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Timing is everything.
A while back, I joined Match.com. For the second time; I'd done so sometime in
2001 (I think), talking briefly to one woman but not meeting her, and never did
post a profile of myself. Well, I've gotten further this time: I've posted a profile and
a few pictures, and I identified three people as reasonable objects of potential
acquaintancing. I wrote to one, and she quickly replied that her "life is a mess
right now, you don't want to know me". Hmm. Another one I decided on further
reflection not to write to after all. The third, I looked at every day and said to
myself, "Self, you need to write to her". This went on for about a month, with
Edward gently encouraging me every few days ("Have you written to
her yet?")
So I finally got the nerve to stop being a mouse
and initiated contact. She responded quickly and thus was begun a conversation,
in which I was glad that she asked several questions at the end of each of her
letters because that facilitated more participation from me. The conversation was to
last four round turns. It presumably ended
yesterday.
In response to one of her questions ("What made you smile today?"), I worked in,
quite naturally, the fact that I'm bisexual. There are a few likely responses to that;
the most probable one may be some variant of "Go away". And that is in fact what
happened. Her reply displayed either a misunderstanding of something I said, or
an unfortunate, but possibly not uncommon, incorrect view of what bisexual means.
But the most significant part being that that ended our relationship as far as she
was concerned. She also thanked me for the "wonderful emails" and wished me
"peace, love, and joy always". That was nice.
Will I learn anything from this? I don't know. The dilemma I face, as do all
non-heterosexuals but bisexuals particularly, I think, in the situation of meeting
someone with intent to woo (eventually), is: When? When
do you bring up this fact; this aspect of your being which, from one viewpoint, is
vitally important and integral, but from another shouldn't necessarily matter that
much.
- Early on
- The person says "Okay" or "That's nice" or "How interesting!" and you
proceed on
- The person says "Sorry, that's unacceptable to me" and that's that
- The person gets some friends and they tie you up and leave you to die. (unlikely)
Later
- The person says "Okay" or "That's nice" or "How interesting!" and you
proceed on
- They say "Okay. Gosh, I'm glad you didn't tell me that before we got to
know each other; I would have ended it then and missed out
on falling in love with you."
- They say "Thanks for wasting n months of my life, you jerk"
- They say "Why have you been lying to me all this time?" and slam the door
- They start praying for the salvation of your perverted soul (you run)
The two outcomes relating to time are the
genesis of the problem. You don't want
either one of you to feel that you've invested a lot of precious time down a romance rathole. But it could easily happen that, if it comes out after you've learned
much else about each other and a long time partnership is looking possible, that
it will be seen for the non-issue that it should be (assuming the
actual
sexual relationship being contemplated is acceptable, rather than some
hypothetical one that ignorant people might fixate on).
I don't know what the right answer is; absent a sudden telepathic ability, there probably isn't one. But the wasting of time, and
concomitant aspect of rudeness, makes me want to continue to err on the early
side.