Dear Deidre

The response is a little late, but I had left this link open with the intention of responding to it. Who knows whether it will do any good, but here's the email I just sent: 


Dear Deidre,

A friend brought to my attention your post on bisexuality from earlier
this month (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/deidre/sextherapy/2469004/Dear-Deidre-Coping-with-bisexual-issues.html)

While I agree with some of the points you make - for example, that
simply being attracted to someone is not necessarily a reason to break
the rules of your existing relationship, and I certainly do believe
that a little personal responsibility would make the world a much
better place. However I think your view is innately biased, and as a
bisexual woman, and a friend to many 'straight' men and women who have
also experimented with their sexuality over the years, I have to speak
up.

You cite the 'thousands of letters from readers over the years' as
your source for information - but you must realise that as an agony
aunt, you simply don't hear the success stories. You exist to hear the
tales of woe, the failed, or failing relationships. Why would anyone
write about a relationship that they are happy about to an agony
columnist?

Bisexual people most certainly exist,  in larger numbers than you seem
to believe, and are able to have perfectly happy long term
relationships. Some of them monogamous, and some of them  polyamorous.
Also in my experience couples who jointly experiment with their
sexuality, and explore who they are *together*, are much more likely
to remain a couple than those in which one partner is forbidden -
eventually this becomes a 'deal-breaker' and the couple dissolves
anyway.

Obviously, I don't believe any partner in a relationship should be
forced into a situation they're not comfortable in, and if one partner
isn't interested in threesomes, then that's not going to be the way to
go. The idea that this is always a 'one way journey' however, is
ridiculous.

I applaud your choice of links, however, (at least they've vaguely balanced, even if oddly lacking in y'know... bisexual sites)
and your advice about being honest with any children involved (although I would stress that
treating them as confidant, rather than just keeping them informed, is
also a bad idea!).

Wishing you well,

Maxine Green

Living in Interesting Times

To fully understand where I am now, one has to look back to roughly the end of 2006. It was December, and I'd just broken up with the partner I'd been living with abroad. Not badly, really - we're still friends, but I wasn't going to able to carry on living there. So I visited London for a week to see if I might want to live there.
While I was in London, I happened to visit Coffee Cake and Kink, and met two people who I was very strongly drawn to. lord_don, who has since become my 'adoptive, if slightly incestuous little brother' , and skibbley who has since become a good, if geographically distant friend, and more than friend.

I moved to London, and had a vaguely stressful 2007, which isn't worth mentioning except for at the start of September 07 I got a note on a social networking site from werenerd inviting me to Polyday that year, which I failed to read until more than twelve months afterwards.

The first three-quarters of 2008 was even more horrible than the year before, but I don't need to go into that either, apart from to say that my ex-partner Alex was wonderful in looking after me right when I most needed it, and immensely patient with me, and eventually over Christmas I gave in and decided it was worth trying again as partners.

The latter part of 2008 also included me managing to attend my first Polyday, and then a week or two after the event logging into a particular site for the first time in 18 months to discover werenerd's note inviting me to LAST YEAR'S event. Sheer amusement prompted me to reply, which grew into a conversation after we realised we had mutual friends.
Chance, and skibbley led me within the same week to a 'Critical Sexology' seminar, at which I met snork_maiden, and also another very cool lady, werenerd's... well she's currently his other partner.

Fast forward a few months, to the start of April, and that's when all this stuff comes in. So Erich (werenerd) and I are now working together, and a whole lot else besides. Despite my initial nervousness about getting into any new relationships, particularly with a business partner*, we also seem to be... well, madly in love about describes it at the moment. He also introduced me to a whole crowd of polyamorous people, mostly on the activist-y end of the scene (- and thank heavens, I finally have a support network of poly people for the first time in my life!) and to misterfallen, who snuck in under the radar, *just* as I announced that I had "too many people in my life already".

Not quite three months on, I'm faced with more scary changes.

Well aware that I'm still in the full flush of 'NRE' with all but one of my two and two-half relationships, I'm finding myself looking for a new house, at the same time that werenerd is looking to build a 'happy poly shared house of joy' that just happens to include misterfallen, and a couple of other people. It's a shared house, but it's still going to contain at least one, probably two of my new partners - I'd be crazy to move in and not expect drama. Yet it's exactly what I've wanted pretty much my entire life. I've always loved group living, always wanted a big house full of people, want to live with people I know, and preferably love, and my presence provides the critical mass for the house to exist.
Despite all the apparent craziness, I'm relatively sure that it's the right thing to do. E and I have life (and world domination) plans that match amazingly well. We had been talking about creating our little poly-kinky-friendly commune already - it was part of both of our longer term plans, even before we met. Do you run away from what you want, just because it arrives at an odd time?

I'm committed to trying it, drama or no. The scariest bit is that we're spending the majority of the time we need to be house-hunting in separate countries. Out of roughly five weeks to the end of July, he's out of the country for three of them, and I'm away for one of the other two. It's going to be... interesting.

It's getting late, so to finish up for the night, I'm currently counting:
Two jobs
Two and two 'half' relationships, plus a couple of occasional sweeties.
Four houses that I have keys to (including my parents)
A huge list of projects to work on, including one city-wide, and one national level event.
One big upcoming house-move.

I'll explain the jobs and projects bit of that list later, but it's getting late now.

Wish us luck?

* I don't think any business partner has had their references checked *quite* so thoroughly, including speaking to interrogating both ex and current girlfriends.