Well, as the title says, I Am curious what Dysphoria feels like for you? When/how did you realise, that certain feelings are in reality Dysphoria?
Edit: Damn, some of you really have lived through a lot. I Am very happy that I can’t really relate to quite some of the comments here, because that sounds horrible.
I interacted with women at those ages, and made friends - but I was in a neighborhood where a group of boys had made friends with me, and my mom encouraged the relationships so much that they often would host sleepovers and center everything around her house, so I was sorta stuck in a hyper-masculine environment during middle school. So while I preferred my female friends at school, it was an age where boys and girls didn’t hang out much together, and when my time and space at home was dominated by boys by default.
Moving away and then going to high school, the kids were more mature and platonic relationships between boys and girls became more common.
It was a confusing time, looking back I think some of my infatuation with some of the girls might have been more about wanting to be really good friends and feeling an affinity for them, and confusing that for romantic desires (looking back there wasn’t an erotic drive as much as what I would now characterize as strong affinity and a desire for close friendship that wasn’t possible without dating).
So I was lucky to not technically be stuck in a male-only environment, but it felt enough like that to me - and I was miserable despite not understanding why - I came up with rationalizations about how the boys are just really violent, I never felt safe around them, and how inconsiderate they were - boys always left a mess whenever they would visit, and they never asked if they should help clean-up, etc. I felt used all the time, and like I was doing a lot of emotional and physical labor for them without much reciprocity.
Girls on the other hand were really considerate, they shared in emotional labor (listening and asking about you as well as bitching about their own stuff), they never engaged in random acts of violence and I felt safer around them, and so on.
All that said, I’m surprised you think your egg would have cracked sooner if not for the male environment, I wonder what you attribute to that?
Simply because I needed to meet some women for my perception to switch from “unfathomable sex objects” to “people I like to be around”. Which it did, very quickly, and even if I didn’t know why it was immediately clear to me that I liked, even preferred, hanging out with women as friends. One of the first times I was able to express, even jokingly, a desire to be more feminine was to a group of girlfriends. My egg exploded soon after.
It’s possible social pressures would have kept boys and girls apart like you describe, but otoh I’ve always been a bit of a deliberate outcast, and I’d probably have quite enjoyed defying those expectations.
ahh, interesting. My world was dominated by women from the time I was born, I often thought that was why I wanted to be a woman (and a reason I used to discount the possibility I was trans, it’s just “normal” to feel that pressure as the only boy, etc.).
My denial survived
Looking back, I don’t see how it wasn’t obvious, but even now I have imposter syndrome and endless doubting.
I feel you. Had the exact same thing. I first thought I was gay, but I never really liked the appearance of men. This was quite confusing.
to be fair, taking estrogen made my attraction to men much stronger, where before I never saw a man IRL and felt sexual desire, now there are times where I do (and strongly so, the way I might feel attraction to a woman). I think part of what was going on was that being attracted to a man as a man made no sense to me, but being attracted to a man as a woman does make sense - but more than that I think it’s just hormones, the estrogen flipped a switch and balanced out my bisexuality from incidental to moderate.
Oh, dear–the closet wasn’t even glass! I do get the “almost like I’m gay, but for women” thing, though.
Funny thing about imposter syndrome: I can reflect on past signs all day long and still feel it, but thinking about the joy I get from presenting femme or the effects of HRT puts it to bed. Or rather, I don’t care if I’m faking it if I get to feel this good. Euphoria is the way to go!