Why “Straight Presenting” Relationships Aren’t Always Better For Bisexual People
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
(from 2020)

Like many people settling into their twenties, as life on my own slowly became the norm, I started considering the possibility of marriage. Being a good evangelical Christian- newly inducted into ministry as a “full-time missionary”- their general expectation was that marriage would be in my near future.

However, given my on-going “struggle with same-sex attraction” (problematic coded language for what I would later learn was my bisexuality), I was uncertain how to proceed with my expected pursuit of a wife. My experience of coming out in Christian circles, even when I did not (at that time) “accept my desires”, had been incredibly painful. So given my genuine sense of calling into lifelong Christian ministry, I believed that marrying a good Christian girl was an important form of protecting myself moving forward. After all, I did find women attractive and longed for children someday. So I decided to go for it.

Over the next several years I had a few relationships, though some would hardly qualify as relationships at all. With very few exceptions, most of the young women I ended up dating seemed to be entering into the relationship with their own equally dysfunctional (if entirely different) motivations. My intentions were honourable with each of them, yet those relationships were doomed to failure. Driven by my perceived need to be married, I ignored our incompatibility and ended up crossing the lines we had committed to, falling just short of sex many times. My evangelical upbringing made me (almost) as terrified of premarital sex as it did being gay, so the relationships would invariably end abruptly with shame and broken hearts all around.

I found myself deeply discouraged that I kept seeming to be drawn into mostly unhealthy relationships. Even crossing my own boundaries sexually seemed to be rooted in more than just my legitimate attraction to these women. It was as though I was trying to prove something to myself. And yet the option of remaining single felt far riskier. After all, what if I “stumbled” and was intimate with a man? And even if I resisted that, because many people knew about my sexuality, would my singleness be perceived as “moral risk”? Undoubtedly.

With hindsight I now see that because so much of the emphasis on the immorality of “same-sex attraction” was directed specifically at sexual contact, I unconsciously believe that sexual intimacy with women would push me in the right direction. It was not that I believed that behaviour was somehow “morally good” but rather that it indicated I had the capacity for a “right relationship”. This belief was reinforced when, upon confessing my impropriety to Christians leaders, their reprimands seemed to be expressed with a relieved grin.

It is thinking like that that has fed into the destructive conviction that, because bisexual people can be fully attracted to people of the opposite sex, they should simply choose such relationships. However, by reducing the potential quality of a relationship to one’s capacity for physically satisfying sex makes a mockery of the depth and beauty of genuinely loving relationships- relationships with other romantic, social, and cultural dynamics. Not only is it a recipe for relational failure, it is also an ethic that is not held consistently in other situations.

Imagine I was told that being attracted to red-heads was wrong. “No worries,” they might say, “You are also attracted to brunettes. So there are plenty of options for you!” While that might be true, what if the person who I most genuinely connected with was a red-head? How nonsensical would it be to reject that relationship for that reason? I acknowledge that such an analogy is premised on an affirming view of 2SLGBTQIA+ relationships, but since that is firmly where I situation myself, the absurdity of such a boundary is very apparent to me.

At the time I lacked this understanding- lacked even the knowledge that I was bisexual and not just “mostly gay”. And so I was left moving from one unhealthy relationship to another- not because I lacked the capacity to have healthy relationships with women but because I was entering into those relationships with a flawed sense of self and the very nature of relationality. The result was even deeper fear, shame, and self-loathing. And above all, a terrifying loneliness that felt like a life-sentence. In that perfect storm of dysfunction, my healthy desires were twisted, finding expression through an unhealthy engagement with gay porn. That, in turn, sparked my fear of damnation and social rejection, starting the whole destructive cycle all over again.

While the added dynamics of religious condemnation brings a whole other level of dysfunction, many bisexual people have experienced the same dynamic at work when dating partners of the same gender. The pressure to identify as gay or lesbian instead of bisexual has the same negative impact of self-denial, fear, and self-loathing. Regardless of the “side”, it comes from, bisexual-erasure harms people. And while such a fact seems self-evident, the pattern continues. Is it any wonder that bisexual folks live with some of the highest rates of anxiety, suicidal ideation, and general mental illness?

In time I did meet a woman who I came to love very deeply. While our mutual attraction was apparent very early on in our friends, there were deeper connections around shared values, vocations, and convictions. However, I believe that what saved our relationship from following the destructive paths my previous relationships had gone down was my honesty with her about my sexuality. In fact, I believe she was the first person to whom I ever referred to myself as bisexual. That isn’t to say that the relationship with without complications- after all, we were both human and I was dealing with unnamed trauma- but her patience, grace, and compassion saved us. I eventually married Kim, the woman I now share my life with, raising our family together.

Our marriage is good, not in spite of the challenges, but precisely because of them. Being in a straight-presenting marriage runs a greater risk of experiencing erasure and being exposed to more prejudices. Many friends, family, colleagues, and strangers, assuming “straightness” because of my marriage, have said incredibly hurtful things in my presence.

And those who do know make assumptions about our fidelity to one another. One senior leader in YWAM even asked me once, “Is your wife really ok with you having multiple sexual partners? Or does she participate?” While I was not going to get into a conversation with him about sexual ethics, I was tempted to ask him from which porn site had he learned his definition of “bisexuality”. Even well-intentioned allies would often refer to me being a “bisexual man in a heterosexual marriage”, prompting me to remind them that relationships don’t have orientations, people do.

Understandably, Kim struggled with uncertainty about what my sexuality meant for our marriage. We had seen several marriages end when one partner came out. And as legitimate as her feelings were, those feelings cause me pain. From my perspective, would Kim worry about my faithfulness if I was straight? However, it was through the process of answering these difficult questions that our marriage gained its firm footing and both of us became healthier as individuals. Decades after first coming out, it is clear to me that the truer I am about who I am, the healthier I am. If I only had known this sooner. If only I had been given the freedom to embrace it sooner.

Robyn Ochs describes bisexuality like this:

“I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted — romantically and/or sexually — to people of more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

If we allowed others who fit this description live into who they are without the pressure, the untruths, the shame, and fear, it would change lives profoundly. It would literally save lives. I know that it ultimately saved mine.