The Wrong Question
(on men, women, attraction, and discovering that my heart speaks more than one language.)
“So… are you more attracted to men or women?”
It’s a question I’ve been asked more times than I can count. Whether from friends, dates, or even strangers who are only just getting to know me…
And every single time, I disappoint them with exactly the same answer – “It’s not that simple.”
Most people smile politely, convinced I’m dodging the question. Some want to insist I pick a side. But the truth is… I genuinely don’t know how to answer it.
Not because I’m confused. But because I think the question itself is wrong.
A few days ago, I found myself having yet another version of this conversation with someone who landed up on my Whatsapp chat window from a group for queer spiritual folks that I am a co-admin of.
He kept insisting – “But are you more attracted to men?”
I replied – “It’s not that simple! My attraction towards men and women is different. It is a longer conversation and possibly a new blog😅”
“It’s one answer… You need to pick one!” he continued.
I kept saying the same thing – “Not for me, it’s not! It’s very nuanced…”
He still had to quantify it – “But are you attracted more to men”
I replied – “I don’t answer with more or less… It’s not a quantifiable thing! Yeah I’ve wholesome experience sexually and romantically with both men and women in the past”
The conversation from there went to my attempt at a more elaborate explanation, and eventually ended… but in my head, however, it did not. It kind of remained with me and made me explore further. Not because it made me question my orientation. It did not…
It just made me wonder, about the need for people to make bisexual people pick a side.
And that’s when I realised, this conversation is important to be clearly drafted into words, not just because of its frequent nature of ask but also as an extension of my original article – An Open Letter to My Future Partner (Click here to read)
As I drafted this article, I also realised more of the fluidity in expressions of bisexuality. And that this article is not a blanket understanding of all bi-folks, but rather an absolutely individual expression and experiential document, which is subject to change with time. Also this might form a template for other bi/pan/queer folks into understanding their nature of intensity and understanding of their orientation and attraction.
So in order to come to a thorough and wholesome answer, I did something unusual. Instead of trying to answer everyone else’s question, I decided to answer my own.
I sat down with a few conversations I had recently and began asking myself questions I had never asked before. With that, in a blank document, I began writing the names of the people who had been of importance from my past. The purpose was not to compare them. But to compare… Me!
Who was I with each of them? What exactly had attracted me? When did desire begin? What did love feel like? And most importantly… Did gender actually explain any of it?
The answers surprised me… in a beautiful unravelling way.
As I started compiling this draft alongside my research and introspection, it not only restored my confidence and comfort in my orientation, but also helped me see the subtle layers of my romantic and relationship needs in words!
To answer that question honestly, I realised I couldn’t begin with attraction. I had to begin with the people who had unknowingly taught me how I love.
So I take this opportunity to talk about my past relationships in that order of chronology, ones that made an impact and possibly need to be out there for my future partner to go through.
In the future it can pan out into a longer series of journal entries, but this is a gist of what all of it was!
So my first and long relationship was that with Ved. We were batchmates during BDS times in Kolkata.
Looking back, I realised something that almost embarrassed me to write. Something I have known for a while now.
I didn’t fall for him, not at first… I first fell for how deeply he wanted me.
It was being desired that attracted me… and only later did I fall in love with the person.
I knew I was gay long before he came into my life. But Ved taught me the earliest version of being comfortable with my orientation as a part of my identity.
Smita walked into my life when I finished BDS and moved out of Kolkata for my MDS. Ved and I were by then in an open long distance relationship.
Smita and I had by then spent months talking, laughing, growing comfortable around one another… She already knew I was in a relationship with a man back in Kolkata. But then one drunken evening she kissed me.
And somewhere between surprise and curiosity… I realised something fundamental about myself. I wasn’t gay after all. And not only was I attracted to women, I also realised I could fall in love with one.
Almost 4 years after having broken up with Smita, losing parts of me in the process and picked up a few on the way one fine day I was in the waiting line at Tirupati for the darshan of Venkateshwara and there was this man next to me in the waiting line — attractive, confident, intelligent, funny…
There was chemistry before there was history… and everything happened immediately…
I still remember standing in the Tirupati darshan queue, silently praying — “Venkateshwara… Please find me someone like him… and I’ll be ready to marry.”
It wasn’t merely lust. It felt like admiration rushing headlong into romance.
Nishant (aka ‘N’ in my writings) eventually went on to become my love at first sight, my muse for writing, love, heartbreak and poetry. My one-sided love for him made me step into a self journey of healing, therapy, meditation and writing… that never stopped, long after I moved on from my dire desperate desire for him!
There have been others who have come and gone in between, but didn’t make it in this article… doesn’t mean they haven’t left a mark in my heart…
So coming back to the topic at hand, I wondered for a moment and presented myself with a question.
A question that another acquaintance from my Shaam-e-Baazgasht Bengaluru Diaries event asked me — “Who would you choose, a man or a woman, with every other character being the same?”
I thought hard — If we were to forget men or women or gender… and just imagine two hypothetical people.
Both are equally kind, equally emotionally available, equally intelligent, equally attractive to you.
One is a man. One is a woman. Everything else is held constant.
What, if anything, changes inside you before the first kiss?
Not after sex. Not after love. Before desire begins.
The question was more difficult to answer for me than I assumed it to be, so I asked myself for more elaborate scenarios to be considered. I stopped writing about people altogether and started writing about feelings I would go through at hypothetical scenarios thrown at me… and run it twice – once with a man, and once with a woman…
(I have mentioned only a select few such pivotal scenarios here, which felt relevant to my introspection. For others, there can be other relevant scenarios… which I may eventually consider as a separate more elaborate blog post.)
SCENE 1: The Café
You walk into a quiet café. Someone is already waiting. You don’t know who.
You only know that your friends have described this person as kind, emotionally mature, intelligent, physically attractive (to your taste), emotionally available, funny, financially independent, deeply affectionate, values family the way you do, loves travelling, wants a long-term relationship, accepts you the way you are including your orientation, has read every one of your blog posts, admires your work, thinks you’re beautiful.
You sit down. The conversation flows effortlessly for three hours. You laugh, debate, flirt… you lose track of time. And by the end of the evening… you genuinely want to kiss this person.
Now imagine… Run this exact scene twice. First, the person is a man.
Then erase only one thing… Now the person is a woman.
Nothing else changes.
I really had to think of this one and I realised I could more easily picture myself walking into that café if the person waiting was a man.
Not because women weren’t attractive. But because I have almost always entered relationships with women through friendship first.
Smita had been my classmate, a friend, a confidante even before that first kiss. Rwi (my second girlfriend) had also been a friend first before the chemistry struck… So yes, for me, it rarely begins with attraction when it comes to women. It begins with familiarity, with safety!
With men on the other hand, I can begin with curiosity, or chemistry, or pure physical attraction.
SCENE 2: Sunday morning in bed
Months into a relationship… Just a regular slow Sunday morning… Not sexual or performative. Just two people asleep beside one another.
Run it twice. A man or a woman
Who do you pull closer?
Who do you kiss on the forehead?
Who do you quietly make coffee for?
And this time I didn’t have to think much… It was somehow “Both” for all the questions!
I stared at my own answers, for a moment… My answers didn’t change based on the gender of the person.
SCENE 3: The hospital
Who do you call after a bad day at work?
You’re exhausted. You sit in your car. You don’t call your parents, or your friends.
You call your partner.
When they answer, what do you need? Advice? Silence? Humour? Being held?
Run it twice. Once a man… Once a woman… Do you imagine receiving comfort differently?
Again… this time I didn’t care whether it was a man or a woman.
I just wanted someone who would hold me. Irrespective of their gender, someone who would tell me — “Don’t worry, you did good, you did your best!”
Gender disappeared… Love remained…
And then came up in my mind one question that completely broke my brain!
If Nishant had been born female — but retained the same intelligence, confidence, wit, emotional depth, humour, chemistry, values and ability to make me feel exactly the way he did… Would I still have fallen that deeply?
And the mirror question:
If Smita had been born male — but retained the same emotional journey you shared, the same friendship, the same kiss, the same discovery of yourself, the same care — would that story have unfolded differently?
I sat there for several minutes. Then I wrote something I had never consciously realised before.
If Nishant were a woman… he would probably be a little bit of Smita
And if Smita were a man… she would probably be a little bit of Nishant.
I actually laughed and swore out loud… Because I genuinely hadn’t seen that coming.
For years I had been asked to compare men and women. When perhaps…
I had always been comparing different pathways to love.
I think that’s the distinction.
With men…
Attraction often arrives first… then intimacy… then emotional attachment.
Sometimes all at once… Sometimes one after another.
But the door is often physical.
With women…
The door is rarely physical… It is usually emotional safety.
Friendship, shared humour, intellectual connection, knowing she wants me, feeling desired.
Only then does physical attraction bloom.
It’s almost as though I become demisexual when it comes to women.
Not because women are less attractive. But because my attraction follows a different route.
Neither doorway is superior. They’re simply different entrances into the same house.
Men are more likely to awaken my desire at first sight.
Women more often awaken my desire through emotional intimacy.
Which is why I could comfortably imagine a casual hookup with a man, but I could almost never consider that with a woman. Not because the desire isn’t there. But because the desire itself needs different soil to grow in.
But once love exists, the place it occupies in my heart seems remarkably indifferent to gender.
And then… another realization quietly appeared.
Maybe I don’t actually love men and women differently.
Maybe I simply become a different version of myself with either of them.
With a man, or a partner who would imbibe conventionally masculine traits, I naturally become softer. I enjoy being cared for, protected, chosen.
With a woman, or a partner who would embody feminine qualities, I become protective, grounded, responsible, nurturing. I want to hold, lead, care.
The attraction changes… not because they change. Because I do.
Perhaps that is why I have never liked answering…
“Who do you prefer?”
Because preference implies comparison. And comparison assumes they’re competing for the same place in my heart.
They aren’t. They simply awaken different rooms inside it.
Neither room feels more like home. They simply hold different memories, different energies, and different versions of me.
So… Am I more attracted to men? Maybe physically, more immediately.
Am I more attracted to women? Maybe emotionally, more gradually.
Would I grow old with either? Absolutely.
Would I hold either after a terrible day? Without hesitation.
Would I marry either? If they chose me… In a heartbeat.
Maybe my bisexuality was never asking me to divide my love equally between two genders. Maybe it was simply asking me to remain honest about the different ways my heart knows how to arrive there.
And perhaps… The question was never, “Do I like men more than women?”
Perhaps the better question has always been…
Who do I become when I fall in love with a man…
…and who do I become when I fall in love with a woman?
Or better still, if you’re my future partner, then you might ask —
Who do I see myself becoming in the future, if I were to be in a relationship with you?
Perhaps that is what bisexuality has slowly been teaching me all along.
Not that my heart is divided. But that it speaks more than one language.
And neither one is a translation of the other.
Journal entry
Dr. Krish
15th August 2026
