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From 1981 to 1998, I was in a 17-year period of no romantic/sexual relationships with women, although I still acknowledged and considered myself bisexual. I just wasn’t actively pursuing a relationship and none were dropping into my lap. Bisexual relationships don’t tend to drop into a married woman’s lap. (Prior to 1981, I had had a number of experiences with women but nothing very fruitful in terms of relationships. Hence, the weariness and the “semi-retirement” from pursuing it.)

From 1998 to 2001, I was in a relationship with a woman where I was more or less “officially” considered her girlfriend. We were partnered in that sense. However, it was a lopsided affair with the world revolving around Maura.  [Note: at no time are real names used in this blog, with the exception of noted personalities, authors, etc.]  She was very self-absorbed and high maintenance. The fact that she got married a year-and-a-half after we met, got pregnant a month after the wedding, and delivered a child nine months after her wedding to Ryan did not smooth our relationship any. It just demanded more of her than what she was able to give, and it’s not hard to imagine that I was relegated to the bottom of the priority list. I am NOT high maintenance and am a centered, giving woman who can deal with a certain amount of that kind of relationship, but I reached my limit with it, especially when they decided to relocate to a town in Wisconsin which was a six-hour drive from the Twin Cities. That was the last straw for me. We weren’t doing well with her living a 20-minute drive from me at that point. We probably weren’t going to be doing any WORSE with her living six hours away from me, but it wasn’t going to improve the relationship, either. It was time to end it and move on.

In the spring of 2003, I corresponded with a 45-year-old male-to-female (MTF) transgendered woman who lived only a few miles from me. (Yes, I am comfortable with transgendered individuals.  I feel that the transgendered and bisexual members of the GLBT acronym have something in common from the “blending” standpoint.)  This was through the FastCupid website where I’ve had a profile posted since shortly before this time.  We wrote a couple of times and decided to meet. On the evening that we went out to dinner that first time, she was only about a week home from her major surgical sex reassignment operation in Neenah, Wisconsin. She was sitting on an inflatable “doughnut” to cushion her sore, reconstructed bottom while we dined that evening! Interestingly enough, though, a sexual relationship blossomed between us, beginning that evening, even though I was the only one who had breasts and genitals that could be touched and stimulated. But, hey! It worked well for me!

This was not a heavy-duty romantic relationship for either one of us. She had a need to experience her new female body sexually, and that was the basis for her making the sexual overtures on that first date.  I knew that, and I enjoyed being a part of that experience for her.   However, it was only a few weeks later when she said to me that she wanted emotional closeness, wanted to be in love, and she couldn’t do that with a married woman.  Still, the sexual relationship went on regularly for four months! I was the one who finally let the relationship go without any declarations or announcements of termination.  I just didn’t answer an email, and she never wrote back and asked me what was up.  It was just over, and I assume she moved on to something more suited to her needs.

In November of that year (2003), I went out with a woman I had known for a number of years. We had met when we were both members of a bisexual women’s support group at Chrysalis Women’s Center in Minneapolis in 1997. She and I had gotten together for some dinner dates over the years, very sporadically. We never really “clicked” for some reason but never lost touch with each other, either. Personally, I found her quite attractive and entertained thoughts of having a relationship with her. I told her this during one of our sporadic dinner dates in the spring of that year, news that she appeared to be fairly receptive to. Then we didn’t see each other for some months again!

Well, we went out that evening in November 2003, her husband of 28 years gone on a hunting trip and mine out-of-town on business. We went back to my house after supper and had sex for the first time. It was a brief tryst that evening because she had to get home to greet her husband when he arrived from his hunting trip. We saw each other once for dinner around the holidays.

Her 50th birthday was in late February 2004, and I purchased an amethyst (Feb.’s birthstone) and diamond necklace for her, wanting to give a woman I cared about something special for that milestone birthday.  When she put off seeing me after my suggestions to get together to celebrate her birthday, I let it go, and I let it go for good that time. Her situation was being married to a man who did not support her bisexuality. He knew of it but was uncomfortable with it. One-night stands he could handle, but an ongoing relationship between his wife and another woman was something he could not handle, and I think she knew she was potentially getting into a more serious relationship if she continued seeing me. This is quite different from the dynamics of my marriage, and I really don’t want to get romantically involved with someone who has that situation going on.  I occasionally wear that amethyst and diamond necklace that I did not give her, and I remember why I bought it and why the intended recipient did not get it.  I like the necklace, anyway. 

A year went by. I corresponded with another woman on FastCupid, a divorced woman my age, and we met for dinner in October 2004. Dated a few times. My husband was gone over Thanksgiving weekend that year, and Rosalind and I “played” (her term, not mine) that Saturday night at her house and I spent the night, something that I rarely have done. It was very, very nice. She was very attractive and very sexual, and I felt my sex drive re-energizing and coming to life in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.  We saw each other a few times after that, with no further sexual encounters between us. It quickly became apparent through our conversations and e-mails that she was interested in a “friend with bennies” from a woman partner. It didn’t mean anything beyond that. She was emphatic that she wasn’t a lesbian and told me this several times.  That’s fine because I don’t consider myself a lesbian, either, but her emphasis on this suggested the unlikelihood that she would get emotionally involved with another woman.  In fact, she could go for several weeks at a time and not touch base with me if she was busy with a male friend or what-not.  Well, I want to mean something to a woman, not just be a “friend with bennies” when it’s convenient. I ended that one on the basis of emotional incompatibility.

Fast-forward another 20 months — Fall of 2006. Another FastCupid correspondent. Another MTF transgendered woman. A very interesting woman: a former high school teacher whose story was written up in the Star Tribune newspaper years ago when she made her very public transition from male to female at the high school she worked at in 1998. Since retiring, she has been self-employed as a motivational speaker in the area of transgendered life and receives numerous engagements to speak nationwide. Yes, I found her very interesting! She found me very interesting as well, to the extent of wanting a serious thing with me on the basis of the first date in November.  (Okay, so I didn’t go home until the next day. Not the thing to do on the “first date,” and I’d do well to remember that!)  She called me a “married lesbian” on that first date.  Even when I objected that I wasn’t a “married lesbian” but a bisexual woman, she insisted that I was a married lesbian until she saw I was getting seriously irritated.  For the second date, she wanted me to spend the weekend with her to see how we viewed the relationship in that light.  (As opposed to the porch light that my husband leaves on for me at home?)  I saw a lot of red flags flying with this relationship.  Dee wasn’t experienced with bisexuality and polyamory and I sensed I was getting into something with her that was not compatable with my life.  I backed off on that relationship in a hurry! 

Millie, a woman almost 16 years younger than me, responded to my FastCupid profile in March 2007. I found our interests and lifestyles to be compatible, found her attractive, and enjoyed exchanging e-mail with a woman who could intelligently string some sentences together — unfortunately, a quality that seems to be hard to find! We didn’t waste a lot of time chatting each other up but decided to meet soon after our online introduction.

We dated and corresponded for about six weeks before sexually pleasing each other one Saturday night at her apartment. She cried and said how good it felt to be in my arms. I stroked her hair, and she cuddled against me and said, “You know how badly you want something to happen sometimes but you’re not sure it will?  I wasn’t sure this would.  I’m so happy it did!”  Being with me like that really seemed to mean something to her!

We saw each other regularly after that. She was always eager to hug me, kiss me, hold hands with me. She didn’t care who saw us displaying these affections towards each other. She introduced me to her kids. She told me that her youngest son, three-and-a-half, wanted to know if he could call Kinsey ”Mommy,” too, since I was Mommy’s girlfriend. We had a wonderful day at the Pride Festival, completely “out and proud,” our arms around each other, our affection there for everyone to see.

Then……