Happiness and Self-Acceptance Didn’t Find Me — I Had to Find Them

There was never that “ah ha!” moment where I realized I was bi. For me, same-sex attractions emerged alongside heterosexual attractions during puberty. In health class, we were taught that this was all perfectly normal, but it was presented as a kind of phase — something caused by the overload of hormones in young and still-forming brains. But as the years passed and I never “grew out of” it, I buried myself deep in denial, hoping that my bi feelings would go away, hoping that I was just a late bloomer stuck in this “phase”. Every time I had a sexual encounter with another man as an adolescent or young adult, I’d tell myself that this was the last time, that I was done after this.

I was very confused for a long time. I wasn’t out to anybody. I didn’t have any LGBT friends. My family is wonderful, but very old-school — not religious, but a very old-fashioned Canadian family — and I felt I couldn’t talk to them about my sexuality. No surprise, I became depressed. It was a year into therapy before I could muster the nerve to come out to my therapist. He suggested that I had “cultivated” my bisexual attractions. That was the word he used. This only more deeply entrenched my denial and confusion, sending me down rabbit holes of research about what caused same-sex attraction. It became an obsession. Was it genetics or hormones, nature or nurture? I was so desperately lonely and so caught up in my own head that it felt like I’d never be happy again.

This state of mind lasted for many years. Too many years. Hooking up with guys and feeling guilty. Afraid to tell the women I dated or was interested in that I was bi for fear of rejection and discrimination. Then one day in my late 30s, a guy I met on a date really talked to me about self-acceptance — about being kinder to myself. Something about the way he said it finally got through to me. We ended up becoming best friends rather than romantic partners. He’s a social butterfly (I’m not), and he introduced me to a bunch of his friends — gay, straight, bi, a real cross-section of people from every walk of life — and for the first time in my life, I was plugged into a social circle where I wasn’t regarded as an oddball. A place where I could be myself and feel no need to hide. As a bisexual man, it had felt like there was nowhere I belonged.

I found a new therapist and started going back to therapy, which helped enormously. It also helped that my therapist wasn’t biphobic! I finally learned to accept myself. It seems clichéd, but I realized that what mattered wasn’t how or why I was bi, but rather how I lived my life and treated others. It put me on a much healthier footing and gave me the courage to come out.

I’d joined this hippie-ish nature club in Ontario. During one of their camping retreats, there was a sort of sharing session during which I took the opportunity to come out. It was my first time coming out to a group of people. The faces in the crowd were a mixture of beaming smiles and sympathetic tears of joy. I felt this wave of love reflecting back at me. I’ll never forget that. A huge weight had been lifted from me. From there I came out to my co-workers (I work in warehouse distribution), and it went just as well. I couldn’t ask for a more supportive work environment. One by one, I came out to everyone in my life.

As wonderful as it was to at last be living as an openly bi man, I learned that being closeted for so long had shielded me from a lot of biphobia. I’ve had my fair share of gay men on dating apps berate me for being bi. I’ve been told I’m not really bi, but gay, and that I must live a sad and deluded life. Some surprisingly cruel stuff. I can take strangers making a remark, but it stings more when it comes from people in your own supposed “community”. It’s one reason I think I’ve never really become plugged into any kind of LGBT “scene” or “community”. My friends are my community. I also encountered many women who spoke openly about how they’d never date a bi man because they think he would cheat, not be satisfied, or be too effeminate.

But it got better. My circle of friends grew. I learned which people to avoid. I met amazing women who accepted me as a bi man. I’m 46 now, and I’m in a good place. An optimistic place. I wish I could have told my younger self to stop analyzing so much and overthinking everything — that you just have to be yourself. Some people may not like you, and that’s okay because other people will like you. It took me so long to accept this.

There are a lot of loving people in the world, but not everyone is lucky enough to be automatically surrounded by them, or to have them just fall into their lap. You have to go out and actively seek them out. Happiness, peace, and self-acceptance didn’t find me — I had to go out and find them. And I’m so glad I did.