Facing The Challenge

Though I am out to my wife. I am still very much in the closet as a married bisexual man.  One of the great things I like about being involved with an on-line Group of exceptional Bisexual Men and also writing a blog like this one is that it gives me the opportunity to meet many other married bisexual men and discuss our common interests, and concerns and triumphs. Some of you have become personal friends though we've never met face to face. I like that. Many of you have enriched my life just by getting to know you and know something about you. 


To those of you who linger in the shadows of the internet and read but never make contact with other guys such as yourself I cannot stress enough how much you are missing of the life you should be living. Reading about your bisexuality is a step in the right direction for sure, but it is only a tiny step towards what you should be doing to truly make the most of the live you were born to live.


I remember all too well the  years, decades, I spent in solitary pain and suffering. I'm a much much happier man now. That doesn't mean all the issues have been worked out by any means, but I have worked out far superior ways of dealing with all the issues than just letting them inflict pain on me.


You have to be discreet. You have to be cautious about not betraying your real identify. I get that. But that does not mean you can have no contact at all with other guys like yourself.


One of the friends, I met along the way is Martin. Martin is a homosexual man who was married at one time and who is a Christian. Like most of us who are married and/or Christian, Martin has struggled with his sexuality. But more importantly, Martin has made himself available to help those of us who are also struggling with their own sexuality. It was Martin who first urged me to attend a meeting of "Guys Night Out," a monthly meeting of married bisexual and homosexual men in the Houston area. At first, I was terror struck just to think of doing such a thing. What if I met someone I knew or who knew me? But Martin urged me to consider attending and finally I decided to do so.


I will never forget that first meeting. The group usually meets in a neighborhood bar which is a nice place filled with people taking a break on their way home from work or meeting friends for a drink. As I entered the bar, I was introduced to the guys who were part of our group. Perhaps Martin sensed my uneasiness, for he called my attention to a group of guys seated across the room and asked me what those guys were talking about.


I said, "Well I don't know. I can't hear them." He said, "That's exactly right. They are just guys having a drink after work as far as we know. And as far as they know, we are too."


It's been a lot of  years since I started attending those Guy's Night Out Meetings and I've never had a bad experience from them. I have met new friends there and I've met a heck of a lot of really great and interesting guys - lawyers, doctors, salesmen, information and data techs, teachers, mechanics, you name it. All just ordinary guys with their bisexuality or homosexuality in common.


You should be careful in exploring your bisexuality. But you should not be paranoid about it.

A few days ago a member shared something with me that I want to share with you. I've taken great care to purposely edit out many of the facts that might lead to someone identifying the young man whose story my friend shared with me. Its not his identity or the specific details of the story that are important, its the overall story that is important.

Sam is an  American wheelchair racer, who competed at the Olympic and Paralympic level. At the Summer Olympic Games, he placed in the wheelchair racing event.  Two years later at the Olympic Games, he finished in the top four in the demonstration sport of Men's 1500m wheelchair. He competed in four consecutive Summer Paralympics, winning a total of two gold and three silver medals.

Sam became a paraplegic at in his early teens after being hit by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle. Only days after the accident, while still in the hospital, he watched a wheelchair race on television where young lady broke the world record in the 800 meters. Having been a competitive runner he immediately became interested in the sport and attended a camp for disabled athletes at the next summer.

While attending High School, he was a member of the school's track and field team. As a sophomore, he was allowed to race in a wheelchair division. As the only wheeler he often raced in mixed heats with runners, the wheeler and runner heats were scored separately. For his last two years of high school, however, the school barred him from competing in mixed heats with runners because of safety issues. Despite the fact that Sam trained every day with the runners in mixed practices, he was deemed "unsafe" during competition. Sam filed a lawsuit against the school system, concerning the right for disabled students to compete on their school teams. After he had graduated from the school, a Federal Judge ruled that school officials had violated his civil rights, as provided for in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, by not allowing him to argue his case. The judge did not rule on whether high school wheelchair athletes should be able to compete alongside or against their able-bodied peers.

Sam received an athletic scholarship to a well known University and was a member of the school's wheelchair basketball and track and field teams. He later moved to the southeastern U.S.  to work for an international company in their Worldwide Sports Department. He has been active in the American Association of Adapted Sports programs which oversees the partnership of leaders in education building a foundation for a national network of interscholastic adapted athletic programs.

Today, Sam still competes in athletic events and it was in one recent even where my friend had the privilege of meeting him. In my friends words, "Life offers some truly awesome and unexpected opportunities!" He considered it an awesome thing just to meet this young man who has refused to let life get him down.

When my friend was telling me about this young man it occurred to me that in a real sense, life itself is all about overcoming adversity. Fortunately, most of us don't have to overcome the type of adversity this young man has had to cope with. But all of us have had our own adversities to overcome. 

This blog exists because I spent too many years afraid to face the reality of my own Bisexuality. I don't think Bisexuality is by any means as hard a thing to face as being a paraplegic, but it does bring real challenges and sometimes real pain.

I have come to see that their are no perfect and certainly no easy answers for those of us dealing with Bisexuality. Certainly there are no easy answers for guys like Sam who are dealing with paralysis. But the only effective way of dealing with it is to face it head on just as Sam faced his paralysis  head on. He could have spent the rest of his life angry at his fate and doing nothing about it. Instead he faced it  head on and overcame it in a very real way.

There are many guys who have done that. Most of those guys have come to a point in their lives where they manage well.  I urge those of you who are still struggling with your bisexuality or your homosexuality to make good use of the help that is available to you. It can help a lot just to speak up and talk to someone who has walked in your shoes.

Live moves at an ever quickening step. None of us should waste time in coming to terms with our Bisexuality and the impact it has on our lives.

Jack