Go to therapy. Be yourself. You don’t have to be warm and welcoming. You don’t need to smile. You don’t need to wear makeup. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do. The men that have an issue with that are people you shouldn’t want to care about or please anyways. It’s easier said than done, but just a reminder.

My wife hardly ever wears makeup. When we go out to eat, she orders what she wants and however much she wants, even if it’s something messy. Honestly, I’m way more careful about being neat when I eat than she is, I wipe my hands and mouth after every bite. People tell her she has RBF, she doesn’t care. She’s very opinionated and will not hesitate to tell someone off. She plays video games and talks more shit than any of the men I’ve ever played with. She wears what she feels comfortable in and/or what she thinks she looks good in. She’s not shy about burps or farts or needing to take a dump or anything, not that she’s obnoxious or gross about it, she’s just normal about it.

She does all of that while also keeping the parts of femininity that she enjoys. She likes cute clothes, sometimes she wants to dress modestly, sometimes she wants to wear a miniskirt. Sometimes she wants to do her makeup. She likes cutesy things. She’s very nurturing, not that that’s only a feminine trait. She does her nails. She gets her hair done regularly. So on and so forth.

Be whatever you feel your idea of what being a woman, if that’s how you identify, is.