Hi y'all! I've watched and lurked in this thread for some time now, but have never posted here. I've seen myself as a "strong ally" ever since I've had a childhood friend that began her transition right after high school (we're both in our 30's now). I always wanted to make sure that I understood the community more so that I could be a better ally by being aware of all the issues you folks face from day to day. At least, I believed that was why...
Apologies for the incoming book you're about to read. My stream of consciousness has been activated.
I've dealt with depression and anxiety most of my life. Body issues were/are the most prevalent, even though I've been told time and again that I'm an attractive man. There was a point in time where I was extremely agoraphobic due to having panic disorder back in my 20's. It's manageable now with my meds, but I never got to a point to where I understood why I had these issues. Always the "chemical imbalance" explanation, that I just went along with. This made me start looking into myself some more over the past several weeks, so I could maybe reduce the intake of those meds.
I've always just assumed the role of being a "manly-man" since I was a kid, but not until we had those "sex-ed" sessions in 5th grade. I used to play dress-up with my older sister in which she would dress me up like another girl and we'd do fun stuff together (my sister has always admitted to wishing she had a younger sister). Playing those games made me inextricably happy, for some reason. Once puberty started to hit, I accepted that I would need to be "one of the guys", have a girlfriend at some point, lose my virginity before I'm in my 20's, get married, and eventually have kids. I struggled in high school to "find time" to pursue a girlfriend (I went on dates, but never committed to going steady with someone until freshmen year in college).
Several girlfriends later, I'm now married to someone I love and we have an awesome baby boy. My wife and I love doing things together, but I've noticed that we engage in things as best friends do, not necessarily as lovers. It eventually hit me: the drive to do all of "manly things" that was promised to me at birth never really came. It's just what was expected of me.
I always thought to myself how weird it was that none of my guy friends loved Disney animation as much as I did. I used to really love singing and performing in musicals (I even sung my wife down the aisle, which causes me to cringe super hard when I think about it ouch ouch). I've always been the guy that had a deep understanding of what women felt or thought, almost like a superpower. Even though I yield a lot to what my girlfriends wanted to do at any given time (was just happy to be there!), I always prided myself on keeping someone happy...almost to a fault (they probably thought I was a pushover in retrospect). I love to listen to music and watch movies that moves me, not really big on shallow media of any form. James Cameron movies were great to me (T2 is my all-time favorite movie). The common theme in his movies was almost always having a strong woman character at the center.
I really enjoy hanging out with my best friend (cis guy). We've been best buds since 9th (15 yo) grade, even though we've known each other since 4th (9 or 10) grade. Our times together mostly consist of going out to eat/drink, catching a movie, listening to music, and having deep conversations while driving around the city. My wife acts like she's jealous any time we go out, but now I think it was actual jealousy. I recognize that the dude is attractive (so does my wife lol), but I don't want to be with him or anything (at least not on a conscious level). He's very similar to me, in that he knows he needs to get married at some point, but just can't seem to find "the one" which worries his family a great deal.
To keep things short (too late), all of this has led me to this point: I started reading r/egg_irl, which made me start to question myself. I had noticed that I have to consciously be aware of times I might not be acting "manly enough", whether it's in tone, hand gestures, facial expressions, etc. or else other men would see me as a fraud. I came across
this essay that was linked in that subreddit that really spoke to me. Now, here I am questioning things, and don't have anyone I can talk to about it since my childhood friend no longer lives here or has a social media profile, my family is deeply religious which prevents me from having conversations about this with them, and I have a high-enough profile career that I don't want to jeopardize.
Whew, this was all in my head. Thanks for reading!
