ready to date

[sky]

It just really feels disrespectful for me to be in lesbian spaces. I have never been with one and I feel curious about a real penis still. I feel as though I am intruding on their safe spaces. I also feel really super inferior with my age and lack of experience. I don’t know how to even engage in conversation with women who are seeking and queer, I’ve never in real life like done that, well I did once but a lonnnng time ago.

I don’t really belong in any group of people. I’m not straight, I’m not lesbian enough. I just feel so conflicted. I wish I could go back to 18 years old and not hate myself for liking girls and date girls and get out there, now I’m old and don’t know what to do, where to go, what to say.

I just really don’t belong in a queer women community. Girls are so pretty and intimidating and amazing I don’t feel worth their time when I have nothing to offer them. You know?

[Sam W]

Before I get into the rest of my answer, I need to set a limit: no more equating "man" with "penis" okay? Trans women without bottom surgery exist in lesbian spaces as do women who have had sex with them (and women, for that matter, who had had sex with cis men, or with nonbinary people who also happen to have a penis).

So, notice how you jump immediately from "queer women" to "lesbian?" That's the kind of thing I was mentioning a while back in chat; this black and white thinking that there are only two categories of things--in this case, straight or lesbian--rather than a whole spectrum of options.

Too, if you go to a space for queer women, you're in a space where more or less everyone probably had a moment of being the newbie and going "oh god, do I even belong here??" You'll actually be in a space where a lot of people can relate to those feelings of doubt, or wishing you'd come to understand your sexuality sooner, and a lot of the other stuff you've expressed to us over the years, which I think could be really beneficial for you even if you don't meet a partner in those spaces.

And all that brings us back to this question of the practical steps of meeting people. Because the only way to get that practice you feel you're lacking? Is to practice. That could look like taking steps to re-write your dating profiles. That could be reading up on dating advice aimed at queer women, or at least written from a queer perspective (like all the dating advice on the main site). I think a kind thing to do for yourself would be to pick one of those steps, including one of the ones Heather mentioned before, and then do it. That something we can certainly support you in, and I suspect that your therapist can as well, so you wouldn't be going it alone.