Hi, this is my first post. Well, kind of my second. As I already I typed this out once before, but somehow wiped it before I pressed send.
And just like the top of this website says..I am that crossroads. What I need is opinions. Opinions for the real world, with all the consequences..
Here's my story. It is stream of consciousness and I want to include as much relevant stuff as possible to inform your adivce, Anyone who perseveres..thank you.
I am almost 40 years-old. I'm a father of three kids. They are aged between two and eight. I have a wife who has stuck by me so far through shared trials and tribulations.
My job is highly-paid and very hard. I have always been restless, driven, anxious...probably why my career is outwardly successful.
However, I now wonder whether I should tear this life up because of an inner debate that has raged in my head for 28 years.
Am I a trans woman? What is a trans woman anyway? Am I just a fetish-driven dopamine-fiend? Am I a fraud? Or am I just a garden variety walking cliche damaged by a slightly difficult - but by no means terrible - childhood?
I was raised by a single mum. I was born in one country, but my mum and dad split up when I was a baby. They were just kids themselves anyway, 19-years-old.
My mum came home with me. It was just the two of us and I had no relationship with my father until I was 17..even then he became like an acquaintance who happens to be a grandfather to my children.
So I had a single mum and no male role model.
I was soft-natured, but not effeminate. I liked playing football. I loved animals.
Aged about 7/8 my mum got involved in a violent relationship. Although always scared by him, I only once got physically hurt. I came home from schoolone day and went to get a biscuit from the cupboard. This man shouted and in a panic I ran for my bedroom, but slipped and banged my face into a door handle. The scar from the stitches in my lip are still visible today.
My mum managed to get him out of our life through a restraining order. Not before he broke into our home and took my pet kitten away.
But I was a child. And to be honest, fairly happy. I was well behaved and did well at school.
Aged 12/13 I suddenly got this strong desire to be a girl. I longed to wear the skirts and have long hair.
I prayed at night for God to help me become a girl. My mum had become a born-again Christian..and Church was a big part of my life. I tried really hard to have faith..but just like my gender identity..I'm still agnostic after all these years.
I would try on my mum's clothes when she went out. I began to masturbate while wearing them. I looked at images of women in the catalogue and I was in awe.
I become a very outgoing teenager and was popular with boys and girls. I did well at school.
I got dumped by my first real girlfriend because I was too uncomfortable with kissing her. I wanted to but I was in no way forward.
At university I clearly wanted to try on one girlfriend's boots and dress. She obviously picked up the hints I jokingly dropped all the time.
I had also gone to nightclubs wearing eye shadow etc, but I never, ever saw this as anything but normal behaviour.
One day that girlfriend asked me: "Would you like to wear my dress?"
We had sex while I wore the dress. It was a denim dress I had urged her to buy. She asked me why I was so gentle during that sex, but wasn't usually. I was kind of embarrassed and that never happened again.
I finished with her a year or so later. To be honest I was a bit cocky by this age, like many young men. I found it easy to attract women and I had a string of girlfriends. I always bought them clothes and they always complimented my excellent taste. I had lots of female friends.
I'd wear sarongs and alice bands..things that were not unknown for men to wear. I once bought a girls top and wore it quite openly..but it was quite like the tight tops in fashion for men at the time.
But I kept coming back to crossdressing and I was pretty sure it was a sexual fetish as I always got aroused.
The clothes I chose were always quite ordinary. Skirts, boots, dresses.
But then I met my future wife and got married. We had a baby son..then suddenly after 3 years of no urge to crossdress all these feelings came flooding in.
Shaking like a leaf one day I put on a dress my wife had worn during maternity. I explained it just made me feel nice, that I might be about "10% woman but not gay".
What followed over a few weeks was my wife trying to understand, being tolerant. I'd want to have sex in a dress. I usually fantasized I was her.
I also went to a dressing service where a woman introduced me to breast forms and wigs. She did my make-up and I got quite tearful when I saw I wasn't a "total hag". Not that I was stealth either! These sessions were not sexual at all.
At that time I went to see a gender therapist during a lunch break in work. He left me utterly deflated when he said "you don't look like a woman" and just said I should cross dress if I want.
It reinforced my opinion I was a fetish transvestite. But when I went to a trans club I was uncomfortable to see men in shiny dresses getting spanked and for male admirers with unsuspecting girlfriends at home to chat me up.
As I pushed my boundaries, my wife's mental wellbeing snapped. She had had an alcoholic mother..and now her husband had 'lied' to her. Of course I hadn't consciously kept this from her before marriage. I had no understanding of myself.
She went on anti-depressants and gave a clear ultimatum - for our marriage, for our children, this had to stop.
And in the belief I am/was a perv, I did.
Years passed, we live a hectic life. We have 2 more kids and moved country.
But all the time I felt restless. I felt like someone watching my life from above. I was always in my head..in my own thoughts.
About 6 months ago I started heavy online gambling..it kept me occupied and gave me a dopamine lift. My wife and children had been struggling to cope after the move to the UK. Add that to my inner turmoil..and it was a recipe for disaster,
I ended up losing £40,000. And I told my wife what I had done. She was distraught and betrayed again.
I promised to go to counselling. I promised to tell my mum about my gambling and I tried hard to be as good a husband as I could be.
Within 4/5 sessions with my gambling therapist..she was able to tell me what a gender therapist couldn't all those years ago.
I have clear gender dysphoria.
I don't hate being a man..but never gained any attachment to male identity because of no role models in childhood other than one bad one.
I have a strong desire to be a woman, but I have built up hugely successful coping mechanisms that have allowed me to build a successful life and deal with constant anxiety.
However she believes I have depression that I usually combat by a big sense of drive..but that can't go on forever.
SO what now?
I'm a woman because I never learned to be a man - and then never wanted to be.
I keep having these life crises caused by my gender dysphoria. By the way..I don;t create a female alter-ego like many. I'm just me..even when I want to be a woman.
I will almost certainly lose a very good job and wife if I transition.
I will scar my children a vital age, repeating the chaos of my childhood.
In an ideal utopia I'd have had the wisdom as an 18-year-old man to go and live as a woman to see if it was for me. ut I didn't.
And I 'd probably be a crap woman..because I had no girlhood. I'd be a nothing..when I have a lot as a man.
What do I do? Take anti-depressants and suck it up? I'm a father..and you could argue lots of people just get on with what is reality, not fantasy.
All opinions welcome..and sorry for the life story.
