Bisexual Erasure in Relationships and Why It Happens

By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist

Most people picture bisexual erasure as an argument. Someone says, 'bisexuality isn't real', or 'you'll figure out which one you really are eventually', and the bisexual person pushes back. That does happen. But most of the erasure I see in my room doesn't look like an argument at all. It looks like absence. A partner who never asks. A conversation that never quite has room for it. A part of someone that everyone around them has agreed, without saying so, not to mention. In my experience, erasure by silence does more damage over a longer period than erasure by outright denial, precisely because there's nothing dramatic enough to point to and call unfair.

That's part of why it's so hard to raise. A single hurtful comment gives you something to name and object to. An absence doesn't. Most of the couples I see aren't dealing with a partner who has said anything untrue or unkind. They're dealing with a shape their relationship has settled into that leaves part of one person outside it without anyone deciding that on purpose, and neither of them quite knows how to describe that as a problem, because on paper, nothing is wrong.

In brief

• Researchers call it identity invalidation: having your own account of your sexuality denied or overruled. In one study most bisexual and non monosexual participants had experienced it.

• It often shows up through the gender of your current partner, which others take as the answer to who you are.

• The long standing doubt that male bisexuality is a real orientation has been tested directly, and it did not hold up.

• For bisexual women, the research describes a different bind, linked to how others read women's same sex behaviour.

• In one study, feelings that bisexuality is not a legitimate identity were linked with lower satisfaction for both partners, which is why this is a relationship issue and not only a personal one.

• Making space is usually small and ordinary. It does not require the relationship to change shape.

What erasure really is

The research I can point to describes this as identity invalidation, the experience of having your own account of your sexuality denied, negated or refused by other people. In a qualitative study of 52 bisexual and other non monosexual people (for example pansexual or queer), most (85 per cent) had experienced identity invalidation. They described five perceived reasons: others did not understand or accept bisexuality, the gender of their partner did not fit with others' beliefs about bisexuality, others believed they were confused, others believed they were 'faking' it, and others rejected bisexuality for religious reasons. The consequences they described included negative emotions, identity related challenges and relational difficulties (Feinstein et al., 2019). This was a small qualitative study, so it shows what people experienced and not how common it is across all bisexual people, but it gives the experience a name and a shape.

Interviews with 55 bisexual people in mixed gender relationships point the same way. Researchers identified three main themes: cultural assumptions about bisexual orientation, bi negativity or biphobia, and bi invisibility. The abstract describes the cultural belief that bisexual orientation is unstable or temporary, set against a partnership that can appear to grant heterosexual privilege (Charley et al., 2023). That is a useful frame because it moves the conversation away from single dramatic incidents and towards something more accurate. In my experience, erasure is usually cumulative, and it comes as much from what never gets said as from what does.

This matters in my room specifically, because it comes from every direction people are told to expect support from. A partner who doubts the attraction is real. A family who never brings it up once someone settles into a relationship. Friends within the LGBTQ+ community itself who assume, without saying so, that someone will eventually pick a side. None of these people usually think of themselves as erasing anything. Most would be surprised to hear the word applied to them at all.

How it shows up for men

Bisexual men in relationships with women describe, in my work, a specific, recurring pressure to downplay the part of themselves that isn't oriented towards their partner, sometimes explicitly asked for, more often simply understood without being said. Underneath that pressure often sits a specific belief the partner is carrying, that he isn't bisexual at all, that this is a staging post on the way to coming out as gay. It's worth being direct about where that belief comes from, because it isn't random. For years, some researchers seriously doubted that male bisexuality existed as a stable orientation rather than a social cover for being gay.

That doubt has now been tested directly. Researchers combined nearly all previously published data from eight earlier studies in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, giving a sample of 474 to 588 cisgender men depending on the analysis. They found that bisexual identified men's genital and subjective arousal patterns were more bisexual than those of men who identified as exclusively heterosexual or exclusively homosexual, and they concluded that male sexual orientation contains a range, from heterosexuality to bisexuality to homosexuality (Jabbour et al., 2020). I find this useful for partners who are carrying that doubt. It does not mean every partner's doubt is malicious, and in my experience it usually is not. But it does mean the doubt is not grounded in anything this evidence supports. It was a study of cisgender men and measured arousal patterns, so it speaks to male bisexuality as an orientation and not to any one man's experience.

How it shows up for women

Bisexual women rarely get told they don't exist in the same blunt way. What they describe in my room is something closer to being taken less seriously, their attraction to women read as something staged for an audience rather than felt for its own sake. Research gives a window into one part of this. In a qualitative study of 187 cisgender bisexual women, researchers asked how they made sense of same sex performativity, meaning heterosexual women's public same sex behaviour such as kissing. The women perceived the link between that behaviour and the male gaze as challenging bisexual legitimacy and reinforcing negative stereotypes about bisexuality. Yet many were reluctant to condemn the behaviour, because they did not want to limit women's opportunities for sexual expression (Oswald et al., 2024). The authors point to the need to recognise how heteronormativity and gendered power dynamics shape bisexual and heterosexual women's experiences.

I read that as a double bind that bisexual women described in their own words: aware of how public displays can be consumed and can undermine how seriously their orientation is taken, and unwilling to police other women's sexuality. In my experience, what sits underneath is wider than bisexuality. It is a habit of treating women's sexuality as something that exists in relation to men rather than as something that belongs to the woman herself. That is my interpretation and not a finding. The erasure and the diminishment are hard to fully separate.

The relationship keeps being asked to explain the person

Which partner someone is currently with tends to become, in other people's eyes, a verdict on who they are. A bisexual woman with a male partner reads to the outside world as straight. The same woman with a female partner reads as a lesbian who was experimenting before. A bisexual man with a male partner reads as gay, finally being honest. The same man with a female partner reads as straight, or as a gay man who hasn't fully come out yet. In every version, the attraction to the gender not currently represented in the relationship disappears from view. Not through any one person's decision, just through how relationships get read from the outside.

The research recognises this. One of the five reasons participants gave for identity invalidation was that the gender of their partner did not fit with others' beliefs about bisexuality (Feinstein et al., 2019). If you are in a mixed orientation relationship, I have written about mixed orientation relationships and how couples stay together, and about how a partner can respond when someone is questioning.

Couples rarely notice this happening because nobody said anything false. The relationship is monogamous and committed, exactly as it appears. What's missing isn't honesty. It's room for a part of one partner's identity that isn't currently visible in the relationship's shape, and that room has to be made deliberately, because it won't happen by accident.

The attraction to the gender not currently represented in the relationship disappears from view

Why it matters for the relationship

This is not only a problem for the person whose identity is overlooked. In a study of 142 mixed sex couples in which one partner identified as bisexual, feelings that bisexuality is not a legitimate identity, and outness to family, were negatively associated with the sexual and relationship satisfaction of both partners. Intimacy was positively associated with sexual satisfaction for both. The authors concluded that it matters to acknowledge bisexual identity, even in long relationships, and to address the issues around it with couples (Mark et al., 2020). It was cross sectional, so it shows associations and not causes, and it concerned couples in which one partner identified as bisexual. But it fits what I see: when a part of someone feels unacknowledged, the cost is shared. If you want to talk about it, how to talk to your partner about sex has an approach that carries over to other difficult subjects.

Erasure from inside the community too

It would be simpler if this only came from outside the LGBTQ+ community, but in my experience it doesn't, and pretending otherwise doesn't serve anyone. Some of the sharpest dismissal I hear described comes from within gay and lesbian spaces. A bisexual person's relationship with a different sex partner gets read as evidence they were never fully part of the community to begin with, or as a retreat into straight passing comfort rather than a genuine account of who they're attracted to.

The research gives a more complicated picture. In a study that compared attitudes towards bisexuality by sexual orientation and gender, heterosexual participants reported significantly more biphobia and more negative attitudes than gay, lesbian or bisexual participants, and bisexual participants reported feeling most stigmatised by heterosexual people. Attitudes differed by sexual orientation but not by gender (Hertlein et al., 2016). So the evidence I can point to suggests the most biphobia comes from heterosexual people. What I describe from my room is what clients tell me about experiences within queer spaces, and I offer it as a clinical observation and not as a measure of how common it is.

The specific accusation shifts depending on who's making it. From straight people, it's often that bisexuality doesn't fully exist. From within queer spaces, it's sometimes that it exists but that this particular person is using it opportunistically, keeping one foot in straight privilege while claiming queer credibility. Both versions can land on the same person from opposite directions, and both can produce the same practical result, a reluctance to bring the subject up anywhere, with anyone. Clients describe learning to read a room before deciding whether mentioning an ex of a different gender is worth the conversation it might start. That's not paranoia. It's a response to how often the mention gets met with a raised eyebrow.

What making space looks like in practice

This is the distinction I'd want a couple to sit with more than any definition of erasure. Not making space isn't the same as being unsupportive, and most partners I see aren't hostile to their partner's bisexuality at all. They simply haven't built anywhere for it to live inside the relationship's ordinary conversation, so it sits unmentioned, technically accepted and practically invisible.

In practice, making space is smaller and more ordinary than people expect. These come from my clinical experience.

• Do not flinch when a partner finds someone of another gender attractive out loud. The same way any partner might mention finding someone attractive without it becoming a crisis.

• Do not reframe every mention of an ex or a past relationship around the gender of the person involved.

• Ask, every so often, rather than assuming the subject has already been fully covered.

• Treat the whole person as present in the relationship, not just the parts the relationship's current form makes visible.

None of this requires the relationship to change shape. If you are exploring whether other arrangements fit, my pieces on opening a relationship and gay open relationships may be useful, but that is a separate question from making space.

If you're the one who needs the space made

Naming this to a partner is harder than it sounds, mostly because there's rarely a single incident to point to. Nobody said anything untrue. Nothing was denied outright. What's missing is an absence, which is a much harder thing to raise than a specific grievance, and a lot of bisexual people I see decide it isn't worth the awkwardness of explaining a problem that has no clean edges.

It helps to be specific rather than to raise the subject as a general complaint. Naming one concrete thing helps, a moment where mentioning an ex felt like it needed managing, a pattern of the subject never quite coming up. That gives a partner something to respond to, rather than an abstract accusation of erasure that can feel unfair to receive when nothing was consciously withheld. Most partners aren't erasing anything on purpose. Most are simply following the shape the relationship has settled into without realising a part of you has been left outside it.

If you are the partner of someone who has just told you something about their identity, Is my partner gay? and coming out to your partner may help.

How therapy can help

Couples rarely arrive telling me erasure is the problem, because it doesn't usually feel like a problem from either side. It feels like nothing in particular, a subject that never quite comes up. Part of the work is simply making that absence visible enough to talk about, without turning it into an accusation against a partner who likely never intended it. From there, it's less about resolving a single conversation and more about building an ongoing habit, room for the whole of someone's identity to stay present in a relationship, not just the part the relationship's current shape happens to reflect back.

Where the erasure has been coming from more than one direction at once, a partner, a family, a friendship group, the work sometimes needs to happen in layers rather than all at once. I'd rather help someone get the relationship itself right first, since that's usually the relationship carrying the most day to day weight, before turning to the harder conversations with family or community that may take considerably longer to shift, if they shift at all. Not every source of erasure is equally changeable, and it's worth being honest about that rather than promising a tidy resolution on every front.

I am not able to point to a study of therapy for bisexual identity invalidation in couples specifically, so what I describe here is my clinical approach and not a research finding. More generally, a review of a decade of couple therapy research concluded that it positively affects about 70 per cent of the couples who receive it (Lebow et al., 2012), and an affirming therapist matters. If you are deciding whether to start, when to go to couples therapy and how to choose a couples therapist in London may help, and I also write about gay couples therapy and lesbian couples therapy.

Where someone is still working out their own relationship to the label rather than dealing with how others receive it, I've written a separate piece on that part of the process, Am I bisexual?, and another for people questioning while already partnered, Am I heteroflexible?.

If this is showing up in your relationship, I offer a free 30 minute consultation, in person in London or by video.

About the Author

Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist working in person across central London, from rooms in Pimlico, Kensington, and Angel. He works with couples, individuals, and polycules on relationship issues including jealousy, affairs and betrayals, sex problems, and considered separation. His practice is integrative, sex-positive, and affirming of all relationship structures and identities.

References

Charley, C., Manickas Hill, O., Bartley, A., Bunting, A., & Mark, K. (2023). The experience of bi negativity in mixed gender relationships. Journal of Bisexuality, 23(4), 374 to 402.

Feinstein, B. A., Franco, M., Henderson, R., Collins, L. K., & Davari, J. (2019). A qualitative examination of bisexual identity invalidation and its consequences for wellbeing, identity, and relationships. Journal of Bisexuality, 19(4), 461 to 482.

Hertlein, K. M., Hartwell, E. E., & Munns, M. E. (2016). Attitudes toward bisexuality according to sexual orientation and gender. Journal of Bisexuality, 16(3), 339 to 360.

Jabbour, J., Holmes, L., Sylva, D., Hsu, K. J., Semon, T. L., Rosenthal, A. M., Safron, A., Slettevold, E., Watts Overall, T. M., Savin Williams, R. C., Sylla, J., Rieger, G., & Bailey, J. M. (2020). Robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(31), 18369 to 18377.

Lebow, J. L., Chambers, A. L., Christensen, A., & Johnson, S. M. (2012). Research on the treatment of couple distress. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 38(1), 145 to 168.

Mark, K. P., Vowels, L. M., & Bunting, A. M. (2020). The impact of bisexual identity on sexual and relationship satisfaction of mixed sex couples. Journal of Bisexuality, 20(2), 119 to 140.

Oswald, F., Wood, J. M., & Matsick, J. L. (2024). Bisexual women's meaning making of same sex performativity: Orientation towards a heteropatriarchal context. Sex Roles, 90(7), 960 to 979.