I’m going to level with you all about something I’m not particularly proud of:
I’m not very good at romantic relationships.
This is something that I’ve been really sitting with now that I am back in therapy, because as much as I have been through the ringer over the years (and boy, have I ever), it is also very clear to me that I simply lack some of the essential skills that enable people to be healthy, giving romantic partners. The primary way I know how to relate to romantic partners is through intense power imbalances: either I’m the adoring devotee chasing someone distant and unavailable, or I’m the larger than life object of affection coolly allowing someone else to worship me.
It’s, uh, not great.
When I had my big sapphic awakening just under three years ago — the sapphic awakening that led me to become academically interested in biphobia, the sapphic awakening that ultimately resulted in the launch of this newsletter — I came to the conclusion that the fundamental problem with my romantic relationships was that I had been dating men. And certainly, there was probably some truth to that: it’s always been easier for me to have more egalitarian, more equitable relationships with women (and quite frankly I am simply more physically attracted to women than men, full stop).
But at the same time… as comforting as it was to tell myself that fixing my relationships was as easy as just shifting my romantic focus from men to women, it hasn’t really been true. I mean not only have I struggled to find an instance of mutual attraction (it’s shockingly hard!), but I’ve also seen that even in my sapphic relationships, the same unhealthy patterns I experienced with men managed to play out, albeit in a quieter way and on a smaller scale. I still don’t know how to have a healthy romantic relationship, regardless of the gender of my partner.
And so given that — given how bad I am at relationships, given how much of a struggle it is for me to connect with someone in a healthy and loving way — it feels additionally fucked up that I feel like I have to police my attractions to make sure they suit someone else’s politics. It’s exhausting to feel like if I manage, after so many decades of fucking up my relationships, to find some balance and happiness with a man, that someone will undoubtedly whisper that I was lying about my queerness the whole time; that if I find happiness with a woman or non-binary person, there will be some smug insistence about the superiority of queer relationships vis a vis my healing that, well, I don’t actually believe. Every choice I make feels like it will be commented on and policed because I am a bisexual — and I feel far too fragile, too exhausted, to withstand it.
In my heart of hearts, I don’t really know how much I care about “bisexual identity politics” or whatever. I care about being okay, and being happy, and I care about people who experience multigender attractions having access to that exact thing. I care about being free from other people’s judgements as I work my way through to finding some semblance of a healthy romantic relationship (or relationships, who knows). Because fuck: it is already hard enough to be happy. Why do I have to deal with other people’s opinions on top of it all?
This is interesting to me. Is it a thing you'd want to talk more about? What are some of the things you do that make you say you're bad at romantic relationships?