Within the realm of what's actually, realistically attainable for you, what would be "perfect" in terms of your own body and how people interact with you?
Now bear with me as I try to sort through some things (this may get TL:DR for some of you ... feel free to just answer the question your own way as I'm always curious what other people feel would make them happy) ...
It seems that a lot (probably the majority) of trans stories, when it comes to being FAAB and identifying as male, include transition. I'm assuming because what is NOT "perfect" is being seen as female in society. But there seems to be a range as far as how one feels about one's own physical body. My perspective is that this directly correlates with wanting to make changes to align the body with the mind. In other words, if you experience a lot of dysphoria about areas of your body, you're willing to do whatever is available to help change your body. In the case of what's available, I see pretty much 3 options: diet/exercise (not drastic, but can definitely help modify your body to an extent), hormones, and finally surgery. So when I say realistically attainable, those are the top things that come to my mind. And given that the later two can drastically change your physical appearance to male, you'd pretty much have to at least complete transition to the point of living as male (change name, gender market, etc.) or face some awkward consequences or be cool with being seen as androgynous, non-binary, genderqueer, butch or a myriad of other things that aren't 100% female.
But what if there were other variables? This is basically where I'm stuck and struggling at the moment. I've given a lot of thought in the last week to why exactly I do
not want to transition (mostly because I'm going to try therapy one more time for some of my issues relating to gender and I want to be prepared for that inevitable question, "If you're male, why don't you want to transition?"). Here's what I've come up with so far:
1) I don't want to have to drastically change my life so that other people can acknowledge what I already know I am.
2) I wouldn't want it to effect my career negatively. Also wouldn't want it to effect my long term friends or my family.
3) I wouldn't want it to effect my marriage (my spouse knows, I'm talking about legal issues).
4) I'm not put off by my name, so changing my name and going through all that would be a major pain when it's not one of my "triggers".
5) I don't want to look drastically different.
I know a lot of times people use that technique of asking you, "If you could just be the way you want to be and not have it effect career/life/family/friends, would you?" as a way of pinpointing what's holding you back form transition, but for me I feel that doesn't really work. The rest of my life I'm fairly happy with. My gender doesn't come up a heck of a lot in my career and it doesn't matter to my spouse. I have a small circle of friends who know my true gender and fully accept that. But there's still things that bother me (or I wouldn't be posting this or considering going back to therapy) ...
1) I do not like being referred to as female by people who don't know me. Sometimes I can let it slide and not have it get to me, but more and more it's just one of those triggers. Someone calls me "ma'am" and I just want to punch a wall.
2) I do not like having moobs. If I had $8k and no fear of surgery I would get rid of them.
3) I've come to the realization that if I had a bit more downstairs growth it might actually help my self-image (not that I'm all about size, it's just if I had a tad bit more it would really not be that far off from slightly below average MAAB).
4) I really don't want to age like a female. So far it hasn't happened, but I want to work towards keeping the muscle tone and all that. I know supplemental T could probably help a lot with that.
#1 on that list is kind of what has thrown me for a loop the last couple years (it's gotten worse over the last 2 yrs). Before I used to shrug it off a lot more because it's people I didn't know. I didn't have to interact with those people on a regular basis so what should it matter? And oddly enough, people I DO know (that don't know the big secrets that I'm trans and have some physical quirks) it doesn't bother me that they call me by my birth name and think "female" when they associate with me. I'm not sure if it's because my gender rarely comes up (and granted, in certain situations, like if I'm stuck in a group of women who know me and THINK I'm a women, it can make me feel way awkward) or if it's because I'm genuinely being myself and those people accept that self.
So I've come to think that my personal answer to, "What would be 'perfect' for you" would go something like this:
1) Just don't bring up gender, period. (how I can get the rest of the world of people who don't know me to do this and NOT transition I don't know)
2) Don't ever call me ma'am ... whether you don't know me or you do! (I guess the only approach to this would be to just tell people, "I'm not a ma'am" when they do it).
3) Go on a very low dose of compounded T cream (could potentially get additional downstairs growth over time, any changes would be very gradual so people around me probably wouldn't notice anything drastic, I would probably avoid the complications I had with injectable T, it will probably keep me from aging more in a female way).
4) Contemplate whether or not I could truly face chest surgery and how I'd go about it (I already schemed up that I'd tell my family, "oh yeah they found some lump or something and they have to come off!" but other than that the thought still terrifies me).
5) Continue on living my life as I have and see if these few changes are enough to make me more comfortable and happy.
I may just print out this post and take it to the therapy session
