Scarleteen

Hello!

I've been having some doubts and concerns about my relationship lately. I'm an AFAB tentatively non binary person and my partner is a cis het man. I've been questioning my gender in the context of this relationship, and have been more and more comfortable identifying as non binary or gender nonconforming in some capacity. My partner is...off and on supportive, I guess? He's not a malicious person, but it seems like one week he'll be super ok with everything and helping me pick out men's dress clothes and the next he'll make jokes about how I must be a girl because I have a vagina, and calling me a woman or girl a lot. I feel really strange, because I don't think he's trying to be hurtful, but at the same time I feel like I've repeatedly talked about how I'm not a woman/girl/comfortable with my assigned gender. It can get sort've taxing.

Enter this new person, a woman, who has just started showing up in our friend circle. I have such a crush on her, but I'm focusing now on being friends with her because I don't have a lot of queer friends and would like more. But it's hard, because when I'm with her I feel more at ease, in that I don't need to explain myself/my identity because she gets it. For example, she will use "they" pronouns with me, no fuss, no questions, and being around her has really helped me when it comes to viewing and thinking about my gender.

So in between trying to juggle these new feelings and navigating this new friend/crush while also dealing with gender stuff in my current relationship, I've ALSO experienced a total nosedive in my sex drive it seems? Nothing has changed in terms of lifestyle or medication (although I was sick this past week, but it feels like it's been going on longer than that.) I'm just...not as interested in sex I guess? And I guess sorta looking back on it I absolutely have bagged re: sex being an obligation in a relationship, especially with a man. I think part of it is that I feel like my current partner isn't totally respecting my identity, but the other part of it just feels like...I don't know, I'm just not super into sex.

I sort've did a mental "test" and was like "well ok, think about having sex with this new person" and I'm slightly more into the thought of that but mostly as a "top" than a "bottom", if that makes sense? Like, I can see myself doing things with her where I am the most active partner - giving as opposed to receiving!

So now I feel also confronted with this issue - is this change in sex drive temporary? Has it always been there and I've just been powering through it? I feel like I DO enjoy sex but...I think I feel a lot of anxiety about providing sex and being a sexual being. On top of that, I'm sort've worried I'm not attracted to men anymore? Which makes me concerned, was I ever attracted to men? I feel like I must'e been because my relationships have overwhelmingly been with (cis, het) men! And I do remember feeling sexual attraction, I think? But sometimes I'm not sure? And I'm worried that my attraction to men is fading and it's scary and I don't even know how to BEGIN unpacking that! AND then I have this issue w/ my partner and feeling like he's not really respecting my identity....it's just been a lot, really.

The icing on this very tall cake is that I am worried if I were to break things off with my current partner it would totally detonate my friend group and I wouldn't have any friends left and I'd be sad and lonely and ostracized because I did him wrong and broke his heart. I know my current partner cares about me very much, so it's all so confusing. I don't know if maybe I'm losing attraction to him or if it's just men in general or what's going on. I'm very confused and don't know where to start.

I'm going on vacation soon (yay!) so I'm hoping this will let me step away from everything and just kinda let it mull over while I'm romping around having fun. But I thought I would just come here, because sometimes folks surprise me with their observations...things maybe I've written but don't see myself! Thank you for your help!

It's pretty common for people's feelings about sex to fluctuate throughout their lives. That might include overall desire for sex, the types of sex or roles during sex they're into, attraction to a certain gender or type of person over others, etc. We can't really pin down why this change is happening for you, but it's not unusual to have those changes occur.

I will say, though, that having a partner who doesn't seem to be entirely on board with your identity could very well have something to do with being less interested in sex! It sounds like you've talked about this with him a few times but he's still saying things that are upsetting and disrespectful, and having less sexual desire, either for him specifically or in general, makes sense in that context. It can be exhausting to have to deal with misgendering or other passive gender-disrespect from anyone in your life, let alone a romantic partner. Even though you've talked about this before, do you think it would be worth one more try, where you really lay out how hurtful his comments are? And if he can't accept that and change after that, sadly that might be your answer about how much effort he's willing to put into being respectful of your identity.

It sounds like feeling some uncertainty about just who you're attracted to and what your ideal sexual expression might be is pretty overwhelming right now. I encourage you to be as kind and patient with yourself as you can - questions of identity can be pretty hard to tackle, and for many people the process of self-discovery takes time. Some women and assigned female at birth folks do find that they have early relationships with men because of the general assumption of straightness that so many people make; that's just "what you do" so they do it, and later realize they don't have an attraction to men at all. Others understand that attraction to be real but might come to realize attraction for other genders as well. It's ok to be in a state of questioning, and I think the only way to know what's true for you is just to give it time.

I also want to mention your worry that breaking up with your current partner will cause problems in your friend group. Sometimes when two people in a large social circle break up, there are some ripples that impact how social things happen, but in general if they're good people who care about you, then everyone can sort things out. Maybe it means that you reach out for some one-on-one or small-group socialization for a while. It's possible some people might be upset at you if they think you were in the wrong in breaking up, and if that happens it sucks and isn't fair to you.
But! Breaking up with someone isn't doing them wrong. It can hurt, absolutely, and I don't want to minimize that. But if the options are a) breaking up or b) staying in a relationship that isn't right for you any more, then ultimately it's not good for either person if you decide to stay. If you break up with your partner it might upset him, and that's a sad part of breakups, but it won't mean that you wronged him. Does that make sense?

I'm not trying to convince you to break up with him, but if that's something you feel that you want to do, I hope you will be able to do it when the time feels right for you. In anecdotal evidence I've had many friends say "I wish we'd broken up sooner" (and I've thought that too!) but have very rarely heard someone wish they'd waited longer.

Hi Mo,

Thank you for getting back to me about this. I am such an impatient person sometimes, and I'm awfully hard on myself, so waiting things out is hard for me. I do plan to talk to him once I get back from my vacation, but I worry that even if he commits to being better and watching what he says, that I'll still be unsatisfied. I also worry that, may, I'm more into folks who are not men and that this will be a sudden thing and I'll be accused of being unfaithful in some way, or having like, planned this out or schemed or manipulated. That's not what I mean to do at all! It's just a lot of things all coming up at once.

All of that makes sense, though, and I've navigated my fair share of breakups. I'm sure I could survive, and weather the storm, and probably make new friends, I'm just catastrophizing about The Worst Possible Scenario.

I totally understand what you mean by "wronging" vs. "hurting". We all get hurt but it doesn't mean you were wronged...that's a really succinct way of framing it, so thank you!

I'm worried about waiting, too, and that it won't bring answers. I'm a very hands-on person, so I keep thinking "ok what can I do to 'test' some things about my identity or attraction?" Waiting is hard, and I'm not sure what to look for in terms of finding answers...like, what signals I guess is what I mean.

Thank you again for taking the time to respond!

If your boyfriend makes an effort and you're still unsatisfied, then that's a bummer but it gives you a data point right there, that something about the relationship isn't working for you. If you get accused of cheating or manipulation just from realizing something about yourself and your attractions, I'd be sorry to hear that but honestly that would reflect badly on him, not you. You can't control how anyone reacts to you so I think being as open and honest as you can be, with yourself and others, is going to serve you best here.

When I was starting to reconsider my orientation (this also happened to me when I was trying to sort out gender stuff, so I feel you on having this all kind of happen around the same time!) what helped was just seeing where my thoughts went as I thought about different people or types of relationships. I am a serious overthinker, and that made it tough, but I started to notice a pattern in terms of who I felt crushes on, who or what I'd think about in sexual scenarios, and just what kinds of people tended to float to the forefront of my mind in general.
In terms of things to test, that can be hard since you can't really use people as test subjects, but I wonder if spending more time in queer spaces/with queer friends might help, to give you more of a space to explore the feelings you're having, at least in a thinking/talking sort of way. It might help clear some things up for you.

I would love to spend more time in queer spaces and with queer folks, but I don't know a ton! I have this new friend, and a trans man/trans masculine/AFAB support group that meets monthly, but the majority of my friends are cis and straight. I'm working on expanding my circle it's just...hard.

Reading your response has made me feel more at ease though because I don't feel such an overwhelming feeling of I AM AWFUL. I'm just worried about being superficial I guess? Like oh, you want to be with a woman or nb person, you're more concerned with how you're perceived rather than the person you're with! And what if that's true? I mean I don't think it is or would be be but what if it was??? It's just scary to think about, like what if being in a different type of relationship still wasn't enough? It can just be an overwhelming line of thought sometimes.

I don't think it's superficial to want a relationship that somewhat accurately reflects who we feel ourselves to be. Whenever there's a situation in life where we feel some significant conflict or barrier about our identity or self, that's usually very stressful and hard, so it's really not superficial to want to limit that where we can. How we're presenting and how others perceive us is a facet of our identity and our self, so, again, not really as superficial as all that, in my opinion. Regardless of your reasons - though it's pretty clear from what you've written that your driving force here is how you feel about yourself and not how others see you - it definitely would not make you awful to want to be in a particular kind of relationship or with a particular kind of person for identity-related reasons. It would also not make you awful if you thought that, and then found things were different or changed at any point, because like Mo says, this kind of stuff really is a process of discovery.

Who we choose to be with or not be with is rarely (exceptions for their awful behaviour) any judgement or referendum on another person's worth or value - it's much more about us and what we want and the kind of life and self we want. It's okay to want and choose the things you want and choose. Relationship-choosing doesn't require the same kinds of equality and equity that the vast majority of other interactions should involve, because it's not a judgement of the other person's value.

(I hope this is helpful to you - I think it's also possible I've grasped the wrong end of the stick from your most recent post, in which case, do say, and then I or someone else can do a better job!)

Hi there Redskies. I don't think you grasped the wrong end of the stick at all! In fact, I was sort've thinking of this stuff recently (I apologize for the delayed response, I was on vacation!!) It's NOT about him or him not being "good enough," it feels more about like, it's so hard to experience erasure, I am stressed out by erasure, it feels like a sort of constant pressure on me. On top of that, I'm not sure my partner is seeing me the way I want/need to be seen and that's double stressful. I still need to talk that out with him. It's just conflicting, because I do really care about him, and he's very thoughtful and sweet and considerate in so many other ways.

I guess I am going to talk to him and see how things progress. I'm just glad your sentiments echo mine, in that there is no value judgment of the other person here. Thank you!