By Lisa-Viktoria Niederberger
When I let new acquaintances know that I am bi+, people are rarely surprised. Even though I am in a long-term relationship with a man and have spent most of my life with men, somehow they still know.
My love for women, and my contact with them, has mostly been quieter, more private. I’m almost 40 and have been thinking a lot about past relationship decisions, many of them bittersweet, even though I know there’s no point in crying over the past.
When I came out as bi+ to my mother in my early 20s, it wasn’t out of a need to come out, but because I was in an acute love crisis and wanted to talk to someone. My mother had already asked me several times what was going on because I was acting weird, so I told her that I had met two people, that I found both of them very interesting, and maybe I was even in love with both of them. One of them was a man, the other a woman. And my mother advised me to choose the man, saying something along the lines of, “Your life is already so difficult”—I had just dropped out of university, had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and had been diagnosed with depression—“don’t make it even harder for yourself.” I found that strange even then, although I know it was a poorly worded way of trying to protect me from anti-queer discrimination.
Of course, neither my mother nor I knew at the time that this would be one of the biggest mistakes of my life, that the relationship (of course I chose the man, compulsory heterosexuality is a thing!) would destroy me, whereas I still think about the woman often, even now. If there is “the one that got away” in my life, it is certainly her. I have been in love with other women since then, but never like that. I kissed them, slept with them, found them beautiful and fascinating, and filled hundreds of diary pages with thoughts of them, especially because so often I didn’t know whether I wanted to be friends with them, be like them, be with them, or all of the above. It still overwhelms me sometimes.
I can read men like books. They come easily to me, so easily that they sometimes bore me. But women, they are unreadable to me. I often feel this crackling between me and another woman. I often get close to new acquaintances, and when our thighs and shoulders touch, I smell perfume and hair and body—it’s hard for me to maintain my composure, and I often fail miserably.
I’ve been with men for 25 years, coordinating shared households, finances, futures, value systems; while women I mostly adore from afar, writing them awkward messages, kissing them tentatively and very occasionally in coffee shop corners and less tentatively in hotel room beds far away from home. With men, I’m an adult; with women, I’m still a teenager. I’ve hardly had the opportunity to be anything else. In real life, at least; on paper, it looks different. Because I am a writer, and my characters are everything I am not (yet).
In my latest books and texts, I repeatedly feature same-sex couples. In 2024, I featured a family with two dads in a children’s book. And in 2025, I wrote a short story in which two married women try to survive in a world where the climate catastrophe is already well advanced—which won a prestigious Austrian literary prize. All of this makes me very happy. What irritates me, however, is how clearly my characters are perceived by readers as either gay or lesbian, as if bisexuality were not an option at all. It seems not to exist. It makes me sad and angry, until I remember how invisible bisexuality is in my life too. I’m not someone who puts blue-purple-pink hearts in their Instagram bio, and my Pride pin is so discreet that it often goes unnoticed. I’m in a relationship with a man, so people usually assume I’m straight until I tell them otherwise—then they say they knew all along.
People often thank me for the queer representation in my books, telling me I’m such a good ally. Sometimes I don’t even correct them. But probably not for much longer. Because writing these stories and queer characters helped me to reconnect with a part of myself that is not buried, forgotten or denied, but nevertheless hadn’t played any role whatsoever in my everyday life for a long time, being in a long-term closed relationship. Sometimes I even forget that I am bi+. That’s a terrible thing, considering how many of my queer siblings don’t have that option. Being bi+ comes with many privileges, especially when—like me—you pass as straight. I don’t have to worry about showing my love for my partner in public. I don’t have to leave my wedding ring at home on holiday in some countries, like my gay friend does, or pretend my husband is my brother. When I’ve kissed women in public, I’ve been stared at, cheered on, filmed, and sexualized—all of which is terribly intrusive and a form of violence—but I’ve never really been in danger because I also love women. I see that now.
I’ve developed a new, more open and activist approach to my own queerness over the last few years through all the literature I’ve written. It’s almost as if I had to write it all down, live it out on paper, to truly realize that it’s true for me too. That even after years at the side of men, I still find other genders just as interesting. That it’s a valid part of me.
I live in Austria, a country that is still relatively safe in global terms, with okay-ish gay rights, but even here you can feel the shift to the right, a return to conservative values, to the heterosexual nuclear family. Even here, in the heart of the EU, there are queer hate crimes. Even here, my gay friends are in danger every day, and I am not, only because of the invisibility cloak of appearing straight. But I can’t, I’ve finally decided, I can’t go on like this. I can’t continue to act like a bystander when I’m also affected. I can’t just enjoy queer parties, love gay fan fiction and Heartstopper, but then retreat into invisibility as soon as it comes to me or things get difficult. I think every glance at the daily newspaper and the internet shows that taking a stand and standing up for who you are and what you believe in is more important than ever. Especially if, like me, you are a white, middle-class woman with a backpack full of privileges. I’m sorry it took me so long.
My debut novel will be published in spring 2026. In it, my protagonist—Lahea—is in an open relationship with her two male partners and also has a sexual encounter with a woman. In this book there can be no more doubt about the identity of my characters. And when people ask me why I chose to write about this type of relationship, I will tell them. Happily. Publicly. It is time.
Lisa-Viktoria Niederberger is a writer and cultural scientist from Austria. Her debut novel, “Lahea,” a queer speculative fiction, will be published there in spring 2026.