4:03am September 24, 2014

➸ why no one should talk about "emotional adultery" ever again

soilrockslove:

I’m shifting the schedule a little bit this week because today is Bisexual Visibility Day— and this week is the first-ever Bisexuality Awareness Week. This is the first year I’ve been out, and see…

I’m not Christian - but for Bisexual Pride Day, Samantha makes some very good points about bisexuality and friendship.

The “you can’t be friends with anyone you might ever possibly be attracted to, or you might LOSE CONTROL” thing is not only insulting, it also bears a little too much resemblance to some forms of controlling BS that get aimed at bi women in particular by abusive partners. I thankfully haven’t run into that personally, but some of my friends have. That’s a neat way of isolating someone, on the basis that they are likely to cheat on you with any friends they may want to spend time with.

The idea thay you can do “emotional adultery” basically by getting some emotional needs met in a close friendship is strange to me.

Honestly, the whole idea of emotional adultery strikes me as coming from a similar place of insecurity and control. Not suggesting this is deliberate in any way, or necessarily bundled in bad intentions like the jealous controlling jerk versions. But, it seems to be coming from a similarly suspicious place where the main thing that you and people you might ever find attractive would probably have in common is that attraction. It’s based on some weird assumptions, to my mind.

But, yeah, I was amazed when I first started hearing the apparently tired old heterocentric “can women and men ever REALLY be friends, though?!” bullshit. That’s obviously going to get a lot more complicated if you sometimes find people of multiple genders attractive. But this stuff sounds like basically the same thing further wrapped up in certain religious ideas. I still find it strange and kind of insulting.

(Not Christian either, but I grew up around the kind of mainline/considered very “liberal”’ now flavors that mean preoccupations with concepts like this tied into religion frankly still kind of shock me.)

I’ve had people assume that I was attracted to my guy friends. Even when, in one case… I’m a lesbian, and he had taken a vow of celibacy. Which is like, the least likely pairing in existence. Yet people were always sure we would hook up, just because we were super-close friends and had a lot in common.

(He eventually dropped the vow of celibacy, but we still didn’t go out. I officiated at his wedding though. :-))

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