I broke up with my same-sex partner and people said 'I told you so'.

I had my first boyfriend in primary school. Year six actually. My first boyfriend was called Matthew and I kissed him in the back of the school bus.

Since then, I had experimented with girls. Who hadn’t? It was the done thing at high school parties, drunken nights at university, a kiss here, holding hands there. An exploration with bodies, what it meant to push “boundaries” and connect sexually.

But this was different.

At 23, I was in love. I gazed at the girl across from me and knew I would do anything for that person. That I could, if we both wanted to, build a future, a life with that person. This was more than experimentation. This was real. 

I realised (almost surprisingly) that I was prepared to have the conversation with my parents, that I was comfortable to come out and tell the world I was, not just “seeing a girl”, but in love with one. I realised I was prepared to walk down the street holding her hand and nuzzling her neck and look past the smiles or the stares or the snickers of passers-by.

This felt terrifying. But I also felt more myself than ever before. I understood myself better.

This realisation gave me power but it did not take away the nerves.

When I thought about telling friends and family, my hands would sweat and a sick feeling would settle in my stomach. Supporting something ideologically was very different to living it. Having intellectual conversations about sexuality and gay marriage at the dinner table is very different to sitting your parents down and telling your father that you’re in love with a woman.

And “no, you don’t know her; and no, my past boyfriends were not ‘fakes’; and really, I’m sure you’ll love her when you meet her… If you’ll agree to meet her. Will you meet her… maybe one day?”

I was scared because I knew I’d be asked for an explanation, and I didn’t have one.

I knew my decision would not make sense to a lot of people. That I was moving from the “safety” of a heterosexual relationship to something very different to the “norm”. That people would think I was choosing this path.

Fortunately, there was hardly any push back, most people were willing to accept my decision. But why did it feel so much like they were humouring me?

For many, this was just a “phase”. Or, worse, something “sexy” or “alternate”.

“But you’ve been with boyfriends until now, what’s changed?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll end up back with a man one day.”

“It’s just a phase, you’ll get over it. I’m only being ‘honest’ because I know you.”

“Does this mean you’re down for a threesome?”

I almost wished the reaction was more negative. At least against negativity I could hold myself. And get angry or upset or completely disregard it. But the dismissiveness winded me.

There was nothing I could do but smile, nod politely, say to myself in my head on repeat: “If it was such a ‘phase’ do you really think I’d be sitting here, having this conversation?” “Do you really think I’d be openly welcoming all the judgements and difficulties we all know that come with loving someone of the same sex, if I thought I was going to “grow out of it”?

We broke up after three years. The heartache, grief, division of possessions, arguments about the car and the apartment and the who would take the television were just as grating and breaking as they are at the end of any relationship. It would be a long time before the feeling of sadness lifted.

Then a man entered my life. Very unexpectedly. Like sunshine in the afternoon. A man who is kind and funny and smart and challenges me and is completely different. I found a love that is equally special, just as deep. But with a man.

So many of you thought you’d been proved right. I stomached the “I told you so’s” and “I knew it was just a phase” with what I could muster of a smile. But it hurt because it felt like my relationship, the love I shared with a woman I saw my life with, somehow did not count.

So many dismissed this three year de-facto relationship as just a stage at best, an attention seeking act at worst.

But how many acts last for three years? How many people put themselves through love and heartache and “coming out” just for the hell of it?

This week, I read the number of British people identifying as bisexual has jumped by 45 per cent in the last three years, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

In 2016, for the first time ever, the number of young people identifying as bisexual in the UK surpasses the number that identify as gay or lesbian combined.

Isn’t it time we started taking bisexuality more seriously?

334,000 people in the UK identify as openly bisexual. While this is only 0.5 per cent of the entire population, it’s a figure that is rapidly rising. The 45 per cent increase of the last three years far surpasses the 8.3 per cent increase in the gay and lesbian population. This is a proportion and a trend that could likely be applied in Australia too. (Also, bear in mind, 2.2 million people did not identify as any form of sexuality in the ONS survey.)

With these numbers, isn’t it time we saw bisexual relationships as more than “just a phase”?

Because, until now, bisexuals have been the hidden minority within a minority. And no group has taken them seriously. They’re funny-can’t-even-choose-a-gender-to-love bi’s.

The straight community thinks it’s “only a matter of time” until a bisexual returns to the heterosexual norm.

The gay and lesbian community is doubtful and critical because, for a group that experience so much discrimination for something they don’t have a choice in – their sexuality, bisexuals seem to be living the best of both worlds.

Anyone who is truly bisexual will tell you there is no choice involved.

I’ve experimented with the same sex and I’ve been in love with the same sex. They are two completely different things. One you have a choice in, the other you cannot help.

Being bisexual is not simple. It’s not like “flipping a switch”. It’s as complicated as feeling attracted to, and also falling in love with, someone of any gender.

Bisexuals have relationships that are meaningful and breakups that are hurtful and feel love and freedom and comfort from whomever their special person is. But this is not the way these relationships are perceived. Often they’re dismissed. Put down to experimentation. Labelled as “selective”, dependent on the best offer.

Relationships for bisexuals carry their own form of discrimination, too.

Same sex partners are suspicious, and wary of “betrayal”. To leave the gay community to be in a heterosexual relationship is so easily seen as “choosing the easy way out”. As if there is a choice involved.

In straight relationships, particularly for women, the first reaction usually involves an invitation to a threesome. The second reaction is a shrugging of the shoulders “you’re over that now”.

No one quite knows where bisexuals fit. This takes its toll.

Rates of depression are higher in bisexuals than they are in people of gay or lesbian or straight orientation.

“Studies consistently show that bisexual people have even higher rates of depression and depressive symptoms than homosexuals,” a review of literature from the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University, prepared for beyondblue, found.

Bisexuals are less likely to ‘come out’ to their friends and family. A 2013 study found 12 per cent of bisexual men had told those who are closest to them, and 33 per cent of bisexual women were ‘out’. This is compared to 70-80 percent for gay men and lesbians.

Yes, the last decade has seen a huge rise in activism and awareness around the LGBTI community. These movements are essential. But in our effort to raise the voices of gay and lesbian and transgender people, bisexuals have been left somewhere (as always) in the (forgotten) middle.

It’s a concept called “bi-erasure”. Where we hear phrases like “gay marriage” and “straight marriage” and what about the people in between?

It’s where public portrayal of bisexual people are the Amber Heards of the world, portrayed as picking a “side” and “did you know she used to be gay?”

It’s the way none of the equality campaigns are centred on a bisexual person. It’s the way bisexuals are grouped together with transgender people, on websites like beyondblue.org.

The conversation is too binary. Sexuality is very rarely so.

Surely many more people, maybe even you, reader, are somewhere on the sexuality spectrum. Not 100 % heterosexual. Not 100% gay.

Maybe, if you’re really, truly honest with yourself, it’s not such a leap to think of entering a relationship with someone of the same sex.

No, not just a one-night, “aren’t-I-crazy”, fool around physically.

A relationship, like my own previous relationship, that has the same depth as any other form of relationship. A relationship where there is love and connection and freedom and security and fights about the electricity and arguments about the pile of washing that’s still sitting in the dryer and can you please not leave the soggy bathmat on the bathroom floor?

I wonder if you can picture this, with someone of the same sex?

And I wonder how you’d feel if someone told you that your relationship, and the way you love your partner, was simply “just a phase”.