Experts suggest it is simply the ongoing negotiation of desire, safety, and sense of belonging in a social landscape
Every few years, the language around desire shifts. In 2026, one of the terms gaining visibility is heteroflexibility — often used to describe people who identify as heterosexual while remaining open to romantic or sexual experiences with someone of the same gender. Emerging at a moment when conversations around sexual fluidity feel increasingly mainstream, the word reflects a desire to name attraction without fully fixing identity.
While the term itself may be new, therapists and sex educators suggest the experiences it gestures towards are not. What is changing, they argue, is how people are trying to negotiate desire, safety, and belonging in a social landscape where labels still carry uneven consequences.
Behaviour vs Identity
In clinical settings, heteroflexibility has not yet become a common self-description. “I have not heard of the term or the experience of heteroflexibility in my practice yet,” says Radhika Joshi, a queer-affirmative therapist. “This may be because most people I work with have already found labels that reflect their lived experiences and make sense to them.”
That said, Joshi regularly encounters narratives that resemble what the term attempts to capture. “I do see that they would come up in ways people describe behaviours rather than identities,” she explains. “Irrespective of how they define things, clients are always negotiating how much desire they can acknowledge without destabilising a heterosexual identity that very often offers a lot of safety and legitimacy to their relationships.”
From a therapeutic perspective, this negotiation is key. “An individual’s relationship with a label can be very personal,” Joshi says. “Two people experiencing desire similarly may label it differently.”
Labels Makes Ro
Rashi Vidyasagar, founder of The Alternative Story, believes that heteroflexibility creates space for ambiguity without forcing people to confront the stigma attached to older labels. “Heteroflexi-bility offers room for some ambiguity and situational desire without necessarily confronting the stigma that is attached to bisexuality or pansexuality,” she says.
She draws a parallel to earlier behaviour-based frameworks. “Much like we used terms like MSM in public health discourse, it becomes a behaviour-based term rather than an identity-based term,” she explains. “People can do things, and people can be things — and these are two different things.”
This distinction is like a protective coat. “One of the things that people gain the most is protection within themselves and also externally from society,” Vidyasagar says. “Saying one is bi or pan often comes with a lot of ridicule, a lot of questioning.”
Protection, Hierarchy, & Anchoring
At the same time, Vidyasagar is careful to point out what the term may reinforce. “This label can often reinforce a
hierarchy also where heterosexuality remains as an anchor,” she says. “Bisexuality is treated as outdated or too loaded a term to claim.” She adds, “We are calling it heteroflexibility and not sexual flexibility. Calling it heterosexuality means that it’s still anchored in one place.”
That anchoring, she argues, has political implications. “It does not challenge compulsory heterosexuality,” Vidyasagar says. “It keeps the structural integrity of heterosexuality alive and well, while saying that it’ll be a little more flexible.”
Claim Over Ambiguity
Across practitioners, there is consensus that heteroflexibility is shaped by social location. “How an individual is placed based on their gender, class and caste identity, educational background and family history shapes how they allow themselves to label their attraction,” Joshi explains. She notes that consequences are unevenly distributed. “Women are less likely to be penalised for their attraction to the same gender than men,” she says. “It might be safer for people from urban, upper-class, upper-caste communities to claim attraction beyond heterosexual norms.”
Dr Tanaya Narendra, popularly known as Dr Cuterus, sees this disparity in clinical practice. “There’s definitely a certain degree of privilege that I see in my patients who can explore identities and explore sexuality and explore their bodies,” she says. “You need the privilege of language, representation, money, and access to the right doctor.”
She also points out that the discourse itself is limited. “I haven’t heard of this term in regional languages,” she says. “It’s often in English.”
Community Tensions and Bi-erasure
The rise of heteroflexibility has sparked discomfort within queer communities, particularly around bi-erasure. “There isn’t much todistinguish heteroflexibility from bisexuality,” Joshi says. “Sexuality is fluid, and bisexuality exists on a spectrum.”
Vidyasagar echoes this concern more strongly. “Questioning becomes very essential when a term functions to keep bisexuality and pansexuality unnamed,” she says.
“Bi-erasure is a constant conversation, and it has a real impact on mental health.”
At the same time, neither therapist advocates policing identity. “Labels exist to help people feel validated and like they belong,” Joshi says. “But they can also be limiting and cause conflict and confusion.”
Not A Verdict
Dr Tanaya resists framing heteroflexibility as either trend or truth. “Sexuality is fluid. Gender is fluid,” she says. “People are more open to exploring, and there is more curiosity now.” She does caution against flattening complexity. “Trends can expose people to ideas they would otherwise never encounter,” she says. “But when we start trendifying identities, it takes away from the struggles of people who have been fighting for legitimacy.” Vidyasagar thinks scepticism does not extend to individuals. “My scepticism is not about people calling themselves heteroflexible,” she says. “It’s about the cultural work that the term does.” Joshi remains similarly open-ended. “More than sceptical, I’m curious,” she says. “To understand who this term helps, and how it helps them.”
In that sense, heteroflexibility may essentially be a reflection of an ongoing negotiation between desire and safety, fluidity and structure, naming and belonging. What it ultimately settles into, or unsettles, is still unfolding.
