Hi all! I recently came upon this site. I am a 36 year old who was born with the male bits. But I have identified with girls my entire life. As a young kid, I was finding every opportunity I could to dress in clothes that felt more "right". Unlike some lucky kids who's parents go along with it, and allow their kids to be genuinely themselves, I sadly did not have that freedom or understanding. So I had to live in secret my entire life, feeling like I was living a lie. Growing up as a teenager, I was not able to express myself. I grew up in a Mormon family, that very much believed that being gay was a choice. I never was gay, but I knew there was something very different about myself that I did not choose. So every time I would hear my parents make negative comments about gay people "choosing" that, I would die a little inside, yet, I could not speak up.
Anyway, over the years as a teenager, I had a collection of "girls clothes" that I would find here and there in our storage unit or wherever, that I would wear anytime I was home alone, and at night after everyone else went to bed. I'm pretty sure I managed to keep them hidden. The greatest thing in the world, was when I became an adult and moved out of my parents house, and could dress the way I wanted to all the time. And I did! But still, not out in public. I loved the days when I did not need to go anywhere, and could dress in my skirts and things all day, and all night. It was the greatest feeling ever to be able to feel so comfortable and just live life feeling as much like myself as I could.
I have some very manly features in the shape of my body, and my face, and it is super hard to know there is no way I could "Pass". Every day of my life, I wish I would just wake up in the right body, and could truly be me!
A couple years ago, I met a girl. We got along great and ended up in a relationship...... Well......As these things typically go, it can't stay secret forever, especially when it is something that could very much affect her. Imagine being a straight woman, and getting with a man, and then finding out that you actually got with a woman who just has male parts. I can't remember exactly how the subject came up, but I did feel like it was about time to kind of break it to her what she was dealing with. At first, as far as she knew, I just liked to wear girls clothes. And she was amazingly okay with that and even bought me some skirts and would tell me that she was just fine with me wearing them as much as I wanted to around the house.
However, I failed to tell her "the rest of the story" til we had lived with each other for over a year. One night sitting on the couch, we were talking, and at this point she had realized that I was quite feminine in ways, so she started asking me more direct questions, and asked me if I actually desired to be a girl. To which I had to tell her yes, I have wanted that more than anything my entire life, and that I actually have always felt like I was already a girl, just in the wrong body. She was surprisingly okay with that too given the bomb I just dropped on her. But then she wanted to know if I actually wanted to do hormone therapy and possibly go all the way, to which I admitted that yes, I really wanted to. Well, we ended up being up til like 3am that night as she was basically having a mental breakdown to learn that the man she fell so hard in love with, was not what or who she thought he was. I felt terrible for that! But we somehow made it past that, and ended up pushing our wedding back. We did get married 5 months later. But still, as two straight people of the opposite sex. The subject comes up fairly regularly, and she knows how much I hate my penis. The penis that she loves, and she tells me that everytime I am disgusted with it.
I love to wear yoga pants and leggings. It has become my favorite clothing item, because I can more comfortably get away with dressing in them all day around the house, and I love the way that the tight enough ones, pretty effectively smash my unwanted penis down to where I feel like I might not have one. However, she looks down and says things about how much she loves my penis and doesn't like when I wear stuff like that because she wants to be able to see the bulge of it. And we do yoga together, and yes I actually wear yoga pants to do yoga. I'm the only guy that I ever see there that wears them, but whatever. I feel more comfortable, and that's what is most important to me. However, I like to wear a tight leotard under my yoga pants to more effectively hide those unwanted bits and make it look like I've got a vagina under there. But my wife quite often makes comments about how that makes her sad, because she wants all of the other people there to see how big her husbands penis is. So it is really hard for me. I can appreciate where she's coming from, and can appreciate that it is hard for her too because she wants to be with a man, not a woman. But man does it hurt to know that even though she is as open and understanding of the whole LGBT community, and as understanding as she is of me and my issues, she still can sometimes be a bit insensitive to me with it.
And as such, I have been left feeling like I am not safe to truly express myself even at home. And it is so depressing to me! When I was single and had my own house on 5 acres in the country with no close neighbors, I was able to dress how I wanted sometimes for an entire week. But now, I feel like even though she tells me she is okay with me dressing that way at home, I can still sense that it makes her uncomfortable. So putting my own needs aside, in order to not make her too uncomfortable, I almost never wear skirts around her anymore. But.......I still like to wear them. So it puts me in a position to yet again feel like I have to hide it. I work from home, so the instant she walks out the door, I go change my clothes. The other day, she came home and I was wearing one of my skirts, and she wanted to know how often I dress that way when she's not around, and said that it seems dishonest and sneaky, and was acting like I was being deceitful by doing so in secret when she was gone. I then proceeded to have my own mental breakdown and we ended up in a huge fight over it. One can only suppress natural tendencies and who they really are on the inside for so long before it becomes too mentally challenging to deal with, and for her to confront me in that way regarding something that is such a sensitive subject, just made me feel so sad and unsupported and missing the days when I had the freedom to dress how I want.
I recently bought a SportKilt that does look very much like a catholic school girl skirt. But since it is a MENS kilt, I was hoping that maybe I could get away with wearing that out in public and atleast halfway get to feel like I was getting to wear a skirt. I have another khaki colored kilt that I have worn out in public with her a few times, and all was well. But this new one, I think must look a little too "girly" for her, because when I mentioned that I would like to wear it out in public, she just never responded and got kind of weird. And she'll do things like if I am wearing it around the house, and we are going to go out somewhere, she will say "go put some pants on so we can go." AHHHHHHHHH
It really sucks! I really love her a lot, and she is amazingly supportive and understanding for the most part, but then can really hurt my feelings bad when she does stuff like that that shows that she is still just not that accepting of it. Or is too worried about what other people will think. I tried to express to her that I too worry what other people think, which is why it would be so nice to have her as my support because people tend to not think you are so strange if there is someone else there with you, as opposed to me being out there by myself. Last year, her and I went to our local Pride Fest together. The one place where I should be able to finally dress out in public exactly the way I want to without question because every other person there is very openly expressing themselves in much the same ways and many of the people there are transgender just like me. However, I can't remember what happened, but I went feeling like I still could not wear my girls clothes. And it was very upsetting to me. This year, we will most likely go to Pride Fest together again, and this time I very much intend to wear just exactly what I want to wear, and I'm very much looking forward to it since it is pretty much the only time I can get away with it without judgment.
So anyway. That's where I am now.... Having been married for 8 months tomorrow. And loving her like crazy, and having a good life together, and me having glimpses of hope that I could actually live life more openly with who I really am on the inside, but then not being able to afterall. And I try to be sensitive to her feelings and what she is dealing with as well. I know it's gotta be hard! If she were to tell me that she felt like a man on the inside, and wanted to become a man on the outside too when I am not attracted to me, I would be very sad about that too. But that's what makes a person like me so ridiculously depressed! To realize the potential for having to make very very difficult decisions! To continue living a lie because you love your spouse, and care about their feelings and don't want to hurt them, or to do what you have to do to truly feel comfortable with who you are.
I want so bad to start HRT! But she is scared to death of it! She is scared of the health effects. Not so much that it will give me certain womanly features, but she is worried about it causing me health issues. She knows how much I hate having a penis, and she tells me all the time how much she loves it and would miss it. I joke with her that a strap-on would work just fine and wouldn't go soft on her like I do quite often, but she doesn't think that's very funny. But yeah, I wish so bad that I had been able to start HRT way back when I was way younger and hadn't developed such a manly body structure. Because now, sure it might give me certain subtle womanly features, but there is no way it is going to make my man hands or my bigger upper body revert. And that is super depressing! To know that even if I did start now, and even if I did go on to have the complete surgeries, I would still be trapped in this mans body! And that sucks! But, I would still love to do it. She does not at all seem open to it though. And I guess I can't blame her. But it is still very hard to deal with.
I know many of you can probably relate very well to a lot of this.
When my sister found out I was transgender, she said things like "You have to understand why those of us who love you are so confused since you have always been into manly things like cars and trucks and building stuff". I guess you have to live your entire life expressing yourself as a girl in order for some people to believe that it's real. Just because I am into all of that stuff, does not mean that I haven't always been into frilly girly stuff as well. Besides, how sexist is that to imply that only men are into cars and trucks? That's insane! Just because I didn't grow up like some trans kids openly demanding that I am a girl from birth, does not make it any less real! It just means that I spent most of my life feeling like some sort of freak, until probably the late 2000's when I finally learned what it meant to be transgender and discovered that there were many many thousands of people out there with the same feelings. But............by then, I was in my late 20's, and already had a very manly body and manly facial features, and felt like I could not tell anybody anyway. So I continued to live a lie, and wish every night that I would wake up in the right body. And now I am in a marriage where I can "kind of" be open about it, but still can't really, and still wish every night that I could go to sleep and wake up in the right body.
Can HRT still have somewhat decent effects even if started so late in life? Like I said, I fully recognize that there are certain physical features that it is never going to change. But in the show we watched the other night, Caitlyn Jenner expressed that as soon as she started on HRT, it just made her feel so much more peaceful and happy with herself even before having the bottom surgery. And that sounds amazing to me! But I worry about my wife, and the possibility of it making it even harder for me to stay hard for her during sex. And we are pretty sure we do not want to have kids together (she already has one from a previous relation) but we aren't 100 percent sure we do not, and I know doing HRT can make you sterile. So I don't really want to screw up the ability to have another kid if we did decide we wanted to at some point. Such a terrible struggle to be faced with! I don't want to become a vague representation of a female. I just wish I was a complete and whole girl from birth. I know I'm not alone with that either. My wife insists that had I been born a girl, that I wouldn't think it was so great. Well........that's not exactly how it works. I feel like I would have lived a life more happily, and feeling more like myself. Even if I never had to identify as transgender. I would have just been the girl I was meant to be in the first place, and never would have had to live a life of sadness and feeling like some sort of freak.
