I am now officially 60 y/o and also spent much to all of that time "In the closet". I am also a bit of an enigma. I felt since I was like 4 y/o I wanted to be a girl. I hoped, wished, prayed that I would wake up as one. Never happened back then. I was told in uncertain terms by mom when I was like 5 "Boys do not wear skirts". As one of several second generation blue collar family types back in the 50's & 60's the only thing worse then a gay person was a a gay person in a dress. A hetero-TV was an oxymoron. Real men do not each quiche and certainly not wear dresses.
When I got out of uni, I experimented with transitioning, twice. Both times utter fails. Between experiments I had my "Practice" marriage hoping the feelings will go away. They didn't. Only my wife did after finding my stash of clothes. I figured maybe "Coming clean" was a better idea. Which I did to my future fiancee. Well... when wedding date pressure mounted, she bolted. I wasn't "A real man"
I spent a good 40 years being a chameleon, trying to blend in. To at some level be like other guys. It took an ever increasing effort to bury the GD. No matter what I needed the at least once a month escape from maleness. At times of high stress, even more
And there was plenty of stress. To bury Joanne I buried myself in a universe of Diversion, Distractions and even denial. The 3D's as I call them. My existence morphed into an overwhelming drive to seem "Normal", bury Joanne forever. I said after two failed transition experiments "I am just a Cross-Dresser". I really just settled on that. At 6ft tall, big everything and deeper then average voice... oh yeah, also balding since 14, I could be nothing else but. In time I turned into a lifeless soulless thing that existed merely to do "What was expected". Actually, more of what the chameleon said was expected. I was a Hollywood facade of a man. Not a person. Just a thing
As often happened in my life, the excrement hit the air-handler yet again. Laid-off, new job 350 miles from home, a shaky marriage now a long distance shaky marriage. A wife fighting depression as well as the chronic pain she has been in for 8 years. Plenty of financial obligations. The new job in rural WV, our home just outside NYC where the best doctors are supposed to be. SHe stayed in NJ to bark at strangers passing the house.
I was alone, in a strange place, new job, culture shock, and.... WAY too much time with just my thoughts. I fell back on my old friends food and booze to shut off the noise. All my distractions were gone. Even my job which so much of it defined me was a joke. A good admin could be as much of an engineer as I was expected to be now working for a mil contractor. 90% of my brain needed to be tied behind my back just to make it fair. After a few months my weight started to get way to close to 200 lbs, a territory this former fatty swore she'll never come close to again after dropping 100 lbs. years earlier.
A lightning bolt shot through me as I sat there sobbing and thinking "I couldn't even cross-dress if I wanted to. Nothing will fit" It spoke volumes. Of everything that I could be depressed over, not being able to fit into my fem wardrobe bothered me the most. I sobbed for a good hour. Not from self-pity, rather because I knew I needed to change things. Change how I was NOT handling being trans which left only having to deal with it for real. Either deal with or that special concrete wall at 90MPH I was eyeing up. One option had a Do-Over
Was I ever a cross-dresser? God how I wish I was. Life would have been far less complicated. But wishing I was just a cross-dresser was about as effective as wishing I'd wake up in the morning as a girl. It took nearly 50 years to realize I was waking up each morning as a girl.
When faced with problems with many moving pieces and no simple answer, I found the answer to one easy question tends to answer the most complicated questions in life:
"Which Pain is Worse?"
You are certainly somewhere in the TG spectrum. The real trick is sorting out where you are, TODAY which then leads into what you need to do to manage the GD. You know you are not happy with the "In the closet" spot you are in. That's an easy one to fix. But it depends on which pain is worse. Loosing your wife?, Family? Friends? Livelihood? Or, would just the occasional "Escape from Maleness" that you had pre-marriage immensely change how you feel?
There seems to be a tendency for people to reason:
I am not Cis, therefore I am trans. If I am trans the only real route to nirvana is to be all in and do a full social and medical transition. Making that leap of logic is often a very deep well of unending angst. Except for the members of the Transition or Die club.
I am constantly juggling Needs and Wants. Most days I do not need to fully transition. That feeling often lasts from hours, to maybe a few days. Every day I want to. But.... Gender presentation is about 20% of the totality of what makes me, Me. The potential cost of making a full transition is more then I want to risk. I do not Need to transition. I do know, without any doubt whatsoever, I need my HRT. I now need to see, to feel and to know I now have a body I can live and be happy in. I worked hard on my personal growth. I know I need to keep up with those lessons. I need to keep on fully integrating the male side of me with female side. After 7 years of work I am still learning what it is to be me, the real person me. I Need/Want my wife, BFF, soul-mate, and reality therapist of some 40 years. I also know how difficult it has been and still is for her to loose her man. She sure cannot see me as one when my breasts are nicer then hers. Yet I do present primarily as male as I dance on the edge of my unique knife.
Only you can answer Which Pain is Worse? for you
