Relationships with bio-guys before transition?

[kingpot]

Hello fellow guys, I am Andrew from China and this is my first post. I love this forum and feel that it's so warm here so finally I decided to join in :> Please excuse my simple use of English.

Just wanted to ask you guys a question, how was your relationship with cisgendered men before you took testosterone? Did they treat you as a girl? Were some of them hostile to you because you violated their "male superiority" (sorry if that doesn't happen much in the west but I guess guys are competitive in nature)? How did you explain to them that you were actually a guy?

I have only recently come to notice that I might be a transguy. I came out to my girlfriend and she really supports me. I have lived under the identity of being a girl for all my life. I'm the youngest in every group I go to and am often treated as the younger little girl, and I hated that.

Last month I cut my hair to a boyish short hairstyle and now it's on my head like a hedgehog. :> I felt like it was the best thing I ever did. Last time when I went to class, a boy student came over to me and he no longer treated me like a girl. He talked to me about porn and asked me if I thought any of the girls in our class are beautiful. We talked about sports and I even showed him my little muscles ;> Anyway, I was thrilled. But I was still very insecure because frankly, in my heart, I still feel like a little boy. I don't feel like a guy of eighteen who is about to become a man.

In some areas I'm still very feminine. I don't have many male friends (actually I don't any, to be exact). I have a stuttering problem and this can sometimes be very hard to deal with. I feel like without first becoming a boy who is accepted, my "inner boy" cannot blossom and become a man. But would other males be accepting? Will they treat me as one of the guys? (I know that some of you guys were always "one of the guys" because of you proved yourself by action or just fitting in in the guys' group :> But I believe there're other guys like me, who were perceived as girls while they're pre-T.)

Hope you could throw in some ideas and I would appreciate it very much.

[riccirules]

Andrew,

I lived most of my life as a female. In fact, I still do at times.
But almost all my friends know I'm a transman.
And even my student housing coordinators know now.

Any guys I've ever been with knew me as a female and treated me as such.
But now, I think I'm done with guys...at least until I go through the rest of my transition.
I do not want to scare them off in case they are not open-minded.

I am 28 years old, and applaud you for being so open with us about this at a young age.
I knew I was really a boy ever since I was little.
At 13, I made the decision to transition, but kept it a secret because I feared people would hurt me.

You are very brave, and no matter what, you'll always have family here.

-Richie

[MaxAloysius]

Hey Andrew, welcome!

I'm not sure if this is what you meant by your question, but I was in a relationship with a bio guy for around six months. We were friends before we were together, so he knew from the get go that I was a guy. I thought he wouldn't accept me as male, but after telling him about my situation he started calling me 'bro' and joking about it, like it wasn't that big a deal. He later revealed to me that he was bi, and had been interested in my for a while but couldn't get up the courage to talk to me about it. He said my being male didn't change anything for him.

We were 'guy pals' as some people might put it, so we talked about sex and porn and all of those kinds of things (while I constantly tried to get him to admit he was totally into that guy ) so I had openly explained to him that I couldn't stand the idea of being in a submissive role in a relationship, and that just because I was born 'female' didn't mean it was okay for everyone to assume I'd love to sub. -shudders-

So when we became an item he really allowed me to take the lead, which was awesome We're over now, but it was pretty good while it lasted. He never seemed challenged by my masculinity, and having to take a more submissive role in the relationship really didn't bother him. But every person is different.

As to other men in my life, well I can't say as I've really had any overly bad or overly good reactions. Everyone just sort of went 'Oh, okay...if you think that's what's right for you', and everything went on as normal. I have never been 'one of the guys', my whole life my friends have been almost constantly female only. That's changed a lot in the last few months, and I now have about even numbers between my female friends and male friends, but I don't think that really matters.

If you're a little girly in the things you do, it doesn't mean you're any less of a guy. I wore thick black eyeliner to work today for the hell of it, and everyone was like 'You look rockin''! I think it's more important to be true to yourself, than to worry about whether you're doing everything in a 'masculine' way or not.

Wow, I've rambled on! Okay, stopping now!

[MasonM]

I've been with a lot of biomen (and am married to one now, who thankfully is very supportive) and as a general rule I would take the dominant role in the relationship.  I just had the good luck of finding men that preferred to be submissive, even if they considered me a female.  At least two of those men were homosexual and felt that I was masculine enough that I still appealed, despite the very obvious female physical features.

My husband knew that I was trans before we were married.  I jokingly call him my 'wife' a lot, because he tends to act more feminine than I do (he nags, for one).  Sexually, he prefers me to be dominant, but we've rarely had sex since the twins were born (went from once a month to coming close to a year without intercourse now).  I'm trying to figure out how to change that, but we both have health issues that lead to it being difficult.

Anyway, figured I would toss my two cents your way.

[Kareil]

There's always been quite a lot of "Mine's bigger than yours" in my relationships with bioguys, they've just seen me as a ball-busting woman, sometimes they think it's malicious, other times they're shorter than me and have a bit of "short man syndrome" and seem to be more used to taking it and dishing it out - I had no idea until now why I did date those short guys, since I'm not so tall that guys are often shorter than I am.  It nearly always pisses them off when I beat them, though.  Often they think I'm a closet lesbian and don't believe me when I tell them I have absolutely no interest in having sex with a woman, any more than any other gay guy would.  It might confuse them less if I was more of an ambitious, career-oriented type A personality in general, but I'm not that flavor of ball-busting woman, I'm...just another guy, and sometimes we're competitive.

The lastest guy I've been playing around with - the only one since I've realized what's going on with me, and so have been doing it with the "right" equipment configuration - seems to see me as a "safe" (read: I'm female so he's still straight, but it certainly feels gay from my end, because he's not a woman) way to explore bisexual tendencies.  We've known each other for a while and it was like a lightbulb went on, "So *that's* why things weren't working before, we were trying to do it completely backwards!" - he's always been the more submissive one.  It's not really a relationship, but as I still present as female most of the time, I guess it's as good as I'm likely to get, for now - scooping up the highly closeted segment of the market.  And he's the only one offline that knows anything, right now.

[Hadrian]

My relationships with men before transition were always strange, when it came to dating that is, because I would always take the more dominant role. I'd do the asking out, etc, but I think once I'm more comfortable in my body (started T, top surgery) that will change, because I won't be so afraid that they'll want to put something "there", and so on. And the fact that I was living as a "girl" before, I have not idea how dating will be now.

Only men that don't know me, treat me like a girl. I've always been "one of the guys" in my platonic relationships with men. Nothing has really changed there, except now, they have no qualms about having boxing matches with me, because they know that what's on the outside isn't what's on the inside.

[skakid]

I have 3 best friends that are guys. Two of them are gay and the other one is straight. When I first came out to them everything was fine, but as time went on my two friends who are gay thought that I was hanging out with my straight friend a lot more and that I was acting like I was better than them because I was more masculine. They started to feel like I thought less of them because they were gay (I was shocked when they told me that). Eventually I found this out and we all talked it out and everything is fine now, but that was kind of weird for a while. That's really the only thing that changed between me and other guys when I came out, but I guess it didn't really permanently change because everything is back to normal now.

[BlindedSkies]

First off, welcome
我也是中国人
I've never really had any male friends either, only 3 to be exact
I've only come out to 2 of them though. One of them still treated me the same and the other began to treat me as..a brother i guess?
I havent come out to the third because I met him online, and i presented myself as male at that time xD.

[Kadel]

Welcome Andrew! 

Nontheless, I haven't started testosterone, but, I have had a cis boyfriend before, I was practically clueless and didn't really engage in holding hands or putting my head on his shoulder or anything, it was only a title pretty much. He would try to get me to be close, but I simply felt like it wasn't right. We broke up after six months, and we're still best friends to this day, but when I told him, he really didn't seem that surprised. And now we're like brothers, and most've my guy friends treat me like one, like a guy and we discuss music, sports, sex, ya know, 'guy' stuff. Most of my old elementary school friends that are male, we all split up in different groups when we got to junior high, but some of them I talk to today just treat me like they did back then, like a guy.

[Dayumson]

Hey Andrew,

I really think it depends on the dudes sometimes, but it is still possible to fit in and be socially accepted by other dudes. I'm a short and feminine asian transguy, and I usually feel like a little boy towards my peers. My friends or the people I hang around usually get confused around about my gender, but people gradually come to refer to me as a male, I think some people just need to get used to it but eventually they will be totally cool with it. I met a bunch of new dude friends and they treat me like their bros, even if it was a bit awkward at first because they were unsure about my gender. The funny thing is that they don't know that I'm trans LOL. Because I'm very androgynous people can't decide whether to call me a he or a she. For now they seem clarified that I'm a guy which makes things very comfortable between us. Maybe they guessed I was trans, I'm not sure, but I really never had to say anything to them.

[PandaValentine]

I've never had issues with guys, except for older ones. Older males don't seem to get me, but the younger ones - even this total homophobe accepted me and said it made sense that I am a guy. I however have not had that much experience with guys, so this is only based on a small amount of interactions with them. I however have always been treated more like a guy than a girl.

Girls have never taken it as well...

[kingpot]

Hey I'm back -  Sorry for the late reply guys. I was preparing for my final exams and now they're finally over so I have the chance to come back online.

I really enjoyed reading every post. I realized there're many guys in the same place as me and I really feel like a part of this family. Your replies have made my day. So I'd like to thank every one of you... I feel so warm inside.