Bisexual Women in a Romantic Relationship: Coming out and Internalized Binegativity in Same/Different Gender Couples

Abstract

The coming out process represents an essential milestone for bisexual identity formation. Bisexual people may face challenges in navigating relationships due to internalized binegativity, i.e., they may struggle with disclosing their sexual orientation to partners or fear being stereotyped or fetishized based on their bisexuality. To our knowledge, no studies deepen the association between the coming out process and internalized binegativity, considering the different forms of couples (same-gender vs. different-gender) in which bisexual women are involved. We reached 157 Italian cisgender bisexual women (Mage = 25.91; SDage = 6.24). Of them, 44% were in a same-gender relationship, while 56% were in a different-gender relationship. A moderated moderation showed that relationship commitment moderates the moderating effect of the type of couple on the association between coming out and internalized binegativity. We found that the coming out process impacts internalized binegativity considering the moderated effects of the type of couple and relationship commitment supports further investigation on coming out and bisexuality. Considering the scarcity of data on the coming out process and internalized binegativity of bisexual women, the present study is an important step forward in understanding bisexual women’s well-being.