Are we naturally bi-sexual?

Until recent years, it was considered to be completely normal for men and women to have lovers of both sexes. It is only in recent years that we have been made to choose between our sexual preferences, whether we were gay or straight. Are we actually bi-sexual by our nature? Isn't it normal to have a crush on a member of one's own sex at sometime during our lives?

I love this topic, mainly because so many people get their backs up at it and protest “well, you might be, but I’m damn sure I’m not!”

I am not suggesting that we all sleep with people of both sexes, merely that at some time in our lives we may be attracted to members of both sexes.

It is fairly usual for most people to have a crush on, or hero-worship members of both sexes while growing up, and I think many men who are militantly heterosexual fail to recognise that their hero-worship of certain sports stars can be their way of acceptably, for them, showing their attraction for another male.

One of the problems that we face in society today is that people like to be able to label people, and place them in a box, saying “that is what they are” and they get upset if they dare to suggest that they should stray from that box. As such, someone who is gay will often face a lot of resistance and anger if they find themselves attracted a member of the opposite sex, just as a straight person does if they find themselves attracted to a member of the same sex. People prefer that once you have stated a preference, you keep that preference, no matter what. This can cause a lot of confusion and pain for the person that feels this way. They feel guilty for finding someone attractive that they aren’t “allowed” to and they end up wondering what is going on with themselves.

I think that almost everyone finds someone of both sexes attractive at some point, and if it hasn’t already happened in your life, then it just means that it will probably happen later on in your life.

To be honest, I don’t think it really matters what your sexual preference is, you can be attracted to the person rather than the sex of the person. I myself am heterosexual, and have never found myself attracted to a male, but I accept that it is always possible that at some point in my life I may meet a male that I would be attracted to and that doesn’t worry me in the slightest. It doesn’t mean that if I met a male that I was attracted to that I would automatically try to sleep with them or enter a relationship with them.

I think that you're quite right on this issue. There may also be a distinction between physical attraction and sexual attraction, in that we might think "I could be friends with that person" just by looking at them, even if there is no hint of sexual attraction. Maybe this is because we tend to infer all sorts of things about someone's personality from their physical appearance.