Did you "always know" you were trans?

[CynthiaAnn]

Hello, bumping an older topic here.....

  No I did not know I was trans (pretty common narrative), I was definitely different and struggled socially from a young age at school, and was simply lucky to have finished school at all (expelled, special classes, bullied). I was taken to many counselors back in the 60's none of them mentioned anything to me about gender. I hid my dressing and had stashes of my sisters clothes. Got up the courage to buy my first lingerie items when I was 20, I can recall the "rush of adrenaline" of leaving the store with the girlie goods in hand ! I planned those trips to the mall in detail, which door I would use, and what I would say to the clerks as I purchased, I was fooling no one, they knew it was for me.... Told my wife about my leanings before we were married in 1984, she thought it was odd, but we would go shopping together for things, she knew me best. Finally in 2010 my daily functioning was degrading, and asked myself "why ?", and got professional help, it was then in therapy I accepted myself as trans in 2010, best thing I ever did for myself was coming out to myself.

Cynthia -

[Margrit]

Yes, I always knew but ages ago in my childhood and adeloszenz was no such word for things like this. The internet did not exist too........

Well so I must say I always knew what I am just with out knowing the exact word.

I just hoping you guys understand what I am trying to explain.

[randim]

I kind of knew and didn't know, if that makes any sense.  I know I was wearing some of my mom's stuff like a girdle and stockings under my clothes when I was a pretty young kid, though I don't remember how young.  By very early teen years for sure.  I learned the term transvestite as a young age and anytime I ran across that it piqued my interest mightily. I recall flipping through Myra Breckinridge in a bookstore just eating up the photos of Raquel Welch's character, or reading what "wisdom" Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex had to impart on the subject.  (Spoiler alert: Not much!)  So I knew at a pretty young age.  But the good girl in me tried hard to be a good boy.  I had tremendous cognitive dissonance.  I was always going to outgrow it or it was just a fantasy, or, or........ There was always some reason it wasn't a permanent part of me, even after cross-dressing dozens of times and going through multiple purges. I *still* wrestle with this.  "Oh, it's too late, you're too old.  Oh, you're not that dysphoric.  You don't want to hang yourself or anything. Oh, you have to give up more than you would gain."   And so forth.  I guess there is a big difference between knowing and accepting.

[Josie_L]

Yes, hence reason for why never been married, never had children and was never interesting in
any sexual relationship with anybody until recently met my boyfriend, who loves me for who i am and not what i am. x

[KimOct]

Yeah I always knew but it was easy to hide.  I was attracted to women and I didn't act effeminately.  I knew how to act so that most people liked me.  Not as good as it sounds.  Being liked was the most important thing to me because of my own insecurities - I knew how to do it well.

I thought my sexual fantasies about being female and dressing when I could was all I could do.  Having a 'sex change' as it used to be called seemed hopeless for me.  I am 6 2 and built like a guy.  I thought I would look ridiculous.

Maybe I do but I did it anyway.

[Victoria L.]

I didn't experience gender dysphoria until I was 10 or 11. Even still I can't say I "knew" because the concept of being transgender had not been introduced to me and I just thought that there was something wrong with me in particular and that I was a freak.

I remember vividly events back then... Preferring friendship with girls instead of boys (even though I made friends with some boys, thanks to being into video games), associating myself with groups of girls instead (there was one 'sleepover' we had at church, and I spent a lot of time with the girls instead of the boys). And then learning about puberty and seeing what girls are going to go through and me thinking "Huh? Shouldn't that be what I'm experiencing? Something's wrong..." And like many others have mentioned in this topic, I was bullied. I don't remember really expressing my feminine side much, but the bullies would not relent, constantly calling me 'gay' all of the time. (Which I always wondered "What would be so bad about being gay, anyway?).

I prayed all of the time, I prayed that things would be changed so I had been born a woman, or that I'd become one now. I did this so fervently and with such a high degree of distress that even though my belief in God was a mere product of being raised that way and not my own belief really, I just believed that my prayers would have to be answered and was destroyed every time they weren't.

It wouldn't be for a few years until I knew that being transgender was actually a thing.

[CynthiaAnn]

I was attracted to women and I didn't act effeminately.  I knew how to act so that most people liked me.  Not as good as it sounds.  Being liked was the most important thing to me because of my own insecurities - I knew how to do it well.

I so get this above @KimOct and you say it very well. I felt like I was play acting for the situation, I was adept in learning what worked, I was also very insecure inside. This lead to such empty feelings inside later in life, because most everything seemed contrived for others, and not authentic, I was setting myself up for a big crash later in life (hindsight is so clear).

I experienced deep depression and anxiety, and confusion, transsexualism was the underlying issue all along and I was blinded by it, partly my own doing, partly my socialization and life's circumstances of the time.

C -

[KimOct]

Transitioning later in life is truly bittersweet.  To finally shed all of the BS we have carried is wonderful but having lived that way is sad. 

The good part is that we are finally living our truth.  Most transgender people take this secret to their grave.  That is the saddest path of all.  I nearly did. 

I had a serious heart attack at a young age called a widow maker 14 years ago. 7% of people survive that type of heart attack.  If I was one of the 93% I would have taken it to my grave.  No matter what happens from here at least I came out of the shadows and for that I am thankful.

[Margrit]

The good part is that we are finally living our truth.  Most transgender people take this secret to their grave.  That is the saddest path of all.

Oh yes, how very true!
I know exactly what you are talking about, I was in a kind of a similar situation.
So I am very happy and glad for you too, it is a wonderful pleasure to be our selfs.
We really have to this.

[Tribble]

I may or may not be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is about semantics and semantics screwed me up, entirely.

Let's just say that if the me of 1983 had been 10 years old today, I would've transitioned several years ago.  Times were different.  The me of 2000-2002 did not identify with the statement "man trapped in a woman's body" and I let my first gender therapist know in 2003.  It may be my own perfectionism and my own ability to see my body as what it is (I've always been a weakling, but I still have a typically male structure).  As a child, I, like others, prayed that I would magically change into a girl the next morning and was always disappointed when I didn't wake up with a new body.  The earliest evidence of what I would turn out to be was told to me by my mom's sister after I came out.  She told me that I used to go through visitors' luggage when they visited my parents' house and I would always pull out women's and girls' underwear...I was 3 years old, she told me.  She only mentioned underwear, so I don't know if other articles were involved (stockings, skirts, etc.).  I'm pretty sure I didn't have a sexual fetish at 3 years old.

Later, it did scare the hell out of me that after I reached puberty I did get aroused when I wore women's lingerie.  By what I'd read in just about everyone's stories online (once it became a thing), it seemed the gatekeepers kept a watchful eye on such things and people that did feel arousal were automatically labeled transvestites (DSM-IV 302.3).  I came to realize later that these feelings derived from my desire to be seen as a woman in every respect and as a highly sexual (read: horny) teenager and young adult, that extended to me wanting to be seen as a woman to my partner, as well.  I do know that I snuck into my mom's and cousins' clothing from an early age and even snuck out of my house late, late, late at night once as about a 10-year-old in my mom's culottes and blouse and probably hose and walked several blocks around my neighborhood.  I was, of course, embarrassed, but I was happy at the same time.

Semantics.  No, I didn't know I trans because I didn't know the word.  I didn't feel like a woman trapped in a man's body, but I did know that I should have been born a natal female.  All I'd heard was ridicule of >-bleeped-<s and fags and all from an early age, so, yeah...I waited until after I'd already married and the Internet was invented to start researching this and waited even longer to transition until I was 29 (earlier than a lot of people at the time, and for that I can only thank the invention of the Internet and earlier pioneers that were braver than I could ever have been to do so without the resources I had).  So yes, if I were ten years old today, I would already be living my authentic life.  Well, I'm almost there again after purging for a couple/three years or so, but I damn sure would have a different body structure and wouldn't need to practice my stupid voice!

(Sorry, another long post.  I did read and was ready to respond to the poster earlier, but they appear not to be here anymore.  I hope, for their sake, that it's not for the same reasons I told a local gender clinic before I transitioned that I would not give them a reason for canceling my appointment as I was too embarrassed that I was going back in the closet).

[Ericalaine]

I always new I was a girl!!! I guess  they finally put a name to who I am and what I am. But I am a 57yr. old woman who missed her life.

[Payten]

Yes, since I was 3, which according to the newest science is a normal age to start having feelings of gender dysphoria if you are trans. Did not come out at all until I was 24.

[Linde]

I never knew until later in life.  I had to work to hard to pretend being a male (which is not that easy with a mostly female looking body), and I had no chance of thinking about anything else.  And I continued trying to be male until it did not work anymore, and I switched into the gender I was supposed to be, and that fit to my body way better!

[skipulus]

Yes I always knew, although the concept 'trans' did not exist when I was young and in my part of the world.
I knew of people dressing as the other gender though but that was mostly in foreign parts of the world.

I was raised in a conservative society but my parents weren't forcing me to be feminine.
I was called tomboy but I knew I was a boy not somewhat. It didn't really bother me until puberty and I wasn't allowed to run around topless anymore. When the genders start to really be segregated and all the other boys were herded away. I became very dysphoric then both socially and from the changes that puberty brought. 

I was literally trapped in a female body, I started masturbation way ahead and to a much greater degree than the girls. I found some porn mags, (there was no internet in the olden days), and was very aroused by them. women are in general far less visually aroused than men.
I would have sexual dreams where I was a man pleasuring myself and then wake up to discover that I didn't have a penis. It was very challenging. 

I saw myself as a man and stopped looking in the mirror because the person looking back was a stranger, it wasn't me.
I have finally started looking in the mirror now that the changes are becoming apparent and I really like what I see. 
I'm starting to see me. I get aroused by it, and I often got aroused by dressing as a man or imagining myself as a man in the past. I really enjoy the new growth and increased libido.

It has obviously caused me depression and anxiety etc. I attempted suicide and I was diagnosed in the nineties as having 'confused gender identity'.
In those days it was considered a delusion and a symptom of psychosis and it was treated accordingly.

I have always lived as a man, a gay man. I'm only attracted to men. I have had a male partner for 25 years who has now left me, we grew apart.
I was the provider, he stayed at home with the kids and cooked and such. we agreed on this from the start. All my friends and family have always seen me as a very masculine female. I'm tall and strong and do men's type of jobs.

When I finally managed to get up the nerve to go to a gender doc he said I was "easy to diagnose". I was on hormones within 2 weeks and I feel so much better.

I'm now consistently passing, and regular service like the train station coffee vendor has switched to calling me 'sir' without being asked. They know me and my order, one day they simply started calling me sir rather than madam.

I was frequently passing before without trying. After T started to correct my appearance; people are finding it difficult to refer to me as a female. Now when I'm correcting gender markers they talk about the account owner in the third person because they can't associate it with the man standing in front of them or speaking on the phone.

My voice has dropped to male levels already and is filling out with resonance. I'm starting to hear myself.

Yes, I always knew I was male and it has been very difficult to be treated as a female and to occupy female spaces throughout all these years.

[sarahc]

I wanted to be a girl since I was little, but I didn't know what transgender was (not sure transgender was a term back then!) and it seemed so strange I never told anyone. The feelings stayed with me while I was a teenager, and when I was in college I learned via Usenet boards that other people felt the way I did. That's when I knew.

[GingerVicki]

I am pretty sure that I knew, but it didn't become obvious until puberty. That is when society's expectations came crashing down.

[F_P_M]

Nope. I was duuuumb.

I mean to be fair I was raised pretty gender neutral and never really forced to dress or act in a "certain way" which likely delayed or masked any real dysphoria I had.

Sure I struggled socially but I just assumed I was extremely awkward.

A lot of my childhood awkwardness and inability to figure out how I was supposed to act in groups of girls was easier explained with "I'm autistic" "i'm dyspraxic" "i'm demisexual"
I mean of COURSE i didn't get it! I didn't understand social interaction so well due to my brain wiring and I didn't experience primary sexual attraction so...

Of course back then i didn't KNOW I was these things either. I didn't figure out I was probably autistic till I had my first child and he started to display traits and I thought "but... his traits are much like mine.. oh.. OH... "
I didn't work out I was panromantic till I was 17 and demisexual till I was in my 20s. Looking back it's bloody obvious but as a kid I just didn't think about it. I assumed my friends were the wierd ones! lol

I was always a tomboy but of course that's socially acceptable isn't it? Especially in the 90s when I was a kid.
It wasn't considered that wierd for me to be into typically boyish things or prefer media aimed at young boys more than stuff aimed at girls (I always vastly preferred transformers and TMNT and HeMan to MLP and Carebears and similar)

Heck, I was actively encouraged to persue my interest in paleontology and geology, my father encouraged me to build things and induldged my love for trains and dinosaurs and such absolutely.
even my grandparents had zero problem with all this.

It was never seen as unusual or abnormal and I think that really does make it somehow harder for a AFAB to work this stuff out. Because culturally it's OK for a girl to dress and act boyish we're not discouraged from it, so we don't experience that same level of dysporic trauma.

The only real trauma I recall from childhood was puberty, which was extremely traumatic. But I mean, I assumed puberty was traumatic for everyone. I was also only 10 and didn't want to grow up. I didn't want to be a woman, I wanted to be a kid!
I mean looking back, I just remember being horrified and embarrassed, humiliated by what my body was changing into and wanting to hide it as much as possible.
I felt like a freak.

It took years for my mother to convince me to even wear a bra. I wanted nothing to do with them.

Apparently puberty isn't supposed to be THAT traumatising. I never knew.

and that's the thing. For me I never realised things weren't right regarding gender because I had a lot of other stuff going on that explained away those symptoms.
Growing up as an undiagnosed autistic who was actively punished for being autistic rather took over.

I assumed ALL tomboys liked being told they were "such a boy"

I used to "joke" that I was a boy's brain in a girl's body without realising quite what that actually meant for me.
I assumed because I didn't have "I want to cut my boobs off with a kitchen knife" level dysphoria that I couldn't have any dysphoria.

I now realise I was wrong.

So no... I had no idea. I hadn't admitted it to myself but as husband pointed out today "man, how did neither of us see it? All those times you expressed a wish for a penis, would say if id have been a boy, would lament about your body shape or refer to yourself as a boy"
And he's right. I've been referring to myself as a guy in the wrong body for decades!

I'm just really fricken stupid and didn't acknowledge that it meant something.

As all the pieces click into place I go "well DUH? Damnit, why didn't I notice that?"

I suppose our own minds are the very best at lying to us though aren't they?
And certainly as a kid the idea I could be anything other than me was just never a consideration. Never even occured to me as anything but a pleasant little fantasy.

It's funny because I didn't realise how dysphoric I actually was about my breasts till I put a sports bra on and squished em away. I looked at my reflection sans breasts and the emotion that overcame me. I mean I felt giddy.
I never noticed before, because they were just "there", something I just shoved in a bra and accepted.

It's so weird to think that for so so long I just... got on with it, going through the motions because I didn't realise I had any other choice.

I'm sort of annoyed at myself that I didn't realise sooner. I feel like.. super unobservant but I suppose just... other things were getting in the way.

There's a certain... liberation in finally realising. Like my eyes are finally open to my true self.
that I lived 33 years wearing a costume is sad, but at least i've started the steps in understanding myself better and finally hatching from the cocoon i've been trapped in all this time.
Like the butterflies I used to raise as a child, I need to sit for a while, drying my wings before I take off into my new life.

At at a critical point in my life. I nearly died last year, this year i'm finally taking control of my sense of self. No more "Oh I can't do that, it's not 'normal'", all those things i've always lamented about wishing I could do I feel more like I can finally actually DO.
And all because I no longer feel like I have to wear this mask. I don't have to conform!

[Tribble]

Dude!  I've always wondered about that and even mentioned something about it being almost impossible for a woman to "crossdress" in our society in my coming out letter to my family.  I can imaging how your dysphoria might have disguised itself in your other, undiagnosed issues.  TBH, I feel like you were lucky in a way, but I can also see how you feel cheated or unlucky to not have realized for so long who you really were.

And, if boys were given the same freedoms of expression when I was growing up a decade earlier than you, I may not have realized for much longer.  In a way, I guess my torture was a blessing in that respect in that I could clearly see who I was, but I didn't feel I had any hope of reaching that goal until life became just too much for me in my late 20s and transitioned at 29.  I mean, I kept that secret from everyone until I broke down one night getting ready for bed with my wife.  I cried for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many years.  I couldn't take living vicariously through her anymore.

Thank you for giving your perspective from the opposite end of our spectrum.  I can see both how lucky you were to be "just you" and how you can see it as a pitfall for your own discovery.

Either way, congratulations on your realization!

Is your husband supportive?  I hope so.

[F_P_M]

As I was finishing my stupidly spicy curry this evening I realised another thing.

Competative "I can do that! I'm just as man as you!" behaviour.

See, women are generally competetive in a very subtle manner. "well MY party will be even better" "My wedding will be more spectacular" "my dress will be the best"
while guys are more "I can eat this super hot curry! Yeah well I can eat this hotter one!" and "I can do a backflip off this wall!"

And this explains completely why I do certain things.

All my life I admit i've found this perverse pleasure in doing something that's specifically "not feminine" or more importantly "very masculine"
I've always felt this NEED to compete in the "more man than you" social contests, enjoying coming out on top when I did.
I enjoyed the looks of amazement as this teensy tiny little girl ate the chillis or chugged the pint in one or ate the monkey brain. I LOVED subverting the expectation. I can lift this heavy weight even if it screws up my back! I can build this shelf! I can fix this! I can I can I can! How dare you tell me I can't!

It made me HAPPY to be told "oh man, you're SUCH a boy!" or "well you're more man than I am"

and i said to husband "oh my.. this is why I eat wierd things isn't it!" and you know, it is. I wanted to eat crickets because it was "gross" and wasn't something most people would try. It made me feel macho lol. it's all about freaking machoness!
I was happy to try wierd things on menus because they were weird and everyone else at the table went "eewwwww you can't possibly eat that!"
and that right there? that's masculine competative behaviour, a contest that may only exist in my own brain but a contest I MUST WIN anyway.

I gotta be the alpha, gotta impress the ladies, gotta win by beating all the other dudes.

and omg that's hilarious.

Husband even admitted he does it too, he can't help it and he knows it's stupid  but he feels this NEED to compete with stuff that doesn't even matter.

Oh man.

Only time that doesn't happen is sport, but I hate sport so... I've never felt that male "gotta pretend I care about football and blag my way through it so the other guys don't realise I don't actually like it" thing. I always thought it was hilarious and kinda sad.

But I realise i've been doing that exact thing with food and household chores and stuff!

And yes, thankfully husband is supportive. I'm not sure how he'll feel if I start taking T but i'm hoping we'll be okay because I do love him very much and am very lucky to have him.
One good thing that's come of all this from his side is that it's encouraged him to start to induldge his "guilty pleasures" a little bit more. He's building up the courage to wear clothes he WANTS to wear rather than feels he should, much like I am. We're both finding ourselves at long last.
it's rather wonderful.

and yeah, I can't even cross dress right now and I have no boobs and hairy legs! But I still get "m'am" argh.

It's my hair I think. It's still too girly. Must.. chop..  hair...

But then I feel bad because I only just got my hair cut! lol. Feels like a waste of money.

[Haley Conner]

I didn't understand how to properly define what I was, but knew from a young age that I was different both physically and mentally from others.  And people often gave me subtle and not so subtle cues to be more manly.  The overall thinking on the issue at the time was quite warped, and not discussed, so I had very little by way of a reference base.