Better Late Than Never: I Came Out As Bi at 58!

I came out as bi in 2019 at age 58. To say that coming into my bisexuality was a long and winding road is an understatement.

My problem was that I didn’t really understand the definition of bisexuality. I mistakenly thought that to be bi, you must have had same-sex experiences — and for the longest time, I hadn’t had any of those, at least none that I interpreted as such. I was married to a woman for 30 years, and I wrote off my attractions to other men because I never acted on them. If you don’t sleep with men, I thought, then you’re straight.

But as the years went by, my questions grew louder. LGBT people became more visible and more accepted. I attended a coworker’s gay wedding. I was a guest in my local theater community (more than just a spectator but not a performer). Seeing queer people around me made it harder to ignore what I felt inside. I started considering myself less an “ally” and more “bicurious”. I confided this to a gay friend in the 2010s, and he offered oral sex to me. Flustered, I said “no thanks”. Over the next several years, however, he reminded me that his offer still stood. Eventually, I took him up on it. There’s probably no clearer way to put a question to bed. It was like a light switch flipped on for me. My friend became a “friend with benefits”.

After that, I joined a bunch of LGBT Facebook groups, including the bi social club amBi, and realized that I didn’t become bi when I hooked up with my friend — I’d been bi all along. Everything clicked into place. My homoerotic shenanigans with other boys as a young teen now made more sense. The feelings I felt toward sexy male movie and TV stars were revealed for the now-obvious crushes they were.

I came out to my very progressive family to total acceptance. My nephew’s reaction was, “Okay that’s cool, do you want a beer?" The education organization I work for as an instructional designer (I design employee training programs) also welcomed me to openly identify as bi, and their company health plan helped connect me with an LGBT-friendly therapist. It’s also made me more effective at developing trainings that involve LGBT-specific scenarios.

Luckily, I never had to fear being rejected by my family or repercussions at my job as a result of coming out. My only concern was about the surrounding region. I live in Gainesville, Florida, a state that has not exactly been the friendliest place for queer people in recent years. And northern Florida, in particular, is the most conservative section. No one has given me a hard time, though — in part because I’m currently in a relationship with a woman, and most people assume I’m straight.

That said, I’m a bit of an over-sharer (can you tell?), and in conversation with folks of my generation, or with my few Christian fundamentalist relatives, I can see by their body language that discussing my bisexuality sometimes puts people off. But I’ve thankfully never experienced any discrimination or bigotry. Even within LGBT circles, which can sometimes harbor biphobic or bi-erasing attitudes, people are less likely to give me flak when I say I’m bi simply because of my age. After all, it’s hard to argue that something’s a “phase” when you’re 65, or to insist that someone decades older than you doesn’t know themselves. There’s enough respect for elders left in society that I think some people feel it would be rude to dispute my bisexuality, whereas they might feel more comfortable with someone much younger.

I know a lot of people who are attracted to men and women say they don’t feel the need to come out, or to label themselves. They say things like “I just am who I am”. For me, coming out and having a clear concept to understand myself was extremely important. For decades, I didn’t know who I was. I thought I was straight. Then I thought I was curious. At one point during my marriage, in the 1980s, my parents, who passed away before I came out, thought I might be gay. My sexuality was so confusing and undefined for so many years that realizing and openly acknowledging it feels like being truly free for the first time — and I think that’s something worth celebrating.

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