Count me in among those who've felt the switch flip. Or did it? As Virginia's MD psychiatrist suggested, sometimes it's "you're straight before and straight afterwards." It's all kind of in how you frame it.
Or, maybe, I've always been pansexual, with a decided tilt towards heteroflexibility. After all, I slept with a few men back in my late teens and into my mid-twenties, but a few men is a few compared to many women. I primarily had women for lovers. In large part because this is where I found emotional resonance. And it's not like I was getting into relationships based on physical attraction -- rather, I developed physical attraction after the emotional attraction kicked in. (Demisexual? Hmm.) Only one guy was a long-term lover, but that was sporadic at best, we were primarily best friends with like three or four experiences have sex together. (He was not pleased when I transitioned, as he had some very deep-seated repressed misogyny for baggage).
It was "the stolen kiss" from a man, barely six weeks before SRS, that showed me I had new inclinations, or maybe they were old inclinations that I was now on the cusp of pursuing because I was just about positioned to pursue them as my true self. Anyways, I felt flushed and giddy and very much hoping I could go much further. I couldn't with him -- the excuses for delaying sex were properly identified as excuses, which turned into a messy conversation that included coming out, and then there was no more interest from that quarter (until, ironically, I was a couple months post-op, when he called hoping his "mistake" in dumping me could be forgiven, but alas for him such forgiveness was not forthcoming).
What's equally interesting is that during transition I became kind of... asexual? Or ensconced in a form of celibacy? It's not that I didn't had periods of feeling aroused, it's just that the deeper I got into transition, the more the way that arousal necessarily manifested itself became deeply repulsive, inducing all kinds of horrible dysphoria. Hormones were a blessing, because they certainly tamped down some of that response, but not entirely. Regardless, for a good two years I wanted nothing to do with sex, and never had any.
Today, fifteen+ years down the line, I'm primarily attracted to men, and certainly prefer having sex with them. I did have some encounters with other women of transition, which were short lived. And while on vacation last spring, I did fool around with a stunning young woman over twelve years younger than me, an ostensible "bisexual" but she too was primarily interested in men and actually ended up playing matchmaker, hooking me up with a couple other fellows more my age, while she and I settled into an easy friendship.
That said, there have been a couple charismatic women I've gotten to know the past couple months that I'd be happy to have kinky sex with. And probably a half-dozen more men, come to think of it.
In the end, I'm glad my pre-transition relationship came to a screeching halt after "the stolen kiss" because I ultimately owed it to myself to explore my sexuality anew, and it just would have been much more honest and smooth if I'd just said as much earlier in the throes of my transition when I began to suspect that was the case. Because I'd been told pretty much the same about "starting hormones" and my response at the time was, "I don't think that's the case with me," while deep down inside I thought, "but if that ends up being the deal, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."
I'm just glad I was ultimately open minded about it, because my sexuality today makes me very, very happy.
