Hello,
I've been exploring as a guest here for a few days and decided to register so I could introduce myself and start asking some questions.
I'm a 41 years old and I've struggled with my gender identity for as long as I can remember. As a young kid I remember playing house with my little sister, I was always the mom or her sister, and I would wrap a sheet around my body as a makeshift dress. Later around age 8, I started wearing some of my mom's clothes and built a small stash from the forgotten clothes section of her closet.
A couple years later I was discovered by my parents wearing my mom's clothes while I slept. They confronted me the next morning. Talk about being mortified! It didn't help that my hothead and occasionally abusive dad was glaring at me the whole time. So the clothes went away, the dressing became much less frequent and opportunistic. I buried my true self very deep and hid behind a very manly exterior. All state football player, pretended to be into cars, partying, fighting, chasing girls, etc...
Considering the environment I grew up in, small town rural Midwestern USA 18 years ago in a very conservative community I'm not sure I really had a choice but to hide. I became very excellent at playing a man. Fast forward to last year, I find myself married for 19 years with three teenage kids and one helluva case of gender dysphoria.
With the help of a therapist that I've been seeing for about 7 months now, I shared my struggle with my wife last summer. So far she has been supportive and continues to show me love, albeit still in a bit of shock. We're from the same small town and share a similar amount of anxiety about this due to our repressed upbringing.
My therapist is encouraging me to experiment while being open with my wife. So I've started to build a small wardrobe of women's underwear and nightgowns which I wear incognito on occasion. I feel like it looks ridiculous on my 6' 1" - 260 lbs dadbod, but it feels really nice (at least until my male junk starts to protest against being squeezed into clothing not made to accommodate it). I told my wife that I've started wearing the nightgowns to bed, but thus far I've only tried it on the nights when she has to getup early for work and goes to bed way before I do. I'm too embarrassed to dress in front of her yet, and I'm also afraid of her losing her attraction for me.
I'm having difficulty investing in new and maintaining old friendships and struggling with some suffocating loneliness at times. I guess I feel distrustful of most of the people in my life and suspect that if they knew what I was they would reject me. The pastor of the church we started attending a few months before coming out to my wife proudly announced to the congregation that the church would not be supporting marriage equality due to their interpretation of the "biblical definition of marriage". Of course I sat there with Jack Nicholson's voice in my head saying "wait till they get a load of me". I've not attended much since then and have been debating whether or not to schedule a meeting with the pastor to share the impact that has had on me, or just leave quietly and find a new church.
My workplace and job role as an account executive are NOT LGBTQ friendly. It is a bit of a gilded cage as I'm making good money. I've put myself on a one year plan of closing up some big commission deals with the hopes of using the money to start my own business, which I will ensure IS LGBTQ friendly.
I'm feeling a little stuck, so I'm here to learn, ask questions, and interact with folks of my own ilk.
Cheers!
