FRIEND CUTS AND BURNS HIMSELF
THINKS SHE'S A BURDEN TO BOYFRIEND

Q: When my boyfriend was a teenager, he had a sexual fling with a man. Before and since he was only with women. Also, he enjoys porn, some of which is transsexual and gay stuff. How common is this? Should I be worried? I keep obsessing about it…

A: Some people theorize that we are all straight and gay to various degrees. So feeling excitement while thinking about sex with both men and women is relatively common. But I don’t think that how common it is really matters. You have to deal with your own real situation, regardless of whether you are the only one or there are millions of others going through the same things.

Should you be worried? Worry never helps anything, of course. But I can understand that you would be, since all of us are insecure to some degree – and most of us are more insecure about sex than about anything else.

Above all else, what matters is whether you and your boyfriend have a spoken agreement that he won’t be sexual with anyone else, and whether he’s a person who keeps his word! (You might want to read “Who Can You Trust?” at my site.) We all are capable of fantasizing about and actually having sex with other partners, and most of us eventually agree not to act on those capabilities in order to be in a safe, secure relationship with one person.

Other than that, you need to know if your lover feels satisfied and complete in his relationship with you. (I’ve known some bisexuals who have happy, long-term relationships with people of their own sex and others who have been happy with people of the opposite sex. They usually say that straight people don’t realize that for them it really does come down to the Person they choose to love, not so much which set of genitals the other person happens to have.)

If you are using the term transsexual to mean that your lover feels like a woman trapped in a man’s body, then I’d strongly suggest that he get therapy from someone trained to work with this issue. He’d need to feel resolved about remaining a male before you’d make any long-term sexual commitment, of course.

In all relationships, what matters most is how your partner treats you, and your letter doesn’t mention anything about this.

Just know that he’s bisexual and that it all comes down to whether he will ever want to make and keep a lifelong commitment with any specific woman or man or if he will want to stay free to have both kinds of sex. Enjoy your relationship as much as you can, and give yourself and your partner plenty of time to see how things evolve.

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