Valentine day and bisexulity

I had the bright idea to write a Valentine’s Day–themed post.
Mistake.

A couple of drafts quickly turned into a nightmare stuck in limbo, a jumble of half-finished ideas going nowhere. I hated the direction. Then, over winter, I read a book on bisexuality, its history, and its culture, and the answer was suddenly right in front of me.

The problem wasn’t the holiday or the topic it was the framing. The queer experience is a human one. It allows us to bond, form relationships, drift apart, reconnect, or build something that doesn’t fit a neat template. Valentine’s Day, by contrast, reinforces an idea of love that simply doesn’t match human nature.

Monogamy is treated as the default, even as something moral or inevitable. In reality, it’s a relatively recent concept, shaped heavily by religion and patriarchy. It took me a long time to understand that — and it’s a big part of why I’ve always disliked this holiday. It’s never felt inclusive or comfortable. Something has always been off. It took years before we even saw gay or lesbian couples acknowledged at all, and bisexuality is still oddly invisible. You also rarely see different kinds of relationships just one narrow version of love, endlessly repeated.

Queer sexuality gives you a different perspective. Sexuality is messy and complicated, and being gay, lesbian, or bisexual gives you an angle on that complexity. You learn to see attraction, connection, and intimacy from more than one direction. Things that feel invisible or “obvious” to everyone else become visible.

There’s a kind of beauty in that messiness. Being capable of attraction beyond rigid categories sometimes to everyone, sometimes to no one mirrors life itself. Historically, that kind of flexibility appears to have been far more common than we like to admit.

Bonding has never been limited to romance alone. Humans have always formed deep connections in multiple ways, something you can see echoed across the animal kingdom as well. Which is why Valentine’s Day, with its narrow script and fixed expectations, feels so jarring to me.

Bisexuality is often talked about in negative terms. Too greedy. Too indecisive. Too much. The focus is almost always on suspicion rather than possibility even though what’s being criticised is actually a strength.

Flexibility matters. Sexuality has never just been about reproduction. Across the animal kingdom, including among primates, sexual behaviour is used as a bonding tool. Humans do the same, but we’re far more invested in pretending otherwise.

Here’s a deliberately ridiculous thought experiment. If aliens landed tomorrow, bisexuals would, in theory, be capable of attraction something that could just as easily be a strength as a weakness. Yet many people would instinctively frame it as the latter.

The same fear would kick in: discomfort with anything that doesn’t respect neat, self-imposed boundaries. We’ve seen this pattern before. Interracial and same-sex relationships were once treated as unnatural too, despite having existed for thousands of years, only becoming “normal” after time, visibility, and resistance.

That’s what feels odd to me. The reaction isn’t about attraction itself, but about how slow we are to accept anything that challenges the limits we’ve decided feel safe.

That instinct to see complexity as something dangerous rather than human runs through much of our culture, shaping how we talk about love, relationships, and who they’re supposed to be for.

Maybe that’s why Valentine’s Day feels off to me. It’s a holiday built on an experience I don’t have one-size-fits-all, ignoring human connections, queer, straight, or bisexual. The messy nature of us is the point. It’s beautiful, complicated, flexible, and real.

Unlike cards or dinners, celebrating one night misses the point. The ability to connect, feel, bond, and love in all its forms can’t be boxed into a calendar or marketing campaign.

I’ve never been a fan of lip service to the LGBTQ+ community. If you’re going to do something to support us, do it because that’s who you are. We’re employed by your companies, too, and the unique perspectives we bring open doors. There’s no need to waste that on something as cheap and empty as a card.