Hello everyone,

I hear a lot about how the people here have memory upon memory of getting along well with girls growing up, but I would like to know how you got along with the other boys/guys socially.

Personally, I've never had any success assimilating into a group of guys, whether in my youth or in my adult life (30s now). I'm usually the quiet one, just sitting on the sidelines watching and thinking. We all get along fine, but I'm always rather emotionless - I don't really care about the things they talk about, my jokes usually bomb and I'm absolute rubbish at the alpha-male games they play. I end up entirely in my head trying to analyze the dynamic in order to know what I should do next.

Until grade 4 nearly all of my friends were girls. I remember it being so effortless and fun. Best years of my life, bar-none. By the end of grade 5 I realized that my days playing with girls were over, and it all went sharply downhill and didn't recover until I learned to relate to others from within my head, not my heart. It took me until high school to finally figure out how to be semi-normal and that cold and detached social facade has now become deeply engrained within my personality. I hate it, and am working hard on ripping it down, and rediscovering what I lost as a child.

Anyway, before I start going off-topic here, can here anybody relate to this? In most of the stories I hear, people don't have this much trouble learning to get along with other guys. So what's your story?

Never very well at all... I had 1 male friend in the course of my schooling and we fought a lot 

My biggest problem was I couldn't handle "guy jokes," like if they say something insulting about you but it's just a joke... I always took it too seriously and got really self conscious 

But I never really liked a lot of traditionally guy things so yea there was not much common ground to work with anyway.

I definitely fit in a lot more with girls, even for all my quirks 

Most of my friends are guys, we have similar interests and a lot of shared experiences but its hard to talk about feelings or anything really deep with them. Some are mroe open than others when talking about trans issues etc but on the whole i leave that side of my life to my girlfriends and just focus on having a laugh with the boys. It hurts sometimes that i cant fully share my life with the guys but the fact they are willing to accept me and defend me when the need arises means a lot to me.

Very much.

I had to start staying away from girls quite early and since I couldn't really identity with boys, learnt to make my own company.

It could sound pathetic if it weren't for the numbers in a similar position.

I found, as I was growing up, my interest in boys became more intimate. But again, it's difficult to express something like this when the reaction tends to be a beating.

It's good and welcome, that this situation is gradually changing for children today.

I never got along with guys in my school years. In fact, they always bullied me. I was always seen as the "odd, gay boy". I wasn't very effeminate but I wasn't masculine enough to fit in or be seen as straight.

Now, guys drool over me.

I always was able to "get along" with boys in my youth and now guys as I've gotten older, but to say that I have any meaningful friendships with any one of them, is a far cry from reality. I never really ever developed the male bonding that you typically see amongst many men and their friends. It's not that I didn't try or even thought I was putting forth the effort, but I just never quite clicked in their talk, or inside jokes, or just whatever.

I'm not syaing that I haven't had surface friendships and people I've been able to hang out with and be around, but nobody I ever let get close to me to get know the real me. I've come out to those friends within the last couple of years, and I've lost a couple, and the others have somewhat distanced themselves to more of acquaintance type friends at best. I am okay with it though.

Most of my life I have always been better friends with girls/women. I've had better connections and more meaningful conversations and relationships. Also, most of the women I've come out too seem to be much more understanding and accepting.

Quote from: JenJen2011 on February 08, 2012, 01:16:40 PM
I never got along with guys in my school years. In fact, they always bullied me. I was always seen as the "odd, gay boy". I wasn't very effeminate but I wasn't masculine enough to fit in or be seen as straight.

Now, guys drool over me.

Gonna go with this.
Except for the last part.
They still think I'm icky. 

Lol i guesse im the black sheep!

While I don't doubt that most ts/tg people get along well with girls, it wasn't my experience.   I was so closeted and withdrawn that I was invisible to the girls every bit as much as I was with the boys.

  I can relate to a few of the posters here in that I had trouble interacting with guys, I just didn't "get them" and they didn't get me either. I hung out with mostly unpopular guys that were either hippie/stoners or video game nerds. Besides playing video games and getting high we had no shared interests and I felt like an outsider within the group. I eventually came out as trans when I was 17 and when they found out completely stopped talking to me and spread rumors about me that I was gay which they were saying even before I came out but w/e.

  I have a mix of girl & guy friends now and most of them are pretty chill with the whole trans thing, some of them don't understand it but I can't blame them as it can seem rather strange to most cisgender people.   

I've always had a few guy friends, but most guys during my youth would just want to pick on me and poke fun at my feminine personality

As I got older and started learning how to defend myself I didn't get physically picked on as much but people would still often comment on my feminine behavior... Even when I thought I was being 'quite the guy' they'd just say that I was acting like a girl who trying to act like a guy

Quote from: El on February 08, 2012, 04:54:30 PM
Lol i guesse im the black sheep!

I have plenty of male friends too  

I always found gender neutral ways to interact with my male friends so I found it ok growing up.  I did have social conflicts when the gender roles got exaggerated at times, but the normal relaxed ways we were with each other have always been fine for me.  It was rubbish withholding my trans status from them all those years as it limited how close I could feel to them, but we still formed meaningful relationships with each other.

I did try to be a 'cool kid' once when growing up.  That was a complete failure though, waaay too much pressure there!