to Date Again as a Bisexual Trauma Survivor
I am writing this from a small table in a Brunswick cafe, where the coffee comes in thick ceramic cups and the playlist drifts between The Cure and Sade. My phone is face down because I have just deleted the dating apps for the third time this year. I have been out as bisexual for almost a decade. I have spent a chunk of those years recovering from sexual trauma, and the two facts do not sit next to each other. They tangle. They shape how I show up to a first drink, a first kiss, a first anything. Learn more about How I Use Journaling To Untangle Shame.
Most essays about dating after trauma assume a straight protagonist. Most about bisexual dating assume an untroubled body. Neither described my life. This is the thing I needed to read three years ago, when I tentatively re-entered the dating world after a long break. It is less a guide than a conversation, the kind you might have with a friend across a bar in Fitzroy or Newtown. Learn more about The Healing Power Of Journaling After Trauma.
I want to be careful with this piece. Trauma is not a personality trait, and bisexuality is not a punchline. Both are lived realities that deserve care. If you are reading this while your own nervous system is doing something complicated, I hope it lands gently. If you are not in that place, I hope it widens what you imagine dating can look like for the people around you.
There is a particular flavour of exhaustion that comes from being a bisexual trauma survivor on the dating scene. You are navigating who you fancy and who fancies you back. You are also negotiating disclosure, hypervigilance, the ghosts of old encounters, and the strange bureaucratic work of being openly bisexual in spaces that keep trying to sort you into a single column. In Australia, where the queer scene is loud in Sydney during Mardi Gras and softer in regional towns that might have one gay bar or none, that negotiation can change dramatically depending on your postcode.
When bisexuality and trauma sit at the same table
The first thing I had to unlearn was the idea that my trauma and my bisexuality were separate filing cabinets. They are not. They live in the same body. The years I spent being told my queerness was a phase, or a trend, or a convenient excuse overlapped with the years I spent being told my trauma was too complicated to discuss. Both taught me to perform certainty. Both taught me to edit myself in real time.
Bi+ people in Australia sit with a particular kind of invisibility. The 2020 Private Lives survey found that bisexual respondents reported higher rates of psychological distress than their gay and lesbian peers, and lower rates of community connection. Many of the bi women I know in Sydney and Brisbane describe the same exhausting loop: coming out, correcting assumptions, watching the person in front of them recalibrate, then having the conversation again with the next date. Layer trauma on top and the loop tightens. You start to wonder if anyone could hold the full story.
The bodies we bring back to the date
Trauma lives in the body long after the story has been told and retold in a therapist's office. I know this because mine still does. There have been dates where I have had to excuse myself halfway through a glass of wine because my throat closed up. There have been others where I laughed along with something that was not funny because the alternative felt worse. The body keeps the score, and dating is a place where the score gets reviewed very loudly.
I have learned to build in small exits. I take walks before I meet someone, around the Tan in Melbourne or along the coastal path near Coogee, until my breathing slows. I choose venues with a door I can leave through easily. I tell at least one friend where I am, a habit drilled into me by the 1800RESPECT campaigns on buses in every city I have lived in. None of this is paranoia. It is just the scaffolding that lets me show up as myself, rather than as a clenched fist pretending to be relaxed.
Queerness complicates this in ways straight dating guides do not talk about enough. A bisexual person might be navigating different scripts with different genders, different levels of outness, different pockets of safety. A first date with a woman in a lesbian bar can feel like entering a sanctuary. A first date with a man in a suburban pub can feel like code-switching into another language.
Performing for an audience of one, or two
Before I started recovery work, I used to date like I was auditioning. I was bright, I
