Q:
I (29f) identify as a bisexual and have been in a relationship with my boyfriend (28m) for the past year and a half. Before this relationship I had never had sex with a man, I’d only ever been intimate with women. I love my partner but I’m having trouble with our sex life. Sex with women came easily (and honestly so did I), but with my boyfriend it’s different. I still have fun and enjoy when we have sex, it makes me feel closer to him, but I almost never orgasm. I also find myself put off by the thought of performing oral sex on him. I love going down on women, but I’m kinda afraid of giving my partner a blow job. I have no idea how to bring up my feelings with my partner and it’s making me wonder if I align more with lesbianism rather than bisexuality. Help!
A:
Hey there. You’re a year younger than me and are reaching an inflection point I once met.
Well, I and millions of women throughout time and space have met it.
You’re actually starting from a good place in the sexual exploration wheelhouse. You have certainty about your attraction to women, with fluid exchange to verify it. That means I can go off-script from the discussion I’d have with a questioning heterosexual woman.
Gonna be real with you: What I’m hoping to help you establish is whether you’re just a bit sexually incompatible with your boyfriend or with all men. You don’t have a great sample size of men for comparison, so we can only work from thought experiments and fantasy. It’s not concrete like the real thing, but we can still get value out of it.
The figure behind the fantasy
Evidence thus far points to you enjoying sex and romantic relationships. I’m guessing you’ve experienced fantasies about potential relationships and sex. Who we daydream about is highly revealing about ourselves. Although far from reliable, our daydreams are an unfettered examination of our private thoughts and desires. That’s where I’ll start.
So I’ve got simple questions for you to answer internally:
- When you fantasize about fictitious relationships, what gender is your partner(s)?
- When you fantasize about fictitious relationships, what’s the gender breakdown between people you know and those who are unattainable (celebrity/fictional)?
These questions probe at what’s on your mind when nobody’s looking. They hypothesize about a world where you have free reign to live out your desires. Who would you choose or be chosen by if there were no boundaries, judgement or logistics standing in your way?
Once you have your answer, you’ll have to ask yourself the uncomfortable follow-up questions. I don’t have to list them because they branch out in every possible direction.
An example: Many of my romantic fantasies are limerant and feature an idealized rescuer figure. My fantastical partners are always women who inject comfort and care into my life. They improve on the stability and resilience I’ve already built by giving me a place to finally rest my head. They’re level-headed, non-judgemental, and soft people who adore me for who I am.
It’s no accident that my fantasy relationship figure represents everything I was deprived of during my upbringing.
Your conclusions might be different. All I’m saying is to look at who you dream about and see how those figures reflect a vision or vacuum in your life.
What’s with the D?
The sexual element of your experience is interesting. I go on and on about oral sex on this site, but everyone is different. Your description of a boyfriend who rarely brings you to an orgasm you actually want will draw some eye rolls from our readership. As does any talk about not enjoying oral sex on men while wanting to dine at a woman-led restaurant.
Another reflective exercise we can try involves ascertaining whether you have a strong genital preference. You know, whether you’re icked out by penises or the people attached to them. This is one of the times I love being trans. We’re the wrench jammed in the workings of impolite heteronormative society.
I’ll open by saying that I think it’s completely fine to have a genital preference in dating. Allowing people into our lives intimately usually calls for a tighter standard of comfort than regular socializing. Liking some genitals or bodily configurations more than others is always worth examining, but not always prejudicial.
The thought experiment?
Again, you’ll start in the safe fantasy world you have in your mind. You’re in that world and I’m not — I don’t squat in people’s innermost thoughts and fears unless they’re Republican.
Picture a hot man with a vulva. A quintessential societal understanding of a ‘trans man’ enhanced by your personal idea of attractiveness. No complexities or judgement. It’s your brain, nobody can kick the door down if you think something ‘problematic’. Once the thought is established, you’ll have to ask yourself if you find him sexually attractive.
- Does your personal taste see a vulva on an otherwise attractive man as an improvement?
- You don’t enjoy giving oral sex to a man, but would you be more interested if he dispensed with a penis and had a vulva and vagina?
- We know this person is attractive, but are you attracted to him?
If sterilizing people down to their body parts for personal interest feels a bit icky, that’s good. It means you know that objectification is impolite and you believe that people deserve agency. But this isn’t a whole person. It’s an object of mental experimentation.
The next one is the presentation-inverted variant.
First, picture a hot woman with a penis. The social understanding of a ‘trans woman’ with your idea of attractiveness layered onto it. Then we ask the same battery of questions in inverse.
- Does your personal taste see a penis on an otherwise attractive woman as a demotion?
- You enjoy giving oral sex to women, but would you be less interested if she had a penis?
- We both know this person is attractive, but are you attracted to her?
Same story. Make a note of your answers and see if any of them elicit a ‘hmmm’ or ‘goddammit!‘ reaction. Those are two of the main reactions therapists look for when they do thought experiments like this. They’re signs of meaningful reflection. I’m no therapist, but I know the drill.
Next steps
There’s a real chance you’ll know some of your answers before you’ve even answered these questions. That’s also a part of the reflective process. I just think this kind of structured — even slightly discomforting — thought experiment has a place in your scenario. It places you into a comfort zone while progressively nudging you out of it.
I can’t answer any of this for you. All I know is that when I was reading, my two main thoughts were, is she just a bad fit for this guy and is the penis throwing off her whole vibe? My questions to you are a foundation for answering or excluding those questions before you move onward.
And there are so many places you could go from here. For one, reading Reddit’s infamous lesbian masterdoc was an enlightening experience for me. Enlightening, but highly disconcerting. It’s a document compiled by queer women (mostly lesbians) about shared experiences that helped them realize they had a very strong attraction to women. It has its flaws and valid criticisms, but I think many of those criticisms stem from people taking it as self-help rather than as a thought experiment. I sometimes fall back on Natalie Wynn’s Shame since it addresses her experiences with compulsory heterosexuality quite eloquently.
The bottom line is that this line of questioning you have is the start of a journey. It may actually end up in a big circle and you come out with the certainty that you’re bisexual with some fresh caveats. You probably know this, but bisexuality isn’t a fixed position. Most bisexuals don’t even have equal attraction to their favorite poles of the sexual spectrum. I can’t possibly see myself forming a long-term relationship with a man, but I’m bisexual. My personal bi pride flag has a big pink and purple section with a really thin blue section. I’m bisexual-but-men-are-on-thin-ice.
Who knows what you’ll be? Maybe you’re a lesbian and these thoughts are the first realization. Maybe you’re pansexual and this boyfriend’s just not a good fit. Neither of us knows, but you deserve to find out.
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
There is also the possibility of split attraction, where OP could be biromantic but homosexual.
Not sure about the fantasies. Many people fantasize about things that are wildly different from what they enjoy in real life.
But yeah, would they enjoy sex more if their current male partner had a vagina? That could be an interesting, though not really helpful question.
Another thing that they could think about is smell, do they enjoy the smell of their current partner, or men 8n general, vs female partners.
Gonna reiterate a couple of points from Summer and Claire cos they are really important:
Genital preference is a completely valid thing and not at all transphobic.
Split attraction is definitely a thing and something worth exploring.
I often joke that I’m the quintessential example of sexuality not being a choice, because I am definitely bisexual and am also instinctually misandrist (probably due to trauma) to the point where I have trouble forming any kind of relationships with men, especially cishet ones. No matter what my rational mind tells me, my lizard brain hisses “boys are icky, throw stones at them.” But that does not mean I don’t still find them sexually attractive in theory and in my head. Again, it’s probably hard to have sex with a man if being in their presence automatically puts you into fight or flight.
But I digress: while perhaps being romantically, platonically, or even physically attracted to men there is something missing. This might not necessarily mean you are not bisexual, you could be biromantic, have a genital preference, or just enjoy giving and receiving different kinds of sexual activities. I had a girlfriend who hated giving and receiving oral sex, and even in the lesbian community there are those who only give or only receive. Whatever the reason for your dislike of certain activities, please remember that they are all valid! You should not feel pressured into doing something you don’t enjoy even if it’s simply because you don’t enjoy it.
That brings us to your relationship with your boyfriend, but this is also valid for any possible future partner as well. There are all kinds of relationships, and they all take different forms with varying degrees of romantic/sexual/platonic. After some soul searching you have to decide whether you yourself feel fulfilled in the relationship, whether there is any change you could see in the current relationship that could make you more fulfilled and happy, and then discuss with your partner these things and what they would require to be fulfilled and happy. Communication and compromise. This could be keeping your romantic relationship but having your sexual needs met by other parties, polyamory, or even just being friends if it comes to it. Or you might feel it best to just make a clean break of things, it’s up to you. Just remember that these things will also be important with future relationships, that no one person needs to provide you with everything you want in a relationship, and labels like lesbian or bisexual or heteroromantic are useful descriptors not straightjackets for your life and lifestyle. People are messy things and tend not to fit into neat categories and that’s okay!
Just a general note to say that I appreciate you, Summer! Your responses to asks are always so thoughtful, comprehensive, and kind.