After my first experience with same-sex attraction, I concluded that I must be bisexual. However, after a short while, I seemed to return to only being attracted to the opposite sex.

I was confused. Maybe I wasn't bisexual after all? Maybe I still was, and would experience same-sex attraction again later? Maybe I was bisexual with a preference for the opposite sex (which is how I described myself for a while)? Maybe I merely went through a bisexual phase?

Then I realised: why should I care? I don't consider my sexuality a major facet of my identity, and it barely affects the way I live my life. Also, no one really needs to know about it, except people I'm trying to date. I'm monogamous, so I'll only be attracted (in any meaningful way) to one person at a time; hence, I can consider my attraction to that person in isolation.

The prevailing view on sexuality seems to be that you are born with a certain label, and that label is fixed. If you become attracted to someone of a certain sex after only being attracted to people of another sex, that means you were bisexual all along and just didn't know. If you return to how you were originally, you're still bisexual.

I've started to disagree with this view, because I think that it's an oversimplification. Many people are content to use general labels like 'bisexual' or 'straight', but countless others, like me, feel that such labels don't adequately describe their experiences. Some people try to solve this by creating more precise labels, but I would argue that there's not much point to this as even the most specific terms can end up having different meanings for different people. A label has probably been created to describe my experience more accurately, but I'd rather not take it, for the above reasons, and because I suspect that sexuality is more fluid than people make it out to be. What good is a label if it can change on a whim?

I believe that attraction should be considered on a case-by-case basis. Sex is just one of many characteristics of an individual. Many people have one or more 'types' of people they are attracted to, who embody specific sets of characteristics which may or may not include a certain sex; and these types can always change. Compatibility (or lack thereof) is determined by multiple factors, which vary from relationship to relationship.

If people stopped defining something as personal, complex, flexible and varied as sexuality with labels and categories, they would be much freer to explore connections with others.

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