Married, Monogamous, Still Bisexual

Bailey reflects on three years of monogamous marriage & strangers' audacity.

Today is my third wedding anniversary. My husband and I have been together for five years now, long enough to have built a rhythm, a shorthand, a home in each other.

I meet a lot of women in the support groups that I run who feel like they aren’t bi+ enough because they married their male partner a long time ago and never got the chance to explore their sexuality with women. For some people, those experiences feel necessary to anchor themselves in the fact that their identity is real. For others, they tell me that it’s like an ache for something that could have been. All of those feelings are valid.

For me, it’s neither. Sometimes women flirt with me or I flirt with women because it’s fun to connect with people in that way. Who doesn’t love complimenting a woman’s bag before being so bold as to remark on the fineness of her eyes? But that’s where it ends for me. I don’t feel like I need to go further than that, and I don’t feel that it makes me any less bi.

If anything, that confidence and easy knowing that my identity is my identity makes me feel even more certain of it.

But something very interesting has started to happen: Queer people seem surprised to learn that I am monogamous. Sometimes, they refuse to believe that I am.