I have a question which I'm a bit unsure about how to phrase (and even about what it is I want to ask), but it's something I've been thinking a lot about and am trying to make sense of. This question is based on my own experience and personality so I'll provide some background: I'm 16 years old (the reason I mention my age is that I'm curious if puberty and adolescence might factor into my confusion), male (though gender is an issue of some confusion for me as well) and would probably identify as bisexual (although I've had no sexual and hardly any romantic partners or experience at all). Also, as this will tie into the question, I might have some narcisstic tendencies: I often go back and forth between thinking I'm very good-looking, intelligent, etc., and the complete opposite, that I'm ugly, wrong and worthless and so on (I think this might be quite common with teenagers, though - is it?).
To the question: I've noticed that often when I become feel attracted to people I also feel an urge to look and dress like they do - this mostly happens with males, but sometimes also with females. The attraction here isn't attraction to people as persons, I should mention, but more aesthetical (although it's possible I also want to copy or become influenced by other qualities rather than the purely physical). I also find that oftenly the people I'm attracted to, if they are males, look a bit like me (which might be due to a conscious effort on my part to look like them - not sure which came first). A poster named faething mentioned something similar in the Male Androgyny thread: "Some sort of reverse narcissism. I want to be what I like."
So, in lack of a better way to ask, could anyone provide some thoughts or theories on why this is so, if it indeed is so at all? (I hope I didn't come across as egocentric here - other than that one other post I have no idea if this is a concern to anyone else at all, but I'm hoping the question and any possible answers to it might be of use to someone other than myself).
I'm reposting Janus' post from Bisexual 101 in its entirety. I thought this was an interesting topic that deserved its own thread. I have similar tendencies—when I have been pursued relationships with women, I have often pursued women who were extremely different from me. When I have pursued men, I usually pursue men with whom I feel some similarity. But a phase I had of dating exclusively women before I began to tinker with my gender I now recognize as a last-ditch effort to make myself into a woman by making myself more like the women I was dating.
I remember a conversation with a boy of mine (hetero-identified) where we joked, mildly uncomfortably, that when I told him "I want your body" I was really saying "I want to look like you." It was one of my worries regarding my transition that I would get halfway through it and realize that what I had taken to be "wanting to be like" was actually simple attraction and nothing more. I still have difficulty telling the difference. Do other people have this problem? How do you sort these things out? |
