship of at least three months with at least one person of each sex. In both studies, men watched videos of male and female same-sex intimacy while genital sensors monitored their erectile responses. While the first study reported that bisexuals generally resembled homosexuals, the new one found that bisexual men responded to both the male and female videos. The earlier study suggested that bisexual attraction was due to subjective arousal rather than a genital response. The second study clearly showed that bisexual men did indeed have a genital response.

So what do these studies mean for us bisexuals? It is reassuring to know that we are indeed sexually aroused by both men and women (as if we didn’t know that already). For many years, I have been under the delusion that I was sexually (genital arousal) attracted to men but psychologically (subjective arousal) desired intimacy with women. This is simply not true. We cannot separate the two.  Arousal and desire for intimacy go together. Genital arousal leads to desire for intimacy and intimacy leads to genital arousal, whether it is with a man or a woman.

What has been confusing in the past is that my relationships with men were based on a quick fix, genital arousal with no subjective involvement, simply find a willing partner and engage, whereas my relationships with women demanded courtship and foreplay leading to intimacy and arousal. While I was married, I did a man thing; I compartmentalized. I got my gay fix (genital arousal) quick and easy and saved my moments of intimacy (subjective arousal) for love making with my wife. Because of the emotional intensity of my gay encounters, I came to the inevitable conclusion that my real drives were gay.  But this is simply not the case; it was merely my personal way to deal with my powerful sexual desires for both men and women.

So what is the solution? Simple me – I still think the answer is love. Find love and have sex, not have sex and perhaps find love. We seek intimacy and enjoy the genital arousal within the boundaries of a meaningful relationship. This can be with a man or a woman.  We are bisexual. This requires an open relationship where feelings and desires are open for honest discussion. And if we are not yet in an intimate relationship than it is perfectly fine and certainly enjoyable to experiment and have genital and subjective experiences with both men and women until the right person comes along.

 

[1] Rosenthat  A.M., Sylva D., Safron A., amd Bailey JM. .Sexual Arousal Patterns of Bisexual Men Revisited. Biol Psychol. 2011.

Bisexual Christmas

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img_1394-1Christmas is often a tough time for anyone experiencing social anxieties and that certainly includes us bisexuals. When scouring the net I came up with gift ideas for bi’s including sweatshirts, tee-shirts and pendants.  But that’s not the real gift, is it? I suppose we could look at the Christ story and look for some kind of rebirth, but I think most of us are happy with the life we have. The key is not to wish for anything new but to enjoy and celebrate the important things we have. So here is my wish list for Christmas.

  1. The present – just to live a life free of anxiety, to enjoy the present moment regardless of where it takes me.
  2. Family time – to enjoy my children and grandchildren now and throughout the new year and to celebrate the fact that they do indeed still love me in spite of all the concern I have caused them.
  3. Love – I am thankful for the solid relationship I have with my wife of two and a half years. She knows I am bi, she encourages me to talk about my past and present gay desires, and she gives me the freedom to explore both sides of my bisexual nature. Above all, I am so thankful that we can enjoy each other’s bodies, minds, and souls.
  4. This beautiful planet – I live on Vancouver Island and we are presently moving up-island to live on a bay along the coast where I can greet the morning sun as it rises over Bayne’s Sound. I am thankful for the pairs of eagles that fly overhead and the sea lions that bark all day. I am thankful for the paths that wind through the old growth forest where I can stop and hug a giant tree and know that I am part of an awesome network of living things.
  5. And me – I am thankful for me, my bisexual nature, my masculine straight side and my feminine gay side. I am thankful for all the experiences my bisexuality have caused and yet opened up for me – the beautiful, the bad and the ugly. Without them I would not be who I am and I am proud and happy to be me.

Sex, Pleasure, and Beauty

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)As I am getting older, I am learning to savor the pleasures of this life with all the passion that my mind and body can muster. I have become conscious of beauty.  I seek it throughout each and every day.  As I explore the pleasures of my senses I am much more selective in how the next moment should be spent.

Sexuality has become much more than experiencing orgasm. My sexual passions meld with the other senses. Making love is no longer a ritual or a tension and anxiety release; I make love because I love life, I love the moment, and I love the person that I am with. The feelings of togetherness dominate my moments and I can focus my arousal on exploring the beauty of his/her body and soul. Sometimes this sense of attraction and oneness leads to sexual passion, but most of the time, I just want to settle into the glow.

As I continue to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love[1], slowly and thoughtfully, I am impressed with the beauty of her words. I would like to explore some of her thoughts on the topic of pleasure and beauty and apply them to bisexuality.

“In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted . . . .  Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal (sex) is the only currency that is real.” (page 114)

This one is about forgetting about the negative aspect of gaining weight and just settling in to consciously enjoying a gourmet Italian meal in a quaint restaurant on the streets of Rome. The same thing can be said about sex. We have to learn to forget the consequences, ignore the negative feelings, and just enjoy the sensuality of touch and taste. For much of my life, perhaps due to my religious background, the beauty of sex has been watered down and devalued, at times to the point of shame and guilt. All of those thoughts imposed by well-meaning individuals have interfered with my sense of pleasure. I have come to realize that those thoughts are not to be trusted.  I will no longer bargain my right to enjoy one of the greatest pleasures of life. The only thing that is real is the pleasure and the knowledge that I can gain through my senses.

“To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business – not always a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into rhetoric and plot . . . . You were given life; it is your duty (an also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight” (page 115).

I am leaning to see beauty in everything, especially in the act and art of making love. Seeing the beauty of my own body, mind, and soul has been like coming out of Plato’s cave and seeing life the way it really is. I am beautiful.  My feelings and sensations are beautiful.  I can reach emotional orgasm smelling a flower or seeing a doe curled up in my flower bed, but best of all by experiencing the love that comes from the exchange of touch. Holding my partner consciously and sensuously is the greatest pleasure I know.  She/he is beautiful. I am beautiful. We are beautiful.

”And I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person – the magnification of one’s life – is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody’s but my own” (page 116).

My sole purpose is to see myself as I really am and to expand into the most beautiful person that I can be. I have learned to live selfishly.  My own personal pleasure and my own pursuit of beauty is the purpose of my life, but it is a purpose I can share with another human being. By exploring another’s beauty sensuously, sexually, and consciously and reflecting it back  to them,  I provide the divine energy that enables that person to expand and grow individually. And when we perform this act of love together, living and growing itself becomes something beautiful and the source of ultimate pleasure.This is a pleasure that I have chosen to experience with one person because of the intensity of the feelings we can share.  I have become monogamous not because of any restrictions on my mind but because of the expansion of my soul.

[1] Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love. Penguin Books. London, England. 2006.

Bisexuality – the Search for Intimacy

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)I am sitting at my writer’s desk, getting ready for my next entry in my Bisexual Blog, my next book on bisexuality, and thinking of the loves of my life. My bisexuality has made it difficult for me at times, because I have not been able to give my whole self to the pursuit of love with one man or one woman. On the other hand, I have had the soul filling opportunity to experience intense feelings of genuine bonding with some truly wonderful people. And is that not the true and only meaningful purpose of life?

As bisexuals, our primary pathway to intimacy is essentially sexual in nature. For heterosexual men and women, even in the workplace, they are always subconsciously and sometime consciously aware of the attractiveness of someone from the opposite sex.  As bisexuals we come from a different planet than heterosexuals and even our close cousins the gays and lesbians.  We are totally oversexed. We are wired so that everyone and everything is sexual in nature. All our perceptions are channeled through our limbic system. Our brains are wired so that we directly respond, absorbing the energies and pheromones of both men and women. Everyone is potentially a sexual partner. The truth is that we hunger intensely for touch, connection, and bonding with both men and women. We hunger for intimacy.

For us bisexuals, who often find early same-sex exploration psychologically disturbing and painful, we are often led to a heterosexual relationship where as women we are pursued hotly by lustful males, and as men, we are urged into a committed and permanent relationship by women. For both bisexual men and women this gives us a sense of worthiness (which we desperately seek), love, belonging, and that terrible word – normalcy.

But because of our bisexual nature we somehow never feel complete.  Eventually that relationship is not enough.  The search for wholeness drives us from the safety of a heterosexual relationship to seek out something more with another man or woman. This need cannot be filled with just friendship, and it cannot be filled with chance encounters. The only thing that will complete us is intimacy; and that intimacy is though touch, and that touch is primarily sexual.

This places us at the crossroads in our lives and our relationships. We have to get past the “sexuality” in bisexuality and focus on the “bi”.  We have to have intimate relationships with both men and women. It does not have to be orgasmic, but it has to be more than a hug, much more. The search of sexual connection ultimately has to lead to deeper emotional satisfaction.

At his point we have to make choices, hard choices, choices that involve others, choices that require honesty with ourselves and with those we love. This requires boundaries that are sometimes difficult to maintain. In my case, I seek intimate and sexual satisfaction with my heterosexual mate, and intimate but non-sexual relationships with my male friends.  It has been a long journey, one that I am not sure I would have been able to make when I was younger and hormone driven. But regardless of the path taken,  I have come to a place of comfort with my male friends where we are aware that we are gay or bisexual; we are aware that we are potential sexual partners; we flirt and banter much like married heterosexuals do with other men or women, but we know that our relationship is too important to let it become sexual. We have moved on to the greater satisfaction of intimacy.  We love each other like brothers, but yet more than brothers, but not as lovers.

Bisexuality,Sex, and Self-Love

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)Last week we looked at bisexuality and the six kinds of love. Most of the social media regarding bisexuality is eros in nature, and most of that is based on erotica rather than passion. That’s okay. There is a place for that in the bisexual life whether it is with the same partner or a variety of partners. These experiences fill a need for our strong sexual drives and our need to experience love making in a variety of ways. It is part of the process of sexual identity, but it does not have to stop there.

In an amazing book by Elizabeth Gilbert titled “Eat Pray Love”[1], she tells about her journey (literally and internally) to find philautia or self love. As stated in the last blog, our love forms and sexual encounters should all lead to greater understanding and love of our Self. One of the strategies Gilbert used is self-talk, believing that the other voice comes from the inner or Higher Self or perhaps from a higher power that functions in unison with our Higher Self. What she does is write in her journal how she is feeling and what questions she has about life, and then sits back and waits for an answer that comes in the form of a written response from her inner self. During one of her moments facing depression and loneliness, she came up with this response:

”I am here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay up with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it – I will love you through that as well. If you don’t take the medication, I will love you too. There is nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

Beautiful isn’t it?  Sends a shiver down my spine and urges me on to loving myself more and respecting myself more. On her journey, she leaves behind a failed marriage and a hot sexual relationship (both with men) and eventually finds Pragma or intimate partnership with another man. Just recently, she has divorced again and found pragma with a woman[2]. This suggests that part of her journey was coming to terms with her bisexuality. The process of finding her Higher Self opened her doors to intimacy, first with a man and now with a woman.

You see, our sexuality, like all forms of sexual identification, is just biological. As bisexuals, we are either biologically men or women, but we are more than just sexual beings.  Our bisexuality is also psychological; it is part of the way we think both at the conscious and subconscious levels. We are a collection of cognitive and behavioral patterns established in our neural pathways with a sprinkling of genetic predisposition and a whole lot of environmental experiences, some good and some damaging to our inner soul. But we are more than that.  We are spiritual beings with an inner or Higher Self that longs to be heard and to guide us into a higher level of living.  We have to learn to listen to that inner voice before we can arrive at the core of our humanity – the intimacy and connection with our Higher Self. We can then connect with others and help them understand and harmonize with their own higher self. Then when we can evolve together, we can experience a whole new level of intimacy. Then the sex can become even hotter as it is more focused on making love rather than just having hot sex.

 

[1] Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love. Penguin Books. London, England. 2006. (page 54).

[2] Schaub, Michael. “Eat Pray Love Author Elizabeth Gilbert Announces Lesbian Relationship”. The Los Angeles Times. Sept 2006. . (https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/09/07/eat-pray-love-author-elizabeth-gilbert-announces-lesbian-relationship.html)

Bisexuality – Kinds of Love

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)Yes, I am a bisexual human being, but there is more to me than my genitals. The key to living a bisexual life, or any life for that matter, is learning to love from the deepest part of the soul.  Kaznarek, in his work titled “How Should We Live”[1], looks at the six Greek words for love. Lets apply them to bisexuality.

As bisexuals, we usually focus on the sexual eros, the passion side of love. We have taken a biological process designed for reproduction, created the concept of “sexual love”, and held it up as the solution to all our wants and needs. As bisexuals, we often seek same-sex love where we engage our passions without being responsible for the feelings of our sex partner. This can be okay as long as each person seeks passion for the same reason. As we have seen, this form of love may lead to pleasure and the dopamine rush that we all seek; however, we have also reached the conclusion that this is not enough to keep a relationship alive or provide for the deeper needs of the human soul. Typically, we use passion for a while to meet our individual needs and then we drift apart.

The second kind of love is ludus or playful love. This is the innocent stage of flirting or teasing. It is the banter at the bar, or psychological jostling in the coffee room at work, or the contact on the dance floor. It is innocent play that seeks to unite through joyful experiences. It is sexual in nature but is more of an attempt to connect through play rather than an all-out drive to seduce. This love lets us laugh and experience each other’s positive energies of joy and happiness without getting into the dopamine driven sexual rush. It lets us connect with and share positive energies with other human beings.   As bisexuals, this play can be with men or women; however, we usually save the play for heterosexual banter and the driven passion for same sex experiences. If we to learn to play with both sexes, we may smile more and regret less.

The third type of love is pragma, or longstanding love, often associated with couples in long lasting relationships. These are usually opposite-sex sexual partnerships but may also be the same-sex primary relationship. Pragma is having a life-partner to share at the deepest levels of our spiritual souls and sexual bodies. When we are in these relationships, we usually attempt to stay monogamous. However, we must realize that the monogamous part is for intimacy and soul to soul, spirit to spirit kind of relationship.  For bisexuals, this kind of monogamy does not necessarily exclude other kinds of love or other lovers for that matter. We may still have our pragma relations with our soul- mate but relate to others with sexual passion or play. This requires a great deal of maturity from both partners.

The fourth aspect of love is philia or deep friendship. At this point, we leave the sexual world behind and express an altruistic type of love. In the Greek, it originally referred to men fighting side by side in the phalanx on the battle field. I believe we are again on the battlefield in our present society, fighting a war for identity and purpose.  It helps to have people that we can trust with our lives to share, grow, and survive. In our bisexual desires to get closer to our same-sex acquaintances, we often revert to sexual attraction, but this kind of love is much deeper than that. For me, my challenge is to make non-sexual bonds with other gay and bisexual men who truly understand and share the struggles of bisexuality.  I have to learn to share my fears with them and trust them to guard my back when I need it.

The fifth, and perhaps most important of all, is philautia or love of self. The negative side is narcissism which is self-absorption that leads to individualism and most of the negative aspects of our society. The positive side is that we like ourselves and feel secure enough in ourselves to reach out to others. All other forms of love should be connected with self-love. All relationships with others should lead us to greater love for ourselves. If we bisexuals find ourselves feeling depressed and experiencing shame because of our sexual practices, we know we have work to do in this area.

The sixth type of love is agape or universal loving kindness. It is tapping into the universal power of love that connects us all as human beings. It is being able to take this love within and then share it with someone else. It combines compassion with intimacy. It is being willing to touch and be touched by others. It is that warm hug from a dear friend or the hug that follows a moment of tears with someone that needs our love and support. As bisexuals, because of the journey we have taken to become mature sexual human beings, we have something to share with others on how to go beyond our sexuality into the world of self-love and love for others.

If we truly understand our bisexuality, we can view it in light of all these aspects of love and connection. Yes, sexuality it is one way to reach out to others as a form of intimacy and connection, but it should not be used to fulfill all our needs and desires for connection and self-identity.  We are more than just sexual beings; we have all these other expressions of love that are better expressed by a hug than by an hour in bed.

 

[1] Krznaric, Roman. How Should We Live .Amazon.  2013.  (http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/the-ancient-greeks-6-words-for-love-and-why-knowing-them-can-change-your-life)