I came out to a straight man, and now we are getting married: My coming out story, queer journey, and fighting a biphobic world

When I was in middle school, I started to have thoughts about boys and dating, as typical 12-year-olds do. I also started thinking about girls and innately knew these were not “normal.” Cinderella has Prince Charming, Ariel falls in love with Prince Eric, and Jasmine and Aladdin fly away together on a magic carpet. Every beautiful, innocent woman was supposed to end up with a handsome prince…right? 

I would admire the women and the men I saw on TV walking down the red carpet at award shows, but I only talked about my admiration for one gender out loud. I saw  Katy Perry on TV at the Grammys, thinking about her earlier hit “I Kissed a Girl.” I would loudly sing the lyrics and proudly proclaim, “It’s just a song.”  I saw her glide down the red carpet and said, “Do I want to be her, or do I want to be with her?” It was a question that continued to haunt me for years to come.

Everyone at school talked about how cute the boys were, gossiping and chatting at the lunch table. I would join in, of course, but probably too much as a means of overcompensating. No one would have any doubts that I loved boys if I talked about it a lot, right?  “Well, you aren’t lying,” I thought because that was true. I wasn’t lying; I was just not saying everything circling through my brain. 

As the years went by and my friends got boyfriends, had first kisses, and started having sex, I suppressed my thoughts about liking girls even more. I remained highly reserved and showed very little romantic or sexual interest in peers or classmates. I was afraid I would be rejected and was unsure about who I was and what I liked. This created even more suspicion and assumption among classmates. I understood that I was different but unsure how and why. I yearned for a boyfriend and to feel desired and normal and simply fit in. I had far more questions about myself and my identity than answers. 

I got to college and jumped into the first relationship with a man who showed interest in me. It was fast and intense, and I didn’t know it then, but there was love bombing from all angles. But, a man wanted me, finally! He showed me deep care and affection for the first time in my life. This was not an opportunity to pass up. To feel loved and attractive and sexy gave me an indescribable high, one so intense I forgot about my feelings towards women, and this is how I became a serial monogamist. To be in a relationship and be the center of someone’s world, we came to the ultimate goal, superseding all else. 

After the toxicity, abuse, and manipulation of my first love, it was not two months later that I jumped into another relationship with a man who picked me up in his truck in the heat of the summer and kissed me on the first date. I wanted to escape the pain of the previous relationship and once again be wanted and attractive. There was no time to process my feelings from my last relationship because I was entrenched in this new relationship and had dove in head first. I thought I was healing and had everything figured out. I thought I was finally stable and happy. 

We dated for a year until I realized I was not genuinely stable or happy. I drove two hours in a thunderstorm to break up with him. In the coming weeks, I fell into a mental health crisis, and all the suppressed questions about who I was and what I wanted came bubbling to the surface. Eventually, I healed, I grew, and I got better. This was a turning point for me. I escaped my serial monogamy tendencies and stayed single. I partook in the stereotypical self-help adventures of journaling every day, hiking, starting a support group, and going to therapy every week. The attraction I always had towards women slowly crept back to the front of my brain. It was an old friend that had never left. She was the friend who was brutally honest with you. She pissed you off, but you always knew she was right. I needed to make amends with her and finally hear her plea.

For the first time in my life, I was acquainted with myself. I met me and got to know her. And then, I met someone. Not the person who was the first to give me attention, not someone who love-bombed me and picked me up in his truck or followed me like a puppy. A man who was my friend first, and then we decided to be together after deep consideration and building trust with one another. 

It was a few months into dating. We were driving to Vermont in the overwhelming darkness of the night. It was winter and cold; we were talking endlessly about anything and everything. We listened to music, and I always listened to female artists more. Their voices and style were far more appealing than most male bands and musicians. He joked and said, “You really like women,” without realizing the truth and history behind that statement. The balloon popped inside of me, and I burst into tears. I released every emotion within me and was uncontrollably bawling and gasping for air. “What if I do. I think I do.” I said between breaths and sobs. As he continued driving in the dark with no other car in sight, he held my hand and said he was proud of me. “It’s okay,” he said. We talked about how I have felt for years and what it meant to be attracted to women and still have intense feelings for him. He asked questions and I answered them. I felt safe around him, and this new relationship with myself and him allowed me to be open for the first time. Scared, but finally open and honest. Saying it out loud, even to him, was a release of the one thousand-pound weight that had sat on my shoulders for over 10 years. I was free, and I was me. And I liked it. I liked myself for the first time in a really long time. 

That reaction still means everything to me. Five years later, we are engaged with a wedding date. We live together with a dog, and I make dinner, and he does the dishes. We laugh, and we watch trash TV. I push him when he snores, and he pushes me when I take all the blankets in my sleep. He calls me every day on his way home from work, and when he gets home, we talk about our days. I learned who his coworkers are, and he learned about mine. He is my favorite person, and I am his. 

I am marrying a man, but I am still queer. It is still a deep part of my identity that I am proud to wear visibly. I am still discovering my own identity each day and asking myself questions. He encourages me to be the most whole and authentic version of myself. I am continuously healing with him by my side and as an individual who owns my sexuality. I can be in a loving relationship with a man and be a proudly queer woman. I can be both simply because I am both. It feels right for me. 

Here, I want to address people who think their journey to understanding their bisexuality or queerness is invalid. You may feel that you aren’t queer enough or that you should continue to suppress the thoughts you have about your sexuality. I urge you to try and let it go. Be your fullest, queerest, and most iconic self in whatever relationship makes you happy. You are gay enough, you are bi enough, you are trans enough, you are simply enough. That is because there is no such thing as enough. You are simply you, and you get to decide what that means.

However, I must recognize safety and privilege. As someone with privilege, I know that coming out was easier as a straight-size, able-bodied, white, cisgender woman in a hetero-presenting relationship. Millions of people cannot safely come out or simply exist as they are because of their intersecting identities, family situation, or even due to the government in which they live. Now, I speak to those with privilege in similar positions as me: become uncomfortable and do the work. Recognize your position and be aware. Ask yourself what you can do to pressure systems that force people to exist within heteronormativity and be unable to be their fillest selves. We have no other option. To be and do what we want with freedom, we must fight for everyone’s freedom. This requires work, introspection, reflection, and speaking up. 

Biphobia and bi-erasure are at the forefront of society and on social media. These terms refer to the hatred against people who are bisexual and the denial that bisexual people exist. These exist within other harmful systems such as racism, sexism, the patriarchy, the gender-binary and so much more. These systems enhance one another, like each equally pouring gasoline on each other to strengthen their fire and the pain they cause. Biphobia and bi-erasure win when we ignore the systems that feed into it and say nothing. Being you and existing as bisexual, queer, nonbinary, questioning, and everything in between is actively going against systems that tell you to be one or the other. We must go against the systems that tell us who we are at our core is incorrect and that to be correct, we must be straight, cisgender, white, able-bodied, thin, and rich. The fights are collaborative and intermingling. We must work on all of them. 

I want to create a world where we can all write our own stories. I want to write a story where Cinderella doesn’t end up with Prince Charming and Jasmine says no to the magic carpet ride. I want things to be different for all of us in this world. I want a story with an ending where queerness is recognized, normalized, and accepted wholeheartedly. We can all play a role in writing this new story for all of us, and the work must be done now.