Hi all,
I'm after some advice and opinions regarding an incident that happened while on holiday and has now come back to haunt me at work. I honestly feel like my life is over right now.
Preface: I am bisexual but with a fairly major preference for guys. Probably 5.5 on the Kinsey Scale. I find some females attractive but haven't really considered dating a female as I believe that to enter a relationship with someone, you should be "head over heels" for that person, and I don't think my attraction towards females is that strong. It would not be fair at all to the other party.
To keep it brief, basically I was part of a group tour when holidaying recently. As expected when part of tour groups, alcohol (and lots of it) is involved, and during a night of pretty heavy drinking I fooled around (but did not have intercourse as we were both very drunk) with a woman from the tour group that I had become good friends with. I was open and honest about my sexuality at the start of the night.
For some reason (I can only presume it being the fact that we did not have sex) this caused a whole lot of gossip and even hate from some members of the group tour. The general unpleasantness and snarky remarks from these people carried on for the next few days. One of those people happened to be from my home town.
Fast forward to coming back home about a week and a half later, and as soon as I am back at work, I notice a distinct coldness and avoidance from some colleagues, with one or two even showing vague signs of disgust and hate. Some colleagues continue this treatment for the proceeding week and a half, and others decide to take a more amicable approach, either for the sake of avoiding awkwardness at work or trying to trick me into thinking rumours did not circulate and everything is hunky-dory.
I have a theory on what may have happened to cause this reaction. I have a female colleague who commenced at a similar time as me (around 8 years ago), and we got quite close as friends. After a while I sensed that she may have been interested romantically / sexually. This got me quite panicked, as although I found her attractive, going back to what I said above, I had doubts on whether i'd fall "head over heels" in love if we were to date, and am absolutely adamant about not "sh*tt*ing where I eat" for the exact same reason as why I am having to post this (to avoid drama / gossip / hate etc) so something casual was definitely off the cards. In addition to this, she is like a 9 on a bad day and I am a 4 on a good day lol. She has an amazing personality and a heart of gold, and deserves something so much better and fulfiling. I really struggled at the time to explain all of the above in a way that did not come across as an excuse, and did not want to leave her in the lurch, so I panicked and came out to her as gay. I had no real plans of pursuing hookups with females and figured I was screwed whatever I did (come out as bi but explain above - guaranteed to be ostracised and hated at work as it would be simplified as "he is bi" - "he rejected her" - "she is way out of his league - what a loser".
Now back to the present - desipte several attempts to try and kickstart a conversation with a few of these colleagues in an attempt to gain more information about what is being spread, addressing it, explaining it - I am getting no where....completely stonewalled, denial. My guess is that news of my holiday escapades has spread, probably with exaggerated and misrepresented information, and my colleague above has heard this and felt upset or hurt - which is probably what is killing me most at the moment as I so despirately want to reach out and apologise / explain all of this to hopefully make her feel a bit / lot better ("it's not you, it's me" type situation) but I don't want to reach out before finding out exactly what has happened / been said (she is on leave at the moment)
Sorry for the long post - all and any advice is appreciated, because I am so unfamiliar with being in a situation like this before and I am not doing too well as a result.