Hello everyone, you can call me L. I'm here with high hopes of figuring something out about myself, hoping you all will know the things to say and the questions to ask that can help me determine what I'm doing with my life. The question that feels like the mass of the sun is on my chest is: would I be happier/happiest living the rest of my life as a woman or as a man?
I'm 35, female, and in a great relationship with a man. We're planning to marry next year. He has two kids I love and though I can honestly say I never saw myself in the wife & mother role, I can't say whether I hate it or even really dislike it. There's just something about it that feels wrong. When I was 19 I got pregnant from a particularly traumatic experience. I carried her, gave birth to her, and she was adopted. That was a horrible time in my life and I've wondered if it is playing a role in how I feel now, why it feels wrong to "play mom" to kids who aren't mine. I've thought about that a lot, and I don't think that's it, but I wanted to mention it because this part of my life could come up if you all ask me certain things.
What feels like the heaviest reason why it all feels wrong and why I'm here is this constant feeling that there's something wrong with me and that something is my sex. It's not unbearable, overly traumatic, or even always there. There are times when I feel genuinely happy just being what I was born to be. But the feeling that there's some unseen man hiding inside me somewhere is around enough that it makes me wonder if I don't feel comfortable with certain "woman" things and labels because I'm somehow not really a woman but am really that unseen man. Little things happen with feminine labels that make me uncomfortable or even embarrassed. A great example is something that's happened to me for years. A guy friend will preface a question with something like "you're a woman..." and most of the time I can feel my face get hot and I feel a discomfort from that, very similar to embarrassment. Or if I'm watching TV, mostly with friends but sometimes alone, and a commercial comes on with a woman acting in a very feminine way, especially if it's a tampon/pad commercial, the same embarrassment & discomfort reaction happens.
What has me so very extremely confused is that when I have sex with my fiancé I really do genuinely enjoy myself. The first time with him I had some of that discomfort & embarrassment feeling, but after that it went away. So if I were that unseen man I don't think I'd really enjoy sex this way. Another weird thing is that even though I get the weird reaction to product commercials I don't really feel weird about my period. I hate them, but it's because they're long, heavy, and painful not because I feel like I shouldn't have them because I'm the unseen man. Writing this all down I feel like I'm certifiable. This all feels so incredibly crazy. I feel like I'M crazy and it's just getting worse as we plan our wedding, like in some messed up way I'm tricking this wonderful man into marrying a man, that I'm going to hurt him and his kids later on when I have some full-force epiphany like "holy ->-bleeped-<-! I'm really a man!" That's completely crazy, right? What's wrong with me?
If you think there's anything you can say or ask me to help me figure this all out I'd be truly grateful. If you want to ignore the crazy lady-?guy? who obviously has a couple of screws loose that's fine too. Thank you and have a wonderful life.
Peace.
