It’s only as awkward as you and the other person makes it, and you sound like you made it pretty awkward for yourself before even giving the other person a chance to be non-awkward about it.

The way I see it: If it’s something the person can fix immediately, like a downed zipper or food in their teeth or visible booger, tell them (discreetly) immediately. If it’s not fixable at the time, don’t draw attention to it.

And I dont know how “oh, you seem to have a zipper malfunction” could ever be seen as trying to hit on someone, so you’d likely have been fine if you hadn’t blown it out of proportion.

Additionally: if you start waffling about and overexplaing, youll make it awkward for yhe other person, if you just mention it casually like you’d mention the weather they won’t feel like its a big deal for you to have seen it. I would appreciate it at least, rather than notice by myself and wonder how many people have seen my underwear or visible booger during the day.

A woman doesn’t have to be feminine, there are plenty of masc and butch women. Would you feel more comfortable with short hair? There are also other options. Would you feel more comfortable thinking of yourself as a man (men can also be feminine or masculine), or neither, or both?

I didn’t feel comfortable calling myself a woman, but not crossing any gender boundary, I just always preferred “girl”. I didn’t feel mature enough to be a woman until I kinda forced myself to claim that title. With enough use I now feel comfortable referring to myself as a woman.

Titles and gender can be hard. You are allowed to experiment until you find the expression and terminology that suits you. But also, its okay to feel ridiculous, you can grow into feeling comfortable with whichever terminology you want.

I have had either of these two major symptoms most of my life.

1. Unhealthy amount: not being able to stop as long as there is alcohol left, staying out til closing, often getting blackout drunk, emptying the glass before going to bed instead of into the sink. This I’ve had most of my life.

2. Unhealthy frequency: drinking before or during social events, party every weekend, “unwinding” after work, drinking as a fix to something (like making boring tasks fun or improving my mood or to fall asleep or get energized), thinkig about it a lot, unable to resist whenever its available or offered. This slowly turned into a more and more frequent habit, until I was literally drinking at work.

I guess there is also the final sign:

3. Not being able to quit: this includes not even trying. I was never able to quit because I never really wanted to. Not wanting to quit is part of addiction, even when you need to. Once I tried to get in control of my drinking, I always found reason to drink pretty much as much as usual. This is when I finally realised that I was an addict. It’s easy to ignore if you never try to quit, but once you try and fail to quit (several times), it’s pretty obvious.