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carrying clipboards with surveys for bystanders to complete. Several also assisted in coding and inputting surveys, as well as with conducting and transcribing interviews, for which they received free meals and coffee, research experience, my eternal gratitude, and independent study course credit. I also thank the thousands of students who enrolled in my Sociology of Sexuality course over several years. Teaching invigorates my soul, illuminates my scholarly imagination, and provides an ideal context for engaging in sex positivity and disseminating sexualities research.
I am especially grateful to the research participants who took the survey and disclosed their relational experiences on paper. Interviewees welcomed me into their homes, gave their time, shared their insights, revealed their relationship struggles, and offered their intimate lives for this project with little to no compensation. I am honored to share their stories in this book.
This research was financially supported at the University of California, Irvine, primarily through the James J. Harvey Dissertation Fellowship, two Social Sciences Regents’ Fellowships, and several Department of Sociology Research Grants. The American Institute of Bisexuality (AIB) also provided a Dissertation Research Grant. I am indebted to the late Dr. Fritz Klein, founder of AIB, whose pioneering research and activism on bisexuality sparked my personal and professional interest in sexualities. I had the good fortune to develop a friendship with Dr. Klein, who often drove up from San Diego to speak in my classes. It was an immense honor to share the lecture stage with him, and I carry close his inspirational passion for illuminating the complexities of sexual orientation.
The College of Arts and Sciences at New Mexico State University provided a course-release award that facilitated the preparation of this manuscript. I am grateful to my colleagues at NMSU for their patience, honesty, and support during the writing process. I thank Manal Hamzeh for assistance with the book proposal and Laura Madson for reading the manuscript. William Walker motivated me to complete the manuscript,