Allow me to pick your brains...
I've been chewing over some of these ideas for a while, and they've just recently coalesced (in the shower of all places), so I want to get them down while they're still fresh:
Now, according to C.G. Jung, we create an idealized counterpart, the Anima or Animus (corresponding to the opposite gender--mind you this is before Kinsey and such). We then project this ideal onto potential partners, with the resultant frustration stemming from the real person's inability to live up to our ideal. Thus we create patterns in relationships, often leaving us burnt out after a series of repetitive experiences. The trick, he says, is to realize that those aspects of the ideal (the anima/animus) are actually a part of you, and that your search for those aspects in others is merely a misguided attempt at making yourself feel whole and complete.
Ok, theory aside, here's the situation. I've spent most of my life chasing women (apparently I was a terrible flirt as a child), but quietly watching men as well. Almost all of my romantic relationships with women have been modeled after a friendship I had with an older woman when I was little. My girlfriends (usually older) have been beautiful, strong-willed, intelligent, and yet, never enough. They were not her.
More recently, I have found myself pursuing men. They are usually younger, somewhat immature, and tend to have a particular boyishness to them. This frustrated me endlessly. I could not explore this as much I have with women, because of societal and personal constraints. After one of my messier entanglements (love triangles suck btw), I discovered the pattern mentioned above. What I say now constitutes my most recent realization: If indeed, that older woman was the model (the ideal) for my relationships with women, then I should also have a similar model for my relationships with men.
It was a painful process, but fruitful nonetheless. I found that I did not remember my childhood well, that I did not remember being young, or really, for that matter, being a boy. I've had this sense of adulthood, of overbearing maturity, since I was little. It was that youth, that lost sense of childhood that I was pursuing in other men.
And so here I am: chasing after older women and younger men, longing for those parts of me that I have dissociated from myself. For me, that is what it means to be "bisexual". Perhaps the genes come first and the psychodynamics second, I don't know. I do know that I am frustrated, by labels that prevent intelligent reflection, by fears that keep half of myself hidden, and by relationships that are not fulfilling.
I don't have all the answers. I doubt anyone really does. But I do know that genuine discussion helps foster growth. Thanks for hearing me out. I look forward to any and all responses.
