Email from a bicurious student

One morning, just over a week ago, I woke up to find the following email in my inbox:

Dear GB

I am a finance student studying in one of well known universities in UK. I just found your blog today which I found very impressive. I am glad that you found your new bf and hope your guys get along well together. I am about to graduate this year and now I am looking for a job. It is really difficult to find a job these days, even more harder when you are not British. Do you have any advise for job hunting?

Another thing is about my sexuality, I don't know exactly what I am. I like going out and flirting with girls, watch porn as normal guys do, but I also like to look at guy's bodies and watch gay porn. I might be bi-sexual but when the time comes, such as arrange a meeting up with some guy, I am so scared and nervous. These things do not happen to me when I am going out or hooking up with girls. I have tried a few times with guys but they just wanna suck my dick...well..they might want more but I just stop at that point. You know, some time when I think back about that it made me feel sick. However, I still love to look at guys and gay porn and wanna try again;p, I don't know why. What should I do? Should I just try again? And this time he has to be a good looking and nice guy. Oh, I forgot to tell you that I am straight acting guy.

Thanks

Before I went to work I sent the reader a brief reply, telling him that I didn't really have any advice for job hunting. It's been quite a while since I was a fresh graduate looking for work, so these days I'm very disconnected from what one has to do to find a good job. Although I've been involved in a very minor way in graduate recruitment, I'm not at all sure what attributes employers are really looking for in candidates. My only suggestion for the reader was to try and resolve any issues relating to work permits and visas before applying for jobs, in the event that he's eligible for such a visa.

Although this reader didn't use the word bi-curious in his email, it seemed to me from what he wrote that the word describes him perfectly. He seems to like girls, but then it's clear that he's curious about guys too. The balance in his email suggests that he could be mostly straight, although it's equally possible that he's just starting to come to terms with the fact that he's gay. Bisexuality is another possibility, but as I think I've said before, genuine bisexuality is very rare and most people tend to be either mostly straight or mostly gay. If a bisexual is in a relationship and that relationship ends, typical behaviour is to move into a relationship with someone with the opposite gender to their previous partner. Indeed, the relationship might have ended because neither gender can give a bisexual everything they need.

But there's no doubt in my mind that he should try and hook up with guys again. His nervousness could well come from peer pressure or family pressure to be straight. He could also be worried that discovering that he actually prefers guys will turn his life upside down. Although that could well be a consequence, the eventual consequences of not establishing his true sexuality could be worse. Indeed, if a gay guy tries to deny his sexuality and ends up marrying a woman, although he may succeed in the short term in the long term he may well find himself surreptitiously meeting guys for sex. The result is likely to be divorce, shame and unhappiness. But if he works out that he is in fact gay, then after the initial trauma he'll be able to find himself a nice boyfriend and is likely to live a much happier life :-).

It's interesting that the reader says in his email "... this time he has to be a good looking and nice guy". I guess this means that in his previous attempts at hooking up with guys, perhaps as a result of his conflicted attitudes towards the fact that he might be gay, he's ended up meeting guys that he's not attracted to or who haven't been very nice people. It's easy to see how that could have happened, perhaps because he's been acting on impulse to explore this gay side without being found out, and perhaps because he's been keen to get it over with as quickly as possible. But of course, it's a mistake to rush into the bedroom with a guy that one isn't attracted to. There's nothing wrong with being gay, and there's also nothing wrong with being straight and having an encounter with a guy just to make sure that one's straight. So he needs to try and relax, and as he says, find a nice good-looking guy for his next hook-up!

Does anyone else have any thoughts for this reader?