Hi, I hate to bother you again. I am very,very confused by this realization I discovered about myself last week. I have it listed below in quick points: 1) I believe myself to be transgendered (closeted). 2) I am attracted to men. 3) I hired a life coach to help get my life in order. 4) She had me try online dating ,profiling myself as “gay” but describing myself as eventually becoming MTF trans. I had previously had a profile as a CD, planning on transitioning. 5) As I tried to find matches, and sent out messages,no one returned any. I have never had this problem before dating women when I was trying to cover my true feelings, or as a CD. 6) I felt kind of wrong seeking gay men. Nervous and like I was doing the wrong thing. I had no such feelings seeking str8 guys in previous profile. what’s wrong with me?
It sounds to me that if you are a MTF transgender person, despite not being fully-open and out at this moment, you still might view yourself as heterosexual. More simply put, without the labeling, you might prefer men that prefer women. You want men who want women, not men who want men. If it’s this simple, it makes complete sense to me. If you do not view yourself as a man or identify as a man, why would you want a partner who wanted you to be a man?
The problem with dating sites – at least in my previous experience – is that they rely heavily on sorting techniques. This means you enter things like your sexual orientation or your gender in order to get matched with someone else. Well, those things might not always be clear, or constant. They might not always match up with what you’re looking for, or with what someone else is looking for.
If it feels wrong to seek out gay men, don’t seek out gay men. While gay might cleanly describe how you look right now, a man looking for another man, there’s clearly a lot more depth to who you are. That simply just doesn’t begin to describe it.
Labels make things easy for people to understand. This may be why you experienced success with cross dressing. There was that label that told people what to expect. Using the label trans may offer similar assistance in finding dates. I realize there is a lot of pressure in figuring out where you fit in, who you are, and what you want. Gender and sexuality are complex and fluid and sometimes it can take a while. Sometimes people just shrug and go with queer.
If you’re not ready to commit to something, continue to think on ways of expressing who you are and what you’re looking for that don’t put you in these boxes.
Good luck!
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Filed under: Answered Questions, Gender & Sexuality Tagged: cross dressing, queer, Sexuality, transgender
