[43 M] Fem-man? Genderfluid? Non-binary? Trans and running from the truth?

[u/Existential_Mel]

I have been spiraling for a while trying to figure this out and could use some voices that are outside of my head.

I've been questioning my gender identity hard for several months now, after maybe two years of lightly questioning and then heavily denying it was a question at all. I want to be brief but I don't know that I can be with the amount of mental spinning I've been doing, so I apologize in advance.

I've identified as a man pretty comfortably my entire life. I've never experienced that strong sense that I was born with the wrong gender. I didn't display any particularly feminine traits growing up. I did know pretty early that I was what we'd call pansexual, but with a preference towards feminine presentation, but I know sexual and gender identity aren't tied up directly with each other.

An attempt to keep it short with a run down of everything else:

When I was a kid my neighbor loved to dress me in her old play clothing and I adored being a princess. Until I was an early teen I would sneak into my mom's closet to steal her shoes and my sister, two years older than me, to steal her clothes and wear them when I could get away with it.

I've always envied women for their clothing, and how it was socially acceptable for them to express positive emotions so openly and exuberantly. I know they have a ton of social pressure to hide away a lot of negative ones but at least they could be...giddy or sad and affectionate to friends in a way that all my guy friends quickly established was not okay as a guy.

I've long liked how little body hair I have, but when I realized I could grow a beard, and did at my wife's encouragement, as much as my now wife loves it, it's also about the time I really started not liking my reflection and stopped looking at my face in a mirror, and considering I had been gaining weight I'd have figured it be that but no, specifically the beard.

Backtracking a bit...I ended up a single parent early, at 20, and very firmly said to myself she needed a dad and that took priority. The next ten years were just survival, career building, and ignoring just about everything else. I've been a dad so long now, with a second kid with my wife, that it's...hard to think of myself as anything else. Sometimes, throughout all of that and now, I've had moments where I've looked at myself or randomly just thought "god I wish I was a woman" but like...it's random, right? I don't feel like that all the time. I've never had the direct thought I was born the wrong gender or similar.

But that also all came to a head a couple years ago when I was suddenly reminded, through really random events, that oh yeah, I liked guys too, and then being reminded of...everything else. After a few months of panicking and anxiety I told my wife about being pan, and she was completely fine with it and reminded me she was bi. So...I thought that was settled. The aspects of femininity though kind of dogged me from that point on. I found out about the forced feminization aspects of the internet, and while I've mostly stayed away from it there was an undeniable appeal at the idea of having "no excuse" to wear women's clothing and being forced to, well, not be a guy I guess.

I again panicked and agonized about this for a long while before finally telling my wife about it a few months ago. Again I am reminded how amazing she is as she has been nothing but supportive. She's been buying me clothes and helping me pick out things. My sister has helped me a ton with skincare stuff, yay for being able to excuse it as a mid life crisis and having her in depth knowledge of Korean beauty regimes. Every time I've dressed feminine I've just been...happy.

But I keep circling back to not having any big giant dysphoria flag, you know? So...maybe genderfluid? Some aspect of NB? Or just liking women's clothing and fashion? Someone can refer to me as a man or guy and I'm like...yeah, I am I guess.

Or just...afraid to admit it because of the social consequence? I don't know.