What is a "heterosexual relationship"?

And can bisexuals be in one?

Apologies for my laxity in sticking with my daily schedule recently; on top of (picture me gesturing broadly at the state of the world right now) I also just spent the last two weekends helping to facilitate a forty hour training for rape crisis/domestic violence advocates (it was lovely, I have a new team of mentees who I am excited to guide through the first year!). So needless to say… a (bi)tch is tired.

But: I stumbled across (or, rather, got a Google alert about) this wedding planner advice column in which a woman writes in to ask about whether or not she should come out as bisexual to her fiancé. Her question is pretty relatable: she knows she’s bi, she wants to come out, and though said fiancé has always been an LGBT ally, she’s not sure that that will translate to wanting a bi wife — especially since her future in-laws are apparently a bit homophobic. (I don’t know why she wrote in to a wedding planner to get advice about this, but that’s neither here nor there.)

And the advice itself is generally fine, and roughly along the lines of what I would have said. You should be honest with your future spouse about who you are because the best relationships are built on trust, etc and so forth. None of that is why I’m writing this. I’m writing this — as I often do — because of a single line in the response that gave me pause.

“Your boyfriend being an LGBTQ+ ally is one thing, but he may be under the impression you are in a heterosexual relationship, or he may not be surprised at all by what you tell him.” (Emphasis mine.)

That italicized phrase is tossed off so casually here, and I have to admit I struggle to understand what, exactly, it is intended to imply. It’s not simply, “he may be under the impression that you are heterosexual” — it’s “he may be under the impression that you are in a heterosexual relationship,” a wording which suggests that a heterosexual dating a bisexual is inherently a different type of relationship; that for the letter writer to out herself to her fiancé would be to fundamentally alter the structure of their partnership.

And I mean, maybe it will? I’ve never been in the position of coming out to someone after we’d been together long enough to be engaged, so I suppose that someone suddenly being able to be open about same gender attraction with their partner could potentially shift the dynamic. But if these people are monogamous, and the letter writer simply wants to be open about the fact that she is queer — I mean, she’s still the same person, you know? It seems strange to me to suggest that her relationship with her partner will necessarily be irrevocably altered.

I know there are a lot of bisexuals who like to say that any relationship a bisexual is in is inherently queer, that our queerness necessarily voids the heterosexuality of our entanglements. I have never really bought that. Certainly, I think it is possible for two people of different genders to be in a queer relationship; it may even be likely that bisexuals are interested in structuring our relationships in such a way. But to say that bisexuals fundamentally cannot adhere to the structures and rules of heterosexuality, even if we want to — it makes no sense. There are way too many bisexuals who conduct their relationships in ways that are functionally identical to straight people for me to actually buy this. Bisexuality doesn’t dictate how we date, for better and for worse. It is just a description of our capacity for attraction.

Anyway. I hope this lady comes out. I hope her fiancé is chill about it. I don’t know if she will or won’t still be in a “heterosexual relationship” after the big reveal — but whatever happens, I hope she’s happy.