Give It To Me Bi: Scripts Are for Plays, Not Dates

At this point, we're professional bisexuals. Give It To Me Bi is a bi-weekly advice column in your favorite Bisexual Killjoys answer all your questions about being bi+.

Q.

Dear Bailey & Jace,

I recently found your podcast and have been seeking out more Bi+ community spaces. Something I’ve noticed is that I tend to act more feminine when I’m dating men or nonbinary people, and more masculine when I’m dating women. The problem is, in both situations, I end up feeling like I’m putting on a version of myself instead of being my full, authentic self.

Do you have any advice or experience with showing up more authentically in dating?

Sincerely,
Searching for My Real Self

A.

Dear Searching for My Real Self,

First, let me say: congratulations. You’re already a step ahead of most people. You’ve noticed the pattern. You’ve realized that something about the way you’re showing up in dating feels off. You could have ignored that voice, shoved it down, told yourself, “This is just how it is,” but you didn’t. You wrote to us instead. That’s the first crack in the egg.

Now, onto the meat of it. You feel like you perform femininity with men and nonbinary people, and masculinity with women. And neither version feels like “the real you.” Babe, you’re not broken, you’re socialized. You were handed scripts, and like any good student, you learned your lines. Straight culture says: This is how you flirt with a man. This is how you impress a woman. This is what “desirable” looks like. It’s all a performance, and you’re not the only one doing it. The kicker is: you already know the performance doesn’t fit.

So what do you do about it? Here’s my advice: date yourself first.

I don’t mean this in the Instagram self-love quote way. I mean that you should literally take yourself out on dates. Go to dinner alone, get yourself flowers, put on clothes that make you feel hot and weird and powerful, not the clothes you think someone else will approve of. Sit with yourself and ask: “If no one else were watching, who would I be?” Because until you know how you like to show up with yourself, you’ll always be guessing how to show up with others.

Dating yourself is practice. It’s rehearsal for authenticity. It’s trying on different selves and realizing which ones are costumes and which ones are skin. If you can’t be yourself with yourself, how can you be yourself with someone else?

But dating yourself is only part one. Part two is community. Specifically: queer community. Not dates. Not hookups. Not situationships. Friends. People you aren’t trying to seduce or perform for. People who don’t need you to impress them but just want to play trivia with you, or grab a drink, or talk about the latest messy queer drama on Booktok. When you’re in queer community, you start to see what parts of yourself light up when you’re not under the spotlight of attraction. And trust me, that version—the one laughing with friends, relaxed, messy, unguarded—is a hell of a lot closer to the “real you” than the one crossing their legs just so at dinner.

Bisexuality+ is a gift here (some may even argue that it’s premium). Because the whole point of being bi+ is that we get to step outside the rules. Straight culture teaches us rigid gender performance: women are this, men are that, desire looks like this, power looks like that. Gay culture has its own rules, too: the masc/femme binary, the pressure to “pick a side” and fit neatly into a box. But bisexuality+ blows the boxes up. We are the liminal space. We are living proof that gender rules are made up. We’re the queers who say, “What if I don’t want to perform like that? What if I want something in between…or nothing at all?”

Here’s where the fun comes in: you get to experiment. You get to show up to a date and refuse the script. Stop trying to guess what the other person expects. Stop putting on the outfit that screams “desirable for men” or “hot for women.” Start asking: What do I want to wear? How do I want to speak? What version of myself feels the most like a human being and the least like a puppet?

You’ll screw it up sometimes. You’ll catch yourself sliding into “femme with men, masc with women” because those grooves are well-worn. That’s okay. The point isn’t perfection; it’s noticing. Every time you notice, you get to try again.

Here’s an exercise: next time you’re on a date, pause and ask yourself, “Am I playing a role right now, or am I present?” If you feel like you’re in a role, shift one small thing. Maybe drop the voice pitch you subconsciously raised. Maybe stop overexplaining your hobbies. Maybe uncross your arms and take up more space. Tiny shifts add up. That’s how you practice authenticity in real time.

And listen, part of what you’re struggling with is universal. Everyone, queer or straight, bi+ or not, struggles with how to be “authentic” in dating. It’s one of the cruel jokes of desire: the more you want someone to like you, the harder it is to be yourself. But as bisexuals+, we get an extra layer of bullshit because we were socialized to perform gender in contradictory ways. The good news is: we also get an extra layer of freedom. We get to refuse.

Beloved, you’re not going to find “the real you” by contorting yourself to match someone else’s fantasy. You’re going to find it by learning what feels good when no one’s watching, testing that out with your queer crew, and then showing up to dates as the person you already are, not the person you think you’re supposed to be.

The other person’s job is not to validate the costume. Their job is to meet you as you are. And if they can’t? Well, good riddance. Better to be rejected for being yourself than adored for a mask you’ll eventually suffocate in.

So, date yourself. Find your people. Break the rules. And remember: bisexuality+ isn’t confusion; it’s possibility. You’re not here to fit anyone’s script. You’re here to write your own.

Authentically bi-self,
Bailey