Will I Regret Marrying a Man To Please My Homophobic Family?

I’m a lesbian. I know this about myself. This has been true for such a long long time. But being gay has cost me a lot, including my relationship with family. (they’re still in my life, but they’ve made it clear that me marrying a woman, introducing them to a girlfriend, etc, is off the table). I just recently met a guy through work who I clicked with really well, and tentatively began dating. We have fun together, and he makes me laugh. He’s cute. I don’t feel those butterflies or enjoy sex in the same way I did with women, but I think it’s good enough. He has my same religion. He knows about my past and isn’t homophobic at all. I don’t feel a super strong affinity for queer community anymore, I used to when I was younger but my priorities just aren’t what they used to be, so I think I can live without it. i think I could make it work with this man. I think about how much it would mean to my family and feel so happy just thinking about it. Am I being delusional to think I could make it work with this man?

Summer: Oof, I suspect I know what the team is gonna say about this situation.

Look, a lez is a lez. And a man – no matter how lovely – won’t be a good match for a lez. This scenario only works if you happen to actually be bi. Or, hilariously, if he turns out to be a trans woman (which your family might not be cool with anyway). I’m not going to tell you it can’t work out because love comes in many kinds and sexual compatibility isn’t a requirement for a happy marriage.

But if you’re a lesbian and marry someone to satisfy the (homophobic) relatives, you’re giving up a part of yourself to gain favor with people who’ve mistreated you. That just sounds like twice the benefit for people who mistreat you and not much benefit to you. The reasons you’ve provided for making this work seem to revolve around pleasing the family, even though your feelings toward the guy are… just pleasant. Are you going to subject yourself to that for your whole life? Is it fair for your man to be in a forever-relationship with someone who can’t fully embrace him for who he is? I wouldn’t do it, but I won’t tell you not to do it.

Nico: I can understand the grief that comes with family distancing themselves from you for being gay. If you picture yourself forty years in the future, still with this man, never having had another relationship with a woman, feeling maybe pleasant feelings but not particularly passionate about him, will you feel like you missed out? Will the loss be bearable? You have one life, and it’s yours to live for you, not for your homophobic relatives, this man, or anyone else. I can’t tell you what to prioritize for yourself, no one can, but I think this is a question about your priorities. In what hierarchy do you order the priorities you have; maintaining the status quo relationships with your family or potentially growing closer again, your career, being out, having authentic and passionate relationships with women, and anything else in your life that is important to you? If you truly believe that dating and maybe marrying a man to please your family will make you happier than trying to find satisfying sex and to maybe even fall in love with a woman (but have difficulties with family), then that is your call to make. Maybe getting closer with your family again and focusing on other aspects of your life will make you happy. I just want you to be looking into your possible futures and really grounding your decision in what you truly want for you.

Ashni: I’m so sorry you’re in the position of having to choose between your family’s approval of your significant other and living authentically as yourself. I’m sending you so much love. I am curious, though — if you’re thinking about marriage, wouldn’t you want to build a life with someone grounded in more than just “making it work” and sex that’s “good enough”? I have a deep respect for platonic partnerships, and fully respect that this man can provide companionship in a way that being single can’t, but I just wonder, a few decades down the line when the family members who are threatening to cut you off have passed (I am assuming they are older, which is perhaps not a fair assumption) will you be satisfied with your choices? You’ll get more time with your family, which, if that is something you value, might be worth the tradeoff. But unless your marriage is less monogamous than most, you may never get to experience a long-term relationship with a woman, and you may never get to have truly fulfilling sex. But those are decisions that only you can make.

Hi! I am having a gender crisis and need to hear other masc perspectives. I was born female (hate that word) and I came out as a lesbian when I was 12–im 20 now.

I always felt an underlying discomfort around my chest. When it grew in, I asked my PCP when it would stop growing. I never liked saying tits or breasts in relation to them. I went thru phases of watching only trans men online for a few months at a time and then stopping and shoving down the feelings I was having. I obsessed over top surgery blogs and vlogs and results and when I learned transbucket existed, I lost my shit. I know i need top surgery, but I also feel this deep anxiety like you are on a roller coaster when I picture my b cups being gone. Its VERY confusing. I feel neutral when they are out, but I immediately put my clothes back on; I love laying flat on my back because they almost entirely disappear. I was dxed with body dysphoria around my chest last year.

Now: gender. Man feels wrong, because i loving being a woman with other women. But I feel so stifled thinking ab being a woman for the rest of my life. I never understood girls clubs as in shh we only tell girls these things. I love women, but I feel inside a small part of me is growing where I don’t relate to them. Even butches who identify as women, I do not understand why. But I am not a guy. Definitely. I have tried on butch or gender non conforming for a while and it works, gnc feels like I am just.. this thing. It feels most comfy, and butch is cool too, but I feel i don’t embody butchness enough. I am a bit fem sometimes, i want to have my door opened too, I cannot handle directions of places to go or fixing things. But I love being strong and helping and being in boxers making breakfast for a girl and taking her out and buying flowers and such. I feel like no label works and my autism wants an answer. You are kinda the only people who might get what’s happening as I know there are some masc/butch/transmen/nb people on your team.

Help please

Nico: I have a friend who kind of feels the way you do, except they’re older and had top surgery at around your age, and have grown pretty darn comfortable with how they occupy gender, which includes not entirely giving up ties to their girl-past or their sense of alignment with women. They may have a mustache and beard and wear button downs, but they also aren’t afraid of the ways they want to allow their femininity to manifest. They hire other queers to build and fix things, though are thinking of learning carpentry at last. They accept all pronouns. I feel like, with this, I just wanted to say that yes, the kind of gender expression you feel you embody is one that is shared with other people, and to offer that validation even though I can’t really offer you a label. Like, maybe, the labels genderqueer or polygender might work, but only you can actually decide what feels right. If you are determined to hunt for a label, I suggest browsing the nonbinary identity Wiki and seeing what resonates. There is no rush to figure yourself out.

I truly believe you can find a home in the ambiguity, but I also understand wanting to feel defined and therefore legible and visible. You can get top surgery and be a woman with other women and then not the rest of the time and then change your mind about that later, or not. You can be strong and want doors opened for you sometimes. While we have stereotypes and expectations we associate with masculinity and femininity, butches and femmes, with people of various gender expressions, none of these things — like being able to follow directions — are inherently linked to any one gender situation. We just culturally impose that on these qualities. In that way, gender is real and it is also not real at the same time, and if you spend a lot of time thinking, it’s not surprising that you feel like you’ve jumped down the rabbit hole.

Kylo: You’re touching on a few important areas here, all extremely valid, and I can honestly say I’ve felt them all at some point in my journey. Firstly: top surgery— I think there’s a common misconception that you’re supposed to need and want it 100%, and feel no anxiety or trepidation around having it. This just wasn’t true for me. I had pretty crippling chest dysphoria, but, at the same time, my narrative was like, “it’s fine. I have my binder, I’m happy and I don’t necessarily HATE my breasts at every moment of the day.” Over time, my understanding of who I was and the body I wanted to reflect that grew stronger. I even had a small freak out the night before surgery where I said to my girlfriend “what if I regret this?”. It is ultimately a huge change of your body, and I think as queer/ trans people, we have such strong resilience in general, so we can accept what’s “fine” even though there’s something else out there that would feel AMAZING and mean real euphoria.

For me, top surgery is one of the best things I have done as an adult. I can’t tell you it’s what you should do (and you shouldn’t listen to anyone who does! we’re all different), but I can say that over time, it’ll become clearer, and the anxiety around it will lessen (in either direction). I will note I had the surgery at 33 years old, you don’t need to rush these things, you can give yourself time and patience — try different binders, see how you feel as you develop in different relationships, different circumstances — I promise it will slowly start to become obvious as to whether it’s the right path for you or not.

Now gender!! Man… (no pun intended) this is a hard one. It’s taken me a really long time to call myself a trans man. Having spent my whole life as a stud, there’s such grief in not being a queer woman amongst queer women, so I get that. At the same time, being comfortable with my version of manhood has opened up and freed me in so many ways, and I think that’s less about what I call my gender and more about releasing myself from the societal ideas of woman or manhood. It sounds like you are speaking to that experience also — because guess what, you can both be femme and butch, you can buy flowers for a partner and you can have the door opened for you. I think the idea that we have to be one or the other can really stifle us, and maybe your label is actually no label at all, or maybe it changes every day — and honestly, that’s more than fine — in fact I think it’s really how most humans are if they let themselves explore it.

Motti: Hey friend! I’m sorry you’re feeling stuck about your gender expression. There’s a lot about your experience that I relate to as a trans man who still identifies within the non-binary spectrum and uses he/they pronouns, despite passing as a man through very intentional efforts. But one thing I cannot relate to is how your autism may play a role in your desire to fit into a strictly defined identity. I’m not autistic myself, but I have many people in my life whom I love who are, and I know that it can sometimes mean feeling discomfort in gray areas.

Everything you’re describing about your relationship to your chest, women you are romantic/sexual with, labels, and gender as a whole, points to gender non-conformity. The catch there is that GNC can look like anything! It sounds like you really want to nail down a term, an identity, and so the flexibility may not feel correct for you.

Now, you’re 20, so you’re young but you are not a kid – you know yourself and you know what you want. But it’s entirely possible you have not been introduced to many different identities in real life, and therefore, maybe can’t see the beauty in the fluidity and plethora of ways to identify. You said it yourself, you have spent hours upon hours watching trans men online, but how about agender, genderfluid, gender queer, or other identities?

I love that Nico linked to the nonbinary identity Wikipedia page. I had never seen that and there’s certainly labels/identities listed that I have never heard of. Our world tends to be very binary, so we think that to be trans you’re either a trans man or a trans woman; and if you are nonbinary, you must be exactly a mix of man and woman. This is simply not the case. If you don’t feel like a man, then you’re not a man! For years before and even after top surgery and starting testosterone, I insisted I was still not a man and instead trans masc. That worked for me when I needed it to. I even used “trans guy” as an in-between, because I wasn’t ready for “trans man”. It wasn’t until I was about 28 that I started using “man” as an identity, and I’m really glad I didn’t push myself to use it before I was ready to. And, of course, that does not mean you’re a man and just not comfortable saying so yet, I just want to demonstrate how our genders can evolve over time.

Something I love about being trans and about trans people is how much we test things out. When we pick new pronouns, we ask trusted people to use them for us to see if it feels right. When we pick a new name, we do the same thing. It comes with potential discomfort when it’s not right, but then you know it’s not right! I think if you tried out a new identity that feels it could be a fit between yourself and trusted loved ones, you may land on one that feels really good.

You were a lesbian at age 12. You tried out GNC at 20. Maybe at 25 you’ll use transmasc, and at 30 agender, and so on and so forth. You don’t have to be the same thing forever. And that’s one of the coolest things about being anything other than cis. You get to constantly learn about yourself and how you interact with the world.

The last thing I’ll leave you with, and listen, I am not a doctor, nor do I have any business giving medical advice. However, I’ve now heard enough stories from people who have underlying questions about their gender but never felt like they fit in the trans identity, and end up learning that they’re intersex later in life. I’m not saying I think you’re intersex, but I think it could be an interesting thing to explore, even just to rule out.

Riese: My perspective with these identities is really just limited to my friends and exes (a few who identified strongly as butches or masc women at one point and ended up eventually coming out as non-binary and then trans men later in life, and a few who have just consistently identified as masc lesbians) but what I am here to suggest is more of a reframe.

Not being sure about who you are gender-wise at the age of 20 is completely okay. You don’t have to have it figured out yet. Confusion is part of the process, incoherence is part of the process, convictions that feel firm on Monday and ridiculous on Friday is part of the process. Every day of life you learn more about yourself, and it’s possible there are experiences you’ve just not had yet that will illuminate things for you that feel hazy or hard to grasp right now. There’s beauty in discovery and curiosity and in the journey towards an unknown destination. Keep trying things. Keep exploring yourself. You’re exactly where you need to be right now.