My girlfriend made me see femininity in a healthier light and helped me accept myself
(random image from Google images)
Hello everyone
I am pretty sure this post will sound quite weird after reading, but anyways let me just get to it
I (24 AFAB) have been dating my girlfriend (27 AMAB) since 2025 October. Before I had met her, my view of femininity was quite toxic due to my environment and country. Here, being a female, everything about femininity is about your social power and social status. People look at you weird for not even wearing feminine clothes
My family would always say girls should not swear, girls should be proper, good looking, always have make-up on. Top that off with the constant pressure of performing above my peers academically and being intellectual by them as well and there you have it: an out of reach, almost impossible to achieve model of femininity.
Now me: chubby, never puts makeup on, always has comfy clothes that don't match, takes shower once or twice a week, doesn't do skincare or anything like that and my family hated me. I hated myself for not matching those perfect standards for femininity
In college I'd watch my roommates get ready everyday for 2-3 hours. Do skincare, put on a good amount of perfume, wear nice clothes, put on makeup, shape their hair with hair iron (those iron cylinder machines I forgot their name)
At work I still see the same. And outside, everywhere; it's always the same. This made me slowly start to think I am probably not a woman enough. Don't get me wrong, I loved feminine things, but the constant pressure to perform and act feminine was suffocating. I had already slowly started to question my gender identity because of that (and now I identify as bi-gender)
Despite my environment (both my country and my family) being really against anything LGBTQ+, I never really had similar feelings. As years went on, I noticed many trans girls and started following many trans-fem circles, although from a distance since I had nothing else to do besides being an ally.
But seeing T-Femmes would heal me and make me look at femininity at a slightly forgiving angle towards myself. Because you see: there was only one man in my family. My social circles would usually be surrounded by women. Therefore I came to see how they think in my country and it made me not like the femininity they'd portray. Similar to alpha males, their femininity is to "get what they want"
But T-Femmes are the way they are simply because they want to be and they are happy being themselves. It feels purer to me, without any malicious intent behind their femininity.
But of course I never really let these feelings surface, because like I said, my social circles are 99% women and my family is all women with one man. I have many good cis woman friends and I know their heart is good, but it's what society is imposed upon them that they are "performative females" and I don't like their femininity, not they themselves.
Fast forward to October of last year, I met my girlfriend at a kink server in discord. I was a cis woman back then and I was straight. We started as friends, slowly got to know each other, I opened up to her about my toxic family, my life, my dreams, everything.
I loved her, and I still love her. But back then I was not honest about my feelings. I didn't want to accept I was gay due to the environment I was in and knowing what it would cost me.
But a month later it was obvious I was very much gay and sapphic for her. I just folded. She's kind, sweet, and made me feel like a woman I never felt like I was. İt's not the pushy kind of femininity my family would force upon me. İt's the little things. Telling me I look beautiful, I am cute, something suits me, she'd love to buy me this teddy bear...and now it's almost half a year and God, I am very much smitten with her like the first day. I still tear up to how much she helped me accept myself in a healthy way.
I came to appreciate being a woman in a natural way. I know I don't need to look perfect. I know it's okay for me to just like those things. To treat myself when I want to.
Thankfully I was never dysphoric so that has also helped. But I'd think back then so much to change my body. Now it barely crosses my mind. Don't get me wrong, I still get gender euphoria when I think of wanting to have different parts. But I love my current parts just as much.