this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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It's more stressful than anything ;)
Navigating split attraction and the correct labels is a challenge...
I'm a trans woman. I spent most of my life dating women, and even before I transitioned, I had come to accept that I'm not attracted to women, even though I've loved my partners. I started working through that, then I transitioned. I dated a woman not long after that and it didn't work out. I told myself it was because I loved her but wasn't attracted to her.
So, I stopped dating women. I called myself straight, because men and strongly masc aligned enbies are really the only people that I am attracted to (though not the only people I can fall in love with)
And that sucked. My queerness was invisible to folk. Most of my dating pool was actively not queer, and I never got what I was looking for in my relationships with men, despite my attraction to them.
And now I'm an amazing poly relationship with my girlfriend.
So I've mostly given up on labels and just settled on queer :)
What a journey! It sounds like the labels were holding you back rather than helping. I'm happy you found love and acceptance without having to navigate labels!
I've also had some experiences with labels holding me back, especially when I was questioning and didn't know how to answer when I was beginning to date other queers. A lot of people interpreted that as me being noncommital, unfortunately. Nowadays I've become a label collector, though I tend to share them on a need to know basis.
I think that's a pretty good description of where I've ended up too :)
Yay for peel-off and reusable labels! :D