Counselling for bi men

Why bi men so often end up in the wrong room

Bi men report a specific and wearing experience of therapy: being subtly encouraged towards a conclusion. A counsellor who assumes that a man in a relationship with a woman is really gay, or that a man in a relationship with a man has stopped being bi, is doing the same thing the rest of the world does — just more slowly and at your expense.

The starting position here is different and it does not move: you are bisexual, that is information rather than a puzzle, and the counselling has no opinion about where it should lead.

What bi men bring

The themes overlap with gay men's work in places and diverge sharply in others.

• Being read as straight or as gay depending on who you are standing next to, and never quite being seen
• Erasure from both directions — dismissed by straight friends, doubted within gay spaces
• Deciding whether to come out at all when it can feel like an announcement about a relationship you are not in
• Attraction that does not switch off inside a monogamous relationship, and the guilt built on top of it
• A sense of never having a community that is straightforwardly yours

What the work looks like

Person-centred counselling, weekly, 50 minutes, online. The agenda is yours. Nothing needs settling by a particular date, and 'I don't know yet' is an answer the work can hold for as long as it needs to.

For many bi men, the substantial part of the work is not about sexuality at all once it has been said out loud and received without flinching. It is about everything that has been queued behind it.