[AnnieBL]

For many years I believed I was gay, firstly because at 17 I got a massive crush on a fourteen year old boy with the feminine beauty that often occurs at that age, secondly because I found that gay men would initiate sexual encounters and would often use me or expect me to participate in what I saw as a female role, and thirdly because I found that initiating a relationship with a female so difficult that the results were always apparently disastrous from my point of view, even with the one woman who established a strong friendship with me, but married someone else (and 17 years later became my wife). When we finally got together I tried to fess up to my homosexual encounters, but she said she didn't want to know and we should keep our sexual pasts to ourselves.

It was only quite recently that the pieces fell into place and I realized that I was gender variant rather than sexually disoriented, and I now regard my male persona as heterosexual since I have never had an emotional as opposed to a physical relationship with a male. Of course the situation raises all sorts of other conundrums that I and my wife of more than thirty years are trying to work our way through since I came out to her as gender variant: but we are and indeed have to be hopeful that our union and partnership shall survive.

I don't know how much any of this relates to your own situation, but I am more than willing to provide any help that I can.