I realised I'm genderfluid

[Tomi]

Hi Girls,

It's been a while since I posted here, but my last couple of months was a wild ride with a whole lot of realizations about myself and my past which lead to me finally accepting that I'm on the trans spectrum. It's a long story so I don't want to go into detail but the bottom line is that all this time the last 8 years since I started my crossdressing jurney, I thought that this is just a way for me to escape from problems. That because I was humiliated in my menhood multiple times in my childhood resulted into me believing that only a women can be confident and self loving. And after my father passed 8 years ago helped this feeling to resurface and that's when I started to crossdress as a coping mechanism for years. Basically that's the tldr story of my last 8 years :D

But in the last couple of months with the help of therapy, I slowly came the realization that when I'm good with myself and confident and starting to heal my childhood wounds, the girly side seems to stay. I crossdress less often than I used to be, and when I crossdress it's more for the joy of wearing women's clothes rather than quick sexual graticifation for easing stress and trauma.

And I came to the conlcusion that if my girly side is more than just about fetish and stress relief than it deserves to be treated more than "just a girly side" which can be tossed aside and pull back when needed. And in a cathartic moment I stopped calling it "my girly side"...Because I'm not girly...I'm A girl...I'm A woman.

I feared this realization secretly for 8 years. "What if I'm trans?" "What if I want to transition?" "I love my wife and my kids, I don't want to lose them"

But I also new that I'm a man. And my manhood hasn't suddenly vanished after I allowed myself to be a woman. I am a man and I love to be a man. But when I crossdress I don't "act like a woman", I crossdress because in that moment I am a woman. And that's when I knew that I'm not a man, nor a trans woman. I'm gender fluid. And everything suddenly starting to make sense. All my life I loved to hang around girls just as much I loved hang around boys and so organically I always satisfied my womanhood with girl friends so I never needed to crossdress. But after I lost my father and became a father myself in the same year and the fact that I wasn't part of girl groups for years at that point, so the woman inside me couldn't hide any longer and "forced me" to crossdress, to let her out just a little. But I always separated her in my mind and put her in a box labelled "just a fetish".

But that's over because when I allowed myself to think of me as a woman I invited her into my life and integrated her into me. So I'm whole now fluctuating between the two genders on a representation level, mostly as man, somtimes as woman, but on the inside I'm both of them, all the time.

Sorry for the long rambling it just good to share this :)

Cheers,
Tomi, which is my real name btw but I like that it kind of has a girly ring too so I'm sticking to it :)

[StephanieLake]

Wow! It's like you are inside my head. ❤️

[docrobbysherry]

I thot "gender fluid" also referred to sexuality? Have u ever discussed all this with a qualified therapist, Tomi?:straightface:

[Tomi]

As far as I know gender is one thing and sexuality is another. Gender fluid means shifting gender identity, and it's under the nonbinary umbrella so it means different things for different people. In my case it means that I have a feminin side, partly because of childhood traumas and partly because of biological reasons I guess. The label is secondary for all of this, and maybe it's not the Best label,.but I felt that it fitted when I read about it.

[DianeT]

Agree, I don't think there is any direct relation between gender and sexuality.

[@tammileetilliso]

I'm more or less like you: I have both sides—masculine and feminine—very strong in my personality. But I personally classify myself as a crossdresser.

Most of the time, I'm a man, and that's how I work and do the boring things in life.

I live the exuberant, festive, joyful, fun side of life as a woman: sweet and charming.

This is how I fulfill all my wildest fantasies.

Translated from Portuguese by Google.

[JulieC]

Tomi, there's a lot you're saying that rings true with me.

I've seen many psychological approaches to crossdressing by the members of this forum. There's no 'right' or 'wrong'; whatever works for someone is whatever works for them. For my part, I've read of people compartmentalizing their femme aspects into a neat box they refer to by their pseudonym. That doesn't work for me...at all. I don't want "Julie" to be some alter-persona that I allow out of a box from time to time. For a loooong time I have struggled with self acceptance of who I am. For many years, it was struggling to self-accept crossdressing, not understanding that the crossdressing is an expression of me, not me per se. For some time now I've been embracing all of me, and trying to further self acceptance of all of me. The way in which you have learned about yourself comes very close to the same path I've taken.

Congratulations on your realizations :) Remember this is all part of the journey, and more of the road lies in front of you, with more discoveries about yourself to come!

[JesseVF]

Tomi your thought process and conclusion is very relatable - enjoy and best wishes for you going forward.

[ilisa]

Society wants labels, and society insists on these little boxes called male and female that are supposed to define and limit who we are. "Real" men act like this, don't do that, and believe whatever and it goes on and on. Life isn't like that is it? Our own identities have a lifetime of both male and female influences upon our lives. Lets not leave out DNA and its inescapable genetic predispositions with who we are and what we believe. Indeed, physically our bodies manufacture both testosterone and estrogen, and both play critical roles within us.. So both mentally and physically we are all a continuum of the male and the female, and there is a natural beauty in that intricate dance between the two.