Fears about passing as female

[MeowMeansMeow]

Hi all, I am a new user here. A little about myself: I have felt transgendered for most of my life. I remember as a small child wanting to try on my sister's clothing, and I did a little cross-dressing as a teen, but it really only extended to furtively buying pantyhose and wearing them underneath my clothes. Back in the 1980's, when I was growing up, there just weren't resources, and I just thought I was sick in the head for being obsessed about wanting to be a girl. I'm not homosexual, i.e. I have no sexual interest in men; and I have been living quite happily as a man most of my life. It's not like I hate my penis or can't stand being a man. And yet, whenever I see an attractive woman, my reaction isn't that I want to have sex with her, but rather that I really, really want to BE her. I crave being a woman so much, it's painful sometimes.

Back in 2000 I went through a little exploration and did some therapy, told my closest friends and family about my "little secret", and decided to go down the rabbit hole a bit to see what I would find. So I bought myself a full set of women's clothing, and did a lot of reading, and attended a few sessions of the local group. In the end, I decided that I was ok staying a man, thinking that I was now more relieved that I had simply gotten this stuff out in the open a bit more. I never went out in public, however, dressed as a woman. The problem is that I think I would have a very tough time passing as female - I'm six foot tall, and just don't really look very feminine. So I felt better after my exploration, but just kind of put the whole thing back on the shelf, thinking "Ok, I explored it, I have both male and female aspects and that's fine, and it's too late for me to be a girl, I am a man and that's about it".

So I got married in 2002, and I told her very early on about the whole transgender thing. Amazingly enough, she was ok with it. I've never dressed up in front of her, though, for me it's a very private thing still. While we did have sex early on in the relationship, it petered off pretty quickly, and we never do it now. I just find myself not at all interested. I've never been able to climax during intercourse, I just don't seem to be able to get sufficient stimulation from it. We've talked about it, and she's fine with the situation, she tells me she really doesn't mind at all. We generally have a very good relationship, and I'm very grateful that we seem to be able to be very open with each other.

I've wondered if I'm actually kind of asexual, since I'm definitely not gay (I've looked at that as openly as possible, I just don't find men attractive), I find women attractive, but as I said it's not that I want to screw them (as a normal guy would) but rather that I want to be like them. I'm not just talking about the dressing, I mean the fuller, more female butt, the breasts, that wonderful figure they get with the broader hips and the slimmer waist. I want to be like that, not just dress like it.

Fast forward to today, I find the trans feelings re-emerging. They've been somewhat dormant for a long time. I even got rid of the clothing, thinking that I had sussed out what was going on, and was ok with my compromise. But it's not leaving me alone.

Here's the thing: I think there are perhaps different motivations and desires behind different people's transgender feelings. I was interested by one description that split us into two groups - I forget exactly how it was put, but something like "behaves female" and "wants to be female". I know I am the latter. I have never been interested in parading around in women's clothing or dolling myself up in a very fancy way. For me, the real fantasy is actually just being female. The only way I can arouse myself during sex is to imagine I am the woman; and for masturbation, I have to imagine that I am somehow being forced to become a woman. This is a consistent theme; the fantasy is that I am compelled to go from being a man, to becoming a woman.

While the cross dressing is certainly titillating, I find it ultimately unsatisfying, since I know that underneath all the clothing, I am still male. So the thoughts of full transition come back to haunt me, even though I'm 42 and don't look anything like a woman.

What I'm afraid of is that I don't want to live the rest of my life looking like a freak. I'm sorry, I hope this isn't offensive to anybody here, I'm just being honest. It's not that I doubt my desire to be female, just that I don't want every waking moment spent out in the world to be about people staring at me and laughing at me because I'm obviously a man with boobs and wearing a dress. For me, the desire is to "just be", completely (i.e. in body, not just in dress), not to parade it around for the benefit of others. But obviously part of the process of transition would involve presenting as a woman for a period of time before "they" will let you progress along the path of hormones and surgery etc. I know there are procedures that can "feminize" a face and even the voice, but I have my doubts how effective all this would be for me. Also, my hair is very thin now, especially on top (it's not receding, it's just always been really thin), and I honestly don't know if I could even grow it out now.

Also, I find myself wondering if I'm really transexual, or just a man with a weird sexual fetish (i.e. fantasising about being female). If this is the case, then I'm in trouble, because the process of becoming female will take away the means to satisfy that urge! I'm not saying I'm all that attached to my penis, I'm really not. I know that deep down, I want to be a woman. But I also know deep down that I'm not a "woman trapped inside a man's body" - this is honestly just me, really preferring the idea of me as a woman. It just feels right somehow, and something that is driving me at a very fundamental level. It is also freaking me out to find myself considering all this again, given how I thought I'd pretty much come to terms with it 8 years ago.

Sorry for the humungous post, I hope I'm not offending anybody by saying this stuff...

Thanks for reading.

[lilacwoman]

can you get to a reputable therapist to help you decide what you are?  There are lots about now compared to years ago.
Ask around to find one.
Then tell him/her just  like it is and decide if what they tell you makes sense about yourself and how your life should progress.

[Keroppi]

+1 on going to a gender therapist.

While personally I'm very traditional and only see myself trying to fit nicely into society notions of discrete binary sexes, the reality is that it's a continuum. There's more to just flat chest & penis verses boobs & vagina. Maybe you will be more comfortable somewhere in the middle. No surgery, but some feminization of the body etc.

[Alexie]

Thank you for the very honest and detailed look into your situation.
A lot of it rings very true to me as I'm now in my 40's and thought all this stuff would go away, but instead it's stronger than ever before. I just wish and pray I can become a beautiful female and it is very similar to me that when I quietly cross-dress I don't see what I would like to see at all and it is very confronting and somewhat upsetting. What has made me feel a lot more contented is removing all my body hair and going to the gym and working very hard on my physique. In fact it was only last night that a female friend of mine noted how defined and feminine my legs were. I was rapped, I must say!

Your feelings about your sexual orientation and even your inability to climax is remarkably similar to me. The only thing I have realized is because my brain is female it has to be the right mood and with the right person to be sexually satisfied. I now approach sex differently knowing this. The other issue of sexual orientation was very succinctly explained in an answer to one of my earlier post asking the same question. What she said made a lot of sense and was a kind of relief, that is until you sort out who you are and are comfortable with that you won't really know. In other words, for fear of sounding whimsical, I don't know if I'm Arthur or Marther

Regardless of our similarities and some obvious differences, we both need to see a gender therapist of some sort. I am just aching to tell all to somebody that will listen, not judge and understand. I have found this forum to be of enormous benefit. It is, believe it or not, the first time I have ever shared my secrets with anybody and that in itself has been very therapeutic.

Alexie

[MeowMeansMeow]

Thanks for the advice. I have looked in the online directories for gender-specific therapists, and there don't appear to be any within a few hundred miles of where we currently live, unfortunately. I used to live in a large metropolitan city and it was easy finding one there. We had some good sessions (this was back in 2000) and at the end, she complimented me on the amount of progress I appeared to have made in coming to terms with my "condition".

I don't think I would want to exist in some in-between state. I would much prefer to either remain in my default state as a man, or else go whole hog into the transition, complete with hormones and surgery. I think I can definitely say with confidence that if I had that option, with the knowledge that I would be able to do it properly (i.e. all necessary surgery and training to make myself look and sound as normal as possible as a woman) then I would do it without hesitation. I've been living with this long enough that I'm very certain of this aspect of myself now. Barring magic genies or winning the lotto, I would probably need quite a bit more money than I have at the moment in order to do that properly. Simply continuing with cross-dressing seems very empty and sort of futile to me now, sort of like a street that doesn't really go anywhere.

Anyway, thanks again.

[Suzy]

Greetings and welcome to Susan's!

I think that one of the hardest things about this is the isolation.  For so many years i thought I was the only one who ever felt like this.  With the information and online communities available today, I know how laughable that sounds to the younger folks.  But it is so true.

So much of what you said and so much of your feelings very much mirror not just mine, but many others on Susan's.  You are among friends here.  Relax.

Many of us also find this condition to be rather cyclical.  But each time it comes around, it seems to get stronger.  So do not be surprised by that either.

You have been given some good advice.  Perhaps you should call your former counselor and ask if she could recommend someone to you.  But also just spend some time here reading other peoples' stories and seeing how much (and sometimes how little) we all have in common.  This storm can be rough.  I hope you find here a convenient spot to cast your anchor.

Kristi

[MeowMeansMeow]

Thanks, Kristi and everyone else. I will do more research to find out where the nearest therapist is, and lurk here a lot more. Please disregard the somewhat creepy looking guy standing in the corner, he's harmless really!

[Ms.Behavin]

Ha.....I Knew I would always look like a guy in a Dress, or pant suit anyway.  Needless to say, change happens.  Ok some need a little facial surgery, but For me anyway, this is the face I was born with, but on E.   So don't use the "I'll look like a guy with Boob's think. to hold you back.  It does take time and the change is soooo slow but it does happen.  Though it does vary from person to person.

Best of luck how ever you deal with it.

Beni

[MeowMeansMeow]

I live in Eureka, California, and there don't appear to be any transgender-specific therapists in the near vacinity, at least not in any of the online directories I've been scanning. I don't know the area very well, since we just moved here recently. I'm not even sure if there are any transgender support groups, though that would surprise me somewhat, since Arcata is nearby and that's a very college/liberal hippy type of place where I would expect there to be at least a few transgender people hanging out. Can anybody give me any tips as to how to find out what resources are available around here? How do you find a transgender-knowledgeable therapist - just call around and ask?

And what do you do if there simply isn't anything?

Thanks in advance...

[Nero]

I live in Eureka, California, and there don't appear to be any transgender-specific therapists in the near vacinity, at least not in any of the online directories I've been scanning. I don't know the area very well, since we just moved here recently. I'm not even sure if there are any transgender support groups, though that would surprise me somewhat, since Arcata is nearby and that's a very college/liberal hippy type of place where I would expect there to be at least a few transgender people hanging out. Can anybody give me any tips as to how to find out what resources are available around here? How do you find a transgender-knowledgeable therapist - just call around and ask?

And what do you do if there simply isn't anything?

Thanks in advance...

there's always online therapy.

[Dawn D.]

Meow,

Hi, what a small, small world! I live just north of you by about ten miles! I and my wife see a local therapist who, though not a "gender" specific therapist, she is quite wonderful and understanding as well as helpful. She would be glad to see you, I know for sure! And, there actually is one gender therapist here locally too, I can give you her name as well.

I'd be glad to give their names to you. If you have a yahoo messanger account my user name is dawnd1257. Message me and I'll get that info for you. As well, let me tell you, you are not alone in our local community. You might be surprised at how many of us there are here (must be something in the fog here, lol). We have a local support group that meets infrequently but, still enough to be of great aid to all of us.

If you'd like to know more just message me! To use the PM system here I think you have have like 15 posts or more. One of the admins can give you a better idea on that. Anyway, so glad you found us here and remember we are closer than you might think!


Dawn 

[Janet_Girl]

Hi Meow,

Welcome to our little family. Over 3700 strong. That would be one heck of a family reunion.

Feel free to post your successes/failures, Hopes/dreams.  Ask questions and seek answers. Give and receive advice.

But remember we are family here, your family now. And it is always nice to have another sister.

And be sure to check out

• Site Terms of Service and rules to live by
  
• Standard Terms and Definitions
  
• Post Ranks
  

I totally understand how Cross dressing doesn't do it for you.  I also cross dressed but found it lacking.  Then it hit me that it was lacking because I wasn't cross dressing, but dressing in my true gender.

As for the therapist. listen to Nero.  He uses an on-line therapist and is doing great.  Just a little plug for my little Brother. 

Blessed Be.
Janet

[MeowMeansMeow]

Dawn, thanks very much - I got your private message, and I will definitely look up the two therapists you mentioned. I don't know if I'm ready to dive into group sessions yet. I'm a little perturbed right now because my wife is not quite as ok with all this as I thought. She says it would be very weird to be living with me as a woman, and if it went that far then she might want to go find someone else, since she wants to live with a man. Very understandable, and very sad, because I feel like this is something I need to work through, but I am also realizing that if I do work through it, then I may lose my marriage because of it. I love my wife, but she may simply not be able to deal with this type of huge change, and I can't say I blame her one bit. It's a bit of an issue, but we're saying we'll just play it by ear for now.

Today I decided to go buy some women's clothing - I dumped the old stuff I had a few months ago, after carting it around in a tub for 8 years I thought I was pretty much done with it. Famous last words. I've been through this before, buying stuff, so it wasn't quite the mortifying experience it was the first time around. I walked my wife to work as usual, then I just very calmly and deliberately walked into Walgreens and purchased a number of pairs of the L'eggs pantyhose, then walked over to the mall to look at clothes. I was too early, but Kohls was open, so I politely asked one of the assistants if she would mind helping me pick out a set of women's clothing, me being clueless about sizes etc. She was really helpful and found me a dress, skirt, and some tops. The shoes was a problem - nobody around here seems to have any women's shoes in size 11 wide (duh). So when I got home I went online and found a couple of sites that seem to cater to that, and ordered a couple of pairs of pumps. I felt pretty weird doing this, again, after so many years when I thought I was pretty much over it. But I need to work it out, and this is the start... next I need to find out about these therapists and go from there.

I also ordered a Braun epilator from Amazon to help me get rid of unwanted hair. We'll see how that goes, it sounds painful, but apparently gets better.

Thanks again for the help, it's much appreciated. I'll be on the road for the next couple of days, so may not be posting here much.

Meow.

[alexia elliot]

Therapy shmeraphy, and all that for what, so that we can finally understand what we feel in the first place! We are lost in the world we barely seem to understand, perhaps we are not suppose to understand it but just go with the flow. Gut feeling so to speak, never failed me! I respect all ladies here and advice given, it is cautious and proper and by all means appropriate, it may even solve some situations, however, your post struck me in the face like a brick, or better, ton of bricks. It is my story as well inch by inch, minute by minute, dumping of clothes, getting arid of past, feeling good about being back on straight track just to feel depression and femininity swell over my sole and suffocate, male me, again and again. I am 42 and finally come to conclusion that it ain't going away, besides, it feels so good to be ME this way that I don't want to be me for others but me for ME. I am not sure who the heck I am, I might never know, but I am who I feel, so there. I started my transition from inside out, You write that either you remain where you are at or go for it all, sounds like libra to me because I was that way to, no compromise, no prisoners. Guess what, has anything ever happened to you in your life which was just Black or just White. It's all shades of gray after all. Accepting of who you feel is you is the truth. Don't listen to others pointing finger at you with words of wisdom(my own included) don't look in the mirror for it is only what others have made you believe its you. Look inside your sole and you find the course.I am sorry for being passionate about this post but it is also my life which had been painful at times and it shouldn't have. Love, Alexia.

[Karin]

Hi Meow - I live in the same city as you. Dawn is right, it is a way small world and getting smaller all the time.  I remember the feelings that I would always stick out.  Strangely enough, after several years of just being me and on HRT, I don't feel that way anymore.  Guess I just got used to it. I'm sure most people clock me as trans.  They just don't seem to care for the most part. 

We do have several therapists in the area that experienced with transgender people. One I know is a gender specialist - I sent her name by PM to you.

Clothes - I swear some day I am going to open a shop that caters to trans women's needs, lol.  Try the Avenue for larger size shoes.  Works for me (Thanks for the tip, Dawn).

As for transition, remember that there is no one way or a "right" way. While there are similarities, for the most part we each find our own way to where we want/need to be in our respective lives.  I live mine very out and as an activist.  I sit on two local boards, a state-wide board, and help run our local support group.  My life certainly isn't for everybody.  Your life is a journey.  I wish you well on your journey and we are here if you ever want to talk or get together.



Cheers, Love & Light, Karin

[pamshaw]

Take it from one who made the mistake of hiding my true female self for many years, it won't go away and it will get much worse if you are truly transgendered. You need to spend some serious time with an experenced gender therapist. If you are female inside it is not going to help by trying to live as a male because you are afraid you won't pass. Modern surgery is amazing by the way. I know it is tough but there is a lot of support out there these days.

Pam

[Firelight]

Meow, you would be surprised at how unbelievably common your story is. Rather than try to gather all of my relevant thoughts in one mass, I'll take your post bit-by-bit, if I may.

And yet, whenever I see an attractive woman, my reaction isn't that I want to have sex with her, but rather that I really, really want to BE her. I crave being a woman so much, it's painful sometimes.

This was EXACTLY me for the longest time. Actually, your whole paragraph described me very accurately.

"Ok, I explored it, I have both male and female aspects and that's fine, and it's too late for me to be a girl, I am a man and that's about it".

You would be so surprised at how many people have assumed that they're just too old to transition. Let me put your fears to rest: it is NEVER too late. Although hormone replacement certainly has a more dramatic and instant effect on people younger than 30, you're going to get something out of them regardless.

So I got married in 2002, and I told her very early on about the whole transgender thing. Amazingly enough, she was ok with it. I've never dressed up in front of her, though, for me it's a very private thing still. While we did have sex early on in the relationship, it petered off pretty quickly, and we never do it now. I just find myself not at all interested. I've never been able to climax during intercourse, I just don't seem to be able to get sufficient stimulation from it. We've talked about it, and she's fine with the situation, she tells me she really doesn't mind at all. We generally have a very good relationship, and I'm very grateful that we seem to be able to be very open with each other.

You're a very lucky girl to have someone in your life so understanding of you. Never forget that.

I've wondered if I'm actually kind of asexual, since I'm definitely not gay (I've looked at that as openly as possible, I just don't find men attractive), I find women attractive, but as I said it's not that I want to screw them (as a normal guy would) but rather that I want to be like them. I'm not just talking about the dressing, I mean the fuller, more female butt, the breasts, that wonderful figure they get with the broader hips and the slimmer waist. I want to be like that, not just dress like it.

Although gender identity has nothing to do with sexuality, transitioning can help clarify some of your sexual feelings to you.

Fast forward to today, I find the trans feelings re-emerging. They've been somewhat dormant for a long time. I even got rid of the clothing, thinking that I had sussed out what was going on, and was ok with my compromise. But it's not leaving me alone.

Okay, this right here is the single most noteworthy part of your post. One thing I've found about being transgendered... it will NOT go away. For better or for worse, if you're TG, it's a part of you and always will be. The only "cure" for ->-bleeped-<- is transitioning, because I remember before I started to transition (and eve when I had a couple of false starts) that I thought perhaps maybe I could live my life as a male with no trouble. There would be long expanses of time in which I felt like I could keep myself from trying to become female. The desire was there, but I could ignore it.

But let me tell you without any hesitation: if you ignore these feelings, they will ALWAYS come back double... and you'll find yourself right back where you started, only a little bit older to boot.

Here's the thing: I think there are perhaps different motivations and desires behind different people's transgender feelings. I was interested by one description that split us into two groups - I forget exactly how it was put, but something like "behaves female" and "wants to be female". I know I am the latter.

There are indeed a lot of different levels of ->-bleeped-<-. There are people that are just genderqueer, androgynous, ->-bleeped-<-s, she-males, etc... the list goes on and on.

However, although I know someone just can't come out of the gate and disgnose you with something, on an off-the-record level, I am absolutely positive that your are fully transgendered.

The only way I can arouse myself during sex is to imagine I am the woman; and for masturbation, I have to imagine that I am somehow being forced to become a woman. This is a consistent theme; the fantasy is that I am compelled to go from being a man, to becoming a woman.

This was absolutely, positively, 100% the case for me. Down to the letter.

What I'm afraid of is that I don't want to live the rest of my life looking like a freak. I'm sorry, I hope this isn't offensive to anybody here, I'm just being honest. It's not that I doubt my desire to be female, just that I don't want every waking moment spent out in the world to be about people staring at me and laughing at me because I'm obviously a man with boobs and wearing a dress. For me, the desire is to "just be", completely (i.e. in body, not just in dress), not to parade it around for the benefit of others. But obviously part of the process of transition would involve presenting as a woman for a period of time before "they" will let you progress along the path of hormones and surgery etc. I know there are procedures that can "feminize" a face and even the voice, but I have my doubts how effective all this would be for me. Also, my hair is very thin now, especially on top (it's not receding, it's just always been really thin), and I honestly don't know if I could even grow it out now.

This is a worry that you will always have, I'm afraid. Between you, me, and the walls, I have to say that there ARE quite a few transgendered people whose appearance makes me uncomfortable. Some people are flawlessly passable right out of the gate. Others take a long time to even remotely appear as the gender of their choice. I'm not going to sit here and tell you any different.

What you have to decide for yourself is how much that means to you. Remember that we're ALL a little vain about our appearance. No one wants to look hideous or laughable. I know I struggle with that day in and day out. However, if you're going to be mortified into hiding yourself forever, what sort of life do you intend to live?

There are ways to regrow hair. Estrogen often helps with that. And in the meantime, you can always find a feminine hairpiece that will look nice on your in the meantime. Just be sure you don't skimp on the cash for one of those things. You don't want to end up wishing you'd gone out with a mop on your head instead.

You're actually at an advantage when it comes to vocal training. An MtF can more often than not train their voice to raise to lower-middle female pitches and inflections with relatively little trouble, while FtMs often have an extremely difficult time with the process. There are places tha can help you with vocal training, or you can practice it on your own.

I should set your mind at ease about one thing, since it was something that worried me for awhile, too: once you start speaking in female ranges regularly, your voice WILL settle in that vocal range, and you won't have to try to maintain the sound. It'll just happen.

To reiterate, every single one of us has gone through the "Guy in a dress" worry. ALL of us. I don't care if it's someone that's been ma'amed their entirely life before transitioning. Let me give you an example:

https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?topic=64677

The TC posted a picture of herself in the third post. Yet, she was actually WORRIED about her appearance! HER! I'd have an unbelievably hard time picturing her as anything BUT a female. Yet she was still concerned about her appearance.

I won't tell you to not care what people think. That's just stupid. But what I will tell you is to not be cowed into living the way you don't want to live because you're worried about what someone MIGHT think.

I'll even go as far as to say this: you probably WILL get clocked at least a couple of times. Even if your appearance and voice are dead-on from the start, there are hundreds of subtle mannerisms that are trained into you as part of being a "functional male." These are so subtle you barely even realize you're doing them. Everything from your posture, to the way you walk, to the way you hold things... these have all got to be retrained, in all likelihood, and might never be 100% accurate.

To put it another way, picture living life as a female the same way you'd picture learning a new language. There are very subtle accents and phrases that you might not understand or might not realize you're missing at first even if the vocabulary is dead-on. And while you might not always speak it without a little bit of an accent, you can easily become understood and come to the point where no one notices.

Believe me, hardly a day goes by when I don't think "Why can't I just be fully female NOW!?" or "I'm not feminizing quickly enough at all. I still look too male." But transitioning is a PROCESS it DOES take time. The best way to handle it is to start as soon as you can and just go for it.

[Alexie]

Meow, you would be surprised at how unbelievably common your story is. Rather than try to gather all of my relevant thoughts in one mass, I'll take your post bit-by-bit, if I may.

Snip...

Although gender identity has nothing to do with sexuality, transitioning can help clarify some of your sexual feelings to you.

Okay, this right here is the single most noteworthy part of your post. One thing I've found about being transgendered... it will NOT go away. For better or for worse, if you're TG, it's a part of you and always will be. The only "cure" for ->-bleeped-<- is transitioning, because I remember before I started to transition (and eve when I had a couple of false starts) that I thought perhaps maybe I could live my life as a male with no trouble. There would be long expanses of time in which I felt like I could keep myself from trying to become female. The desire was there, but I could ignore it.

But let me tell you without any hesitation: if you ignore these feelings, they will ALWAYS come back double... and you'll find yourself right back where you started, only a little bit older to boot.

Snip...

Wow, wow, wow Firelight and Meow!

I am so happy I joined this forum. You both managed to put into words exactly the way I feel and have felt. I am so relieved to realize I am not alone. About the only difference to the story is I never married, but at least you confided in someone. I have spent my whole life bottling up a series of secrets, and it's been killing me on the inside. I have become a very good actor and most people see me as extravert and bubbly. The fact is, the way I feel on the inside, I couldn't care if I died tomorrow. It's when I realized that, I decided I do need counseling.

I have just been watching "Ma vie en rose" and every step of the way it starts to eat me up. I start to remember feelings I had thought were long gone, as if it were today. That scene in the dressing room where he didn't want to undress in front of the other boys and got ganged up on was exactly what happened to me!

Meow, you are absolutely definitely not alone. Thank you once again, so much for putting your thoughts into words. It has been like lifting an enormous weight off my shoulder.

Love Alexie.

[MeowMeansMeow]

Thanks all for the kind replies. I've been on the road, but am back home now. Dawn, I did send you an email after your first PM, but it looks like maybe you didn't receive it? Perhaps check your spam folder, or I will try again over the weekend. Also a couple of other very wonderful private messages from others here too, thanks again. I will certainly be following up, please forgive me for not being so quick - this has all blown up rather suddenly again, and I'm kind of flummoxed as to how to proceed. I know I said in the original post that my wife was ok with all this, but now I don't think so. I believe she is/was ok with the concept of me being simply a cross-dresser, she saw that as something relatively harmless and actually kind of cute. Maybe also she felt subconsciously that it was something that could be safely compartmentalized. But now I have mentioned an actual desire to perhaps transition to living as a woman, I sense a bit of distance starting to grow between us. I can completely understand why, to be honest it would be a little weird for me too if she suddenly up and told me she was going to start living as a man. I think our marriage would be in real jeopardy if I choose to pursue this. So I'm stuck between this deep, deep desire to live as a woman, and my marriage. Although our marriage is perhaps not the traditional make-love-three-times-weekly American dream, we do have our little world that is just ours, and I love her in my own way - enough that I ache to think of throwing it all away. So kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place there.

I've been thinking about this whole "transexual" thing, and what it would mean for me to transition. So I do the hormones, and say I get all the necessary surgery to make myself look more feminine, and lop off the old penis and make a nice new vagina for myself. Does this make me a woman? Or just a mutilated man? It's an interesting question. I think, though, that I would characterise it differently:

We all, consciously or subconsciously, live our lives by playing roles. I'm talking about everybody, not just us here in transgenderland. Walk down any street, and you can see at a glance the role that people have chosen for themselves, and they work to make themselves fit into that. You have the Power Businessman, the American Mom, the Hippy, the Goth, the Athletic Person, the Intellectual, the Nonconformist, the Motorcycle Dude, etc etc, ad infinitum, and combinations too. Those aren't very good examples, but hopefully you get the idea - we are all playing roles that we have decided at some level are what and who we want to be. So perhaps the way to look at transition is not so much trying to convince ourselves that we have suddenly changed sex, as us simply choosing to adopt a different role, and adapting our costume accordingly. So with transition, I believe that after all the surgery I would probably still be "me" underneath, the me who wants to be female, but if I go in thinking that afterward I'll suddenly be magically transformed at all levels into a woman, then I might be a little disappointed. But if I view it more as a change of costume, a change of role, then it makes more sense. I won't "be" a woman in the genetic sense, but I will be living as a woman, and I'll be able to play that role in as full and immersed a way as possible, even to the point (hopefully) of eventually forgetting that I am anything else and just becoming completely submerged in it - and isn't that the most important aspect? Living that role, that major gender role, which most people never even dream of changing, this is our challenge, our destiny to ponder.

Me, personally, I would love it if I could simply disappear into the female gender. I don't want to think of myself as transgendered, I just want to be female. If I wind up making a lot of money, then you bet I will be searching out the very best surgeons to see what they can do with me. If I could make myself look halfway convincing as a woman, then I really think I would just do it. The compulsion is so deep there inside me.

I'd like to bring up something else that may be a little hard to talk about. Oh well, here goes: When I dress up as a woman, usually it ends with me masturbating to some elaborate fantasy about me being turned into a woman. Obviously actually being dressed like a woman while doing this helps the fantasy along. I have noticed recently, before all of this blew up again, my masturbation sessions were getting a little, well, stale. But when I got back to the pantyhose, I noticed a real perk up in the stimulation factor. Now here's the big doubt: Immediately after climax, the urges to be female go away, it's like they are just drained away completely for a few minutes. They always come back, usually very quickly, but this makes me wonder if the sexual component, and the fact that the desire to be female fades temporarily, throws any doubt on the possibility that I might be bona fide transexual, rather than just someone with a particular kind of sexual fetish. It's actually kind of paradoxical, because the fantasy involves becoming something which, if the fantasy were to be followed through in real life, would result in the expression of the fantasy itself being severely curtailed.

I think of this a little bit like New York City (where I used to live). I was always struck by how you could best appreciate the beauty of the city by viewing it from afar, across the water, somewhere like Jersey City perhaps, where you could see the whole of downtown glittering like a jewel. But when you are in the city itself, you are too close and can't really appreciate the whole. So what I'm getting at is that you need to be separate from a thing in order to appreciate it; if you become the thing, then you cannot appreciate it in the same way. So when I fantasise about being female, it is from the perspective of a male thinking about the other way of being, i.e. female. If I were to actually transition over to being female, would the grass still be as green? It's just a philosophical question, sorry, I think too much. I'm a programmer, what can I do.

To be clear, I do think that I actually desire to be female at a very deep level. The fact that this is also hooked into my sexual fantasies may or may not be significant, I don't know. What I do know is that if someone offered me a magic button to change into a female right now, and there was no going back, and I would look and be in every way a woman, then I would push that button without hesitation. What does that say?

I'm definitely going to follow up with the PMs, please give me some time, and I'll also definitely be seeking out one of the local therapists that have been mentioned. Thanks again! And I hope I'm not offending anybody with my ramblings - I'm not trying to define anything in an absolute way, this is just me pondering this rather interesting condition.

Meow

p.s. One more thing: I don't think I am gay, like I said previously I just am not attracted to men. However... I think that when I imagine myself as a woman, then I could possibly start finding men attractive - but only in the sense that this would help to contribute to solidifying my identity as a total woman. Does that make any sense? Does this make me secretly gay at some level? I mean, I imagine myself turning into a woman, and then having sex with a man, it is kind of titillating, but also a little disturbing since I find the thought of having sex with a man - as me NOW, kind of repulsive. Ok, I'm a sick puppy.

[Firelight]

I don't think I am gay, like I said previously I just am not attracted to men. However... I think that when I imagine myself as a woman, then I could possibly start finding men attractive - but only in the sense that this would help to contribute to solidifying my identity as a total woman. Does that make any sense?

Absolutely. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but this was very much the case for me, as well. IS the case, as a matter of fact. Before beginning my transition, I was pretty sure that I only found females attractive sexually. However as time went on, I started allowing myself to consider the possibility of being with men a little bit more and more.

I still find females attractive for sure, but I have to admit... now when I dream of being proposed to, I picture it being a man doing the proposing.

I Does this make me secretly gay at some level?

Actually, it kind of makes you secretly STRAIGHT. Remember that you are considering yourself female. The accepted terminology for transgender sexuality is that of the target gender. Therefore, if you're an MtF that likes guys, you're straight, and if you're an MtF that likes girls, you're gay. It might seem odd at first, but believe me, it makes perfect sense once you begin to become serious about transitioning.

I I mean, I imagine myself turning into a woman, and then having sex with a man, it is kind of titillating, but also a little disturbing since I find the thought of having sex with a man - as me NOW, kind of repulsive. Ok, I'm a sick puppy.

Once again, you hit the nail on the head. As a guy, I had almost NO pleasure from sex whatsoever. I could "go through the motions" with no problem, for sure, but I just didn't like the sensation, and felt uncomfortable being touched. As a girl, I'm feeling more and more comfortable with the idea of becoming romantically and sexually involved with someone, although some reservations are still there for the moment.