The same thing happened when my boyfriend began transition. While at one point he considered himself exclusively attracted to women, his preferences swung over to being exclusively attracted to men.
If your reaction is similar to mine, it may be that you're worried about him not being attracted to you anymore. I still struggle with feelings of worry and anxiety about not being attractive to my partner. All you can really do is make sure that you both communicate your feelings openly and honestly, especially when it comes to attraction and desire.
I wanted to thank you both for the entry and thread responses. I am going through a similar situation and confusing emotions with my M2F TG spouse. Even though I don't have any issues with bi/gay affiliations/sexuality in general ~ I do have other concerns and your thoughts help me sort things out.
bisexual thoughts...rabidferretNovember 18 2007, 04:06:20 UTC
As another dyke dating a transman, I'd like to encourage you to not take his change as a threat to your identity. I still consider myself a lesbian and would even if I were dating a bioguy. I was startled by your statement, "I am technically bi too." Orientation, like gender, is a social construct with no hard and fast rules. your sexual orientation identity is yours. While of course your partner's gender does factor into this, there are tons of other things you can focus on as well, like past history, general trends (i.e. I consider myself a lesbian because I am predominately attracted to other women), your social identity (as a member of the lesbian community), and other factors. Just because you are dating one guy does not make you bisexual, if you would not like to see it that way.. Many people have valid issues with the word "bisexual" itself, because it reinforces the gender binary. If you feel more comfortable, you can eschew the term altogether for simply "queer
( ... )
well I know for me anytime a partner has come out as anything even if it doesn't effect our relationship, there is still that freakout of WTF. For me being on both side of the transitioning relationship (as a partner and as a transperson) there was the fact that ever change brought the the fear of "what does this mean for our relationship". will the chemistry still be there, what if you don't find me attractive anymore, what if this changes things and for me with my partner, it was "why didn't I notice this before". For me once I got in my head that nothing had changed for our relationship I stopped being freaked out.
one no more "decides" to be bi then one decides to be straight or gay... he simply decided that now was the right time to tell you. He is, and always was bi, he may simply have not known it himself.
Bi people are almost never exactly 50% attracted to men and 50% to women, it is usually an uneven balance of the two. Personally I m about 70/30 attracted to men over women, but that still puts me well into the bi category. Likewise, your BF could be primarily attracted to women, but with some attraction to male characteristics.
Also, being female (least I'm guessing so from the "ex-dyke" part) does not mean that you can not fulfill some of his male based attraction. That 30% of me is quite fond of the fact that my BF (soon to be husband) loves to collect plush rabbits. Though he is male, he is able to appeal to the part of me that likes the feminine. He just said (reading over my shoulder, the little sneak :P ) that he had to become a guy to be at peace with his feminine side.
To be fair, the OP's phrasing wasn't "decided to be bi", it was "decided he's bi". Even leaving aside all questions of choice and malleability of sexual orientation and assuming being bi is an immutable fact, it doesn't seem like an inaccurate thing to say--I wouldn't say my actual sexual orientation has changed over time, necessarily, but when I was 15 I decided I was bi, because I realized bi was the word for what I thought my attractions were. When I was 19 I decided I was pansexual, because I'd discovered that there was life beyond the binary and realized that pansexual better described my sexuality--doesn't necessarily mean I'm viewing bisexuality as a passing thing, just that people come to different realizations about their identity at different times.
Not to mention that this community doesn't seem like the place to argue immutability of sexual orientation, considering how many people are in relationships with people of a gender they never thought they'd be attracted to :P
sorry, I guess I made use of a bad choice of words (blame lack of sleep). I was not really trying to make the point that he was ALWAYS bi, merely that it was not something that was a recent change.
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If your reaction is similar to mine, it may be that you're worried about him not being attracted to you anymore. I still struggle with feelings of worry and anxiety about not being attractive to my partner. All you can really do is make sure that you both communicate your feelings openly and honestly, especially when it comes to attraction and desire.
Wish you both the best.
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The same thing is true in my situation. I would love to talk to you about this in more detail sometime if you're interested.
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one no more "decides" to be bi then one decides to be straight or gay... he simply decided that now was the right time to tell you. He is, and always was bi, he may simply have not known it himself.
Bi people are almost never exactly 50% attracted to men and 50% to women, it is usually an uneven balance of the two. Personally I m about 70/30 attracted to men over women, but that still puts me well into the bi category. Likewise, your BF could be primarily attracted to women, but with some attraction to male characteristics.
Also, being female (least I'm guessing so from the "ex-dyke" part) does not mean that you can not fulfill some of his male based attraction. That 30% of me is quite fond of the fact that my BF (soon to be husband) loves to collect plush rabbits. Though he is male, he is able to appeal to the part of me that likes the feminine. He just said (reading over my shoulder, the little sneak :P ) that he had to become a guy to be at peace with his feminine side.
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I would definitely disagree on that point. People's identities can and do shift.
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Not to mention that this community doesn't seem like the place to argue immutability of sexual orientation, considering how many people are in relationships with people of a gender they never thought they'd be attracted to :P
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