As a bisexual woman, this is typical of the kind of things I often have to contend with.
People assume that you're super kinky, "greedy", and after having your cake and eating it – but this couldn't be further from the truth.
Thankfully, a new comedy, The Bisexual, which stars Desiree Akhavan as Leila, a woman in her 30s who breaks up with her long-term girlfriend and starts dating men, looks set to bust the myths surrounding bisexuality.
There's more of us out there than you'd think: a 2015 YouGov survey found that 49 per cent of Brits aged 18 to 24 defined themselves as something other than fully heterosexual.
But there's still a way to go in terms of people's understanding of bisexuality.
I first fancied women at the age of 13
My first flutterings of desire might have been for Pierce Brosnan in James Bond, but most of the celebrities I fancied as a teen – Aaliyah, Eva Mendes and Rihanna – were women.
And when I was 13, I had an intense crush on a schoolmate: a girl I fell for hard, in that intense way teenagers do. My fantasising usually also involved thinking about women.
However I also fancied boys and believed it was easier to be straight. I wasn't worried about being bullied, but I didn’t believe that it was possible to be both gay and straight.
It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I started to think of myself as ‘bisexual’ and started dating women.
It raised a few eyebrows among my newer friends, particularly the men, but my sister and the mates who’d known me longest seemed the least surprised – I guess my schoolgirl crushes were less subtle than I’d thought.
With a woman I am in charge
I was tentative at first, scared that my lack of experience would be blatantly obvious – and disappointing – to a female partner.
However, the first girl I slept with had also never had been with another woman, and so we muddled our way through it together.
Since then, I've found that I am more able to take the lead sexually and express myself when I sleep with women than when I've been with men.
Women are more open about what they want in the bedroom. In my experience, women’s arousal and pleasure is more nuanced and individualistic.
There are similarities: there’s the same first-date nerves, awkward fumbling, and the sheer exhilaration that someone actually wants to see you naked – whether that someone is a man or a woman.
But the differences are part of the joy of being bi.
We've been called "sex tourists"
While the sex might be great, other people's attitudes aren't.
The stereotypes are well-worn: for women, bisexuality is just a phase, or a way to grab men’s attention.
Last year, ‘lesbian’ was the US’s most-searched term on Pornhub, and a 2016 study found that 82 per cent of men would be interested in having a threesome, with the vast majority preferring a trio of the two-women variety.
And for men, it’s a pit stop on the road to coming out as gay: it often seems the only conceivable outcome for any bisexual is to ultimately end up with a bloke.
For both genders, it’s associated with being sexually ‘greedy’ – just remember Samantha in Sex and the City, whose brief fling with another woman only served to illustrate her up-for-anything appetite.
There’s a scene in The Bisexual that hits home for me: when Leila’s lesbian friends brand straight or ‘bi-curious’ women in gay clubs as “sex tourists”.
Biphobia exists in the LGBT community, too – and it’s an attitude even I’ve been guilty of.
There’s a tendency to see bisexuals as having our cake and eating it. But, if anything, I feel like we get the worst of both worlds.
Men see the other side of my sexuality as an exotic novelty: my aforementioned ex couldn't see that, to me, having sex with a woman would be the same as cheating on him with another man.
I'd never sleep with a straight girl
Recently, a female acquaintance I had a crush on, but who described herself as “99 per cent straight”, asked if I wanted to go on a date.
I should have been thrilled, but instead I was hesitant. When a mutual friend, who is also bisexual, asked me why, I replied, “You know, straight girls…”
What I meant was that I suspected I would be an experiment for her; an adventure to tick off on her sexual bucket list.
Because that’s the thing: all those misconceptions around bisexuality get into your head, and it’s all too easy to end up believing them, even as a bisexual person.
I’ve even been on the receiving end of it. Once, a gay woman told me she wouldn’t waste her time with me because I would inevitably “go back to being straight”.
My parents still don't know I'm bi
I’ve never spoken about it my sexuality to my parents, because I’ve never brought a girl home to meet them – I’ve always figured that I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
When you’re bi, you have to come out over and over again: your friends who’ve only known you to have boyfriends are surprised to hear you also like girls.
And mates who’ve seen you kissing women don’t expect to hear you talking about dating guys.
My colleagues at a new job knew that I had recently broken up with a man, but when I started seeing a woman I wasn't sure whether to mention it.
Having to explain that I was bisexual felt a bit dirty, like I was revealing a secret kink rather than my sexual identity.
In fact, although they had assumed I was straight, they weren’t judgemental when I told them.
People's attitudes are slowly improving
This is a sign that attitudes towards bisexuality are improving. We’re getting more rounded, less hyper-sexualised representations of bisexual characters on our screens, too.
The Bisexual’s Leila joins Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Rosa Diaz and Game of Thrones’ Oberyn Martell as another strong, convincing character who made me cheer when they came out as bi.
But progress is still slow. Even some of my friends, who are cool about my sexuality, still joke about a bisexual ex-boyfriend of mine being gay and “only halfway out of the closet.”
This attitude forces young people to pigeonhole themselves – and hide half of who they are when it comes to love.
Oberyn sums it up best when he is questioned as to whether he really likes men and women equally.
“Everyone has a preference,” the other character says. To which Oberyn replies, “Then everyone is missing half the world's pleasure.”
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