With the LGBTQ community becoming more accepted sociality and politically, people are now more able explore their sexuality. The LGBTQ+ community is frequently represented in popular culture—young people are coming to terms with exploring their sexuality and embracing a bisexual identity.
According to a 2016 survey, more men and women are saying that they are bisexual. After interviewing 90,000 men and women, the survey found 5.5% of women and 2% of men identified as bisexual compared to previous years when only 3.9% of women and 1.2% of men identified as bisexual.
Despite bisexuality identification rates being on the rise, people still have reservations about coming out or opening about their sexuality due to a number of stereotypes and misrepresentations. Many people believe that bisexuality is a phase or that it doesn’t exist at all, basically insinuating that bisexuals are “faking it.”
College is commonly known as a time for exploration and finding what you do and don’t like, especially in bed. As you’ve all noticed, high school relationships tend to fade away in the beginning of the first semester of college, and that leaves room to get a taste of what people have been craving. Rob is a first-year in college who was looking to explore his sexuality. Always knowing he’s had an attraction to guys, he wanted to share his story with my Sex Column.
Rob’s Story
I guess I’ve always known I’ve never been fully straight. I’ve had “schoolboy” crushes on guys for as long as I can remember, yet I’ve always found myself in relationships with women. Being raised in the Bible Belt of a conservative family where the only acceptable form of relationship was a man and a woman in the confines of marriage makes it challenging to accept your sexuality. There weren’t many opportunities to express my true feelings, so I always fell into “straight” relationships with the thought of something more or something different pushed to the very back of my mind. It wasn’t until my last relationship, during my junior year of high school, that I really came into who I was with my sexuality. Despite both of us being raised in strict conservative families, we were comfortable with each other and comfortable being open to the other parts of ourselves. My girlfriend at the time was incredibly supportive. In fact, she came out as bisexual shortly after I did. We both did whatever we could to support each other while still being committed, but as I discovered, there isn’t much to satiate the desire of being with a man for the first time.
As time went on and I went to college, due to the distance, my former girlfriend and I broke up. Now I had the freedom to explore my sexuality and experiment for the first time. I went back onto Tinder and excitedly changed my preferences to “interested in men and women.” It wasn’t long until I found someone open to hooking up with me, a feat I owe most to my tendency to drunkenly swipe on every living body I see when I get home from a night out. Within a couple minutes, I was on my way to his house off campus. Despite the liquid courage coursing through my veins I still felt apprehensive. I had only been with a few other people since my relationship ended, let alone someone of a different gender. It was all new to me, but the excitement outweighed the fear.
When I got to his house, we hardly said two words outside of a greeting, full of awkward grumbles, but he grabbed my hand and we went upstairs. Luckily, we didn’t have to worry about roommates because he had most of the house to himself. He brought me into his room— before I knew it, our clothes were tossed to the other side of his room. For the next hour we explored each other’s bodies—I got to finally experience what being with a man was like. The sex lasted about fifteen minutes. Despite the alcohol buzz, I felt when he pushed himself inside me without any lube. Then when he got the lube, he did the same thing. At roughly 1 a.m. we parted ways and I went back to my dorm.
This experience was still like my other random hookups, it was full of figuring out exactly what to do with a new person. There were just a couple differences like me not really knowing how to have sex with a man and needing to clean up more at the end. When everything was over, I wasn’t sure how to feel. Was I supposed to feel a wave of ecstasy as I finally embraced who I was or relief? I did feel a sense of empowerment. I did something I had never done before—and it was exhilarating. I was more confident in what I wanted out of a partner. I didn’t have the same sense of insecurity about openly exploring sex with both genders—I know I still want to grow my experience with men.
