Do You Love Me? from Fiddler on the Roof is a great song. Unfortunately, I may be the youngest person I know to understand that people actually lived and thought that way.
What does his wife say when he gives her a hug and says, "I identify as someone who loves and has the hots for you and also for Charlie. Of course I would never act on it. But you ought to know."
Depends on your culture. India may be changing, but arranged marriages are still the preponderance, I believe.
"Uh... thank you for sharing?"
Kitty, I'm puzzling over whether a trans person whichever way they made their transition can be scolded for 'mansplaining'.I have queer friends who knew they were queer at three years old and a stepsister who didn't know she was a lesbian until her children were quite mature. 'Kids' these days get very huffy about their gender identity language as that identity is still evolving. It is possible to be ignorant and still understanding. I have been schooled here because I saw 'bisexual' as a sexual preference (perhaps based on personal biology) rather than an identity. But pardon me if I do a bit of a head swivel if you say you weren't trans until your mid-twenties and bi until some time later. I will feebly guess that you basically thought you were 'queer' some time early on. But what was your identity when. If it is evolving you need to give people some rope in getting you, right? But your identity is you, whatever pants you got on. That said, other people who didn't grow up in your body just might need some time and some words to understand and love you the way you deserve.
-was being serious.
My feelings for my spouse and my polyamorous feelings are part of who I am. Charlie, specifically, is not.
It means someone can BE bisexual without behaving as you think a bisexual should behave.
You're just making stuff up. It's contrary to what bisexuality means. What it is. What it means as an identity. You really seem to be deliberately ignoring what actual bisexual people are telling you about what it's like and what it means, in order to play word-games you think make more sense for some reason only you appreciate.
You're confusing whatever it is that's between your two ears for the way people use the word "identify." I IDENTIFY as a bisexual when I tell you I am one. I tell you I am one because I AM one. I am identifying myself to you as a bisexual. How am I so confident in doing so? Because I feel it. So, there is no confusion between "feelings" and one's sense of one's own identity or identification.
Just to be clear, this was your agreement with, and defense of, the idea that one is "feelings for" and the other is "identifying as."
If you're talking about this thread, I don't see that happening. What I see happening is a performance that looked like seeking to understand how other people feel about something, which turned into push-back against the answers they got and erasure and denial of those very feelings. That's what gets attacked. Not good-faith curiosity and interest.
No, just trying to get him used to thinking of gender and sexuality as two different things without burying him in too many terms. Cisgender and heterosexual don't always go together; all lesbians aren't butch, etc. They are both part of who a single person can be, but they refer to different... for lack of a better word ... "aspects" of that.
I don't see it so much as pushing back as struggling to understand a fundamentally new concept. In the culture he and I grew up in, gender identity, sexual identity, and gender presentation were always tied together. Always one thing, not three.
It's often very hard to distinguish clarifying questions about an alternate perspective from pushing back and challenging the perspective. Often, because the perspective being shared is so unfamiliar to someone, they end up asking the wrong questions, questions that are still fundamentally premised on assumptions or definitions rooted in their own perspective. Not because they're trying to assert the rightness of their own perspective by begging the question, but because those assumptions and definitions are so ingrained that they don't realize that even those premises themselves are a difference in perspective until they finally make that paradigm shift. It's often a catch-22, they can't understand the perspective without asking more questions and they don't have the basis necessary to premise the questions correctly without understanding the perspective.
In addition to eros and philia, let’s not forget about storge and agape, which also develop and function within a loving relationship between adults, all of these intertwined with one another. Indeed, these days people tend to focus on eros and underestimate the significance of the other three, even though they are essential to the longevity of relationships.
He's straight.
Oops, I didn't know I had an opinion on you. I believe I said just about what you said, in different words. That said, if our identity changes I feel we need to be loose about saying "I was this but now I'm that." I recognize that for you that a very, very deep reality.
I reserve the right to be confused. As others have pointed out, words are 'labels'. They often don't express a 'state of being'. What I can do is to take your words, apply them to my experience, and do my best to understand the real you. Please don't assume disapproval.
Great wife. I will assume that wives and husbands born in the last thirty years are much more capable of doing that with equanimity.
Not necessarily. It depends on the relationship, but in many it's possible to be open even about strong feelings toward specific people. Often having to hide it and bury it does more damage and causes it to come out in more unintended and harmful ways than simply being aware of it, not having to hide it, and discussing it openly (with one's spouse, NOT with the person themselves, obviously). Spouse and I have had many conversations both ways about specific friends we've had feelings for without judgement or jealousy. And we still see those friends and even still have occasional one-on-one moments with those friends, during which the other has enough trust to know that nothing untoward will happen, because we're both committed and we both have an extreme aversion to cheating. At it turns out, "don't act on it" means "don't act on it", and we've found it's actually easier to not dwell on it when we can acknowledge it and let it go.
I respect your right to remain confused and I don't assume disapproval on your part.
I appreciate this mention of cultural differences. It's possible that in the culture you're referring to, something that looks to me like "pushing back" could really have been intended as a challenge-free way to respond. Even though in my culture, "that can't be right, this is what's real and it doesn't match what you're saying" is typically taken as a pretty stiff challenge.
Hmm, I'm thinking of my spouse's current total obsession with Elvis Presley. May seem silly, but it's a 'stone jones'. I can say,"Dang, I think I've heard that video clip of 'Love Me Tender' seventeen times now'." But why be snarky? This is her new friend and the friend makes her very happy. Still, I reserve the right to be puzzled by this new love. I guess maybe in the original post I was wondering how I, or someone like me who has been shedding some older ways, would react to a person I was falling for saying, "Hey, if you didn't know already, you should know I'm bisexual." And whether the me in the story I was writing would react to that in is as fucked up a way as some folks here have said I did. And that might be the end of that; but it might make a good story.
I don't remember anyone here being aware that you "had a reaction" to that at all - especially since you're talking about something that hasn't really happened so why would anyone talk about how you reacted to it?
