Hi, I am a 44 year old man with a wife and three school age children and I have recently admitted to my wife that I think I am transgender, she says she wants to support me and I believe her but it is hard. I wish I could rid myself of the feeling that I am somehow in the wrong body so that I can lead a relatively uncomplicated life without potentially hurting my family but it feels like that is just not going to happen. Over the past few weeks since I came out to my wife - who is the only person that knows - I have been spending a lot of time researching online, not only about transgender issues but also asking myself the following questions: Is this just a mid-life crisis? Am I gay? Am I mad? Do I suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Am I a sociopath or a psychopath? I've been wondering if it is possible just to leave this whole thing alone and put it in a box under the bed ( along with my newly acquired heels ) and I really think that would be impossible and even more damaging than the alternative of actually being brave enough to confront my problem and dealing with the possibility that I could end up living alone because of this. I did secretly dress up in my mothers clothes when I was a child and I also wanted to be a girl but I had a very masculine father who fostered an environment which was brutally macho ( funnily enough I think he was secretly gay ) and I was always getting into fights at school because real men had to stand up for themselves, anyway I went to art school when I was 18 and dropped out after a year and spent the next 10 years living on the dole (welfare) and taking as many drugs as I could get my hands on. I did do a bit of crossdressing in my twenties,wearing my girlfriends lingerie and make up and getting her to photograph me, she was doing a course in photography at the time and I told her I'd dress up just for her project but when I subsequently wanted to repeat the experience she freaked a bit, so, depression, frustration, slashed wrists, anti-depressants - end of relationship. So a couple of years later I met my wife, we immediately began having children - I went back to art school and since I graduated I have basically been a housewife; my wife makes the money while I look after the kids, do the shopping and do all the cooking which is basically ok with me because I enjoy doing these things but keeping my true feelings - I want to be a woman - repressed has resulted in further problems with depression which I have been treating with alcohol and weed which has got somewhat out of hand though I have cut back a fair bit since I came out to my wife because of the relief I felt through admitting I really am a little bit different to what you might expect from my macho carapace.
So, yes, relief but also confusion and fear. Thinking: Am I really going to do this? (transition), it kind of blows my mind because it gives me hope that I can maybe be who I really want to be but it seems also a bit like maybe planning to go on holiday on the moon if you know what I mean, like, how am I going to get there.
