What was the thing that made you face the truth?

This year, dating a girl. We ended up breaking up, but I had to finally come out. As for my gender identity, a massive dysphoria feeling made me realize it.

 

I have to say I find your shower story hilarious.

I have gone back and forth about my sexuality since puberty. I went down on the boy up the street and liked it A LOT. I did it again a few times and managed to get him on top of me as well. But he got religion or something and we stopped. Then I had a couple of experiences in my teens. At some level I knew the truth, but I was in complete denial about it.

In college, I went to a couple of meetings of the gay students association. But I couldn't deal with and left without talking to anyone. On the sly, I bought books about homosexuality and was old enough to go into an adult bookstore. That started a gay porn habit that has stayed with me even now. Porn actually helped me a lot in those days. Seeing men doing all of the things I had wanted to do let me know that I wasn't a freak. On the other hand, I had to accept that I had pretty standard male homosexual fantasies, ergo the chances were good that I was a homosexual (Duh!). I had a few experiences of coming on to men and in one instance picking up a man at a bookstore near my apartment (not an adult bookstore). All of these incidents ended with me panicking and backing out—except one with a coworker who claimed not to be gay after sending all sorts of signals that he was. I talked to therapists, but I kept coming up with complicated explanations for why I wasn't really gay.

Eventually I got married. And eventually I started back up with gay porn when my wife wasn't home or was asleep. Then one night she walked in on me while I was masturbating to pictures I had downloaded from a gay web site. I acknowledged to her a few days later that I was bi. I think that's probably true in some sense. I have had numerous relationships with women that I enjoyed. But I think I'm pretty far to the gay side of the continuum, somewhere right around where bi gives way to gay. And I did eventually tell her that I was basically gay. She divorced me not long after.

So what made me finally face the truth? No one thing. A lot of therapy was involved. And when I reread the notebooks I had kept off and on over the years, I was struck by how much of what I had written addressed the matter pretty directly and honestly. The phrase "my homosexuality" turns up with some frequency. And as some of my postings here have made clear, I still need to work on complete honesty and self-acceptance.

 

I fell head over heels for my dental hygienist who stared at and touched me inappropriately. Even then, I fought the feelings for another 1.5 years.

 

Oh wow haha that would've a tricky situation for you! Did she ever find out you liked her? Or did your ex husband ever find out?

I was 15 when I finally accepted that I was totally emotionally, physically and sexually attracted to women. I fell inlove with a really cute Canadian backpacker 10 years older then me. Everytime she hugged me I would melt. I was so smitten with her and was sad for weeks when she left! ♥

 

I fell for a young guy who I thought was just going to be a hookup. I've never denied having sexual interest in guys, in fact I've owned that and been open about it (at different levels) since 19. But I never thought I could have romantic feelings for a guy. Until that guy. Changed everything. Sometimes I still wish I could go back.

 

Sexuality;

walking through the mall one day, I saw a beautiful woman come out of a store and walk up the hall in front of me.... thinking the usual things straight men think about in that situation.... then there was a guy walking towards us, also beautiful....where did that come from..... he met the woman, and they started walking towards the food court in front of me and I started thinking about him the way I was thinking about her....:eek:!!! hang on I need to think about this so I got an extra large coffee and sat down... and I blocked everything out and looked inward, kind of a mediation, I went back through all the times I deflected, avoided, excused away my attractions to men, did I really feel attraction to women? yes, did I feel attracted to men.....yes.... you are Bi I said to myself and I felt right, and peaceful.... that took about 45 minutes and I practically floated out of the mall.

gender, lots more introspection, questioning, and meditation and I concluded I am Bi Gender. now the question was more man or more woman. at first I was content with being a guy with a bit of girl.... then more girl..... after going to therapy, and learning about myself I know now that im mostly a woman in a mans body (still my body) and that I want to change that body to reflect who I am on the inside, as much as I can. this is going to be a long road....

 

Massive heartache after separation from my tom-boy ex-wife after 6 years. I told her from the very start, even before the first kiss, that I had feelings that I might've been the "wrong" gender even since I was in kindergarden, and that I often fantasised about being a girl even though in day to day life I make sure not to act in any way that would raise any suspicion. She is/was rather manly in her attitude towards life, and because of that I totally fell for her, and thought with all my heart that we could complement each other nicely.

After 4 years she started drifting apart from me, and ended up cheating and lying to me about it after one more year. She did this when she realised she wanted in fact to be more of a hetero woman herself, and wanted a man who enjoys using his dick more than I did by her side, a man who would behave more typically Alpha so she could feel more challenged in day to day life, and feel more dominated in bed (the guy was someone who was far less successful than me professionally, less educated, but he was more primal as a male, into adrenaline, motorbikes and extreme sports. In many ways, he was more like she was, because she is also driving a motorbike, that we got together for her, and I was always terrified of it).


I wasn't so heartbroken because she slept with the guy, I mean yes it hurt like hell and it felt unfair after all we had been together, but I spent enough time in therapy to understand that is normal that sometimes people change and they want something else in their lives; it was her right to seek out happiness they way she wanted to, but being lied to about these matters, and being used, putting on the act... was a betrayal. It felt like being back-stabbed by the one person you had put at the centre of your universe.. it does bad things to your mind, especially if you had chosen the other with all of your being and did all you could as best you could, emotionally and materially, so she would be happy.


So even though it would tear myself apart even more, After I convinced her after a few months of bringing this up to come with me to couples' therapy because I really could not grasp the whys , and the hows, and i was really hoping we could reconnect, but after we clarified more of all this mess, I realised that she simply no longer saw me as a lover nor wanted to compromise in this regard. As long as i wasn't a dominating alpha male I wasn't going to be good enough for her. I did the right thing and stepped out of the picture, because she did not have the strength to ask this of me directly, but it was becoming obvious in therapy that she wanted me to do it .

She was the centre of my universe and I did strive to make her happy the best I could, to provide to all her needs as best I knew how, including trying to mould myself in the more masculine dominant being I felt she wanted me to be. But denying what i felt just to make the other happy was the wrong thing to do, because the more I tried the more miserable I became because i realised that my desires were reversed, i fantasised more and more about our genders roles being reversed and me offering her pleasure in any way possible in that altered framework, but this wasn't the case in real lif, so my libido dropped ... and I felt more depressed cold not radiate happiness outwards anymore, stopped dancing, stopped going to karaoke, and took refuge in my work.

It broke my heart and left me to pieces, because I had played with all my cards on the table since day one, since before we kissed the first time, she knew this about me. I fell in love with her masculine side, but she never truly came to terms the fact that I wasn't an Alpha male, she just hid that unsatisfaction and hoped she could influence me somehow me into becoming one, and secretly grew more and more unhappy with my submissive sexual mental configuration as time went by. All the gifts that I bought her, all the travelling, all the romantic outings that i had planned couldn't really outweigh that. If things are not good in the bedroom the relationship is fragile. We did have one night in five years when she wore a strap-on, but I could see it on her that she didn't really enjoy it, so at the end I pretended that I didn't really enjoy it either and that i didn't want us to do it again, even though for me it had meant the world.


Anyway, the result was that in the end she felt unnapreciated as a woman, and I felt betrayed by her not tell me that she wanted something else before sleeping with someone else. With a help of a good therapist I managed to stop blaming myself for not being omniscient and figuring it all and accept more of who I really am. Feels good to finally find your balance, and becoming ready to seek out someone who can appreciate me for who I actually am and what I have to offer

 

I never really "faced the truth" as I wanted the term transgender to apply to me as it would explain the confusion I was feeling. It was pretty gradual and I just started heavily researching the topic over time.

 

I've written about this in other posts, as well as my coming out post (available in my threads or blog). For me, the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando on June 12, 2016 was the thing that made me face the truth. It was my trigger. I came out of the closet the following day and now I'm fully out.

ride:

 

When I had a massive crush on a lesbian co-worker despite having had a relationship with a woman when I was a teenager.

 

It was coming here to empty closets. Once I admitted I was gay here, there was no turning back.