r/NonBinary

TLDR: I’m engaged and worried my nonbinary identity is accepted but not really loved. However, I think I'm overanalyzing things, so I'm really just dumping out all my thoughts to help myself process things.

First off, I (he/they) have a therapist and will be seeing them again in a few days to talk things through, but in the meantime I want to see if other queer folks might have insight into this.  Also, the major factor in this are definitely my own insecurities and pre-wedding stress, but I have some maybe unsubstantiated fears I want to quash before my fiance and I say "I do" in a few months

Okay, so long story but I feel like the context is important, plus writing it out is helpful to me. In general, I'd been struggling with my gender forever up until the last few years when I found that the non-binary identity and label really suited me. 

I'm amab, tall, fit, bearded, with a shaved head. I grew up athletic and I've typically always been seen as very masculine. Kind of rugged, lean, and sporty.  That is a big part of my identity, I love sports and the outdoors.  However, I never fit in super well with the typical guys'-guys and hung out with the queer kids.  I was one of the first people my best friend came out to, I was his best man at his wedding, he’ll be the best man at mine, and I’m so proud that I’ve been able to support and protect people like him. I think people thought of me as this quiet, weird, fun, jolly ally dude, basically a Grungler. However, I've always been into feminization and I've kept super under wraps my whole life.  I come from a very accepting family with two younger gay brothers, which is honestly great now, but for a short while I felt like I might have had some influence to feel ‘gender feelings’, so I repressed them, plus I felt like I had to uphold the image of being the big, strong, cool, dependable, older brother to everyone.  Plus, while I had really strong feelings to be femme and would crossdress in private, it was definitely partly autogynephilia for me and I love my masculine side too.  So, I had this mix of shame, repression, and confusion.  I clearly had this desire to be feminine and a woman at times, beyond AGP, but I felt like a fraud to consider myself a true transwoman.  I would describe my ideal body as like an athletic, tomboy bodybuilder, like the women rowers I’d hang out with instead of with the men’s team I was on.  Ideally, I’d be myself, tall and muscular, but much more femme, with breasts, curves, long hair, and would flip flop on genitalia, which was extremely confusing at the time because I didn't know about identities outside of the binary.

I told myself it was all just a kink, because I couldn't figure it out, but it was all I was really into in terms of sex. I never had a relationship last longer than a year because I couldn't fully emotionally connect with any partner (mostly ciswomen, tried dating one or two men and transwomen).  Eventually, my egg cracked and I was like "Fuck it, I must be trans, because this is not leaving me and pretty much what I think about all day".  So I tried dipping my toes in the water, so to speak, with DIY HRT herbs to see if that would be the right direction for me.  It sucked, I do not recommend it, but exploring that led me to seeing a gender therapist who was trans themselves. They helped me sort out my shit, educated me about a lot of things, and after 6 months I really clicked with the nonbinary label.  It allows me a sense of freedom to be myself, this blend of masculinity and femininity where I'm still a strong, rugged, protective kind of workhorse with a soft, nurturing, supportive side. It's great for me. And I was able to see a path forward to how I could appear physically, which was a huge relief, because I couldn't keep living a double-life, with my closeted femme side.  So I ended up going to an endocrinologist, and even starting real estrogen HRT at a low dose. The goal was minor feminization. I would love breasts, fat redistribution, and hair loss prevention, but I also wanted to keep my muscles, energy, and downstairs functioning. So low dose was right for me and I knew the effects would be pretty limited, but I just wanted to start small and feel it out.

During this time, I met my current partner.  She's phenomenal!  We hit it off immediately.  Nothing I was doing was physically obvious at the time so she didn't know about my identity, but then after 3 months, she confessed to me that she's bisexual and I came out to her as well!  She's the first person I came out to. I was so scared but I was past my fuck it point. I liked this girl and I wanted her to know the real me, all of me.  She made me feel so accepted, I was able to come out to my closest friends too.  I'm helping her as well.  She's had abusive exes, so she really appreciates my softer, emotional, caring side and how we communicate.  We're really healing each other and continuing to grow.  And selfishly, I was very hopeful she’d be into my femme side, but this is where the problem starts.  

She is only kind of into my femme side.  She accepts it and is supportive, but I can see it makes her unsure, sort of uncomfortable.  She is really happy to see that I’m happy, but she says out loud that she likes me the way I am and prefers me being masculine.  When changes from E started to show, slightly puffy chest, weight gain, flab, and some ED, she told me she probably wouldn’t be attracted to me if I went further. She also lets me know that plans to never come out to her family as bi.  Her friends know, but it would be too complicated with her family, so she doesn’t want to deal with that and doesn’t need to.  She feels similarly about my identity, she doesn’t want to have to deal with her family about it all.  I appreciated her honesty, and tbh, I was not at all pleased with the results at that point either.  So I stopped with HRT.  Another major factor that’s now come up is that from her perspective, I’ve been inconsistent and driven by just temporary good feelings. I’ve tried estrogenic DIY herbs, stopped when it felt bad, went to therapy because I thought I might be trans, got on real E HRT, felt off about that too, and now am stopping, but still have feelings that will come up again.  For me though, the goal has never changed, it’s just I’ve found a lot of wrong ways trying to get there.  

With T on the rise again, I feel better, I’m working out again, I’m strong and lean, which I love, but I still want to be femme.  Like, I still know what I want my ideal body to look like, I’m just searching for the right route to it.  I’m still dressing up.  I wear sports bras to work because I like them and I hate male nipples poking out; I’ve always had prominent ones that got me teased as a kid.  I love wearing my corsets and breast forms around the house, but never have enough confidence to go outside dressed up.  We’re not intimate all that often, but things get incorporated into our intimate times, she even suggests it some times.  We have deep talks about gender and identity, and she learns a lot, even coming to say she might have a slight bit of autoandrophilia.  She also makes comments about how my ideal body would probably be a combination of our parts and how much she thinks I’d enjoy her “perspectives” in some things.  For all I can see, she’s really come around to embracing my femme side, my nonbinary identity, and all of me, which I’ve never had before and feels amazing.  

Fast forward and now we’re happily engaged.  Stressed about wedding planning and money but still in a good place.  We’re taking weight loss pills to slim down, I’ve taken up weighted jump rope workouts, and I’m feeling fantastic about myself. We haven’t been intimate for weeks because of the stress, and she’s going away for the weekend on a work trip while I have my first relaxed weekend at home in a month.  I’m dressing up by myself, feeling great. I find a new look, and realize an old costume wig I have would really tie the look together.  I put it on and it just clicks for me.  I see the ideal body I’ve always dreamed about having: the perfect blend of masc and femme for me.  Muscular, lean, curvy, fun, cute, tomboyish, and I just love it.  I’m so into it. I’m like “Wow!  Finally!  I see myself!  I see how I want to be!  I feel good, attractive, confident!  I’d go out like this!”  I even post here on Reddit, which I have only ever done once before, because I’m so elated.  I send pics to my fiance as a sort of sexy tease. She flirtatiously mentioned sending some to me at work before, and did, so I wanted to do the same.  I was careful about timing, but I did it without warning, which was a mistake because it caught her off guard, but she still said I looked good.  She came home and was obviously exhausted, so I’m trying to be chill.  We have a nice evening and the vibes are so good, we’re intimate after a weeks long dry spell.  Afterwards, she asks what I was thinking about, clearly alluding to the photos, and we talk about gender stuff.  She mentions “what if I cut my super short again, I’d kind of be like a boy”, “ What if we both just totally switch genders? No, I could never give up my boobs” and “I would have loved her view”.  I’m loving it all and it seems like we’re in a great place. I’m still buzzing with excitement, so I want to talk about the photos I sent her and how I feel.

Our conversation about it left me deflated and honestly a little hurt.  I know I caught her off guard with the photos, I should have sent a text ahead to not surprise her, but it’s more than catching her at a bad time.  She didn’t like them.  She’s still very supportive and glad I feel so good about myself, but she’s worried about the future. She said that this is all something that I just do for me and that she’s just not really into it.  She said she’s okay with me dressing up, but if I do it all the time, like if I come home and immediately go get changed every day after work, then that would be really dishonest.  She’s mentioned before and brought up again that she has this fear that we might get married and I’ll have this “awakening” where I realize I’m truly a transwoman and fully transition with SRS and other surgeries, leaving her trapped (we both fear divorce because no one in our families have been).  She’s worried about my inconsistencies in my gender.  She also says that feels pressure on her and that she needs things to be taken down a notch. She has generally high anxiety, so I flirt and let her know I want her but without being pushy.  It’s a tough balance, complicated by my gender and dressing up.  Like I said, there are times she’s suggested I dress up for her, but that’s rare and it’s much more often that she wants her space and to not be intimate or feel pressure. She questioned why I tend to do it more when she’s not around.  Exploring my femme side and dressing is sometimes part of my sexuality, so I do sometimes keep it on the downlow, so she doesn’t feel like I’m in the mood and being denied.  She says this is all still new to her and she’s learning and like before, it may keep growing for her, but it’s not her thing, it’s mine.

I don’t know.  I’m still processing.  I feel like she’s being inconsistent and giving me mixed signals. I feel like she wants to separate my masculine side from what she perceives as this femme dress up kink thing that I do for fun.  I’ve tried to explain how this is me, I’m both masc and femme.  I may not go out as femme because of social complications, but I’ve always been searching for the right way to be both, but to her that feels like inconsistency, troubles, pressure, and the risk I may waste years of her life when I switch up on her and fully dive into becoming a transwoman.  It’s so tough, with how good I was feeling over the last weekend, I would go out in public more femme and keep integrating it into my more public life, but there’s clearly way more going on.  

Now I’m worried she doesn’t really love all of me.  She loves my masc side, and I fear she just tolerates my femininity but doesn’t love that part of me as her partner as well.  I want to be loved wholly.  She said she’s worried that maybe someone else out there might be a better person for me.  That made me just really sad and taken aback.  It seemed like things were going great and she was feeling good about it all too, especially how she was also talking about genderbending things.  

Sorry for the super long post.  I don’t know where things are at now. I think we’re still good, but I fear I added a lot more pressure and worry onto my fiance.  And that sucks, because I feel guilty for that and that makes me feel like I shouldn’t be so out and about with my femme side.  We’ve had these kinds of conversations a few times and afterwards I’ve kept my femme side more in the closet, but this was our most serious one because we’re heading to marriage, and I really can’t just keep it in the closet.  That’s never been the goal for me, I want to live it and blend it with my masculinity, but I’m starting to think that she wants me to keep it the closet?  I can’t do that.  I can’t go back to repressing it, that’s going backwards in life, and I don’t like feeling that in my marriage I’ll need to be calculating “Oh am I dressing up or being femme too often for her to be comfortable?”  I just want to be me and loved for it. That’s what I feel like I offer her without restrictions.  Hers does have restrictions.

So that’s where I’m at.  Looking forward to seeing my therapist, but in the meantime, I thought I’d get all this out here.  I’m thinking I went through a high of gender euphoria and then was a little disappointed in my tired fiance’s reaction, but overreacted since I was coming off that high. And because of our upcoming wedding and majorly we both take this commitment, I think I’m overanalyzing her actions.  I’m looking for problems to fix.

If anyone reads this, even only a little, I’d love some genuine feedback, even if it's just “dawg, chill”, but I would especially love advice from any other enbies who have been through similar situations feeling like one of their sides wasn’t fully loved by their partner.

SO to start i (AFAB and 27) was going out with my husband and my brother to bring my mom to mother's day dinner last Saturday.

I had been questioning if im Agender, Non Binary, demi girl etc for several months. Well to reaffirm myself I has set my pronouns on Facebook/Instagram to She/They for now. I had however kept it private or so I thought

apprently my FB settings for my pronouns ended up viewable to my family.

So we get in the car and start driving over. Husband (31M) is driving and im in the passenger seat. Brother (older then me) and mom were in the backseat.

We get driving and my hubby mentions "yeah OP and I wore button up shirts to look nice!". My mom then decides to go "hey so OP are you non binary?"

Which came out of left field. I didnt intend to ever tell her let alone have her ask me while im still figuring it all out.

She says she wants to be supportive but she is the type to be supportive as long as the LGBTQIA+ person isnt HER child. Ex is she pushed me to date men once she found out i was Bi.

So in her asking this i fumbled through poorly explaining it. I tried explaining it as im a HUGE Dungeons and Dragons fan the following way: "you know how you see a goblin in media and you just dont assume a gender you just assume *goblin* and it isnt until someone's like this is Jeff the goblin you even think about applying a gender to said goblin? Its like that. I just *exist* as a little gender neutral npc goblin most of the time with the occasional desire to dress like a magical fairy princess a few times a year (talking like ren faire or going to the magic castle kind of frequency here). But she didn't understand what I meant in the slightest. I was woefully unprepared to be bombarded with such questions at 7pm on a Saturday in the car.

My hubby tried to help explain further but also fumbled it. My mom then says "i identify as a rabid racoon" which honestly felt very insulting and mocking.

She then proceeded to ALL NIGHT call me "her girl". Keep in mind she normally just calls me by my name. She had only ever had 1 pet name for me as a child and i hated it and was vocal of that. Outside of that she never called me a pet name as my name is 4 letters so why does it need to be shortened as a pet name.

After dinner in the car i explained I didnt appreciate her suddenly calling me "her girl" and how that was very contradicting to her wanting to be "supportive " and she said "well i just need a pet name for you and its so nice" and kept making excuses and also pressuring me to give her a pet name for myself which is genuinely weird af.

Side note but my mom is very controlling. Think Mother Gothel in Tangled controlling. To the point my wedding dress was in fact Rapunzel Lilac. So ive been in therapy to deal with it and learn to say no.

Idk why im posting i guess i just wanted to vent a bit. I ended up coming out as NB to my 3 closest friends bc I needed to vent to someone about it same day xD the night thing is the 3 of them were like "dude thats so disrespectful of her im sorry" and didnt make a big deal of the NB thing which I greatly appreciated.

But yeah idk i just wanted to vent a bit to peoppe who might understand. My hubby is great and doesnt care because he loves me and my friends are all great as they just care about me. But yeah my mom is a hyper feminine person who put me in glitz beauty pagents as a kid and told me id regret not wearing false lashes and doing eyeliner for my wedding this past October (I hate both. I have autism and its a sensory nightmare) so idk if this is her being upset that her little barbie isnt an actual barbie and is a person or what.