Pride 2020: The person who made me proud of who I am
Today is mine and my partner’s wedding anniversary. 8 years of friendship, 4 years of kids and 2 years of marriage and I couldn’t be luckier to be in lockdown celebrating Pride month with him.
Before I met Sam I didn’t know who I was. I’d been hiding so much about myself for so long. He saw through it all without judgement and has empowered me to be proud of and embrace who I truly am.
One of the biggest things I’d been hiding (though not always purposefully or particularly well) was my sexuality. I’m bisexual*. I never blatantly spelled it out to people growing up, but I tried many times, and was met with oblivion or dismissal — so I stopped trying to tell anyone at all, until recently.
My tale is not a particularly painful one — I’ve rarely been the target of direct homophobia apart from remarks made by drunk men that I wanted an excuse to steer clear from anyway. Instead it’s a daily niggle that’s reminded me I never quite belong.
At a young age I remember constantly being asked if I fancied various boys, and wondering why no-one was ever interested in my infatuation with other girls. ( I still hear parents I know now asking kids as young as 3 “is that your boyfriend? Are you gonna get married?” — Please stop) As I became a teenager I discovered a deeper connection with some of my female friends, but they too pushed me towards relationships with boys. I dated my first ever boyfriend because the girl I fancied told me to. I was lucky in many ways as he became my first love. But when he split up with me a couple of years later and started a relationship with that exact girl I’d fancied my mind was an absolute mush of confusion and self-loathing.
So at the age of 16 I literally threw myself into relationships with men. Most people I knew thought I enjoyed these relationships, but for me many of them were a kind of self-harm. Sam saw that as soon as we became friends at the age of 20. I vividly remember him quizzing me about why I was dating certain people, and making sure that they treated me with kindness and respect.
As my confidence grew with having Sam as a friend I decided to try to start telling people again about my sexuality. But when I tried to come out to another close friend she firmly told me “you’re not bisexual”. When you get shut down like that, and told you’re not who you say you are it makes you clam up about everything. I took a year out of relationships at that point. If even one of my closest friends didn’t believe or care about who I really was how could I mean anything to anyone? My romantic life became a conveyor belt of flings — because if people never really knew me they couldn’t reject me and my identity.
I eventually settled for a simple relationship with a straight-forwardly straight man. I relaxed into the comfort and the invisibility it gave me. But Sam still saw me for exactly who I was, and eventually we both realised that there was more to life than just existing. There was more to life than just accepting that parts of us couldn’t be accepted. We both broke off our relationships and had a roller coaster year that was painful in many ways and exhilarating in others. That year helped us both to discover and embrace who we were.
We eventually got together and quickly got pregnant with our first child. Many heterosexual people are confused why I still continue to talk about my sexuality when I’m in a monogamous relationship — but my sexuality actually became even more important than it had been when I was single. Along with the fact that I’d never has the space to process things when I was younger and Sam created that safe space for me to do that, I also found that after having kids you actually need to be more clear and strong about who you are and what you need from romantic relationships or else your entire being and existence gets consumed by young children. We also talk more openly and explicitly about it because we now have the opportunity to raise our children to see the world differently — we have the chance to show them that they can be whoever they are and be accepted and loved for that.
After having our first child once again I started speaking more on the topic of my sexuality with others. When I was Director of People at a tech company we celebrated Pride at work and I spoke to a gay colleague about my bisexuality and how I never felt I’d been able to fully come out. He opened my eyes to the complex stigma surrounding bisexuality that I’d never been able to quite put my finger on before — and he then encouraged me to share my sexuality as part of our pride campaign. But I still couldn’t do it. And I realise now it was because there were things I’d seen and experienced there that told me I wasn’t entirely safe to do so — it was safer for me to continue to hide behind my heteronormative relationship. In some ways I’m extremely lucky that hiding was an option for me — many people don’t get this privilege of living unquestioned.
But when I set up my own company at the start of last year, and me and my family moved to Nottingham, we finally got the opportunity to rewrite our narrative. We finally got the chance to start from the beginning and to tell people the important things about us. It was freeing beyond belief. It made me better at my work, better as a mother and better as a partner.
Since then I’ve felt more able to talk with confidence when I encourage people to be authentic at work, and more able to challenge employers about how they stifle people’s identities. And I’ve even got to the point of coming out explicitly to my parents on my birthday this year — I’ve always been lucky to have understanding parents but for some reason I’d been holding this silently and tightly to my chest whenever I was around them. When I told them it felt like I could finally breathe.
There is so much more I could say. Both about my experiences of being bisexual and how Sam has made it possible for me to be proud of who I am. And I’m happy to talk to anyone about their own experiences — I am lucky to have someone who gives me strength and holds that space for me to exist, and it’d be my privilege to do that for other people.
