When I first set up my dating app profile, I listed myself as heteroflexible. However, the more I explore and play, I am not sure if that is the correct label, while, at the same time, recognizing that people don’t fall into discrete categories or labels anyway, regardless of the topic.
That being said, you do have to choose something, so I have been thinking about what makes the most sense and is the most truthful. My initial feelings for choosing heteroflexible was because while I am interested in being physical with a woman, I really don’t have any experience in being sexually intimate with a woman. Yes, I have been in a threesome with Jake and Mia and played with Mia a bit during that encounter, but I still haven’t gone down on a woman and I worry about truth in advertising (over-promising and thus, potentially, under-delivering), as it were. But, lately, my hesitancy in continuing to use this term is that it doesn’t fully convey my interest and desire in being with a woman; I am not just willing to be flexible, I have an outright desire to be intimate with a woman. And, I wonder if some women are overlooking me because heteroflexible doesn’t speak to them sufficiently.
Given this perspective, I next thought about the term “bi-curious.” It seemed more honest with respect to my lack of experience. But, I was concerned that it sends the wrong message; I am not considering my intimacy with a woman as a science experiment or a one-time thing. Rather, I am making a conscious and serious decision to be with a woman. So, I have dismissed it as an option.
Recently, I came across an essay that I wrote in 1993, titled, “Treatise on Attraction,” in which I called for a world in which we “would be attracted to a human being for their interior and exterior beauty regardless of gender. In a sense, we would all become bi-sexual, but to go a step further, we should abandon all labels.” So, even then, I was open to being with a woman, I just never had the opportunity to pursue such a relationship before I was monogamously married. Reading this essay again now, I feel that it still fits my beliefs perfectly; I truly have an attraction to women as well as men and hope to have the chance to explore this desire more fully.
I don’t know why I worry about a lack of experience with respect to calling myself bisexual. I easily referred to myself as heterosexual well before I ever had sex.
So, after much thought and deliberation, I have updated my profile to read: bisexual. We’ll see if this edit has any impact on who I attract on the dating site, but either way, I feel that this is the most honest, accurate depiction of my sexual identity.
Summer of Sexiness 