Envy as a component of same sex attraction

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I'm not for one moment attempting to assert this happens in every case or even in many cases. I am only speaking for myself.

When I was much younger I identified as a gay man. Nowadays I am predominantly attracted to women. This change has happened entirely of its own accord and is not something I've tried to influence.

However, I do know I was also deeply jealous of the the guys I was attracted to when I was a teenager/student etc. and I wondered if anyone else had had this experience?

Looking back, the guys I was attracted to were quite androgynous, pretty in fact. They had quite feminine faces and hair and slender builds. They were also heterosexual and massively popular with girls because of their looks.

That is how I wanted to look. I did not look like that.
I am a very big hairy bloke. I always found it difficult to find the sort of clothes I would like to wear so I felt like a particular role was being "forced" on me. If I had tried to dress in the way I wanted I would have just looked comical because of my build and appearance. (just to clarify I'm not talking about cross-dressing but about dressing in a more androgynous style)

Therefore I had complex feelings towards these people - I was drawn to them and a bit resentful of them as well. Nowadays the attraction isn't really there, but the jealousy still is.

Can anyone relate?

Last edited by Falloy on 11 Jan 2014, 3:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've actually thought a great deal about this. My belief is that my attraction to guys was me attempting to emulate them... ie, the attractive/social guys were able to interact successfully in society and I was not. This made me very VERY interested in them . Since at the time I was unaware of my autism, I decided my interest must be due to being gay. It seemed a reasonable assumption

Later in life, I came to realize the true cause of my attraction and I now self identify as bisexual

I think I know what you mean. You described it well. Although my "type" was not like yours, I remember having those two feelings together inside me. And probably I do sometimes get this combination of feelings even now. I guess, logically thinking, it can only happen in gay people. Because you are attracted to the same sex, you can actually compare yourself with someone you are attracted to. It's pretty much "I want to be him!" kind of feeling. This is not a nice feeling.

I've noticed those pretty boys over the years and yeah, I was jealous of the attention they got, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. They weren't the ones I was attracted to anyway. The ones who made my heart leap in my chest were the skinny, nerdy guys with glasses (think Dale from The Big Bang Theory). The few times I ventured into gay bars were wastes of time because I was always ignored plus they never had my type anyway, just the muscular beefy dudes that all looked like Freddie Mercury. Yuck.

The want to be vs. attracted to and/or want to be *plus* attracted to dilemma is something I've wondered about (and struggle with) as a bisexual woman. For me, I can be very attracted to men but sometimes resent it because I feel like I also want to be them, particularly when I'm watching fiction, where male actors often get to play the glorious bastards with slick, badass clothing and all the confidence in the world or the lone-wolf noir types Doing the Right Thing. On the other hand, I'm usually attracted to women who are like myself (on the geeky side of things, less outgoing) but more impulsive and take-charge, which also involves some envy on my part. In some ways, I think women are less 'threatening' to me as partners because they're less holding out something I can never be/am supposed to be happy just being around and admiring.

In a perfect world, I would find someone (of either sex) I don't have any desire to be but enjoy being around. Though I wonder if most relationships don't involve some degree of envy, just from people finding partners who offer skills and traits they find desirable. And who most desires what they already possess themselves?

i was always jealous of the boys that were more attractive than me. i was fat and they were thin.

but now i am thin and they are probably fat

^^ This is very similar to me; attraction and envy on both sides. As long as I can remember I envied men/boys, to the point of jealously, both physically (I always wanted to be bigger and stronger) and socially (their apparent freedom as compared to women.) My envy of women/girls was more centered around my desire to be normal, i.e. if I look and act normal maybe I will be normal, though now I'm more accepting of myself as I am so this is less so. My attraction and envy were so intertwined that it caused a lot of confusion for me. It greatly contributed to my gender confusion and it was a long time before I became aware of my bisexuality.

I wouldn't call it envy, so much as idealisation and awe. I struggle to see feminine attractiveness in myself sometimes, so when I see it in other women, my mind has a habit of exaggerating it. As I get to know a woman and find out that she is flawed and human as well, my feelings for her develop into something more mature and stable, something closer to love than infatuation.

I've never had that sort of love returned in a homosexual sense (never had a girlfriend, although I slept with women quite a long time ago.) I used to put this down to me 'lacking' something other women have, but really, I've never had a girlfriend for other reasons: because most people are straight, I'm on the autism spectrum, I'm into men enough that it's easy for me to end up with one and because I seem awkward on the queer scene.

I want to see other women as equals. I wish I could completely get rid of this idea that they've all got some magic female mystique I haven't got. Even if I never get into a relationship with one, it'll be good for my self esteem and my ability to relate to people.

Funny, when I see those cool guys, I feel like I AM like them more than I am like the women I'm attracted to. If I see a guy I want to be like, it seems somewhat achievable (although I'd be a 'female version' of them.) I feel like I can match the men I'm attracted to, even if I won't be exactly the same and I'll have different traits and strengths. I feel like I'm their equal and I just hope they recognise that. I'm like that with my current boyfriend. The things we have in common, I feel like I manifest in a female form. The ways in which we're different just seem like being in a team and trying to achieve the same goals with different strengths, rather than some major gendered difference or yin/yang thing.

If I see a woman I'm attracted to, I almost feel like she's going to find me freakish and be annoyed that this weird person likes them. I don't feel equal. I feel like I'm making a pilgrimage just by going over to her, or that I'm blasphemously staring at a holy icon by looking at her. When I get to know her better, that feeling starts to go away and I relate to her more like I relate to men. But it still happens and I think it's because I lack faith in my own femininity.

A funny thing is that I notice some straight men have the same feelings about women I have: 'I hope she doesn't catch my ugly mug looking at her beautiful face/body. Hope she's not offended.' etc. Then when they get to know her, they feel like they might actually have something to offer this person. In my case, I only get to offer loyal friendship rather than anything sexual, but it feels nice to be able to just offer that. I think I can understand from this how some straight men fall in love with women. It hasn't worked out when I've tried to date lesbians because I think they don't get it. What it gets me is straight female friends who do get it because they've had it from men as well, but they can't consummate it because of the whole being straight thing. They're usually flattered, though.

I would like to be more confident in myself as a woman, though. I'm happy in a hetero relationship right now, so it's more for my own internal happiness than for getting into a relationship.

That sounds rather nice! With me and men, I think it's a complicated case of overexposure to media, among other things; like I said, particularly in SF/F (my favorite genre), men are the ones who look good, take action, and get to feel isolated from humanity and, often act ego-strokingly self-involved, cocky, or goofy. You've got the Doctor (uh, well, *some* of them are attractive) and the Master, Agent Smith, Deckard and Roy, every character ever played by Robert Downey Jr., Sam Tyler from Life on Mars (British version!), Crichton from Farscape... Women characters who have that sense of isolation from the context around them are usually written without the same flair; they're quieter and less flashy, like Willow in Buffy or Fred in Angel. (My favorite exceptions, as I was growing up, were Celes and Tina from Final Fantasy 6, though Tina was quite quiet.) Male characters tend to make looking socially isolated/alienated a strength, not a reason to be quieter, undesired, and uncertain about oneself. The strange thing is, I don't have such a strong sense of envy and desire to be like them with real men, but it still taints the way I relate to real men and my feeling that presenting more femininely and being attracted to men is a weakness. When I'm with a woman, in my head, I can 'feel' like a male character--take the initiative more, imagine myself carrying out the active part of courting rituals, act like a cocky goof if I feel like it. Of course, it all eventually falls apart when the cognitive dissonance sets in and I find myself feeling stretched untenably between desires and gender 'poles,' between desiring what I'm pretending to be and feeling ashamed of not being able to play the role naturally and consistently.

I can maybe understand a bit about feeling intimidated by more feminine women? I don't feel strong admiration for them, but I do feel a sense of seeing people I can never be like and never fit in with whom I'm *supposed* to be able to do both with. And I always feel like other women are just tolerating me, whereas I often feel less like that with less feminine-presenting (usually geeky, in my case) women and with men. When I'm around other women, I feel like an impostor who wishes I could understand how they navigate the world and feel comfortable in it.

And I don't want to hijack the thread! So anyone feel free to interrupt my train of thought and redirect the conversation.

I think it's a component in all attraction. My straight NT step sister said she is attracted to tall guys because she wants to be tall.