I am definitely a lesbian. I have
definitely been a lesbian my whole life, but I didn't know it until
quite recently. I officially “came out” to myself in the
beginning of 2012, after the last few months of 2011 left me in a
state of depression I hadn't seen the likes of in over a decade. I
was distancing myself from my girlfriend Gabriel. I was floundering
to save my marriage, which I feared was unsalvageable. I spent months
internalizing, trying to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with me.
Why wasn't I having sex with my husband? More importantly, why didn't
I miss it?
Any attempts to rekindle the passion in
our relationship died before the embers could even catch. I even gave
him the task of learning how to get me off without using his
penis—something which could have been fun, experimental, a way for
him to learn new things. But he neglected the prompt, finally trying
once half-heartedly, and went right back to expecting sex to be the
same old routine it had been before. I didn't want to admit it, but
the nagging thought kept returning to me: it isn't the sex I was
missing, but the closeness. I still wanted to be close to Ark, but I
was just not interested in his genitals at all. Sex fizzles out in a
lot of marriages (so I'm told by television and magazines), but this
didn't feel like the “normal” decline of sexual activity. I was
still a highly sexual being. I was just a highly sexual being who was
no longer turned on at the prospect of heterosexual sex.
Sex with Gabriel was a different story.
Sex with a woman is something entirely different. One of the last
times I saw Gabriel, we had sex on the couch while my boy Kiba sat on
the floor in front of us and played video games. With a woman, my sex
drive is on seventh gear.
Was it just because my relationship
with Gabriel was newer? Was it because the sex was explosive,
unpredictable, experimental?
It soon came to me that a large part of
my unhappiness was being caused by Gabriel's dependence on me. I
needed her to back off. In short, I realized that I could not give
her everything she needed in a relationship, and have everything I
needed to be a happy person. I had to end it. She could not grow,
clinging to me, and I could not breathe.
With my sexual outlet gone, my lack of
sex with Ark became more obvious to me. I wondered why I didn't miss
it. I still loved every other aspect of our relationship. The
illusion of our marriage crumbling proved to be false—a landmine in
my mind planted during my depression. Ark loved me just as much as
ever, and was continuing to evolve in our polyamorous relationship in
ways that I was still apparently too wounded to see. He had opened
up, and was finally willing to embrace our relationship as it was,
but I was too busy looking at the pieces from the past and trying to
fit them all together. I love my husband, but I still needed further
introspection.
I guess I realized it slowly. The
puzzle of my sexuality came together in achingly tiny bits. And the
first time I thought to myself, “Maybe I'm a lesbian,” I thought
it jokingly. But the more I thought about it, the clearer it became,
and the more sense my life made up to that point.
I was never interested in sex. The way
other girls looked at boys and would fawn over them, “Ooh, Johnny
is so cute! Look at that ass!” It didn't make any sense to me. I
dated boys who I came to love, but my love had nothing to do with
sex. The first time I saw a penis, I was repulsed by it. My
experiences with oral sex were awkward and uncomfortable. When I
finally lost my virginity at eighteen, the part I enjoyed was the
closeness to the person I
loved. It was a special moment, and I wouldn't trade it for the
world.
I
figured maybe sex and penises and ejaculate was just something I'd
get used to. I figured everyone felt the same way at first—grossed
out, squicked by cum, totally
grossed out at the idea of putting a penis in your mouth. Only, I
never really got used to it. I just accepted it as part of a normal
life.
I think that's
basically the root of everything here: I grew up assuming I was
heterosexual. I mean, everyone else I knew was straight, or at the
very least bi-curious, so why wouldn't I be straight? I knew,
and later admitted to my sister, that I liked girls. My first
long-term, real crush was on a female friend of mine from elementary
school. Then, later, in high school, I harbored a crush on a girl
from England. Aging into adulthood, I began to amass a collection of
Penthouse and Playboy, and probably hundreds of pictures of sexy
girls of all sorts on my computer. Girls were a mystery to me. My
relationships were years-long and with men, one basically starting
right after the other (with overlapping, in one instance).
I didn't grow up in
the kind of household where you'd be afraid to be gay. I always knew
that if I brought home a girlfriend, Mom would be happy because I was
happy. My sister didn't care what I did, either. I just never even
considered it, when I was younger. And now, at 26 and married to a
man I wasn't willing to lose, I was considering it.
I was terrified.
One of
the good “rules of poly” I've seen is that if
you're afraid to tell your partner something, that means you need to
tell them. I'd been
brutally honest and open with Ark up to this point, and now was not a
good time to start changing that.
I came out as a lesbian and polyamorous
to my family (and the general world) around the same time. I kind of
cheated—I deleted my Facebook account and made a new one. At first,
I sent out friend requests only to people who already knew or people
who I felt were ready for the news. My profile picture was this bright yellow square with the words "nobody knows I'm a lesbian."
My “interested in” said “women.”
My “relationship status” said “in
an open relationship.”
I was able to list my partners under my
“family,” due to a recent update, which was nice but I'm still
waiting to be able to list them all under my relationships, like you
can on Fetlife.
I never censored myself on this new
profile; I was 100% myself. I was coming out as Blue, the polyamorous
panromantic lesbian married to a man, who I intended on keeping, and
yes, we were happy and we made the choices we wanted to make for our
relationship. I was unapologetic. I even posted links to my personal
blog as it was updated, and family members read it. Some even reached
out to me about its contents. I have nothing to hide. I am not
ashamed of what I am.
Slowly, the rest of my family was added
to my friend list. I guess it was a half-assed way of coming out, but I
didn't feel the need to really make a big deal out of it. I didn't
need to stand before all of them with my poly
triad-sometimes-quad-sometimes-pentad (is that a word? it is now.)
and tell them to accept us all or lose me. It isn't that dramatic. My
family will probably only come in contact with our long-term,
committed partnerships, and even then, it will/has been in (mostly)
slow and comfortable increments for all of us.
I've been pretty blessed in my family's
acceptance of us. I was terrified for a while there and—let's face
it—kind of bitter about the “friends” we did lose along the
way. You see so many stories about people being disowned by their own
parents after coming out of the
closet. Do you think it was more for my family to handle, because Ark
and I stayed together, or easier because of it?
There are a lot of
resources out there for being the “straight spouse” (and a lot of
them say that “it's hard to get support during this time”). Don't
think I'm downplaying Ark's pain in this. I think we had plenty of
time leading up to it—I discussed my fears and feelings with him
thoroughly, probably too thoroughly, so when I finally did say, “I
think I'm a lesbian,” his reaction was something like, “Well,
yeah, I kinda figured.” But we have the kind of relationship and
understanding of each other where he realizes that my sexuality is
through no fault or shortcoming of his own—it isn't his fault he's
a man, and I love him no less for it.
What I
didn't find was a lot of information on couples where one of them
comes out gay—but they stay together. This view is usually
speculated upon as something that's difficult, unfair; it's said that
the gay partner usually was cheating with someone of the same sex, or
hiding their sexuality. This wasn't true in my case and I refuse to
believe I'm the only one out there who's been honest the whole time.
My sexuality wasn't just a self-discovery, it was a discovery for
both of us. The decisions we made, we made together, as a couple, for
the well-being of our relationship both as a couple
and as individuals.
In
some relationships, it seems, this is an unavoidable end. But for me
and Ark, it was a new beginning—to a stronger, unique relationship.
Sure, folks look askance at us. They ask probing questions. They
don't believe us when we say, yes, we're okay. Nobody has to take
sides. He and I are in this together. 'Till death do we part.
