Hi there, this is my first post here and i guess i would really appreciate some advice Im a 21 y/o male student and my sexuality has been in some way a big issue for all of my life since puberty. I always felt different from the other guys and since puberty really had problems to fit in. Additionally, I also had some health issues in the past, which put me down for probably all of my youth. Only thing which held me up was doing school, working and studying. But let's get to the point: I just recently broke up with my third girlfriend in a row and after each prior breakup I actually wanted to try out "the other side". After the breakup before this one i even came out to the closest part of my family and friends only to end up entering another heterosexual relationship. The problem is, I just cant seem to identify myself as either side. On the one hand I really get aroused by girls and have sexual fantasies about them which always get myself into a new relationship with a girl. I really admired each of them and we always had very sexually active and very supportive relationships. BUT I could never fit into my role as their boyfriend or the male role in general. I felt like I was acting in every second of being with her. At several points I even felt like rather having her part in the relationship. So during each of these relationships I got more and more miserable while she fell more and more in love, which got me feeling more and more guilty until I could not bare it anymore. At the end there always was a devastating breakup, which she could not understand at all and got her feeling so miserable and me even more miserable because I somehow could not be with her but being without her and seeing her suffering so badly, made me feel even worse... I also tried being gay but it seemed as if I could not really fit into that either. Once I went to a gay party but everyone there seemed to be so feminine, so when I drank a lot and pushed myself to getting intimate with a random guy, it just felt the same "not right" as with girls. That got me even more confused. On the other hand, in retrospective I'm pretty sure I already had some crushes on some friends of mine and sometimes I get to know guys who really make me feel good when having them around me, all of them are straight ofc -.- This is all so confusing I wish there was a way to just tell yourself if you're straight or gay or whatever. I even thought about rather being a girl, but I am actually pretty ok with my body so that should maybe not the solution either :lol: Anyways, everytime I listen to "I want to break free" by Queen I can really relate to the song. But I just can't figure out how to do so. I would be very thankful if you had some advice for me or could share some experiences which might be similar to mine, even after reading this confusing text
Hi and welcome! I see two immediate possibilities: The first is that you might have equal attraction to both sexes. But the second is more nuanced and, I think, more likely: I wonder if perhaps the underlying issue is difficulty with deep emotional intimacy. This idea is fueled, for me, by your comments that the more the girl fell in love with you, the more you wanted to pull away. Sexual attraction is, in large part, fueled by emotional connection and openness. So if you don't have unrestricted access to your emotions/feelings, and find it difficult to be emotionally open and vulnerable, that's going to have a huge impact on your sex drive, attraction, and could really confuse things. I'm sure someone else will come along and offer up one of a dozen unrecognized labels to try and describe who you are... but my experience is that those labels aren't helpful (not to mention, there's no credible basis for them in the psych literature or among the majority of clinicians who work with these populations.) So if it is an issue of emotional openness... the first step might be to think about that, think about the fears or anxiety or other emotions that come in when you're thinking about being close to someone (male or female.) Another process that can be helpful is experimenting with your masturbation practice. If you regularly use porn, try giving it up entirely for a while and let the natural fantasies that come into your mind go to work. See what comes up more commonly... guys or girls. And maybe try, at different times, focusing on guys and then, separately, on girls, and see which is more arousing and exciting for you. That can often help you to get more clarity. Feel free to provide more detail or ask questions or share more... this is one of those things that, the more you talk about it, the more you'll gain deeper insight into yourself, and that's ultimately where the answer is going to come from.
Hey thanks a lot for you fast answer. It somehow brought in a new perspective. To your first statement, I see it that way too, rationally thinking. But the problem somehow seems to be that while my sexuality can be just somewhere in the middle of the axis between exclusively gay and exclusively straight, in reality there somehow is a border in between those two possibilities. So no matter which one I decide to take it might seem that the grass will always appear to be greener on the other side. And when something doesn't work out that well or doesn't feel that good, the first thing coming to my mind might always be that I must have picked the wrong side. Yet I can imagine that that might be something possible to work on. The second thing you mentioned might be the bigger problem. I think I do in fact not have unrestricted access to my feelings. I have been denying any not 100% straight part of my self or what i imagined to be not straight for several years just up to the point where I first talked this through with some family members and friends of mine half a year ago. So while that really gave me the chance to be who I am it also started some major identity issues with myself. Ironically, having had myself locked in, acting to be someone else, hiding and denying a big part of myself for all the years somehow seemed to be easier than trying to bring myself together now after all the time. It feels like I actually missed some major steps in personality development. Well, and finally the thing about masturbation practice gave me some homework to do I like the idea behind it.
Ok, 7 months passed since I last posted something and in the meantime a lot of things changed for me. Because of depression and identity crisis I got myself the help of a psychotherapist shortly after my last post. This really kind of helped me eliminate all kinds of lingering conflicts of the past including family conflicts etc. and therefore really helped me free my mind. What I also managed to do was focussing more on myself and exploring my very own emotions instead of trying to label me being this and that etc. First of all I managed to confirm to myself that i am attracted to women sexually. There is no more denying that for me. But relationships with women never wholly satisfy me emotionally. Then I tried exploring my sexuality with men and my romantic attraction towards them. And the only way which then seems to satisfy me is if I am the one completely acting like a girl and of course being treated like a girl. Sooo then I got back to thinking about my "relationships" with girls and came to understand the huge mystery of why these always crashed so hard. Especially in my last relationship I found myself being with a girl who i absolutely admired and loved every little thing about her. Back then I also always felt a lot of underlying envy of her as well, which I could not understand. I felt like I wanted to have her part during sex and be the weaker sex instead of her. So I counted one plus one together (me wanting to have the feminine role with men and me wanting to have the feminine role with women) and really started investigating myself for the possibility of being transgendered. Because of me only knowing of transgendered people through the media and the www the whole idea is still very unreal for me. BUT I got through a lot of my childhood memories, memories of puberty and youth etc etc. and I am very sure that my whole life would have felt a lot better being a girl. It explains to me why I have always been an outsider since puberty. I grew up with 4 brothers(stepfamily) and always only had male friends. I really know what it means to be a man, but I never really felt like one. Male friends only were like brothers for me but not like people that I actually felt alike and that is still the way it is. If there was a pill which would instantly turn me into a girl I am convinced I would definitely take it. Of course I am also talking this through with my therapist. He is not a gender specialized therapist but still has experience working with transgendered patients. He can't tell me if I am transgendered or not, he basically says I am the one to know. For some time we discussed me growing up with my divorced and depressed mother and about emotional incest (when a parent leans on a child for emotional support and stuff) which definitely happended in my childhood. But I don't really think that this can in fact make you transgendered. So much for the information. Now the emotional part. What is really hard for me is the fact that I actually have noone to talk to about all this. In my environment being transgendered is something you only find in porn and freakshows. I am currently suffering from a total emotional roller coaster and find it getting harder and harder to relate to any of my friends at all. Of course I am also very concerned about my future. As a mtf transgender it would be really hard to have children build a family and actually find love. As a man I could of course build a family, but the idea of living the rest of my life in this role with this kind of depression makes me want to kill myself. To address these problems I am trying to find a support group at the moment. I think talking with people who've been through all of this will really be helpful. Which was also helpful is just having written all of this down right here. I am sorry for my bad english. I would be very happy to read any advice or anything you have to add if you can relate to this. thanks for reading
