Trying to figure out my sexuality - what even is a relationship?

[Estobawk]

I'm 15, AMAB but pretty sure I'm transfemme - I've recently been trying she / her / more feminine names.
I find female bodies attractive. I find feminine people attractive. I find people I am emotionally close to attractive.
Except, I've been dealing with depression, a near complete lack of feeling or emotion about pretty much anything.

During the summer I had a sort of... thought experiment? in which I was very intensely kissing a girl I kinda sorta knew at school, and it was quite emotionally stimulating. Since then I've just sort of been in a 'limbo' of maybe wanting to explore an intimate relationship with her. Shortly after that my depression set in. So I don't really have any strong feelings of attraction to her, but I haven't really been feeling much, period.

At the start of the school year this same girl has befriended me, and she has been very kind and friendly. I found myself wanting to have feelings for her, but not really knowing. I've also just wanted to become better friends with her, and have been.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like my mind, my pattern of thought, doesn't really distinguish between a friendship, a close relationship, or an emotionally / physically intimate one. My train of thought moves from one to the other. I suppose I almost always make friends with girls because of this.

Heck, I've become much better friends with one of my only non-female friends after she came out as transfemme.


Ever since I've been very little I've just been fascinated by something which is hard to describe, the best word for it being "feminine." And I feel that other human beings are very important in my life. Being emotionally connected to people, being able to trust someone, for someone to be part of who I am as a person, being able to discover and express myself with them. I don't know if this is love or romance or just close friendship or what.

So with all that in mind, I hope it makes sense when I say that I feel very confused about my thoughts and potential feelings about my (pretty much entirely feminine) group of friends, especially as someone who is probably transfemme themself while all their friends are lesbian or bi or pan or something like that.

I also really struggle to talk to some friends. Particularly the aforementioned girl. Whenever I try to my mind is just spinning and racing around so fast with all this stuff. And I want to be better friends with her. She's in a romantic, and possibly?? physically intimate relationship with another friend. And it really confuses my brain.

I also have a lot of anxiety when I'm not talking to or with a friend, and it's been really bad with these friends, especially since I found out they were dating. I'm not really sure how to explain how I feel here.

I feel confused about what being attracted to someone, what loving someone, what being friends with someone, is. I just know it is important to me and I want it with girls and I don't really know what to do.

[Nicole]

Hi Estobawk,

Thank you for reaching out to us! Depression really, really sucks. I know how you're feeling really well, especially the lack of interest in things and people that you once liked. I am really sorry you are experiencing this. Does your depression usually come in waves? Do you think it was caused by the change in seasons? It seems like you have experienced this before, so do you know how to cope with it? If not, are you seeking therapy and do you have any questions about that? Sometimes depression can just pop in and out of your life, so I can understand how debilitating it can be when you are trying to form bonds with other people.

I see your concern with being unable to distinguish relationships from platonic, romantic, and sexual. What you're describing, the "being emotionally connected to people, being able to trust someone, for someone to be part of who I am as a person, being able to discover and express myself with them" can basically fall into any of these. I want to link some articles below that might help you out with this, let me know if any of them resonate with you!

• Friends or Lovers? The Complexities of Queer Love

• How Do I Tell If Someone Is Into Me?

Lastly, I am really sorry you are experiencing anxiety when talking to friends. This shouldn't be happening around people you feel comfortable with. I understand that this usually happens when you find out they are in a romantic relationship. Do you think this stems from jealously? Maybe you would rather them have a romantic relationship with you, or you want a romantic relationship like they have? I hope the articles I sent above give you some answers, but please let me know if you need any further assistance because I am happy to help! Take care.

[Estobawk]

I do have a therapist, they just haven't had very consistent appointments lately.

I keep stumbling over my words here because there's such a disparity between what I'm thinking, what I want to feel, and the actual emotions I have - that being pretty much none. I think my friendship with her and her friends is quite meaningful. I feel like I'm beginning to be able to express myself, to be myself. They have also been very friendly and good friends.

But I still feel pretty distant.

I think I make friends with people I feel like I could be able to form a deep, emotional connection with. That sounds pretty similar to being attracted to someone for me, and pretty much all my friends are girls / feminine nonbinary people. I think I really want to see a friendship become something deeper, more intimate, and in my mind there's not much distinction between these things. It's all tangled up and intertwined when I'm thinking about it.

I feel anxious because I feel so distant, like I lack truly being connected to them, to the people I really want to... be a part of the little family they have built. I do feel it when I talk to them, but it's way worse when I'm not, and only even worse since I found out that she and her friend are together. I do really want that relationship that they have. And honestly, the only people I really feel comfortable about even thinking about or exploring that with are those friends. I would probably say they're my best friends too.
But it just feels so wrong, because they're together, anything I do that brings out friendship closer reminds me of that, and it feels wrong.

I feel like the way I can truly become myself, to truly feel something, is with these friends. But in order for that I want to be closer to them. But I feel so distant and wrong and anxious, and confused about how all these things work.

[Mo]

I don't know if this is the case for you, but I've had some transfemme friends who described really struggling with friendships before they were out to people they knew because they didn't just want to be friends with other girls, they wanted to experience that friendship as "one of the girls" and feel a specific kind of friendship and acceptance from them. In the absence of that, it made any kind of friendship feel confusing/alienating/some flavor of "this isn't quite right" that they couldn't easily explain. That may or may not resonate with you, but I wanted to mention it.

Do you have a sense of why the relationship your friends have together makes getting closer to them feel wrong to you? Is some of that related to how you struggle to see the difference between a close friendship and a more intimate relationship? I'm a person who finds the lines between those things to be pretty blurry, personally, so I can certainly understand that.

[Estobawk]

Yeah, I definitely feel wanting to be "one of the girls."

Becoming friends with someone, wanting to be better friends, closer to someone, finding someone emotionally attractive, wanting to fall in love with someone, the only difference is my choice. I want to talk about this, honestly, with that friend.

Maybe it feels so wrong because I feel distant, again partly since I want to "be one of the girls?" It just feels wrong to get close to them when they're already together - two girls together, but what am I? A pretender? No. It feels wrong.

Also, I have lost a ton of stuff I wrote down several times because I kept getting logged off so when I click 'submit' it redirects me to log on and then it doesn't save what I wrote.

[Siân]

Hi Estobawk,

Sorry to hear you keep losing what you've written, that's really frustrating! I usually find that if that happens to me, hitting "back" gets me back to the post with the text I've written. Other options are selecting and copying the text you've written before you hit submit, so you can past it back in if needed, or if you are someone who needs a lot of thinking and editing time, then writing in a doc and then pasting it over. Do any of those feel like decent workarounds to you?

Back to your actual questions. You say you want to be able to talk about this honestly with that friend. How much (if any) of this have you shared with her before? I ask because honest, supportive conversations are an important part of any relationship - whether with friends or romantic partners - and I wonder whether she feels like someone you can talk about these kinds of things with safely?

I don't see anything wrong with wanting to be one of the girls. Or with being close with people who are in relationships. Sure, if they're monogamous then they'll have some boundaries in place and I don't know what their relationship agreements are, but being part of a couple doesn't mean other people aren't allowed close. In fact, most of us need lots of close, important people in our lives even if we're not romantically involved with all or any of them. It sounds like you're carrying some shame around this though - what do you mean by a pretender, for example?