Balancing Act: An Exploration of Mental Wellbeing, Bisexual Identity, and Monogamy

1. How do bisexual people go about maintaining a bisexual identity from within a
monogamous relationship?
2. How do monogamous bisexuals manage their wellbeing?
A qualitative, multi-modal approach will be employed, utilising both verbal and visual
methods. Research methodologies that privilege discourse create limitations, as discourse
remains embedded within pre-existing cultural narratives (Majumdar, 2011), making it
difficult to articulate identities that exist outside of dichotomous categories (Bowes-Catton,
Barker, and Richards, 2011).
Visual methods are therefore particularly salient due to their potential for moving beyond
discursive constructions, creating a shift in focus away from what participants think about
their experiences and onto the exploration of what an experience was like as it was lived
through (Del Busso, 2011). For example, photographs allow participants to access more
specific memories, providing a deeper exploration of subjective, relational, and spatially
located experiences (Majumdar, 2011). Multi-modal methodologies also enable participants
from marginalised groups to gain a voice to a greater extent than with traditional research
methods (Bowes-Catton et al, 2011; Majumdar, 2011).
Therefore, semi-structured individual interviews in combination with photoproduction/
elicitation will be used.