**About me**: I’m 20, female, student. I’ve always been assertive on my goals and beliefs, but tried to ignore the personal aspects of my life. Now I realise that being a coward about it solves nothing.
As I grew up the less I related to girls. As a teen I noticed that I’m into women. The idea of me turning into a woman was terrifying and confusing, felt trapped. I was envious of boys. Didn’t feel like a lesbian.
Lately I’ve been trying to respect and get what I feel. I still feel stuck, but certain things are more tolerable. I recently tried therapy.
(Note: non-conformity exists and it’s ok, if it’s the person’s nature. When I refer the concept of “woman”, I’m talking about its social, physical, biological, sexual etc. aspects. It’s undeniable that Men and Women both have their own hardships and expectations).
**About my relationship**: Connecting to people in general is challenging. I know that I’m not unattractive or uninteresting, I could have had way more relationships/experiences if I didn’t suddenly dissapeared all the time.
It’s been 3 years since I met my now boyfriend. We have many similarities and common interests, so we get along extremelly well. He’s the only one who really knows me. He agrees with me about avoiding at all costs transition and just try accepting my body as it is.
He’s the only dude I ever loved. Our love is mostly about companionship, also romantic which is nice, he’s very caring and affectionate.
The problem is sex (I’m far from an asexual). I have to abstract myself from my body which sucks. I frequently fantasise about women. I often struggle with penetration, I know he finds that frustrating. He’s bisexual, mostly prefers women. We have days. If I’m drunk or having a good day I can abstract myself enough. We agreed on having a threesome with a woman once this “situation” improves (he’s very loyal and monogamous, open relationships don’t work for us). Honestly, I don’t even know. I’m just insane.
I know the “situation” by itself won’t end our relationship, but it will definitely affect it. I tried to distance myself while we weren’t too attached, but now it’s too late (if we broke up now we would just vanish from each other’s lives, it would hurt too much). I feel guilty, he truly is a good person and I don’t want to hurt him.
Any suggestions on how to make things better?
Different perspectives? Similar experiences?
4 comments
Your internal world sounds very complicated, but from the outside it really sounds like you’re attracted to women but are dating a man. My advice from the outside it to stop dating the man that you’re not attracted to, explore your gender until you figure out what makes you feel right, and then don’t date anyone until you find someone who you are actually attracted to and with whom you don’t need to dissociate in order to enjoy sex.
You’re very young, you may need to take a few months away from this guy, but after all is said and done you can probably still be friends once you’ve figured out what it is that you want.
It sounds like you aren’t into your boyfriend but are emotionally dependent on him, but I’m not a therapist, and more than anything, it sounds like you need to work with a good therapist.
i don’t think we are better than a therapist, but i think having sex while imagining your body is different and trying to mentally be out of it is just awful.
I feel like if i suddenly could change sex, i would find a way to enjoy my body and sexual identity anyway. While i do wish my body was a bit different, i am overall content and able wrapping my identity preferences around what i have, *as such as i struggle to relate to you and you probably can’t get anything useful out of my advices* . I would say to rethink your body image and learn to see yourself and act as a kind of woman, with a different unconventional femininity, that you can accept more.
Maybe having sex with a woman can let you discover things that aren’t about lesbianism. What if you like dominating or being more active? what if you become slightly jealous of the other woman with your boyfriend? maybe those kind of emotions can let you discover different sides of your femininity that are unconventional and you might like.I think it’s better to push for experiments, but you have to accept there is a risk for your relationship.
If you have problems connecting with people, actually transitioning would likely make that worse. I’ve heard repeatedly from FTM acquaintances that they were somewhat shocked at how much less connection men get, the lower trust levels they got, etc