Am I Bisexual?

Dear Dr. Darcy:

I hope you can help me make sense of the confusion in my head/heart lately. I’m married to a man, and I always thought of myself as straight. That being said, there have always been women I’ve noticed and been drawn to. I used to think it was because my mother died when I was a little girl, but I don’t know anymore.

I have a close female friend, and I can’t stop thinking about her. We’ve kissed a few times, why I don’t know. I even dream about her. She is on my mind constantly. I don’t know what this means, or what to do.

ANSWER

Step away from the friend.  That’s for starters.  Stop getting into situations (drunk or sober) that lend themselves to you exchanging saliva or you’ll find yourself without a friend and still confused about why you want to make out with her.  You clearly have a crush on her, which would be bad enough if you both identified as bi, but your confusion makes experimenting with her a disaster waiting to happen.  And I’d hate to see you lose the friendship.

I’m guessing that your husband doesn’t know about this or you’d have mentioned it.  Your marital status makes this more complex.  If you explore your sexual orientation while you’re married and without his consent, you’re cheating.   If you bite your tongue (so to speak), putting blinders on to your attraction to women, hoping to live a hetero-normative lifestyle, you’re lying to yourself and to your husband, possibly depriving him of a partner who is completely available to him. So what’s a girl to do?

Get into therapy, and don’t roll your eyes at me.   There’s no other action to take.  If you tell him before fully understanding your attraction to women, you risk jeopardizing his trust and the relationship.  If you don’t tell him and hope to repress it, you’ll fail.  Humans suck at repression.  You’ll wind up writing in to me in a year with a story about how you had an affair with a woman and got caught by your husband.  If you explore this without his consent, you’re a cheater.  So find yourself a shrink who works with members of the LGBT community or someone known for understanding issues around sexual identity and start working.   Just make sure you don’t contact anyone who practices reparative therapy, conversion therapy, or any other method that claims to ‘pray away the gay.‘

Writer’s Stats: Female, Unsure if straight or bi.