Bisexuality has always been a subject of controversy, in Libya and worldwide, and many misconceptions about bisexual people have to be cleared out, some misconceptions include that “Bisexuals need help to choose the gender they really like”, or that “they are actually homosexuals.. and their attraction to more than one gender is a crossing point between heterosexuality and homosexuality, and if given freedom choice away from society’s judgments, they’d admit that they are homosexual.” How true are those statements? Can a person love two people of two different genders? How effective are psychological treatments in the Arab world that aim to change their sexual identity and make them “heterosexual”?

Too many questions

Bisexuals.. Which people are they attracted to the most? Men or women? Do they get married out of love, or out of covering up their secret? Are they gay? What if their partner finds out? Many questions asked by the society and bisexuals themselves.

“I am not attracted to a person according to their gender. Their affection is what attracts me to them,” says Omar (pseudonym), who searches for love without caring about where this love comes from, from a woman or a man. Omar adds, “I am sexually attracted to men as well as to women. But when I feel interest and love, I drift emotionally with anyone, regardless of their Gender identity.” “I fell in love with my friend. And since I saw him sitting alone at another friend’s wedding – and he was just recovering from a traffic accident – I could no longer contain my feelings and I went to take care of him. We spent most of our time together. Muhammad (pseudonym) thinks we’re just friends. Our relationship is much deeper after all this attention, but at the same time I love a girl, and she also has feelings for me.”

Being blackmailed

Omar says: “Once I had a huge fight with my partner Muhammad and I met him later to make it up for him, and we actually got back together, and he hugged me in the backroom of the store he works in, and he wasn’t the only person in the store, so his cousin came to us by chance and discovered our about our secret. Days went by and suddenly his cousin forced me to have sex with him in exchange of not telling my family about my relationship with Muhammad.

Several sexual partners.. And a ton of toxicity

“Months after our separation, I became “empty”, unlike the time we were together, I started having several sexual relations with other men only to satisfy my desire and to try to ignore him or even attract his attention through social media.

Currently, I do not trust any man. All my relationships ended in failure because I feel that the only men seek for is sex. I keep them around with sex,” he says, adding, “I have 9 sexual partners.”

Omar believes that men have let him down, because in exchange for sex, he was seeking attention and affection that he didn’t recieve until today, despite his multiple sexual relations. For him, sex is a tool to attract partners and implicates him in the relationship, but what he really wants is a stable relationship that he has not yet found. “I am proud of my multiple sexual experiences, and I am willing to reveal that to my future wife,” he says.

Solutions that are not solutions

“Muhammad and I separated permanently, but Muhammad crosses my mind throughout the day, so I decided to Marry Nora (a pseudonym) and actually went to propose to her for only one reason, which is to forget Muhammad. I don’t want to see him again, but I see him every now and then by accident as he lives next to my house. I am trying to forget him, but in vain, so I approached Nora in a last attempt to forget him. I admit it.”

Omar and Noura will be socially demanded after marriage by their families to have children, and to assume full responsibility for their home, and here they find themselves facing the responsibilities of life, not having fun or spending a happy romantic movie time, as they may fall into a spiral of frustration and then make the decision to divorce, especially since their marriage is standing based on an improper decision.

We are now in an urgent need to re-study society and its new habits and trends, in order to understand the motives behind its movements, in order to come up with real means of social change.

Note: The names mentioned in this topic are pseudonyms to preserve the privacy of their owners.