In my late 30’s, I finally managed to untangle myself from an abusive marriage in which a lot of fights over the last couple of years were about me not wanting to have sex often enough. I assumed that the high-anxiety, high-stress relationship was killing my libido, so after I’d taken a little bit to recalibrate myself after the divorce, I started dating again.

It went fine, I was reasonably “successful” (as such things are often measured from the male perspective), but every time I had sex, I left the event feeling distinctly unfulfilled. It’s hard to describe. It was something I thought would make me happy, but, at best, it left me kind of empty, and, at worst, I’d spend the next couple days fighting off anxiety.

So I decided to get my testosterone checked (it was normal) and get some therapy. At some point I realized that I hadn’t been on a date, much less had sex, in over a year, and I was fine with it, and, most importantly, that apparently wasn’t normal for guys. I noticed that all of my friends would complain up a storm if they hadn’t gotten laid in longer than about a week and a half, and that there were always these very confusing threads on AskReddit or AskMen where guys would say things like “I might be able to go 6 months without sex for a million dollars” or whatever. Whereas I was over here having to look back at old text messages just to find out exactly how long it had been since I last had sex, because I hadn’t been keeping track.

I had one more hookup (Feb. 2021), got the same kind of empty feelings afterwards, and decided that, while the act itself was enjoyable, all the complicated unwritten rules and rituals around sex just made it not worth it, especially considering I never got the happy-fuzzy-euphoric feelings everyone else talked about. I wasn’t getting the same payoff that all my other guy friends said they were getting, and instead of thinking they were full of hot air, I decided to take their word for it.

So after some research, I started identifying as sex-indifferent gray/ace.

It’s not a perfect label; I do experience sexual attraction, but it’s not powerful enough to be a motivating factor. Sex is kind of like mowing the lawn, in that it’s not awful, and sometimes it can be relaxing or enjoyable under the right circumstances, but I’m not leaving work early because I’m excited to mow the lawn when I get home. And if someone said “Hey, you never have to mow the lawn again!”, that would be pretty good news. Sometimes I miss the smell of freshly-cut grass, but on the whole, it’s just one more big thing I no longer have to worry about.

My current girlfriend is also ace, and it works out wonderfully. We cuddle, we hold hands, we laugh, and we never have to argue about sex. Life is much simpler. I’m reasonably happy.

I knew I had a thing for guys as well as women when I was in middle school but was deeply in denial. I didn’t want to admit it and was afraid of what it meant to come out.

It wasn’t until I went to college and met more out LGBT people that I felt comfortable admitting I was bi. Now, I’m 4 years into a same-sex relationship and it’s fantastic!

Why do you feel like you shouldn’t have let that happen? Sounds like you liked it.

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I always knew but I was outed by my former best friend. We were sitting at a lunch table in high school and she suddenly yelled “You just checked out that girl! Just come out as bi already; we all know it.”

I was deeply ashamed when she did that and it took me awhile to be comfortable with it. I distanced myself her after that. She also had drug issues so it wasn’t going to work out for multiple reasons.

Not sure I every really found out, tbh. The gender identity was more at odds with society so sexuality has always seemed less pertinent in virtue of being relative. What good is a box for my sexuality when I’m already considered a “deviant”, y’know?

The general trend of my sexuality made me feel like my gender identity wasn’t real or valid or whatever. Finding a partner was more of an immediate survival thing when I was younger since my living parent was my abuser.

Having married as a teen, I am cosmically lucky that my spouse continues to be my absolute best friend who ended up not having any gendered preferences in sexuality.

We’re theoretically ENM, but in practice, relationships are hella work and neither of us has dated in years. At any rate, I’ve never managed to determine the precise character of my sexuality and I don’t know if I ever will.

Human bodies aren’t really all that different and it’s always seemed weird that so much weight is placed on what specific configurations of genitals a person prefers 🤷

I didn’t really find out until I was in my early 20s. I had a close and sometimes intense relationship with my best friend who I met at college. We spent a ton of time alone together, opened up to each other about things we’d never talked about with anyone else in our lives, and had one or two dramatic “friend breakups” before making up again and coming back to our friendship. It took both of us two or three years of this before we realized that this was more than just bros being bros, but that we had real romantic feelings for each other. We confessed our feelings for each other after experimenting with cuddling in a hammock on a hiking trip together and wound up as boyfriends for about a year.

I had a lot of confusion about my identity around that time and didn’t really know what to call myself, but I eventually settled on bisexual cis male.

I was a young 13 years old boy when it happened.

That’s when I started watching porn. Too young maybe. By that point, I actually was quite late compared to all of the guys I knew who got into it way before me. I don’t when I first saw porn, but I do remember what it was and I can still name it. I didn’t like it at all. And it never interested me past that… for a time.

Eventually, I started to have my “sexual awakening”. Watching TV and developping strong new feelings at the sight of some women. Having my first sexual and wet dreams. Don’t remember what made me go towards porn, but I did.

I watched some, started masturbating for the first times. But it quickly dawned on me that more often than not… when I was watching a video of a man going down on a woman, well… I wanted to be her, more than I wanted to be him. I started to explore other sides of porn and also my body.

I’ve had my first actual sexual experiences a few years later. I didn’t have many sexual partners, and funnily enough, I am now married, ten years after we first met, to the women with who I had my first time. We broke up multiple times for various reasons and during one of our longest hiatus, I also had sex with another guy, those are some great memories too. We never went past oral though but I loved every second of it.

Eventually, she and I started seeing each other again. Tried to stay friends. And eventually, we both accepted we were like magnets, we kept being drawn to one another. We figured out our shit, set our boundries with external elements who were trying to fuck up our relationship and and I went to live with her. And I still am to this day. That’s when I started to really figure out who I was sexually, a process which took years.

I’m in my mid twenties now. Last year, lots of things happened in my life, it was an awful year, perhaps the worst of my life. But all of that stress had the unforseen consequences of pushing out of me the femboy that was arguably, always there, just hiding in me. Can’t say she was surprised. She helped me figure it out and never pushed me in any direction, she just encouraged me to keep on digging. She always knew who and what I was. Me being this, was not a surprise at all to her and it just made her love me even more.

This also made me question if maybe I was trans. That was a whole mess of tangled questions and past traumas that I had to figure out and unwrap in my mind. That wasn’t fun at all to go through but in the end, I’d say it did a lot of good. The answer is most likely no. I don’t think I’m trans. I’m just a femboy, I don’t feel like a men, but I don’t feel like a women, I just feel like my weird androgynous self and she loves me the way I am, so I’m happy being this. We both keep on exploring our bodies and sexuality together, and I keep on finding out things about myself. I couldn’t dream of a more humane and healthier relationship.

Turns out, I’ve always been this way, naturally feminine in my way of dressing and acting, without knowing it. Which leads to lots of people not knowing if I’m a man or a woman… and I love it. I love being “this”.

And this year, I mustured the courage to go to my first pride event with my wife as a bisexual pair. I had an amazing time. I have yet to go out in public in “full femboy mode”, one thing at a time. If I’m being honest, I genuienly believe that it wouldn’t be safe for me to do so.

But maybe one day I will. Who knows. However, I don’t feel the need to right now. My dress code has pretty much always been whatever pants, oversized hoodie and fingerless gloves. Skirts and thigh high stockings are just comfortable and fun to wear at home. :3

So yeah. It started when I was thirteen and I’d say it’s still an on-going process. It feels like I’m finally figuring it all out, though. But I’m sure there is a whole lot more to discover and it’s no longer scary.

I grew up surrounded by people who were talking during lunch about how “Homosexuality is a birth defect, a mental sickness”, so, yeah. That wasn’t fun for me to live with that. Most are quite supportive now, but the damage is done and I try to avoid talking about that stuff. I may not look like it now, because it’s the internet and it’s much easier for me to express things through a written format. But I am quite discreete and private in real life. I don’t talk much and certainly not about my sexuality.

What helped me is that I met her. Especially when I went to live with her. She is also bi. She was always into the LGBTQIA+ culture and had supportive parent. She is the best thing that ever happened to me. And to all my fellow bisexual peeps out there, get yourself a bisexual partner. 10/10 would definetely recommend.

Telling all of this felt… good. I don’t know why, but it did. Thanks a lot OP, for the opportunity.

EDIT: 4 months later, if someone somehow find this and ends up here… turns out that this egg here finally cracked and I’m actually definitely trans, not a femboy, just fem. Happier then ever.

I told my friends that “obviously women are more beautiful than men”. I didn’t realise until then that I had based that opinion entirely on seeing nothing but statues of women and women in ads

I didn’t figure out until that moment that they were all made by men to tell women what they should look like, and not because everyone agreed that women were more beautiful.

I hadn’t considered that most women were actually attracted to men and you didn’t just pick the least ugly one to marry because you had to.

I had a lingering crush on a girl from the next class. I was 12 and I didn’t know it was a crush but she’d always steal my attention whenever she walked by. I got a little blue when she got a boyfriend but I just moved on and proceeded to have another crush on a guy from my class. It took me a year to understand bisexuality. These days I’m not sure what my sexuality is anymore because I’m married already. I can’t seem to find anyone else sexually attractive other than my partner

Hey I’m glad you learned what you did from that experience, takes alot of growth in someone to explore one’s self without judgment or fear, I’m proud of you! 🫶

I was 5 or 6 and saw a photo in the newspaper of two guys holding hands and I was like, “oh, that’s what I want too.”

I had some feelings that I was different when I was younger, but being raised by a narcissist Christian mother and homophobic father meant I learned to suppress everything that wasn’t “normal” very well. Ended up being suicidal for most of my teenage years from trying to fit in a perfect child mold.

I went to university later in life, and being surrounded by people who were open about their sexuality and personal journeys helped me open up to myself.

It took me until I was almost 40 to finally start coming out to people. I was worried my partner wouldn’t like me anymore, but she’s been very supportive. I consider myself pansexual nonbinary. I’m a person who likes people. It is a bit weird for me sometimes because I even though I do find other people sexually attractive irrespective of their gender, I’ve only ever been with my wife. Sometimes it feels like I’m stealing a label because I never got the chance to explore before I was married, and I’m not about to cheat on my wife.

AMAB here. When I entered HS, I met one person in particular who I was super drawn to. It’s hard to talk about now because when I met her, she hadn’t transitioned and wasn’t out as a girl to anyone, maybe not even herself. She became my best friend, to the point where I entered the IT shop (it was a trade school) mostly because she was there. I could tell that she was struggling mentally (note to self: untangle attraction to mentally vulnerable people, it’s shitty) and tried to keep her sane among a crowd that recognized how uncomfortable she was and harassed her for it.

She trusted me enough to show me some anonymous online accounts she had (furry, and most definitely queer, egg still not hatched) despite seeming ashamed about it. I grew up in a Christian cult (Jehovah’s Witnesses) and I got super messed up over the idea that as far as we were concerned, God hated her. It bothered me so much.

It took some funny feelings on a mat in Gym class and a whole lot of processing on the bus ride home for me to be like OH, SHIT. I’M CRUSHING SO DAMN HARD AND I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE IT. (This was my third year of HS. That’s how long it took.)

Queue “oh God hates me as well, actually”, feeling shame just looking at men I now realized I found attractive. What a great few years that was. I decided to ask her if she’d go to the prom with me, didn’t go anywhere. She distanced herself after that. That started making more sense when she finally came out as trans (jokingly calling herself "the artist formerly known as [deadname]) riiight before we graduated.

I don’t think I ever had any specific moment, except perhaps when I realized there was a word for it. I just always (from the time I was a very young kid) knew that I liked to play with everyone.