#hetgnc dating

It was really inspiring to read, and gave me a bit of hope for myself.

Here's a link to the forum posts anon is talking about!

"There are SO few cultural examples of men showing attraction to butch women that I find it really hard to believe any man could genuinely find me hot. My brain tells me those men must be out there, but my heart isn't convinced yet. I always find myself thinking that men might like me in spite of my butchness rather than because of it."

God, OP summed this experience up so well here. No notes. That's exactly how it feels.

Here's one of my favorite comments of encouragement:

I can say that since I got a stereotypically lesbian haircut, I get less attention from men in general, but the men who no longer notice me are for the most part the sorts of men who think of women as some general concept rather than as individual people. It is admittedly harder to pick up men on Tinder, but the people I actually meet are less likely to be disappointing, and a lot of them are enormously turned on by me.

That sounds about right-- Being yourself might please less people than being a people pleaser will, but it will also attract the people who are actually meant for you, and filter out all the people who were just going to waste your time anyway.

Embrace your virago feelings for men, but don’t be so blinded by them that you miss signs he doesn't care about you. Embrace your virago instinct to give and initiate, but be careful not to allow others to take advantage of you for it.

I was in an embarrassing long-term situationship (yeah... long-term situationship) with this guy I was pretty sure was some flavor of HetGNC. His flustered face and demeanor gave away that he had a little crush on me, but he was incredibly shy and so, HetGNC or not, I knew I’d need to be the one making the moves for it to go anywhere.

I was absolutely fine with that, even happy about it, being how I am. However...

While I had been under the impression the whole time that he was "just super into me and wanting me to be the one initiating," eventually it became clear that what he really wanted was a low-maintenance casual girlfriend, or something. Sure, yeah, he'd bat his eyelashes at me and follow me around like a lost puppy and look at me with starry eyes, and he was actually the one to reach out to me initially... but he'd also leisurely take a couple of days to text me back, half the time he was "too busy" to hang out, and eventually, to no one’s surprise but mine, he ghosted me when things got too serious. I'd been led on. Found out later I wasn't even his type. (Shocking: it was “Butchest woman Twitter can handle.”)

Lesson learned:

Sometimes a guy is HetGNC. But sometimes he’s just not that into you. The difference is in whether he's putting in effort to make sure your emotional needs are being met too. Being a virago doesn't mean you can't need anything from a partner, especially something as basic as attention or appreciation.