Say it to Sappho: why do they always go back to men?
July 24th, 2009 by Sappho
“Dear Sappho. Far too many women who I have been with have gone back to men after ending it with me. Am I just attracting straight/bi women in the first place or am I doing something to put them off women?” Jenny, 31, Portsmouth
That can’t be doing much for your self-esteem now, can it?
There may well be one explanation for each of these different women as to why they go ‘back to men’ after being with you. Or, there may be different reasons for each of these women and it is just a coincidence that you are attracting them.
Let’s stick to the second option, for your sake, and I’ll give you 5 reasons why I think some women go back to men, after being with women:
1) They aren’t out. It is easier to go back into the closet.
2) They are bisexual. Going ‘back to men’ therefore wouldn’t apply. It could have been a woman next just as easily. But it wasn’t.
3) They are still lesbians, they are just choosing to do have flings with men. Supposedly, two thirds of lesbians have reported feelings of attraction towards men.
4) They were never lesbian/bisexual in the first place. They were just bored. And lesbians who are attracted to straight-looking, straight-acting women are never far away. Easy targets.
5) They had a bad experience with a woman. Okay, this one would bring it back to you. That bad experience doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t something wrong. It just means that it (whatever ‘it’ is) didn’t work for them.
Beware of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you convince yourself that these are the kinds of women you do attract, you will continue to attract them.
Do you have a sex or relationship problem you need Sappho’s help with? Email Sappho@lesbilicious.co.uk, and remember to include a name, age and location.
Another option: are you sure they “went back to men” immediately after you? When you’ve seen them again, how much time has elapsed - enough to have had other relationships, or just other dates that didn’t turn into relationships before they got involved with the guy you saw/heard about them being with?
And another: Are you sure that they’re not simply using you? Is it possible that they’re women who are more usually attracted to men, but that you were one of the special women who attracted them? There are people who are usually attracted to one gender or gender identity, but can sometimes attracted to others. Because we live with over-simplified categories, women for whom this is true are accused of using other women, instead of having the fact that they fell for a woman being simply acknowledged. Back in the box, and stop disrupting our cosy but oppressive notions of gender and orientation! ;)
“Am I just attracting straight/bi women in the first place..?”
That disturbs me. It skates so close to the idea that all bi women are untrustworthy and will favour men over women that I can’t see daylight between them.
K ∼ July 28th, 2009 12:36 pmK, don’t be disturbed. Come on, on the spectrum, there has to be women who are bi and do opt for men - at least more often. and then people like ‘jenny’ get caught up with them and get hurt.
louise ∼ July 28th, 2009 7:12 pmLouise, of course there are bi women who tend to more often be attracted to men than women. My entire 2nd paragraph was about that :)
The point is that the letter strongly implied that bi women are the same as straight women who are either sexual tourists (not something I approve of) or women who are experimenting (something everyone does at some stage of their lives, with varying levels of honesty and/or earnestness).
The implication was that bi women *will prefer men*. And it bothers me enormously.
K ∼ July 28th, 2009 8:04 pmLouise,I don’t understand why would you be more likely to be hurt by bi women who more often like men than women? Are you implying that some bi women shouldn’t be in relationships because they prefer men?
I’m not sure if the assumption here is that a relationship ends because one person wants to be with a different gender… Surely a relationship always ends because the two people aren’t right together.
Also, by saying that some women (for example) prefer men (for example), does this mean that they like being in relationships with men more than they enjoy being with women, or does it mean that out of a number of partners, they will be with more men? The first situation implies that a relationship with a woman will never be as strong, or passionate, or loving than a relationship with a man. And I strongly disagree with this - although I do see that this is what a lot of people assume about bi people…
I don’t really understand (rationally) why people get offended if their ex partner starts seeing a someone of a different gender. I totally understand that it hurts to see an ex with someone new, we certainly can be really hurt when we break up with someone. Blaming the hurt on their bisexuality seems like an easy (and a bit of a biphobic) option.
I guess what I’m really just trying to say is that (for me) relationships are about the person you’re with, not their gender. If someone is attracted to more than just the one gender, it is likely that they will have relationships with different genders. Why should we be offended if they do?
Heather ∼ August 31st, 2009 9:33 pmThis is like saying that I deeply hurt my ex-girlfriend because my next partner after her was a man, despite the facts that I didn’t even meet him until two years later, and that we broke up because she was still emotionally involved with her previous girlfriend (with whom she promptly got back together, and they have just got engaged). I’ve never in my life been bothered by the gender of the next person a former partner goes out with, I’m more concerned about the timescale i.e. whether I was cheated on. Which has happened twice, once by a straight man, once by a gay woman, and never by a bisexual, nor have I ever cheated on anyone. I’m not saying, “aha, far from bisexuals being more prone to cheating, they’re actually less likely to do it,” I attribute it to a smaller sample size. I don’t think bisexuals are any more or less likely to cheat than anyone else. Also, being bisexual is not the same as being polyamorous, and being polyamorous is not the same as cheating (and indeed seems to make cheating less likely, judging from the poly folks I know).
And you know what? If you want to know where your partner stands with regards to all of this, talk to them about it. It’s not difficult. I’ve never got together with someone without knowing their sexual orientation, for heaven’s sake, and after a few years I also developed a policy of having an open, honest discussion at the start about our sexual histories and how each of us felt about monogamy. If you think that your partner should be able to magically mindread all of this stuff, then you’re either fifteen or living in cloud cuckoo land.
Unless you spend all your time in the queer community, and sometimes even then, a bisexual is going to meet a far larger number of potential partners of the opposite sex than of the same sex for the simple reason that roughly 90% of people are straight. Your chances of meeting with nonsense about your own sexual orientation, however, are much greater if you go out with a monosexual (not that I like the word, but it fits here). I’ve experienced quite a bit of bullshit from straight men about my being bisexual, ranging from dumping me the minute the message got through (I still reckon that one’s a closet case) to making constant distasteful jokes about threesomes. I’ve heard less nonsense from gay women (most of it has been what I’ve read on this site!), and never from anyone I’ve dated. My (male) partner’s ex-boyfriend used to make a big unnecessary fuss about his being bi, trying to force him to say that he was gay instead. I have to say that it’s a relief to be with someone where we both know that we have chosen each other as people, couldn’t give a hoot about the genders involved, and can happily argue together about which actors and actresses in the TV shows we watch are hot without fretting that it’s a Sign Of Impending Infidelity. We’re both shaped by our experiences of the gender we inhabit, but it’s very far from defining either of us as people. I didn’t fall for him because he’s a man or because of what bits are between his legs, I fell for him because he’s a fabulous person and we suit one another down to the ground.
E ∼ March 1st, 2010 3:23 pm