Jean-Jules knows it, he has seen it and especially heard it too much: if he opens up about his bisexuality, people will judge. So he keeps quiet. Explanations.
The forty-year-old wrote to us earlier this summer, following the publication of the testimony of a certain David, a heteroflexible. “I recognized a lot of myself in him,” he begins, seated in a nice café in La Petite-Patrie. Except for one huge detail: while David was trying at all costs to define himself, broadly heterosexual, but open to a fluidity of possibilities, Jean-Jules, for his part, is downright “anti-label.” “I don’t see the point in telling people who I sleep with.”
Read David’s testimony
If you’re wondering at this point why he agreed to confide, you’re not alone. He doesn’t exactly know himself. We’ll come back to that, of course.
In any case, he opens up with ease, without the slightest embarrassment, and also confides right away his very “first contacts”, at a very young age, with little “boy friends”. Let’s be clear: “It was in the context of innocent games”, he specifies, and no, this does not provoke the slightest questioning, he assures us with a convinced nod of the head.
His very first sexual relationship was at the age of 15. “With a 23-year-old woman. I started strong!” he laughs. He doesn’t complain. “It was a very beautiful moment. Today, she would end up with accusations, but it was fully consensual,” he says, all smiles.
Jean-Jules then has a few adventures with girls (“not great, you know, you have no experience, you’re no good!”) before making his very first girlfriend, around the age of 17. Their story lasts more than a year and the breakup is painful: “a big heartache”, he remembers. That’s when a good friend gets closer to him, they talk a lot, Jean-Jules opens up, “one thing leads to another”, as our interlocutor says, and there they are… in the sauna.
To the sauna?
I was attracted to masculine attributes. But I didn’t dare take the plunge. After talking about it so much, I asked myself: why leave?
Jean-Jules, mid-forties
And then? “It’s conclusive. So much so that I wanted to do it again.”
He was 20 at the time. He also continued to see this “friend” regularly, but no, he didn’t question his orientation any further. “It’s a purely physical attraction. I have zero interest in getting into a relationship with a guy. Kissing a guy makes me sick!”
Still, he keeps their encounters a secret. “It’s none of the others’ business who you sleep with,” he repeats. “It’s easy, having a straight life, it goes down well in society. You’ll do whatever you want in your bedroom!” At least that’s his philosophy.
It must be said that he knows what he is talking about. Allow me an aside: at work, Jean-Jules has a colleague who had children with a man, was in a relationship with a woman, and then returned with another man. “And the judgments are still flying! But what difference does that make, who is she sleeping with?”
As for him, at work, once, and only once, he dared to say that he was bisexual. “The rare time I dared to talk about it, in a safe environment no less, it wasn’t very inviting. […] All eyes turned to me as if I were an alien. That’s the feeling I had.” One thing is certain, “it made me want to shut the hell up…” End of the parenthesis.
Still in his early twenties, Jean-Jules then met his wife, with whom he would start a family. Their story would last 15 years. In bed? “Standard,” he answered without hesitation. “No interest in experimenting with anything.”
This is not entirely true, since at the very beginning of their relationship, they had fun here and there with a couple of friends. No swinging, but rather a few voyeuristic experiences. “Yes, it was nice, very exciting.” What you need to know is that before these adventures took place, our Jean-Jules had a little fun with the guy from the couple in question. He ended up confiding in his girlfriend, who didn’t exactly react with joy. “She felt betrayed, threatened,” Jean-Jules sums up. She mainly confronted him: “Are you gay? Are you going to leave me?” As for him, he didn’t see (and still doesn’t see) anything threatening in it, precisely.
For me, it was sexual contact. And that was it…
Jean-Jules, mid-forties
They will continue anyway, and experience a few threesomes all three of them (him, his girlfriend and the guy in question again), an experience that Jean-Jules describes to this day as one of the “most beautiful moments” of his life. “I could live out pretty much all my desires without asking myself any questions. Without limits,” he smiles. But not madame, for whom all this caused many insecurities. “And she didn’t want to experience it again.”
And then, for all sorts of reasons, over the years, a postpartum here, a “beige” routine there, mid-thirties, the couple who became a family ended up cracking, and Jean-Jules separated. “The deliverance,” he continues.
As you might have guessed: once single, Jean-Jules immediately seeks to relive an experience with a couple. Because we remember it: “It was great,” he recalls. “But meeting a couple with a bi guy is very difficult…”
To meet women, moreover, if he shows himself as “bi” for a while, Jean-Jules quickly abandons the label. Why? Too “heavy” to manage, he argues. “Girls are insecure: are you going to cheat on me? Do you have a higher libido?” True story: it is much less complicated to simply say you are straight.
It is in this context that, at the turn of his forties, our Jean-Jules meets a new woman, his current partner. In bed, it is again “standard”, but he is very comfortable with it. Madame knows nothing about his past or his bisexuality, and that is all the better. No question of dealing with all the anticipated insecurities again. “I quickly understood that it is very, very, very complicated, even impossible, to live all your desires and have it go well. But for me, the priority is to be in a relationship, to have a future, to think about my old age.”
Clarification: no, Jean-Jules is not at all “bitter” here. Quite the opposite, he assures us. “I’m really happy with her, she’s the person I’ve been with the best in my entire life.” Instead of seeing what he’s missing, he’s now focusing on what makes him happy.
This is perhaps why he wanted to tell his story, in the end. To do “useful work,” he says philosophically, before concluding: “Happiness is appreciating what you have, and not spending your time wondering what you don’t have…”
*Fictitious first name, to protect anonymity