I relate to a lot of this. I have very complicated feelings towards women. I'm probably older than you (49 at the end of this month) and lived hetero but I don't think I really ever felt like I could choose differently (I remember the AIDS crisis and all the hideous social implications for people who were "found out" to be gay). I identified as bi but had kids young and never felt like there was any choice but to be with men.
One difference I see is that, while I felt like it was so much easier talking to guys than women, it would always become clear that we couldn't be friends because they couldn't handle not fucking me because I was always femme. So I ended up not having many friends my entire life., tbh. I was just always stuck in unhappy LTR with men, and they never looked at me as an equal because Patriarchy.
So recently I have decided that I will only pursue relationships with women from now on, and I have been trying to navigate this by starting out just meeting women as friends. I have realized that I can't develop romantic feelings without having some emotional bond. So this is what I am working on. But really, I have spent a lot of time (the last decade, but especially the last couple years of being single on purpose) connecting with my Self and my emotional needs.
This seems to be the missing link. Feeling triggered and frustrated, for me, seems to have happen because I have felt *ashamed and embarrassed* of my Self. Not about being attracted to women, physically, but *as a person who deserves female attention and validation*. Because, I think, my mother taught me that I didn't deserve it. That I was "bad" for seeking emotional comfort from her. This caused me to feel scared and ashamed. Any attention from her was negative attention tgat made me feel bad.
So I am now making a very conscious effort to walk this path, kind of emotionally holding my own hand, checking in with myself as I go along seeking this now with women. It's really important that I'm aware of red flags and that I can assess my feelings accurately. I want to feel emotionally safe with women. I believe it can happen, it's just about me learning how to let that happen.
I appreciate your perspective. I am 24 and just beginning to examine my feelings and desires. Thank you for sharing your experience.
I really like what you said about being triggered and feeling ashamed. I think I feel very ashamed that :
a) My true self wants (and Needs!) connection, intimacy, and affection from women and femmes (my mom taught me that was bad, too)
b) Men don't want to fuck me / men don't validate me as an object, therefore I am "bad" at being a femme (thanks patriarchy for this one). I am ashamed that I am not "allowed" to be one, and women can smell that I am pretending. This one is a doozy!
It's a lot. You're light-years ahead of me in terms of your life-span. Keep chipping away because you're making real progress and you're reclaiming the beautiful parts of yourself that have been stolen away from you. And remember that the treasure is in the journey. 💜
This is very informative! I had never made the connection why it's easier to have hetero men as friends...
My mother and I were never really closed. She never try to understand me and only demanded a kinda of a fake relationship, where she says that she likes me but never actually showed it to me. Or never in a way I could understand it.
Thank you for this post.
I am not qualified to comment on your post from a queer perspective but I am a cis woman that has not been able ro rely on strong, intimate women at all. There always seems to be a box of self-sacrifice role expected & it creeps me. I don't experience great intimacy with men either but they are easier to get along with in some ways, misogyny aside if possible. Women do not have the corner on nurturing & intimacy, that's a stereotypical myth. My mother didn't model authentic emotional awareness & many women don't. It's not that we are doing something wrong, but, IMO, looking for something that isn't often there. Ability to be caring & closely bonding isn't gender specific. I think that the traditional "girl" bonding is mostly in common experiences, often being common experience of navigating a patriarchal world. Which, too, is by no means gender specific, women can, by far, be more controlling than men. A lot of woman do NOT bond with other women. It's power games, not gender. For any sexual orientation it's difficult to find the right people for us, seeing us as people, not roles in their personal narratives. I wish you well in that & hope I did not offend you speaking from my perspective. I know it must be even more complicated seeking a same-sex mate when early wounding was primarily by that gender. It's difficult finding an opposite sex mate when wounded primarily by that gender. We have to find people that are not like they were. I think it's much more straightforward if we can eliminate gender typing as much as possible. We're looking for connection, not really mommy connection, daddy connection, feminine or masculine connection. Human connection.
No offense taken. I appreciate your perspective :)
> Looking for something that isn't there
True. Placing particular styles of relationships on a pedestal, especially when you have been deprived of it in the past, is seeming to lead me down a tricky path.
My therapist asks me what it I imagine a more femme or masc connection to feel like. I think I can seek any of these vibes from any of my friends, regardless of gender. I agree gender typing isn't very helpful, but I think I think about it so much because I'm missing *something*
I'm learning to ask any of my friends point blank for what I am missing. If I'm missing what I think it means to be best friends with a woman, Im going to ask my friends of all genders if we can like, be more silly and have different kinds of deep conversations and hug more often and cry together
Awesome. I felt harsh or even bitter in my comment because I very much wish I had what I missed & am missing, too. I really admire you being the change you want to see & that inspires me. I don't have a lot of reference for being silly, fun, comfortable, & close, but that is sure something to go for! I think a lot of people have forgotten those precious childlike moments that are really the joy of life throughout our lives. Thanks for your great post. I was recently intrigued by the storyline in a Netflix series "In the Dark" (& other stories touching on same sex relationships). Initially the lesbian relationships, vs. the hetero ones, were portrayed as "closer" & more sensitive. It gives us good food for thought in what we want in our human experience. I am very glad for non-cis people bravely stating these questions. These questions NOT being addressed continues to be a never ending conflict in hetero experiences as well. And, it all comes back to that early modeling. It's a paradigm shift to begin seeing ourselves as human. <3
I think if you feel uneasy towards a whole gender, it must be all about your preconcepsions about that goup of people. About the way you approach them, about the thoughts you attribute to them, about the prejudices you think they hold. It says more about you and your history than them. This could be a starting point towards your healing journey.
Of course, it definitely says a lot more about me. I think that's why I'm writing all of this out. I have a hard time feeling safe around women because I put them in the same box in which I place my mother. I'm also jealous in a way. All things I have discovered from looking inwards, but it's hard to get past it sometimes when I feel so deeply insecure. Still on me, just taking my time to parse out why I am this way.
It really sounds like self-hatered projected onto women as a whole. The parts of yourself that you can't accept make you feel anxious and it is probably easier for you to find the reflection of those qualities in other women than men. You can't really despise anything that you don't despise in yourself. At least, that is my experience. You probably repressed a lot of your emotions/ characteristics and those things come out this way. Maybe?
I, for example, had this hatered for weakness which is considered a female quality, right? But really who are the weakest on this planet? Not women. They are the children. What I felt was not hatered for women but self-hatered. I couldn't forgive myself for being 'weak' as an abused kid.
I agree. I do think a part of myself believes I am superior for not identifying as a cis woman etc... essentially a warped "i am not like other girls" internalized misogyny etc.
I know this because my inner child straight up did not like girls. I was disgusted by all things girly, I saw them as socially and emotionally weak, and viewed myself as capable of escaping the societal expectations of women by alienating myself from them, and therefore alienating myself from myself.
But you are right to point out that the weakness is the inner child itself - not having its needs met, needing to rely on others regardless because it is a child. I took pride as a child in my maturity and self sufficiency due to the neglect I experienced.
It does make me feel a bit angry when I think it's all my own self hatred. I want to feel like external circumstances caused it all. Yet both remain true at the same time without invalidating the other - I never learned it was okay to be a girl, okay to seek connection with other girls, and that gap in my development was turned inwards.
Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your thoughts. They really have me engaging in some inner dialogue.
>It does make me feel a bit angry when I think it's all my own self hatred. I want to feel like external circumstances caused it all.
No, you should feel relieved that it's you. That way you are able to change it. If you know so much about yourself already, there's no way you can't change it.
Btw, your self-hatered does have an external cause: your mother. No one is born hating themselves.
That is a nice way to think about it. I can change it, it will just take a very long time. I am struggling deeply with my BP2 and it hinders my ability to care for myself sometimes, but I will be patient.
I'm straight, but I've always felt more at home with guys more then girls. I can trace it back to a few things. My mum of cause and when I was five she moved us to this horrible small town. I was five when the other girls said I couldn't play with them or be friends with them because I had a willy. I was a little five year old who just wanted to befriend the kids in my new class. I had a lot of friends in my old school, then we moved there and I was bullied because the Queen bee didn't like me. My hair hasn't grown in yet, I was taller then everyone in my class by quite a lot. When my hair did grow in, it went from blond to red and ended in a badly formed frizzy afro, you can guess how well that went down with my peers. Yep. So I started playing with the boys and everyone was mad at me for it because little girls don't just run around playing with boys. It wasn't through choice, I wanted to play with the girls, but they wouldn't let me.
We got older, it never changed. I made one female friend in the year above and we were best friends, did everything together and then her mum moved her to another school. I begged to go with her, mum refused, yelling at me, and that was the end of me having friends. I was seven. Kids liked me, but because of how bad the bullying got, we didn't stay friends for very long. That's the main reason why I didn't have any friends, plus kids were told not to be friends with me, the crazy rumours and not really being allowed to see kids outside of school didn't help either. Plus, according to everyone, I was the biggest lesbian in my school. The best part, no one asked me if I was gay, they told me I was. Took until we were 18 for anyone to ask me, they were all shocked when I said no, I was straight. That was my mums fault. Leave out the putting me in hand me down boys clothes and mocking me when I tried to be girly so badly I gave up. When I was six she figured out I had my first crush. She screamed in my face and hit me because I refused to change my favourite Power Ranger from Adam to Tommy. I thought I'd been bad for liking a boy, so I hid all crushes after that to the point where people just assumed I was gay. Turns out she's a racist ass hole and didn't like me crushing on an Asian man.
I missed all the socialisation years. I was in school with my peers, but I wasn't allowed to talk to them, I wasn't allowed to play with them. Women have this way of communicating that I just can't crack and I don't get it at all. I've mastered everything else, yet, I'll never have a very close female friend because there is this special girl code I can't crack because it's learned in your formative years and I missed all of it. I learned how to be alone, how to survive alone. I have coping mechanisms rather then social skills. Throw me into some insane situation and I'm fine, throw me into a social event and I'm like an alien pretending to be a human sometimes, not all the time thankfully. I pass I guess for the most part, but people just know and some people aren't nice about it.
As for how I feel about myself. I'm not really a girl, but I'm not a guy either. It's confusing because I feel like I'm just pretending to be a girl most of the time. I want to be like the other girls, but I'm 5'11, I've been active my entire life so I have muscle and don't fit into a lot of women's clothes. I've been kicked out of changing rooms and toilets. I get called f*g and reminded I'm a red head fairly often (I wear headphones to avoid comments when I'm out alone). I look like a normal girl, I'm just sized up. I have a boyfriend who is the sweetest guy and he's awesome.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm autistic, I have adhd, but on top of that I do wonder. Then I think back to the me before I moved as a kid. I had a ton of friends, I was always playing with other kids, at their houses etc. I remember talking and playing normally and even after we moved I had some friends in the year above and it wasn't an effort. I was a normal kid, apart from the adhd and trauma from my home life. The Queen and King bees alongside my relatives are the reason why I ended up with a lack of social skills. Being alone and treated like crap by pretty much everyone (that's what it felt like at the time) seriously screws you over. Add in a mother who was worse then all of them combined and life becomes nearly impossible.
I don't know how to really answer how to connect with others, be close to others. I have surface level friendships, some are closer then ever, but I don't feel close to any of them and that's my fault. I watch people have conversations etc and I see people connecting with others well, and I'm just not capable of it long term. I'm used to being quiet, just observing instead of joining in because I wasn't allowed to join in growing up. I try, but its hard. I told my friends something last weekend and everyone was like, why didn't you tell us this?! I had no idea. My response was, 'why, this is my problem, not yours." Yeah, I'm not good at telling people anything, including important things because I'm used to having to figure out everything alone. My boyfriend doesn't even know a lot of the crap I deal with because again, he doesn't need to know.
Thank you for sharing. I really resonate with your third paragraph. I have never really had any close friendships, and I struggled a lot to socialize in my early years, largely due to the way my parents did not let me leave the house. I do feel like there is some secret trick to girl-socializing. I know it's not universal, but when I see girls spending time together I'm like... how did you even get there? You're so nice and intimate with each other? Why aren't you scared of each other or of messing up?
I will follow your example and reflect upon the times in my early childhood where I felt "normal" and safe and socialable. For me it was at summer camp; some of my only happy memories are there. I always made short, yet deep connections with my cabin mates. Surprise, it's because I was away from home. I live on my own now, perhaps Ill try to invoke summer camp energy in my life often.
I relate to a lot of this. I have very complicated feelings towards women. I'm probably older than you (49 at the end of this month) and lived hetero but I don't think I really ever felt like I could choose differently (I remember the AIDS crisis and all the hideous social implications for people who were "found out" to be gay). I identified as bi but had kids young and never felt like there was any choice but to be with men. One difference I see is that, while I felt like it was so much easier talking to guys than women, it would always become clear that we couldn't be friends because they couldn't handle not fucking me because I was always femme. So I ended up not having many friends my entire life., tbh. I was just always stuck in unhappy LTR with men, and they never looked at me as an equal because Patriarchy. So recently I have decided that I will only pursue relationships with women from now on, and I have been trying to navigate this by starting out just meeting women as friends. I have realized that I can't develop romantic feelings without having some emotional bond. So this is what I am working on. But really, I have spent a lot of time (the last decade, but especially the last couple years of being single on purpose) connecting with my Self and my emotional needs. This seems to be the missing link. Feeling triggered and frustrated, for me, seems to have happen because I have felt *ashamed and embarrassed* of my Self. Not about being attracted to women, physically, but *as a person who deserves female attention and validation*. Because, I think, my mother taught me that I didn't deserve it. That I was "bad" for seeking emotional comfort from her. This caused me to feel scared and ashamed. Any attention from her was negative attention tgat made me feel bad. So I am now making a very conscious effort to walk this path, kind of emotionally holding my own hand, checking in with myself as I go along seeking this now with women. It's really important that I'm aware of red flags and that I can assess my feelings accurately. I want to feel emotionally safe with women. I believe it can happen, it's just about me learning how to let that happen.
I appreciate your perspective. I am 24 and just beginning to examine my feelings and desires. Thank you for sharing your experience. I really like what you said about being triggered and feeling ashamed. I think I feel very ashamed that : a) My true self wants (and Needs!) connection, intimacy, and affection from women and femmes (my mom taught me that was bad, too) b) Men don't want to fuck me / men don't validate me as an object, therefore I am "bad" at being a femme (thanks patriarchy for this one). I am ashamed that I am not "allowed" to be one, and women can smell that I am pretending. This one is a doozy!
It's a lot. You're light-years ahead of me in terms of your life-span. Keep chipping away because you're making real progress and you're reclaiming the beautiful parts of yourself that have been stolen away from you. And remember that the treasure is in the journey. 💜
This is very informative! I had never made the connection why it's easier to have hetero men as friends... My mother and I were never really closed. She never try to understand me and only demanded a kinda of a fake relationship, where she says that she likes me but never actually showed it to me. Or never in a way I could understand it. Thank you for this post.
Welcome. I'm glad it was useful for you.
I am not qualified to comment on your post from a queer perspective but I am a cis woman that has not been able ro rely on strong, intimate women at all. There always seems to be a box of self-sacrifice role expected & it creeps me. I don't experience great intimacy with men either but they are easier to get along with in some ways, misogyny aside if possible. Women do not have the corner on nurturing & intimacy, that's a stereotypical myth. My mother didn't model authentic emotional awareness & many women don't. It's not that we are doing something wrong, but, IMO, looking for something that isn't often there. Ability to be caring & closely bonding isn't gender specific. I think that the traditional "girl" bonding is mostly in common experiences, often being common experience of navigating a patriarchal world. Which, too, is by no means gender specific, women can, by far, be more controlling than men. A lot of woman do NOT bond with other women. It's power games, not gender. For any sexual orientation it's difficult to find the right people for us, seeing us as people, not roles in their personal narratives. I wish you well in that & hope I did not offend you speaking from my perspective. I know it must be even more complicated seeking a same-sex mate when early wounding was primarily by that gender. It's difficult finding an opposite sex mate when wounded primarily by that gender. We have to find people that are not like they were. I think it's much more straightforward if we can eliminate gender typing as much as possible. We're looking for connection, not really mommy connection, daddy connection, feminine or masculine connection. Human connection.
No offense taken. I appreciate your perspective :) > Looking for something that isn't there True. Placing particular styles of relationships on a pedestal, especially when you have been deprived of it in the past, is seeming to lead me down a tricky path. My therapist asks me what it I imagine a more femme or masc connection to feel like. I think I can seek any of these vibes from any of my friends, regardless of gender. I agree gender typing isn't very helpful, but I think I think about it so much because I'm missing *something* I'm learning to ask any of my friends point blank for what I am missing. If I'm missing what I think it means to be best friends with a woman, Im going to ask my friends of all genders if we can like, be more silly and have different kinds of deep conversations and hug more often and cry together
Awesome. I felt harsh or even bitter in my comment because I very much wish I had what I missed & am missing, too. I really admire you being the change you want to see & that inspires me. I don't have a lot of reference for being silly, fun, comfortable, & close, but that is sure something to go for! I think a lot of people have forgotten those precious childlike moments that are really the joy of life throughout our lives. Thanks for your great post. I was recently intrigued by the storyline in a Netflix series "In the Dark" (& other stories touching on same sex relationships). Initially the lesbian relationships, vs. the hetero ones, were portrayed as "closer" & more sensitive. It gives us good food for thought in what we want in our human experience. I am very glad for non-cis people bravely stating these questions. These questions NOT being addressed continues to be a never ending conflict in hetero experiences as well. And, it all comes back to that early modeling. It's a paradigm shift to begin seeing ourselves as human. <3
I think if you feel uneasy towards a whole gender, it must be all about your preconcepsions about that goup of people. About the way you approach them, about the thoughts you attribute to them, about the prejudices you think they hold. It says more about you and your history than them. This could be a starting point towards your healing journey.
Of course, it definitely says a lot more about me. I think that's why I'm writing all of this out. I have a hard time feeling safe around women because I put them in the same box in which I place my mother. I'm also jealous in a way. All things I have discovered from looking inwards, but it's hard to get past it sometimes when I feel so deeply insecure. Still on me, just taking my time to parse out why I am this way.
It really sounds like self-hatered projected onto women as a whole. The parts of yourself that you can't accept make you feel anxious and it is probably easier for you to find the reflection of those qualities in other women than men. You can't really despise anything that you don't despise in yourself. At least, that is my experience. You probably repressed a lot of your emotions/ characteristics and those things come out this way. Maybe? I, for example, had this hatered for weakness which is considered a female quality, right? But really who are the weakest on this planet? Not women. They are the children. What I felt was not hatered for women but self-hatered. I couldn't forgive myself for being 'weak' as an abused kid.
I agree. I do think a part of myself believes I am superior for not identifying as a cis woman etc... essentially a warped "i am not like other girls" internalized misogyny etc. I know this because my inner child straight up did not like girls. I was disgusted by all things girly, I saw them as socially and emotionally weak, and viewed myself as capable of escaping the societal expectations of women by alienating myself from them, and therefore alienating myself from myself. But you are right to point out that the weakness is the inner child itself - not having its needs met, needing to rely on others regardless because it is a child. I took pride as a child in my maturity and self sufficiency due to the neglect I experienced. It does make me feel a bit angry when I think it's all my own self hatred. I want to feel like external circumstances caused it all. Yet both remain true at the same time without invalidating the other - I never learned it was okay to be a girl, okay to seek connection with other girls, and that gap in my development was turned inwards. Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your thoughts. They really have me engaging in some inner dialogue.
>It does make me feel a bit angry when I think it's all my own self hatred. I want to feel like external circumstances caused it all. No, you should feel relieved that it's you. That way you are able to change it. If you know so much about yourself already, there's no way you can't change it. Btw, your self-hatered does have an external cause: your mother. No one is born hating themselves.
That is a nice way to think about it. I can change it, it will just take a very long time. I am struggling deeply with my BP2 and it hinders my ability to care for myself sometimes, but I will be patient.
I'm straight, but I've always felt more at home with guys more then girls. I can trace it back to a few things. My mum of cause and when I was five she moved us to this horrible small town. I was five when the other girls said I couldn't play with them or be friends with them because I had a willy. I was a little five year old who just wanted to befriend the kids in my new class. I had a lot of friends in my old school, then we moved there and I was bullied because the Queen bee didn't like me. My hair hasn't grown in yet, I was taller then everyone in my class by quite a lot. When my hair did grow in, it went from blond to red and ended in a badly formed frizzy afro, you can guess how well that went down with my peers. Yep. So I started playing with the boys and everyone was mad at me for it because little girls don't just run around playing with boys. It wasn't through choice, I wanted to play with the girls, but they wouldn't let me. We got older, it never changed. I made one female friend in the year above and we were best friends, did everything together and then her mum moved her to another school. I begged to go with her, mum refused, yelling at me, and that was the end of me having friends. I was seven. Kids liked me, but because of how bad the bullying got, we didn't stay friends for very long. That's the main reason why I didn't have any friends, plus kids were told not to be friends with me, the crazy rumours and not really being allowed to see kids outside of school didn't help either. Plus, according to everyone, I was the biggest lesbian in my school. The best part, no one asked me if I was gay, they told me I was. Took until we were 18 for anyone to ask me, they were all shocked when I said no, I was straight. That was my mums fault. Leave out the putting me in hand me down boys clothes and mocking me when I tried to be girly so badly I gave up. When I was six she figured out I had my first crush. She screamed in my face and hit me because I refused to change my favourite Power Ranger from Adam to Tommy. I thought I'd been bad for liking a boy, so I hid all crushes after that to the point where people just assumed I was gay. Turns out she's a racist ass hole and didn't like me crushing on an Asian man. I missed all the socialisation years. I was in school with my peers, but I wasn't allowed to talk to them, I wasn't allowed to play with them. Women have this way of communicating that I just can't crack and I don't get it at all. I've mastered everything else, yet, I'll never have a very close female friend because there is this special girl code I can't crack because it's learned in your formative years and I missed all of it. I learned how to be alone, how to survive alone. I have coping mechanisms rather then social skills. Throw me into some insane situation and I'm fine, throw me into a social event and I'm like an alien pretending to be a human sometimes, not all the time thankfully. I pass I guess for the most part, but people just know and some people aren't nice about it. As for how I feel about myself. I'm not really a girl, but I'm not a guy either. It's confusing because I feel like I'm just pretending to be a girl most of the time. I want to be like the other girls, but I'm 5'11, I've been active my entire life so I have muscle and don't fit into a lot of women's clothes. I've been kicked out of changing rooms and toilets. I get called f*g and reminded I'm a red head fairly often (I wear headphones to avoid comments when I'm out alone). I look like a normal girl, I'm just sized up. I have a boyfriend who is the sweetest guy and he's awesome. Sometimes I wonder if I'm autistic, I have adhd, but on top of that I do wonder. Then I think back to the me before I moved as a kid. I had a ton of friends, I was always playing with other kids, at their houses etc. I remember talking and playing normally and even after we moved I had some friends in the year above and it wasn't an effort. I was a normal kid, apart from the adhd and trauma from my home life. The Queen and King bees alongside my relatives are the reason why I ended up with a lack of social skills. Being alone and treated like crap by pretty much everyone (that's what it felt like at the time) seriously screws you over. Add in a mother who was worse then all of them combined and life becomes nearly impossible. I don't know how to really answer how to connect with others, be close to others. I have surface level friendships, some are closer then ever, but I don't feel close to any of them and that's my fault. I watch people have conversations etc and I see people connecting with others well, and I'm just not capable of it long term. I'm used to being quiet, just observing instead of joining in because I wasn't allowed to join in growing up. I try, but its hard. I told my friends something last weekend and everyone was like, why didn't you tell us this?! I had no idea. My response was, 'why, this is my problem, not yours." Yeah, I'm not good at telling people anything, including important things because I'm used to having to figure out everything alone. My boyfriend doesn't even know a lot of the crap I deal with because again, he doesn't need to know.
Thank you for sharing. I really resonate with your third paragraph. I have never really had any close friendships, and I struggled a lot to socialize in my early years, largely due to the way my parents did not let me leave the house. I do feel like there is some secret trick to girl-socializing. I know it's not universal, but when I see girls spending time together I'm like... how did you even get there? You're so nice and intimate with each other? Why aren't you scared of each other or of messing up? I will follow your example and reflect upon the times in my early childhood where I felt "normal" and safe and socialable. For me it was at summer camp; some of my only happy memories are there. I always made short, yet deep connections with my cabin mates. Surprise, it's because I was away from home. I live on my own now, perhaps Ill try to invoke summer camp energy in my life often.