Catch up with Tom, bisexual male. 

Last year I spoke to my close friend, Tom in detail about his sexuality in his first interview.

http://wp.me/p78BZ8-2ZOn 

Its success and my knowledge of how much he has positively moved on, influence by people asking me how he was doing I decided toasked for a second interview…….. 

Here it is

Enjoy! 

Since your original interview many things have happened in your life. Can you fill in our readers Tom? 
The biggest thing that has happened to me (in my whole life I would say) was coming out to my mother. I did it the night before her Birthday because my brother and his gf were visiting and I just thought to myself, I can’t keep doing this. I felt like I was leading a double, or sometimes triple life. The pressure was immense from all aspects of my life and has been building up over time, and it did take me a few days to actually say something. I beat around the bush too much and didn’t give myself enough time to talk everything through and so finally something in me snapped and I just thought ‘just f***ing do it’.

So how did it go, was it what you expected and how did she react to you being bisexuality?

It was not at all what I expected. I cried a whole heck of a lot more than I had ever anticipated. Mum said she didn’t care about my sexuality because she wanted me to be happy. She told me to “fuck everyone” (not literally) because I needed to make myself happy, and not try make everyone else happy while I’m not.

Not only did you had to tell your mother in the same weekend, you had to tell your brother. Did you find that difficult or easy because of repetition?

Well, I didn’t speak to my brother, my mother did because I told her I was going to tell him first but I decided she would be the hardest person to talk to and I think it was really just like ripping off a bandaid… I definitely felt like I would have found it harder to repeat myself, it was such a relief to finally get it off my chest that if I did try to express again maybe I wouldn’t have been able to express myself completely, or maybe I would have thought of a better way of saying it.

Are all your family cool about it?

During my talk with mum, I explained that there were several members of her family that knew, this wasn’t with malicious intent that “they all know and you don’t ha ha”, but it was to say that if she needed someone to talk to, she could talk to my cousins (her nieces and nephews) and her brothers and sisters.

My brother invited my current boyfriend along to the movies the following day (but he was unavailable). So that shocked me.

My cousins and co. were all super supportive, I told the one cousin I had openly discussed sexuality with, and she informed the rest of my extended family who all said the same thing “is he okay?”, so they were supportive for sure.

I know your previous boyfriend didn’t understand your sexuality very well, what is the reaction of the new one?

He actually messaged me after our first interview (after months of no contact) and told me he was so sorry for how he made me feel and treated me and that he didn’t think he was portrayed as the villain.

I responded by saying that it was in the past and we had both moved on. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand very well, to me it was because I hadn’t been 100% honest with him about who I was as a person, and I think I had left it too late to actually tell him, and he hurt because of it. And I accept that I was of course at fault for the matter, but we were both mature enough to move past it and we’re both happy now in our lives.

I know you are in a relationship with another man, do you get any comments about your sensuality because of this?

All the time. Work is the hardest place for me. While I have opened up to my mother (who informed my brother and his gf), my workmates are a different story. My team are in two locations, and I’ve opened up to a few of those working in the other location to me (all younger, one of them a great mate who is an openly gay male). The office I sit in substantially is full of older workers and they come from a more conservative background. One of them recently stated to my mate in the other office “everyone already knows he’s gay” and that annoyed me because rather than say it to me, or ask about my relationship, they’ve already assumed, and that’s frustrating for sure.

Do you feel that because you are a bisexual in a gay relationship it hides your true identity?

I think that a lot of people struggle with the thought that maybe someone in a same-sex relationship could be something other than gay or lesbian. You can’t just assume someone’s sexuality, you can’t assume anything about anyone certainly not same-sex couples on the street, because you don’t know the full story.

Does this matter, if so how much to you and others?

It matters to me that there are those out there that say “oh you’re not bi, you’re gay, just accept it” because I feel like they’re trying to label me as something I’m not because it makes it easier for them to stick me in a certain pre-disposed perception stereotype. And that isn’t fair.

 You have had a lot of, ‘fan male’ since the first interview, is that inspiring for you? 

Poparlised to get Oh my word, yes it is. It humbles me beyond belief. I had several people message me about being brave enough to share my story and they enjoyed reading the article. Everyone has been fantastic about it and I didn’t expect the responses that I know you and I did.

I feel that if I helped just one person through that article then it was worth it for sure.

What have you got planned next? 

Become Head Writer of ‘Doctor Who’… But also, try my damn hardest to live a happy life with whomever I choose to love.

Thanks again Tom, you are an inspiration to all my readers and myself. Is there anything you would like to say to all the young bisexual guys out there?

Thank you for thinking of me as an inspiration. I think that young bisexuals out there shouldn’t just let others make judgements about who they are, they know who they are and they don’t need anyone else to stick a label or slot them into a stereotype because of their pre-disposed perceptions.

There is a reason LGBT  has a B in it. Bisexuality is and there are those out there that can and do love both men and women equally. It’s up to the Bisexuals to stand up for themselves.