HappyMoni has stated some great insights.
As a (former) very closed and secretive person , there is a lot of pressure in the "Guy World" on you from birth. You learn very early on that even wondering what it might me like to be a girl is So Wrong. You try to hide those feelings, stuff them away in the deepest darkest corners of your mind. You know, absolutely, your "Guy World" will come tumbling down around you if anyone, especially a guy, even gets a whiff of you being "different". BTW, being different just for average things is adequate reason in the schoolyard for a tease or beat-down.
As others have admitted to, I also had forced feminization fantasies. "IT Wasn't Me... They MADE Me Do it" Less Shame and Guilt. Both of them the rulers of your life. TBH - I suspect there are fair share of "on the spectrum" or otherwise males just into the kink of it. Guys brains are weird for sure when it comes to getting off. Some of the stories my wife has heard from several high end escort friends of hers in NYC are.... amazing.
Telling an SO your deepest darkest secret takes an amazing amount of strength. You know the absolute risks involved, starting with: The Earth is going to open and swallow me up. I'll be struck dead by a bolt of lightning. A meteor will land on my head.... Oh, and the SO will run off screaming into the night never to be seen again. Or, it just might take a few years as it did with me once.
My wife knew of my gender issues from about day 1. Many decades later I dropped the T-Bomb on her. It wasn't easy for her for sure. She is an avowed sexist. Has "reminded" me many many times how she likes guys. Likes what they have, How they smell. How they make her feel. Rubber doesn't do it for her. She didn't marry a woman.... Yet, her we are 8 years later, me still living and present primarily as male. And neither of us having a clue what may happen in the future.
Your needs and your wants, as hard as it is to think, are Number 1. They follow the needs and the wants of your b/f and those of "The Us". It is not like you two have an long established relationship like my wife and I of some 40 years now. Our basic personalities tend to place the others happiness as just as important, if not more so then our own. For us, "The Us" is worth preserving through the compromises we can both live with. That is working so far. But I know, if/when by bad days come too often and my want to live and present as female full-time becomes a need to... that is likely too much for her. We'll sort it out when that day comes.
What kept us together so far has been the oft times difficult totally open and honest discussions. Listening to the message, and not to the sometimes un-filtered words spoken. You are allowed not to like what is happening. This deeply affects you on so many levels.
