Dear Arlene,
I've been married for a year and my husband has just confessed to me that he is bi-sexual. I'm very confused about what I should do now. My best friend says that I should leave him because he going to put me in danger of contracting HIV. I love him and don't want to leave him but I don't want share him with anyone else either. What should I do?
Sincerely,
Newlywed and Confused
Dear Confused,
First, smack your husband with a blunt object (lightly) for not being honest about this before you walked down the aisle. This is a pretty big deal, and I know that it can be difficult to be upfront about it, but the time to suck it up and tell is before you marry someone, not after.
That being said, this isn't necessarily the end of the marriage. Nor does it automatically mean that you will be at higher risk for HIV or any other STD in the future. You first have to figure out what being bisexual means when he says it. Does it mean that he expects to get a pass for sleeping with other people outside of the marriage or does it mean that he will have a more varied internet porn surfing pattern than most?
If he is one of those that wants to have his cake and eat it too, you are faced with some hard decisions. This will put you at higher risk for certain diseases but with vigilant safe sex practices this will be easier to handle than the potential emotional consequences. I've seen open marriages work but 99.9% of the time they are very difficult to maintain and they usually do not remain stable for long. Most of us are just not wired to share in that way.
So, I'm not going to tell you not to try and make it work, because you may find that you are capable of doing that; however, if you already feel like you can't do that it might be better to end the marriage now before things get more complicated. You are going to have to do some real soul searching about this.
One thing I will say is that if you decide to leave, this is one of those situations where no blame really attaches to you. Most break-ups include both parties sharing at least partial blame. In this case you didn't know what you were getting yourself into and can't be blamed for not being up for it. However, do not make this decision in haste.
I also strongly recommend that you find a good therapist and schedule a few sessions to help crystallize what it is you need to do. I can give you good general advice but my powers are limited by not being able to discuss this at length with you. You need to find a neutral 3rd party to bounce this off of and to help you find the path that makes the most sense for you.
Now for the good news. The good news is that in spite of what your friend seems to assume "bisexual" is not code for "will sleep with anything that moves slower than they do". It is entirely possible that he confessed to you, not because he wants to go out and sleep with men outside the marriage, but because he finally screwed up the courage to share this aspect of his sexuality with you. It probably would have come out eventually and his confession is a good thing, not just because it is better to hear it from him than from someone else, but because it has added honesty to your relationship and that is always beneficial.
So unless he says otherwise do not assume that he is going to go play with his boyfriends. You can be bisexual and monogamous just as easily as you can be heterosexual or homosexual and monogamous. The ability to commit to an exclusive relationship comes from a completely different place than which gender flips your switch.
One last thing, I do urge you to get tested if you haven't been. Not because I think he has been sleeping around but because young males are known for their risk taking behavior -- it is why they pay more for car insurance than anyone else -- and there is a higher risk associated with gay sex. If he has ever had another partner of any sex, actually, getting tested is a good idea. Even if he had only one other, or you only had one other, it is impossible to know who those people slept with.
I really do hope that you can resolve this as painlessly as possible. This is a tough one and there are no easy answers.
All the best,
Arlene
___________________________
Dear Arlene,
I got drunk the night before last and changed my password on my XP home edition computer and now I can't remember what I changed it to. Is there any way to recover it without paying someone?
Signed,
The Wine Was Good
Dear Wine,
Dad? Is that you? All joking aside, yes, there are several things you can try before you have to pull out your wallet. The first, and easiest, thing to try is to log in to the default Administrator account while in safe mode and change your mis-remembered password from there.
1. Restart the computer, and then after the Power On Self Test (POST), press the F8 key.
2. On the Windows Advanced Options menu, use the arrow keys to select Safe Mode, and then press ENTER.
3. Select Microsoft Windows XP edition, and then press ENTER.
4. On the To begin, click your user name screen, click Administrator. If you have never assigned this account a password this should log you in to the account. If you or someone else has and you don't know it, stop here because we will have to get esoteric.
5. Click Yes to the little screen that pops up and asks you if you are really sure you want to log in to safe mode.
6. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
7. Click User Accounts, and then click the name of the user account that you want to reset the password for.
8. Click Change the Password, and then type a new password. Click change the password.
Restart and Voila.
For the more esoteric options go to the MS knowledge base article:
If nothing on that page works for you, I suggest this list of software tools and other possibilities that might get you back into your account.
And if that doesn't work, call your 13 year old neighbor. The one with the Unix cheat sheet t-shirt. There's always one. He'll laugh at you but it is better than paying someone else way too much to fix it.
Oh, and if you are going to imbibe stay off your computer. Drunken computer use always leads to heartbreak, confusion and begging strangers on the internet for free tech support.
Sincerely,
Arlene
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Comments
Dear Arlene,
Could you please take my boys to high school registration today? I'm not feeling up to it.
Thank you,
Sick of this Shit
Oh, woman, I'd have taken them if I could but until they invent the teleporter we are SOL.
Kaysong, Lisa and Olga-
Thank you!
ktm-
Course I did. It was a perfect suggestion. It fits with my particular voice better than anything I managed to come up with.
I'm curious about:
"I've seen open marriages work but 99.9% of the time they are very difficult to maintain and they usually do not remain stable for long. Most of us are just not wired to share in that way."
... implying, as it does, that statistically speaking, you've seen 1,000 open marriages, 999 of which were difficult to maintain and one of which was not.
... and also implying, with "wired that way," that perhaps humans are genetically disposed toward monogamy?
I'm not married or in an open relationship, so have no ax to grind, nothing personal to defend ... but in my life I've seen and experienced about as much or more evidence that we're NOT wired that way as I have that we are. Which leads me to suspect that we really aren't wired that way at all, since our non-monogamy comes bursting out of us despite every social construct we set up to corral it.
We'd probably be better off if we were like bonobos and didn't have all the insecure stuff we do associated with sex, love and greed.
As for the 99.9% number, it isn't a statistical number as much as an anecdotal one. Of the people in open marriages I've known, and once you meet one of them you tend to meet all their friends who are poly, only one was without any kind of drama or problem or unhappiness in at least one of the partners. And some of the blame for that is societal, as well. It isn't easy to live outside the norm for people.
Bisexual activists, put down thy torches: I am not one of those oddjob people that doesn't think bisexuals exist. I'm merely stating the truth (now ensconced in cliche) that sometimes individuals work their way out of the closet in stages rather than all at once. And not because they are necessarily manipulative or cruel, but because they are human and still working things out for themselves.
Personally I'd make a lot of individual therapy for him a requirement of my staying on, not that I know if I could stay on at all in a situation like that. Better find out as early as possible what the real implications of this kind of revelation are.
There is too much for me to go into here. But I will say this: I made a lot of naive assumptions. I should have questioned him a lot more about certain things, especially when things did not add up -- I was in love, and had my rose-coloured glasses on. I assumed that, because he had been in an 18 year marriage, and spoke of how hurt he was that it ended when his wife had an affair, that a) he was capable of long-term commitment, and b) he believed in monogamy within a relationship and fidelity, and c) he was a heterosexual who had just done a little experimenting. None of these assumptions ended up being true. There were a lot of signs I recognized in hindsight. But, he was also a con artist and was dishonest about things (not just about sex). But sometimes, our partners tell us only a part of something (I am bisexual)... and there is a whole lot more that they are not telling us. They speak in code.
My advice would be to be very, very cautious... and to make sure they keep on communicating about this -- often people are embarrassed to communicate really openly about sexual matters. But she needs to understand what is meant so there are no assumptions being made. And they need to have an absolutely frank and open discussion about sex and sexuality. Perhaps it is best done in a counselling office, to have that independent observer. She has said she does not want to share him -- so she believes in monogamy, it seems. Does he? Would he be expecting to, at some future point, perhaps add a male to their sex life to 'spice things up' i.e. a three-some, and would she be uncomfortable with that? I would want to be clear about certain aspects of his past sexual experience... some of you may think 'no fair, you wouldn't be asking about that if his past relationships were all heterosexual' and you are right, then I wouldn't feel I should intrude. But, especially so late after they were married, this does change the game. Speaking of which, I would want to know why he is telling her now, a year later. Has he just had a fling or affair, and this is merely a quasi-confession? Has he begun to realize his attraction to a male in his circle? Is he feeling stifled or unsatisfied with their sexual relationship? What, precisely, has led him to confess this to his wife a year into the marriage?
In his past, were his relationships with men mostly sexual flings, or were they love relationships? Were his relationships with men mostly one-on-one or did they involve threesomes with heterosexual couples (bi-curious men), or...? Where did he meet his male partners? Gay clubs? Steambaths? Online? Did he use protection? Were his past sexual experiences mostly with men, mostly with women, or 50 / 50?
My comments are coloured by the fact that the man I was involved with had multiple addiction issues, including sexual addiction. Sexual addiction is far more rampant in our society than most people realize. (When I attended the sessions at the Addiction Fdt, to cope with the situation I was living with, I was going because of his other addictions. I did not realize, at the time, that he had a sex addiction... and I was incredibly skeptical when I first heard a leading addiction expert discuss how prevalent sex addiction is). I do urge her to be very cautious, and to take especial heed if she sees unwelcome changes to their sex life, such as a lack of interest. I would urge her to be cautious if she sees constant downloads of sex videos from homosexual websites or trannie 'she-male' sites.
Were he to feel a strong attraction to a man, would he confide that to his wife before he acted upon it? How would she feel, upon hearing of his attraction to a man? How important is it to him that he acts upon all his sexual fantasies? What are his prevalent sexual fantasies? Would he feel stifled to be confined to heterosexual sex?
Often, expert theories are 'correct' until a better theory comes around and replaces it. That being said, most of the authorities say that, while women seem to be capable of being truly bisexual, men are hard-wired differently so that there is a distinct sexual attraction to either one sex or another. Many of you may not want to buy into that, but until it is proved otherwise, it would certainly raise concerns for me.
Knowing what I know now, I would not choose to involve myself with a man who admits to being bisexual, or who has had recent gay experiences. I would consider someone had had experimented a long time ago, in his past, but not someone whose 'experimentation' is more recent. This is a very different position than the one I would have taken, prior to involvement with this man, btw.
I am the least cynical person out there and far too naive... but I am far more cynical than Arlene for the husband's motivations in confessing to the wife his bisexuality at this point... and suspect it may not be for all those honest, open reasons Arlene points out.