I was born as a female and only child. I was raised as a Christian, and sent to church in frilly dresses and bows. In kindergarten, my favorite color was pink, and I was the picture of the perfect little girl. As I got older, however, I started to reject such frilly clothing, and loathe dresses. I loathed the color pink, and how disgustingly girly people expected me to be. I started watching Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh and was introduced to video games. I started acting pretty opposite of my gender, and became better friends with guys than girls usually. As I grew older, I was a tomboy, though would be insulted at the term if outright called it. To this day, I would still rather sit around and play Xbox than go out and... do stuff... that normal girls do I guess? I've never thought this to be strange, as I've heard of other females being the same. I identify as female, and haven't even questioned it my whole life, but I can remember thinking about wishing I had the opposite sex's genitalia on a few different occasions. Mostly, for all my life, I've identified, and firmly believed I was a straight female. Am I just a masculine female, a strange female, or something else... what am I? Now, that's problem one, which relates to problem two, my sexuality. I've believed, as previously stated, that I was straight for my whole life. I've had... maybe two or three relationships, all with the opposite sex, and nothing strange ever happened. There wasn't a lack of sexual attraction or anything, so they were fairly normal relationships that just didn't work out, mainly because they were primarily all with people who lived a substantial distance away from me (i.e. long distance, online relationships). However, more recently, I got into a relationship with a male whom I knew personally and who was seemingly wonderful for me. He was nearly everything I imagined in a partner of whom I'd be inclined to seriously date. However, one day in to the relationship... a feeling of dread grew throughout my whole body, and continued to linger over me until it was just too much to take. I felt as if something were absolutely, irrefutably wrong with the relationship. I began to dread texts or calls from him, and began to avoid him, and the thought of being around him or seeing him was seeped in uncomfortably dreadful feelings. This continued until I broke up with him later in the week. It made me feel like a horrid person, and even now I still feel guilty. Now it's been nearly three months since that occurred, and I've been interested in a male friend of mine, and yet just becoming closer to him has started to accumulate that feeling of dread. It's not nearly as intense, but still there. My female friend recently came out and admitted to me (the first person she's told) that she was bi-sexual. I was happy for her, as usual, but the idea stirred some strange feelings. Not feelings of fear or discomfort, but... more of... like... attraction. I've started to imagine what life would be like if I were indeed dating my friend of the same sex, and the feelings don't invoke negative feelings, instead invoking mostly positivity and curiosity. I've never really considered myself attracted to females at all, and in-fact have more male than female friends. I find myself now wondering if I am attracted to females as well as males, and wondering if I am even attracted to the male sex at all. In the past, I've felt attraction, both romantic and sexual, to the male sex, but I'm beginning to question if what I felt was actually attraction. As a young child, I do remember experimenting with another female friend of mine, and liking it, but I attributed that to my age, and quickly forgot it even happened. All these events are just piling up and making me quickly question my gender and sexuality. Please help. I don't know if I'm male or female, or if I'm straight, bi-sexual, or gay. I'm so frustrated at not being able to answer the question of identity and sexuality for myself, and I would honestly just like some peace of mind. Any help is appreciated...
Hmm... A) You could be bi-curious, in relation to your possible feelings for that female friend. And actually you are still mostly straight. There's kind of a continuum, no one says you have to be totally straight or totally gay, or even perfectly balanced bisexual. B) Your constant questioning could be sort of distorting your sexuality for you; as in, maybe you are what you always thought, but the questioning makes you doubt that. (In my time of extreme questioning, I would flip-flop constantly over what I could be and couldn't get it off my mind. Has eased some now.) Your dread could be sort of manufactured just because of the questioning turmoil, and not indicative of anything. C) Your questioning could be leading to an actual realization of a different sexual orientation than you thought you had. Experiment some, relax some. If you don't wind yourself up over assigning yourself a particular label, it might be easier to figure out if you even need a label at all. As for gender, you're not the only person who's, on occasion, wished they were the opposite sex, or gone from extremely girly to extremely "tomboyish." I had kind of an extreme tomboy phase also, but again, I never doubted that I am and am meant to be a girl. I don't have experience with transgender issues, but the fact that you really did seem to believe you were female *might* say you were. Again, I don't know all that much about this. I don't know if there's a continuum here, like "mostly female but kind of male" and stuff like that. Again, the gender confusion could just be a result of overthinking the identity question. Nothing wrong with being a "strange female", if that's one identity for it, but if you don't feel that it is inherently wrong that you are female, it may just be a stage of questioning to go through. Hope this was kind of helpful--no offense to anyone if the transgender stuff makes no sense--but I hope you can make your peace with some kind of decision. Even a decision not to decide and just accept. You can change your label for yourself as your understanding about it grows.
Alright... thank you for your help, really. I'm gonna say I'm female, just because... I do feel like I'm mostly female, and perhaps I'm overquestioning things, however I still have no idea what sexual orientation I am...
