Nikole Mitchell: “How I realized I was pansexual”

Nikole Mitchell is a young woman from St. Paul, Minnesota, who revealed to her husband in 2016 that she no longer feels straight, but instead feels queer. How this realization changed her life and her marriage is what Nikole Mitchell tells us here because she hopes that her story will “shed light on a subject that is still receiving very little attention. And that it helps others to find out their own truth and Ways to deal with it well. “

What do you do when you wake up one morning with your beloved husband lying next to you, your three children next door, and then realize for the very first time – you are no longer straight? How do you deal with such a revelation? How do you deal with this without feeling like you have a “dirty secret”?

I was three years ago.

Let me tell you a little bit about the background.

All my life I thought I was straight. When I was young, I was crazy about boys. I dreamed of guys, dated guys, made out with guys and dreamed of one day marrying one of them. And the boys were crazy about me too. I got two marriage proposals before meeting my husband (but that’s a story for another time).

When I met my husband it was a perfect whirlwind of romance.

We met in October 2008, started dating in November, we got engaged in December, and I would have married him in January if I hadn’t been so concerned about people freaking out about such a quick relationship. So we waited until July to say yes.

We were both teachers and we really enjoyed working in the same school together. We went back and forth together, took lunch breaks together, visited each other during breaks, and sent each other Valentine’s cards through the school office. We were crazy about each other and loved hanging out together.

We also got pregnant very quickly (surprise !!) and the following six years were a hurricane of three children, job changes, relocations and finally a calmer rhythm with a man who worked full-time and me, who I stayed at home to to look after our children.

We were both very active in the church at the time, and it was the first church I ever belonged to that did not directly condemn “homosexuality”. The church didn’t speak out in favor of it, but it was fairly open to the LGBTQ community and that made me curious. (Editor’s note: LGBTQ is an abbreviation for the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer. Queer means that you could belong to any group of LGBT people, but sometimes you don’t know which one you belong to or would like to belong to, which is perfectly fine (source: USA Today).)

While growing up, I was taught that homosexuality was a sin, and I was familiar with those verses in the Bible that conservative Christians assume condemn homosexuality. But I had never heard of LGBT Christians interpreting these verses for themselves and I was curious to hear more about their thoughts on them. I read many articles and books, listened to interviews, watched videos, and even took a course on queer theology. In the course of this process, I came to believe that the scriptures did not condemn homosexuality and became a passionate advocate. (Editor’s note: Meanwhile, Nikole Mitchell has renounced Christianity and instead refers to love as her religion.)

As a result, I spent more and more time at queer events. I always felt this magnetic attraction and felt drawn to the queer people, which confused me very much, because I always thought: I am heterosexual.

At first I thought that I just love people.

I love meeting new people, talking to them. I am attracted to all kinds of people, I just find people beautiful.

But something happened to me, somehow it clicked when I was at this queer event one night. Suddenly I thought: “Oh my God. I am not straight.“

I wish I could say today that this was a joyful moment because today I LOVE being queer. But then, at that moment, I felt sick at first.

Because I asked myself: what does this mean for my marriage? What does this mean for my children? What does that mean for me?

Suddenly memories from my childhood and youth came to mind, my queerness suddenly made so much sense.

At school, for example, I was very much in love with the band “Hanson”. I thought the three boys were girls with their long hair. Even when I found out the three were brothers, I fell in love with them. My two biggest high school loves were queer men. I even fell in love with a friend in college for a moment.

There were many signs of my queer identity. I just had no eye for it, no words to describe what I was experiencing, nor the freedom to explore what I was feeling over the years.

And there I was: 32 years old, realized for the first time that I didn’t just love men, married with a man and three children by my side.

I felt so alone.

I didn’t know anyone who felt the same way. I’ve only known straight couples and gay couples. Where were the other couples with one queer partner and one straight?

I knew my new self-awareness would have painful consequences. So for a moment I thought I could just pretend I never realized I was queer.

But I knew it wasn’t possible. Authenticity is very important to me and I love too much to want to do that to myself. So what to do

So I did what I know to do: be honest, vulnerable, and brave. I told my husband the truth.

We stood in the kitchen that night and I felt that pang in my heart that told me now it’s time. I took a deep breath and asked my husband: “Would you like to know something interesting about me?” He said, “Yes, baby.”

I said, ‘I’ve realized something about myself … and that’s … I’m not straight. I’m queer. ‘

He stopped washing up, turned to me, and with tenderness in his eyes asked me to explain what I meant. I told him about my journey, my magnetic attraction to queer people, and how it finally clicked. When I finished he said with so much love in his soft voice, “I think this is great baby. I think this is completely normal, healthy, and I totally support you.”

I collapsed crying.

My husband took me in his arms, made me cry until I couldn’t cry anymore. When my tears stopped, he looked at me and asked quietly, “Did you cry yourself well?”

My heart couldn’t love this man anymore. He was and is the essence of love.

The following year my husband and I had many, many conversations. He supports me in my development and my new understanding of myself. I learned that I am pansexual, which means that I am attracted to all people regardless of their gender.

A year after I came out to my husband, he told me that that night he expected me to tell him I wanted to break up with him. I was scared to hear that because I never intended to.

Feeling bad that he had kept this worry to himself and alone for a year, I asked him why he hadn’t told me about it earlier. He said that he didn’t want to pressure me so that I could make my decisions freely.

There are times when I swear I can’t love this man anymore, and then there are moments like this when the vastness of his love completely overwhelms me.

And so things come together.

Most people assume that in a marriage like ours, there will either be a divorce one day so the queer partner can find another queer partner, or that you stay together and the queer partner is completely happy to be in living in a heterosexual marriage.

We live in the tension of these realities.

I love my husband from the bottom of my heart, I cannot imagine life without him and have no intention of getting a divorce. But I also feel a need for the love and body of a queer person.

Because I only discovered my queerness after my marriage, I have only ever experienced sexuality with cis-men, i.e. men whose gender identity corresponds to the gender that was assigned to them at birth.

There are days when I long for the queer experiences I haven’t had, for the tenderness and the body of a woman with whom I could cuddle and live my queer sexuality.

So I am forever caught between the need to fully embrace my queer sexuality and to live and the need to fully honor and respect my marriage to my husband.

And that’s the reality that most people don’t want to talk about. People prefer clear answers and black and white realities. My marriage and my identity cannot match that.

My husband and I live in a limited space with overlapping identities, and we choose to embrace this by embracing them day in and day out without imposing unhealthy expectations or putting ourselves in any sort of box.

We love each other from the bottom of our hearts, we respect each other very much and navigate through hard and valuable conversations together. Isn’t that what life is about?

After coming out to my husband in the summer of 2016, I spoke publicly about my life in a small YouTube series in 2017. I did this for a variety of reasons.

I wanted other people not to feel as alone in such a situation as I did when I realized I was queer.

I hoped that my story would give other people courage and hope, just as other people’s stories have helped me.

I wanted to tackle prejudice against queer people by making it clear that queerness exists, whether you know it or not. We are your best friends, colleagues, teachers, neighbors, daughters and fathers. So please, be the kind of family member you dare to come out to. I wanted to be seen and loved just as I am, not even though I am, but because I am what I am.

I wanted people to see that queerness and pansexuality are a gift to this world. I wanted to continue on the path my LGBTQ + family took for me. I do this for those who come after me.

I wanted to help make this world safer, more beautiful and more inclusive for all of us.

And that’s still what I pray for. Everything I do as a wife, mother, friend and life coach, I do for it: make this world safer, more beautiful and more loving – for all of us. “

In this video, Nikole Mitchell’s husband, John Mitchell, answers questions from their followers about life in a marriage with a queer partner in English:

This story by Nikole Mitchell was first posted at LoveWhatMatters.com published and translated into German with the kind permission of Nikole Mitchell from BRIGITTE.de. If you want to follow Nikole Mitchell on her journey, you can find her here at Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and on their website NikoleMitchell.com.