It's all a little academic, I guess, because I'm monogamous and permanently partnered, but it hit me suddenly today that I'm not bisexual, as I've thought for the last ten years (as opposed to the decades before that when I thought I was straight but just a messed up person): I'm pansexual. I have no idea why this didn't occur to me before. It's really obvious. I love people of all genders, whether that's one, the other, both, neither, a mixture, or something else entirely. That doesn't mean I'm attracted to all people, but I'm attracted to all genders of people. My main question is how I can be so oblivious, but maybe I'm being too hard on myself. "Bisexual" is harder to explain than "gay" or "straight", but it was easier to explain than "pansexual," and I already have an uphill battle trying to explain "bi-gender" to people. Besides, I'd barely heard the term "pansexual" before the last year or so. Apparently, though I've been what I am all my life, I've had a hard time getting to the right labels for it. I do feel kind of foolish declaring any kind of new label for my sexual orientation, because it doesn't mean I'm going to fall in love with a transwoman or transguy, or go on a date with another bi-gender person (though how many fun options would that present???), or anything like that: my heart is already completely allotted. At the same time, I think it helps knowing better who I am. Is any of this sounding familiar to anyone else here?
That's how I feel. What I do is say I am bisexual but panromantic. I know how you feel, because before my current trans boyfriend, I was bisexual, attracted mainly to girls.
Practically the exact same thing happened to me. I identified as bisexual for some years, until it occurred to me that I could be pansexual. Looking back, it was strange that I hadn't realised it much sooner, despite the signs being clearly in front of me. Especially because I would regularly think along the lines of "I could probably fall in love with a person of any gender, so long as they had a good personality and connected well with me." (Then I started thinking a little deeper, until I decided that my sexuality was far too complicated to put a label to. So I ended up ditching labels altogether.)
