Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Good evening. It is odd. The more I try to look back into my past, the more things I find that seem to reassure me that the transgender thought is not something I developed in a bout of OCD thinking, like I wanted to believe at first. It was something more at a subconcious level or that I only regarded as "my personal oddities and quirks" that nobody had to know. But when the doubts started is when I started with the active countering (Think of when Homer though Bart could be gay and put him looking to a Marlboro Ad). These are a few of the things I tried, hoping they would be regarded as "manly" and that I only needed to straighten myself:


- Training myself to be a strong drinker and be able to compete with a few friends. It never worked, as alcohol always puts me into a depressive state. I tried to get used to strong beers and talk about it with other co-workers or friends... Seemed macho. Sadly, it was not very compatible with sports, so I quickly abandoned it.

- Grow muscles. When I first lost fat, that's when the thoughts about a wrong body started to arise. So I tried to hypertrophy the muscles and look like one of those calendar dudes. Did nothing.

- Grow a beard. Hey what could be more macho than that? Unfortunately, it seem I can't grow anything but loose hair patches on my face

- Hetero porn. Maybe watching a lot of women and sex would reassure me... Looks like it worked the opposite way when I realized what was exciting me.

- Acting transphobic when hearing the TG topic. Afraid that if people knew I was supportive they would look at me as "gay".

- Getting into destructive relationships. When I started to realize something was really wrong. The last thing I tried, and easily the worst. I just wanted to reassure myself I still worked properly and was interested in chicks, sex, etc... Unfortunately, it only made the dysphoria worse.

- Try to convince myself that it was only a sick fetish or self induced autogynephillia.

- Try to convince myself I was gay or bi, since it would be an easier path

- Blame another mental disorder for it. After a few months of therapy, looks like I am more sane than  I was thinking...



In the end I ran out of denial mechanisms. Anxiety and depression rose until I had to accept it. Then they came again, registered in Susan's... and ended making an appointment with a Gender therapist.

What did you do in your denial stage? In my case, I still keep making lists of pros and cons, and telling me I probably am not from time to time, but seems to have little to no effect.

OK - here are my answers to your points...

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Training myself to be a strong drinker and be able to compete with a few friends. It never worked, as alcohol always puts me into a depressive state. I tried to get used to strong beers and talk about it with other co-workers or friends... Seemed macho. Sadly, it was not very compatible with sports, so I quickly abandoned it.

Used to drink whiskey. Now I never touch the stuff. I have over 2L of the stuff in the cupboard

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Grow muscles. When I first lost fat, that's when the thoughts about a wrong body started to arise. So I tried to hypertrophy the muscles and look like one of those calendar dudes. Did nothing.

Tried that. Got soooo bored at the gym. Gave up.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Grow a beard. Hey what could be more macho than that? Unfortunately, it seem I can't grow anything but loose hair patches on my face

Mine was not bad around the chin but thin elsewhere.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Hetero porn. Maybe watching a lot of women and sex would reassure me... Looks like it worked the opposite way when I realized what was exciting me.

Never liked porn.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Acting transphobic when hearing the TG topic. Afraid that if people knew I was supportive they would look at me as "gay".

Never felt comfortable doing that because I always wanted to be female even though I was certain it could never, ever happen.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Getting into destructive relationships. When I started to realize something was really wrong. The last thing I tried, and easily the worst. I just wanted to reassure myself I still worked properly and was interested in chicks, sex, etc... Unfortunately, it only made the dysphoria worse.

I never did this.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Try to convince myself that it was only a sick fetish or self induced autogynephillia.

No - I never did this either.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Try to convince myself I was gay or bi, since it would be an easier path

I thought about it and wondered about it, but it was not me.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AM- Blame another mental disorder for it. After a few months of therapy, looks like I am more sane than  I was thinking...

I blamed the universe. However I was wise enough to know that if I had been female I would not be me.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 09:17:37 AMWhat did you do in your denial stage?

I stayed busy. I never allowed myself time to think. I studied hard and often read until 2am so that I could not stay awake any more and sleep claimed me. I challenged myself by studying what many regarded as the "hard" subjects - Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Computing, Cosmology. I learned to fly, I got an advanced driving certificate, I learned to sail, I learned to write, I learned to cook. I did whatever it took to keep my brain so busy that it never had time to question anything other than the stuff in front of me.

Eventually I ran out of stuff that interests me and then the problems hit because the one unsolved problem I had left was me. After a breakdown in the Doctor's surgery I was referred to a mental health team who diagnosed GID and referred me to a GIC. That is when I stopped living in denial.

There's a scene in the movie American Beauty where Carolyn (Annette Bening) is in her car and starts crying. She then repeatedly yells "Stop it!" while slapping herself in the face. That's basically how I dealt with it.

I thought of my GD as a defect or imperfection. Those of us who lived through the VHS era are familiar with the worn out or damaged tapes with lines of static and flickering. It was annoying but we suffered through it. In the end though the tape got so bad there was no denying it had become unwatchable and would have to be thrown out or replaced all together. I chose the latter.

The annoyance of it and sense of betrayal by life got to me in a big way towards the end. My behavior was totally out of control at times. There was this one incident at my very peak when I droped lots of acid and speed, drank a case of beer and went to an underground party where I was all up in everyone's faces yelling and screaming that I wanted them to kill me. Not good, not good at all.

contracter paramedic, with trips to africa. not smart but hey....it was a macho shot...welll sort of.

I don't think I did anything much to convince myself otherwise. I knew at some point I would have to transition. It was difficult  gathering information pre-Internet about the feasibility. I started HRT a few months after I got hold of a 1K bit modem which got me into contact with the TG community in the Usenet. I met a few M2F and was convinced.

I never did any self-harm. I was far too vain for that...and still am. Oh yes, almost forgot the cutting between my legs with a razor. Thankfully, no scars.

Quote from: MariaMx on September 14, 2012, 10:22:05 AM
There was this one incident at my very peak when I droped lots of acid and speed, drank a case of beer and went to an underground party where I was all up in everyone's faces yelling and screaming that I wanted them to kill me. Not good, not good at all.

Wow - and I thought I was having a bad time with constant low-level torment for decades.

Because I feel we should always looks for the positive in any situation, mine was less damaging to me, but yours would make a far better movie scene than mine. :D

I tried really, really hard to be a gay man.

Quote from: brc on September 14, 2012, 10:40:55 AM
Wow - and I thought I was having a bad time with constant low-level torment for decades.

Because I feel we should always looks for the positive in any situation, mine was less damaging to me, but yours would make a far better movie scene than mine. :D

My life up until transition was an extreme one for sure, and even worse things happened at times. Incidents like the one I mentioned were really out of character for me as I'm actually an introvert and quiet gentle person, but I was outraged, self-destructive and I hated myself. Most of the time I lived my life as if it would most likely expire within the next 5 minutes, and a few times it easily could have, but I didn't care. Nowadays I'm pretty happy and I like my life. It still feel a bit like I could die any second, never could quiet shake that feeling, so I've learned to enjoy and appreciate life more.

I used to like this song pre-transition. It seemed fitting to the life I used to live. Somehow it still does but in a very different context.
TV SMITH "Only One Flavour" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGuXeQXWe_k#)

Quote from: brc on September 14, 2012, 10:04:14 AM

Eventually I ran out of stuff that interests me and then the problems hit because the one unsolved problem I had left was me. After a breakdown in the Doctor's surgery I was referred to a mental health team who diagnosed GID and referred me to a GIC. That is when I stopped living in denial.

Thinking about it, that's when the things really got tricky for me, after running out of activities to fill empty time slots and stopping wasting my life on videogames. In the moment I tried to sort my life, this appeared on top of everything.

Ps: Sorry.

Let's see.

Got married three times.  Had four children.

Shaved head.  Grew a full beard.

I would literally beat myself in the head, trying to drive it out.  When to a therapist, who said it was OCD.  Even tried to convince myself I just talked myself into it.

Alcohol, which would only bring it out more.

Video games, first person shooters.  Macho right?

Work very male jobs.  Truck driver, auto mechanic.

Quote from: Ms. OBrien on September 14, 2012, 11:27:12 AM
Video games, first person shooters. Macho right?

Odd. I hated ultra realistic "brown"  violent fps and GTAs, usually labelling them as "bullcrap for teens that need to feel "macho"".

Oh yeah, I got married too, forgot about that ::).

Well, getting married to a straight woman was the denial. I'd still like to be married to a woman!

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 11:14:29 AM
Ps: Sorry.

What for?

I didn't do anything like that  :-X

I always just liked what I like and most of it happened to be girly stuff  :)

I brushed myself off as just weird.
I made a lot of stupid mistakes with guys because I knew the hole I felt was from the lack of a guy. I didn't realize that I was the guy.

Well, at first I just told myself that getting a "sex change" was wrong, and that God made me a woman for a reason. That I just had to wait a little longer, hold out, my prince would come and make me feel like a woman, I'd have babies and the white fence and the whole shebang. Then I'd be all content and happy and realize that this was what was right for me all along.

I told myself all woman felt this way.

I told myself, after suspending my belief in God, that gender didn't matter. That I could just be this awesome hippie lesbian and it would all be fine.

I told myself that I had a political duty to remain a woman to combat sexism and homophobia through my own existence.

I told myself I only wanted to be a man because I watched too much straight porn. So I tried fantasizing about having lesbian sex, to "honour" my true genitals (lol), but it failed and was painful and awful.

As my mother said to me last night: "You tried (to be) that and it turned out that is not who you are. So now, you have to be you and stop trying to please everyone because you can't."

I tried the 'grow a beard' thing:

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi688.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fvv246%2FKeairaElisabeth%2F37848_409231946486_644296486_5167157_3125012_n.jpg&hash=5b5343a97814603f302fe855d21185be8f1fd2b4)

Lasted about a week or two.

I was crossdressing a lot when I was a kid. My Mum once told me she knew I had been doing it since I was 11. And I obsessed over Star Trek and model kits, anything really, just to keep my mind busy and that feeling of being wrong away.  But at 18, I joined the RAF:

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi688.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fvv246%2FKeairaElisabeth%2Fphoto-123.jpg&hash=c8427b49b516b655c0e432134d06821d95359892)

Didnt last. Being in a room full of guys made me really uncomfortable. And in the end, even my C/O thought I was "A square peg trying to fit a round hole."

So, I became a hubby and a parent. I don't think that getting married was an attempt though. It was and still is, genuine love for my wife and children. And even though John may be gone, I'm still Dad, which is better than the deafening silence when you lose your kids and come home to an empty house.

I became increasingly depressed as the years went on. I couldn't take being a guy anymore. When I finally had a knife to my wrist, that's when I knew I had to change and just let go. I had to be the real me.

Quote from: Keaira on September 14, 2012, 12:50:04 PM
I tried the 'grow a beard' thing:

Every time I see one of your "old" photos I simply can't match them yo the current ones. No FFS?

How familiar  :( I knew when I was 4 something wasn't right, that I should have been a girl. However, it was plainly stated that aint the way things are. So growing up I tried my best to just try to get along with boys. At least to some extent I was spared some bullying over the multitude of targets I presented. As I got older I got a bit better at being a chemeleon. I also got really good at stuffing.

I used what I call the 3D system to get by. Distractions, diversions and a dose of denial. Denial mostly directed at me being a TS. I did all a lot to convince myself that I was just a cross-dresser. After all, I liked girls & didn't mind the dangly bits all that much. Sure, I was praying and wishing as I grew up that I would wake up as a girl. OK, during sex I could really really get aroused by imagining I was the woman. Oh yeah, whenever I saw a woman wearing something I really liked my first thoughts were always I wish I could look that good in it. But! I liked girls & didn't mind the dangly bits all that much.

I also satisfactorily, completely, and undeniably answered that little "How about transition?" question... twice. Tried HRT, tried part-time, tried guys. THe HRT part was nice, cleared a lot of the fog in my head. The part-time thing, well, I always felt like some guy in a dress. The fantisy of being with a guy didn't live up the reality. See, I really do like girls.... OK so the transition question is still up for grabs as it is now time #3 and is being very seriously considered

Diversions and distractions came easy. I had a career which was really an extension of my hobby. So I easily buried myself in my work. Being a big romantic the women I became involved with became the center of my life. Though some knew about my other "hobby" dressing became a once or month or so necessity for survival, always done in the privacy of the home, often done in complete privacy. See, I told you, just the occassional cross dresser. Pay no notice to how for the most part there was nothing sexual associated with dressing once I got into my 20's. Happens when you get old right? Just like no longer getting spontaneous erections. Yeah, that's the ticket  ;) Gettin old. Works for me. Older, wiser. OK so you do feel so alive, joyous and no longer like "some guy in a dress" but the real you. You like what you see in the mirror You finally feel proud and confident about being you. But hey, I am just an occasinal cross-dresser with maaaaaybe some tendacies towards.... Ocassional as in every day after work or you start stuffing your face with food or booze to stop the over the top death match going on your head. But! I liked girls & didn't mind the dangly bits, all that much.

4 years ago I shaved my entire head. If you have seen my picture you know I looked goofy. I think thhe other bit was me trying to hold back any of my girlish ways. It was hard enough when I would get caught by my very guy friends saying something "gay" to them.

I tried the whole head shaving thing too, but I was able to shower and only take 2 minutes. Plus lint and fluff would stick to my head  :laugh:
Also Keaira's boy picture with the beard. That gets me hot and bothered. And that is probably very very wrong of me to say. She made one handsome boy, it is to bad she is a girl.

I was a total bully to the gay and trans kids too.... I feel so bad because when I was about 12 I was in a alternative school for kids with issues, there was a trans girl and I kicked the back of her chair and called her a nasty name.... I feel like trash because of it... I will never forgive myself for being a total ->-bleeped-<- as a kid-teen...

It was more of an avoidance rather than a denial for me. I smoked pot throughout high school and college, and took several hallucinogens as well (which often didn't help with the avoidance). I'd also obsessively play video/compy games, especially when it came to MMOs.
Being academically engaged worked against confronting myself, too.

I got married lol That went well :P  We stayed married for about 5 years. Now 20 years later we are best friends. What's weird to me is she never had a clue I was trans.

I drank, smoked a lot of weed etc too. I tried hard to avoid this, but ended up a woman anyway.

Tessa sounds like we're a fun little hell cat. Kinda sorry I missed the party

Quote from: TessaM on September 14, 2012, 04:30:26 PM
I tried the whole macho image once too:

-I smoked a pack a day, if not more, of Marlboro Red or Benson&Hedges Black
-I drank like a fish. It got to the point where a 40oz of 10.1% beer would not even have me drunk. Id need two. Once I even drank an entire bottle of vodka...that ended up with a hospital visit (no stomach pump tho)
-I smoked lots of weed. Like, literally every 3 hours
-I grew a beard and a half. I was one of only two kids in grade seven who was already shaving so as you can imagine, I had quite a lot of facial hair, all of it thick. People would actually envy this. Oh how little they knew.
-I went to the gym. HATED IT!!!
-I was a bully in high school. In all honesty, I got bullied by one kid and badly. I took my rage out on other kids to compensate for this, and to make myself feel better for other issues.
-I once had a girlfriend. We actually did it. EWWW! Were still friends tho, good shopping buddy!!!

Sometime in 2011 (I was 19) I said ->-bleeped-<- this s**t im just gona be me and I dont care what the others think. Smartest thing I ever did :)

I kept trying to tell myself that perhaps it was just a phase. I stopped trying in school (luckily for me, not trying is still enough for me to get a 102.5 GPA). I asked out a girl in my school because I was trying to overcompensate my manliness. I basically destroyed my desks and my bedroom door with my bare hands and wouldn't talk about any of my feelings. I kept everything bottled up inside until I had a nervous breakdown, crying and screaming while suffering the worst headaches anyone could ever feel. I then spent the first 5 days of my spring break in bed, crying silently, only getting up to drink water, eat some food, use the bathroom, or work out. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't do anything without crying. I literally cried for 5 days straight. I then accepted myself for who I am, and soon enough, I'll be able to be the real me.

In short, don't hide from anything. Tackle the issues at hand and avoid the consequences of any unresolved feelings.

Where does one start?

My whole life was an avoidance or it was buried by circumstance. Early on it was buried by a sister that was born severely handicapped. By age 11 I was running the whole household on the weekends as my parents were involved with their business. All the laundry for 8 people had to be done,supper had to be made both days, and the whole house had to be cleaned.  In high school tried to avoid PE at all costs and even took classes I really did not want to take. 

After High School tried to bury them by heading off to college to become a pastor. After 6 months of that just went totally off the wall. Was going to school full timewith a 50 hour a week job.
Blew through over $6,000 of cash with drugs and junk purchases. This is in 1977 dollars. Moved in with a woman after 4 days because we were going to get married. She stole my car and then my boss from work moved in. (I did get my car back) He was gay but he was also a phsyocopath. He threatened to blow my parents house up if I ever tried to leave. Three different times he tried to kill me. After about three years of this he finally released me from it.

Six months later got involved with a married woman. She got divorced and we ended up being married. Two months later that ended. The kicker was is she would let me live with her but we wouldn't be married. I also worked for her and she was the "man" of the house.

You think at this time I might be getting it through my head I can't "beat this". Not a snowballs change in Cuba. I just have to prove my father is wrong about me and I can beat this. Once again I get involved this time with a divorced woman ,with three kids who have very serious social issues due to their mother being a recovering alcoholic. Within three months we get married. How did that work out? It didn't work well at all. After about 5 months she is asking me why can you not act like a man it's like i'm living with another woman. Still tried to bury it. Tried healing services being anointed with oil. Tried working at a factory where they pressed the laminate on tabletops.
Hard psychical labor that I had no business doing. 125 lb no muscle weakling trying to flip over 150 lb table tops.

It took a lot for me to quit trying to beat myself up.

All in all just another wonderful day in paradise.  :D

It's mostly my own doing.

For the longest time I thought cross dressing was a "temptation", so always suppressed it and didn't give myself the chance to know anything but 2am shame, went through depression, anger, drinking, sports, school, achievement, church (yuck), family, marriage, fun experiences, both chasing a diversion and hoping to find fulfillment along the way.

Came out to my wife ten years ago because I thought we were done, I couldn't fake it anymore.  She didn't like me anymore.  We're now blissfully married and I'm clearly out at home but have yet to start a medical transition, so much remains unsettled.

Spent about 10 years working in an extremely masculine job. Grew a beard. Drank....a lot. I wore shoes that were too big because guys are supposed to have big feet. I even purposely talked in a deep base voice.

Quote from: Crt.rnA on September 14, 2012, 12:59:44 PM
Every time I see one of your "old" photos I simply can't match them yo the current ones. No FFS?

Nope, no FFS, though I would like a lower hairline.

Quote from: ShaunaNinjagirl on September 14, 2012, 04:17:00 PM
I tried the whole head shaving thing too, but I was able to shower and only take 2 minutes. Plus lint and fluff would stick to my head  :laugh:
Also Keaira's boy picture with the beard. That gets me hot and bothered. And that is probably very very wrong of me to say. She made one handsome boy, it is to bad she is a girl.

I get that a lot now. lol. Back then I was either too wrapped up in my identity struggle to notice that Women found me attractive or I was just that oblivious. I think it's because I look like Johnny Depp there.

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi688.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fvv246%2FKeairaElisabeth%2F37848_409231946486_644296486_5167157_3125012_n.jpg&hash=5b5343a97814603f302fe855d21185be8f1fd2b4)(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.roopevintage.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F06%2Fjohnny_depp_glasses.jpg&hash=0c697202b1b5aa3b2ce34331e67ef66434e50a5d)

Quote from: TessaM on September 14, 2012, 04:30:26 PM

-I once had a girlfriend. We actually did it. EWWW!

Hey, at least you could. With me the last times were like "Why am I on top? How does a man act? This does not feel correct..."

She was quite homophobic, so that was another issue for killing the relationship, I could absolutely not explain why I kept failing... Yet it is odd, the other two girls I explained this to... Well, they loved the idea. One started to treat me like another girl in a moment and the other... well, she's bi and did not mind.

I've been coming to terms with the fact that over the last year, even though I was transitioning I was really hobbled by being in a relationship with someone (whom I still really love, even though it's over) who fell in love with me as a woman, but wanted me to be a man in bed. And I tried to be both. And I'm not. It's very painful.

Quote from: TessaM on September 15, 2012, 08:22:12 AM
Ya sure it worked... occasionally. And when it did it required lots of concentration, closing my eyes, and imagining other things. When I came out to her months after we broke up she said "Oh thats why you could never get hard!" lmao it was kinda awkward at times. I was often "too tired" to function.

xD. For me it was the straw that broke the camel's back and finished paving the road. Foreplay, hugging... All perfect (Oh well, save for the fact I was incredibly scared and she was "wearing the boots", I just could not act manly enough), my turn to act manly and... Oh, poop. "This is so unnatural".


I wonder what would have happened in another time...

I applaud all of you ladies for having the courage to tell and share your stories.

Don't forget the gentlemen who have posted also.   :)

Quote from: SarahM777 on September 15, 2012, 10:19:48 AM
Don't forget the gentlemen who have posted also.   :)

Well, for the guys is not a big deal as they are tough hombres! Thank you dudes!

Focused on academics in school.  Forced myself to stop doing things in a "girly" way because of the shame I felt being teased about it.  Forced myself to hang around the guys instead of the girls like I wanted to. 

The last 12 years or so I focused on MUDs and MMOs.  Although I wanted to play a female character, I never did for fear of getting caught by my wife or for the shame that I already felt.

Internally condemned myself for these feelings, since I was taught that everything associated with the opposite of traditional marriage was an abomination.

Now that I've allowed myself the luxury of accepting my own feelings, that shame is slowly going away.  :)

I forced it down so deep into my being I became seriously depressed with run away anxiety. That was the bottom. A good gender therapist got me on medication. Once on medication I began to actually deal with the problems. Their were two real clues that just couldn't be explained away. From a very young age (before puberty) I always wanted to look pretty, curvy and soft. I wanted to be gentle not tough. Also I realized that I always had to force myself to be male. It never felt right  to me. It simply felt wrong. Ironically my gentleness was what my wife was attracted to.

I became a professional athlete which took up alot of my time when younger. It was fun but never was able to change how I felt and after getting very sick with meningitis and nearly dieing had to give it up. My training partners went on to win gold medals at the Olympics and win the biggest events in the world in my sport. :(
I was always in a relationship and got married however deep down on the day I wished it was me in that beautiful wedding dress.
After that fell appart a few years later after she got pregnant to another man (nice girl hey?) I left and said to myself I would change so moved to the Cross in Sydney. I closed down and lived in semi isolation, other than going to work. Never going out and socialising as I just didn't know how to cope with my true feelings. I aways looked at the pretty girls and wanted to be just like them.
Still gripped in fear about transitioning, I put it off until recently coming out here. Started laser on my face in July and love the results so far after two sessions, it has dramatically reduced the growth and hair on my cheeks is almost gone completely. I could grate cheese from them previously. I cant wait for my face to be totally clean of my facial growth. Next steps to go shopping which is a big fear and to see a therapist at to look at 1 reducing the T and 2 starting E, but most importantly I need to be true to myself. I like the thought of slowly washing my maleness away a bit at a time.
The good thing is that I feel much better to myself as isn't that's what it is all about, being happy? :)

Quote from: Christine on September 15, 2012, 05:10:32 PM
Their were two real clues that just couldn't be explained away. From a very young age (before puberty) I always wanted to look pretty, curvy and soft. I wanted to be gentle not tough. Also I realized that I always had to force myself to be male. It never felt right  to me. It simply felt wrong.

YES!  It simply felt wrong!  I get more and more epiphanes about myself the more I see other gal's experiences and feelings!

Coincidently, we need an emoticon for *hugs*!

When I was younger I tried to tell myself that it was a test from god and that it was my duty to just learn how to live as a woman. I thought that not being a proper female was a failure of faith on my part. Thinking like that didn't work, of course.

Quote from: Felix on September 15, 2012, 06:06:06 PM
When I was younger I tried to tell myself that it was a test from god and that it was my duty to just learn how to live as a woman. I thought that not being a proper female was a failure of faith on my part. Thinking like that didn't work, of course.

  I don't believe in god so I never had anyone to curse but myself.  It sure was tons o' fun feeling completely alone in the entire universe for 35 years.  Most of you can understand my relief upon joining this site and discovering so many people with common experiences.

I was never a "macho" guy and preferred to try acting tough on the exterior. I did sports in school, did weight lifting, tried to act like a guy to be one of the guys, and that never worked. I don't know that I could be described as "fem" back then or even now, just a sort of regular everyday person. My crowd was always the alternate scene like hanging with the goths, hippies, metal heads, and stoners. I was always one of the girls in my social crowd. The guys accepted me in that crowd, but I think I was more "queer"in their eyes and some of them even said so, and they didn't say it in a demeaning way or anything...they stated it in more of a thought or opinion that would come up in conversation.

I suppose I always saw myself as queer in a gender queer sort of way.

My avoidance was and sort of still is to keep myself busy with all sorts of meaningful, constructive activities. Still, the whole mental and emotional female identity is there. I look at other women and as always, my mind says "that is how I was supposed to be made, that is how I am supposed to look, that is how I WANT to look".

I tried pushing it out of my mind, tried ignoring it, tried listening to that negative voice in my mind that said it was dumb / stupid and that I was stupid for engaging that sort of thought and feeling. I tried to find my true identity, and at first thought I might be gay, then when I noticed I liked both males and females (at a very young age) I thought I might be bi but still felt female. Years passed, and I realized again that my female side was still there, it was creeping back. I couldn't ignore it, and had to confront myself privately with it. I have been with females sexually while only being able to perform in bed while thinking of myself as a female over the course of my life, and then realized sex with women felt wrong. It felt wrong because I was not in the body I thought I was supposed to be in.

I find if I'm attracted to a guy, it will only be after I have known him for a long time and know that I can trust him, that he will not hurt me or abuse me. Yet, I still feel attraction to women as well. I'm not sure if my attraction to females is more emotional than sexual, more social as one of the girls or just my resentment of my own physical appearance. Maybe it can be all of the above?

I've always felt safer with women than men, and have always been able to trust a woman more than a man and more quickly than I would trust a male. Marriage? Tried it, and it fell apart. I'm at a place now where I am trying to get my life together so it becomes something I recognize once again.

The reality is that I am who I am. I need to find a way to embrace it and love myself, I need to like myself, and I need to focus on me. 

Quote from: Violet Bloom on September 15, 2012, 06:37:45 PM
  I don't believe in god so I never had anyone to curse but myself.  It sure was tons o' fun feeling completely alone in the entire universe for 35 years.  Most of you can understand my relief upon joining this site and discovering so many people with common experiences.

I'm glad you're here. It's really easy to forget how many people are like you. In my everyday life I'm usually the only one like me and it's helpful to surf through susan's for a reminder that there are lots of people in similar situations.

Thanks everybody for sharing. I won't start commenting or it would take all day. My own things that I did to avoid who I am:
1) Gave myself a job: understand every person and every thing in the world
2) Gave myself a job: make people stop fighting and start laughing
3) Gave myself a job: make daddy not be so sad any more
4) Gave myself a job: keep mommy from being crazy and wanting to die
5) Gave myself a job: take care of all my own needs so that I'm not a burden on anyone; deny any needs that I can't take care of myself
6) Gave myself a job: take care of my sisters; keep them safe, loved, fed, clothed, educated, entertained, guided, encouraged, protected, accepted.
7) Gave myself a job: always do perfect in school
8) Gave myself a job: never cry
9) Gave myself a job: never complain
10) Gave myself a job: never ask for anything; never take anything that anyone else has or needs
11) Gave myself a job: make God not hate me
12) Gave myself a job: make people not hate me
13) Gave myself a job: don't attract attention
14) Gave myself a job: don't have an ego
15) Gave myself a job: don't hurt anyone ever
16) Gave myself a job: don't fight
17) Gave myself a job: don't make people think I'm smarter than they are
18) Gave myself a job: become a great artist
19) Gave myself a job: become a great writer
20) Gave myself a job: don't kill myself ever
21) Gave myself a job: don't think about things I cannot change
22) Gave myself a job: take care of my friends
23) Gave myself a job: date girls
24) Forgot 17 years of my life and my entire identity
25) Moved across the country to go to school all alone
26) Gave myself a job: graduate from an ivy league university
27) Gave myself a job: be a perfect Mormon
28) Worked three jobs while going to school full time and serving in church callings and doing volunteer work at school
29) Served an LDS mission
29) Gave myself a job: learn all world religions
30) Learned Spanish, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese.
31) Worked my way through college and sent money home
32) Read at least a book a day
33) Put myself into dangerous situations where my life was on the edge and then saved myself
34) Gave myself a job: figure out how to become wealthy enough to solve the world's problems LOL
35) Gave myself a job: reconcile faith with science with humanity
36) Dropped out of school, moved to a cabin in the woods, and worked in a Mennonite wellness center.
37) Moved home to save my mother's house and business and help my sisters graduate.
38) Taught repressed Mormon girls to believe in themselves and their potential.
38) Helped 26 Mormon girls in a row to find the man they married, immediately after dating me.
39) Taught myself gourmet cooking and flower arranging. Convinced every woman I dated that I was gay! Oops.
40) Taught myself woodworking, car repair, home repairs, astronomy, cosmology, art and music and drama appreciation, classic movies, classic literature, gardening, hiking, nature appreciation, dabble dabble dabble, massage, acupressure, tai chi
41) practiced medication, mindfulness, zen, tantra, running, swimming, climbing, shopping, walking backwards, walking with eyes closed, holding my breathe, fasting, tolerating cold, tolerating pain, tolerating all things
42) collected books, quotes, ideas, tools, experiences, and interesting people
43) tried having sex while staying a virgin
44) discovered sex
45) discovered alcohol
46) nannied for two years for my infant nephew so my sister could finish college
47) worked multiple jobs
48) taught myself computers and all things information technology
49) married; took care of my wife and her every need and whim
50) was a foster parent to two wonderful kids
51) converted recurring depression to an increasingly severe panic disorder instead
52) got therapy to deal with the destructive tapes in my head so that I could keep functioning in all of my roles a while longer
53) ended one marriage and immediately began another
54) always told myself that I was different, that dreams and wishes were for other people, never for me, and focused my whole life on setting stuck people free and helping others to live their dreams.
55) covered my face with moustache and goatee for 25 years; shaved my growing bald patch; wore drab, ill fitting masculine clothes; went from 170 to 290 lbs, and avoided mirrors and looking at or touching myself.
56) monitored myself constantly to masculinize my voice, my language, my expressed interests, my looks, my body language, my walk, my gestures, my touches, my thoughts.
57) literally wiped the idea of crossdressing from my mind for 30 years, telling myself that I had to have GRS in order to wear women's clothing.
58) developed an allergic reaction to men's underwear, so that I had a 'health reason' to underdress.

That's a few of my favorite ones! So glad I don't have to try to maintain all of that any more. Still cleaning up the wreckage from a lifetime of self-neglect.

Vast quantities of drugs and alcohol, a lot of casual sex - mostly fuelled by the drugs and alcohol. Tried to be a gay guy..

None of it worked, just kept me too wasted to think.

Quote from: Felix on September 15, 2012, 07:28:01 PM
I'm glad you're here. It's really easy to forget how many people are like you. In my everyday life I'm usually the only one like me and it's helpful to surf through susan's for a reminder that there are lots of people in similar situations.

I'm glad You're here also.  It seems you are a decent human being and possibly even remotely sane.  You may have travelled from the 'opposite pole' but I greatly appreciate there is common ground to be found in the experience.  The existence of both lends credibility to all and the value of just being yourself.

Oh boy....many of the ones already mentioned...I think soon after I got married and started a family and went back into a "suppression relapse" for a while.

Also went through a hyper-religious phase....ROTC phase.....even smoked a pipe for a few years (off and on)......

all seems so stupid now....glad these days I'm just focusing on being me.  Although, there are days that I'm certain I'd have coped better had I just been born female....

I'm doing this in snippets here, as they come to me... I did the beard thing, but not for reasons of looking manly - I'd noticed early on that men who shaved every day ended up with coarse-looking skin on their faces, so my beard-growing was a secret ploy to keep my face soft underneath :). One of the first things I did when I decided it was finally time I could transition was to get some really good blades and shave - it was such a relief!

In my late teens I became a North London Hippy (we were an 80s thing) just so I could have long hair and wear colourful clothes (I spent 3 years dressed entirely in shades of lilac) and still pretend to be a straight boy (with a pretty dyke concealed under the patchouli...)

Then I tried to be a gay man (because they didn't have to be macho, and I liked some men, and again with the androgynous clothing, hennaed hair and that). then I tried for the blokey Buddhist chic, with the crew cut and the black outfits.

Enough trying now, enough.

Quote from: MadelineB on September 15, 2012, 09:37:48 PM
Thanks everybody for sharing. I won't start commenting or it would take all day. My own things that I did to avoid who I am:
1) ...
24) Forgot 17 years of my life and my entire identity
25) ...

OMG I forgot this one!

My wife often remarks now how when we first started going out how my response to "What was your childhood like?" was "Normal"; end of conversation. OK, not first started going, some 30 years of going out and then some. I am so glad she looked past the Warning Warning Will Robinson alarms going off in her head. Now, some 30 years later and a fair ammount of pain and tears, she gets to hear the details, both good and painful, when they come up.

Hopefully my luck will hold as a new set of Warning Warning Will Robinson alarms are going off in her head as we both, in our own ways, wrestle with the genie let out of the bottle.

Quote from: Padma on September 15, 2012, 11:57:22 PM
In my late teens I became a North London Hippy (we were an 80s thing) just so I could have long hair and wear colourful clothes (I spent 3 years dressed entirely in shades of lilac) and still pretend to be a straight boy (with a pretty dyke concealed under the patchouli...)

I don't think I knew many North London hippies, but NW10 was my universe for many years.

Quote from: Felicitá on September 16, 2012, 04:02:19 AM
I don't think I knew many North London hippies, but NW10 was my universe for many years.

I was an NW11 gal - Golders Green, innit. I had mates in Harlesden though (and chowed down in Willesden a lot - mmm, Sabras).

Quote from: Padma on September 16, 2012, 05:00:04 AM
I was an NW11 gal - Golders Green, innit. I had mates in Harlesden though (and chowed down in Willesden a lot - mmm, Sabras).

Carmelli bagles and...hamentashen, yum. Willesden will always feel like home. But I'm a little further up north now.

Quote from: Felicitá on September 16, 2012, 05:23:57 AM
Carmelli bagles and...hamentashen, yum. Willesden will always feel like home. But I'm a little further up north now.

...and I'm way south west, escaped London when I was 21. I've always felt safest in the south west - I didn't know I was moving here to transition until as soon as I'd actually found somewhere to move into - then bam! (to get back on topic :) )

As a teenager I gave GID a complete swerve and went straight into pretty severe Depression that lasted for about 40 years off and on. 
Joined the Police.
Got married and fathered two children.
None worked as I now realise that I was aware I wasn't a guy from 11 or 12, just didn't have a way to express it, or any way to tackle it that didn't likely involve a Psych Hospital. 

Quote from: Padma on September 14, 2012, 11:01:41 AM
I tried really, really hard to be a gay man.

LOL! Same here!

Quote from: Felix on September 15, 2012, 06:06:06 PM
When I was younger I tried to tell myself that it was a test from god and that it was my duty to just learn how to live as a woman.

I hear this a lot from religious folk when bad things happen to them.

Every once in a while I catch myself wondering what kind of sick pup would get jollies from testing people with awful circumstances to see how they bear up.

Just remembered something else I did. In high school, I went to the gym and lifted weights with a friend. I figured if I looked buff then the bullies would leave me alone. I also joined the Army Cadets but that lasted only a few weeks. I got into a fight with another kid who, surprise surprise, thought I was gay. I was shocked at my strength that day because they said it took 4 people to peel me off of him.

Looking back, I can't help but wonder if my long hair at that age along with my apparently feminine mannerisms only served to enhance what made me appear to be gay.

I did the weightlifting thing too, because people would bully me. At my strongest I weighed 135 lbs but was able to benchpress 300 lbs. Nobody bullied me then. But it destroyed my naturally slim physique

Wow, A lot of what you guys have said resonates within me strongly...  Too strongly for my current mental state actually.  I like everything in my life as it is (with the exception of being male).  Only common thing that has been tried that I havent is the drugs/drinking and sleeping with lots of women/ watching porn.  Never tried being gay, but I have hung out with some gay guys, really really not me...

Working out to look manly: check
Pretending I'm just a crossdresser: check (interesting sidenote, its easier for me to accept being transgender now than trying to convince myself I am a crossdresser)
Hanging out with "Hyper-male" friends: check
Got married: check  (didnt do this to prove my manliness, but out of love and respect to my wife.  I seriously desire the marriage to survive all this)
REPRESSED MEMORIES : well, dont know, but I dont remember anything before 14, but remember almost everything thereafter... Not a good sign on the repressed memories front.  I do know I crossdressed from 10 years old, or at least that was when I was caught by my parents.
Difficult studies : check (taught myself a fair amount of quantum theory, even started trying to mathematically state and prove my own theorems)
ROTC: check (really hated it, refused to call classmates sir/maa'm lol)

I had a lot of bouts with depression and would not even admit to why I was so depressed.

 ::)  Joined the Army! "Yeah...  Baby...  You are a man! You look ->-bleeped-<-ty in camo! :P

Quote from: ashrock on September 17, 2012, 04:04:33 PM
Pretending I'm just a crossdresser: check (interesting sidenote, its easier for me to accept being transgender now than trying to convince myself I am a crossdresser)

This describes me too. I always hated the label of TV/CD but I am quite comfortable being labelled as TS / TG / MTF

Quote from: DaniStarr on September 19, 2012, 09:00:12 AM
::)  Joined the Army! "Yeah...  Baby...  You are a man! You look ->-bleeped-<-ty in camo! :P

"I never thought I'd look good in khaki
It hurt the pride as well as it scratched the balls"
From a traditional Irish song ;D

Quote from: Keaira on September 17, 2012, 08:04:39 AM
Just remembered something else I did. In high school, I went to the gym and lifted weights with a friend. I figured if I looked buff then the bullies would leave me alone. I also joined the Army Cadets but that lasted only a few weeks. I got into a fight with another kid who, surprise surprise, thought I was gay. I was shocked at my strength that day because they said it took 4 people to peel me off of him.

Looking back, I can't help but wonder if my long hair at that age along with my apparently feminine mannerisms only served to enhance what made me appear to be gay.

Wow...that one hit's home....I had a similar experience in High School, but it would be a while before I started to understand why.  I have a high-school yearbook photo where the other students doctored it to look female.  I remember being real upset about it and counselors and other school officials telling me it was "all in fun" and should be a "good sport" about it.   Meanwhile, I'm getting harassed and assaulted almost daily because everyone thinks I'm gay.

...turns out your average gay-basher doesn't really know the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.....and I had no idea what was going on with me either.

I keep wondering about the gay / bi thing. I had that stage of trying to convince myself that I could be bi or gay, but... It took me some time to notice that when I was thinking about interest on men, I was not seeing myself as one. Surprise. Too bad there are too many good looking gays. I keep telling a friend that he'd enjoy more being bi. His reply... I'd love it, but looks like only one thing interests me.

The guy is a freaking chick magnet. Heck, I was even tempted to hit on him.

ohh lets see
fasting, prayer, and penance (how Catholic am I)
Pentecostal sects, since the Catholic thing didn't pray away the gay
endurance exercise, weight lifting, high impact / full contact martial arts (I didn't like my body, so I didn't care if it got hurt, I figured out last year that the exercise to exaustion, and fighting were my version of "cutting")
Historic martial arts groups (medieval European sword word, very traditional Asian dojos)
Drunkeness, and black rage.
Hyper male jobs


didn't work though

Quote from: Abracadabra on September 24, 2012, 05:56:06 AM
Were you a role-model for "Christian" in - 50 shades... I say!

Unfortunately not. I never learned to make bucket-loads of money...  :(

Quote from: Abracadabra on September 24, 2012, 06:36:01 AM
"What do you pretend you don't know?"

Most folks looked plain stupefied at it... like huh?!?

Until two years ago I would have pretended I did not know what that meant. I would have said... "Huh?"

;D

Quote from: Abracadabra on September 24, 2012, 06:36:01 AM
Telling about keeping busy like hell to keep the "lid" on things we don't want to "know".

This was me - keeping busy and living "responsibly", that is until I finally got too tired and depressed to do much of anything anymore.  I thought I'd 'take the hit' and do everything 'right' and eventually I'd have plenty of money and have the time to enjoy my life more.  In a sense that time is NOW.  Certainly though this wasn't the situation I consciously thought I was preparing for.

I didn't deny it, I just thought there was nothing I could do about it.
I figured well if im going to be miserable I may as well try and live up to what people wanted me to be.
At least then I could make them happy.

My denial was extremely strong for the years that it lasted, but thankfully my denial was much shorter than others considering i'm only 20 now. I was always shy and awkward growing up and gender dysphoria kicked in around 8/9 for me. I repressed any thoughts concerning this and focused it on several things; from playing basketball to sexual gratification in my early puberty years. Although I thought I had a good handle on "my condition" I continued to struggle for years until I finally realized I couldn't fight it any longer and I started to unveil what was truly underneath. My denial may have been short but it was extremely strong and no one who knew me suspected a thing because I acted the role of a stereotypical male, but deep down I truly knew in my heart...I was a female.

I've done that typical guy role too...never worked on me. I also tried keeping busy, getting caught up in life, suppressing it whatever way I could, and did the whole dating girls and getting married game. I tried to convince myself that it was just a fantasy, a way to run away from my misery. That backfired!

I have an update coming tonight, so keep an eye out!

I almost discovered myself in my late teens but then I got my girlfriend pregnant and joined the Army.. that started a long cycle of proving my manhood.  Doing everything "manly" I could think of in the Army and out of it.  Riding motorcycles, jumping out of planes, bodybuilding, martial arts, heavy drinking in my youth. 

Ended up married twice with four kids between the two wives.  Thankfully my career is not a traditional male field (IT), so it shouldn't be overly affected by my transition.

Looking back I wonder how much was simply exploration of myself and how much was denial of what I found?

And I totally get the distraction thing repeated over and over again.  I've always been called a renaissance man (woman?)  because of the breadth of my interests and studies.  But my wife says I have serious ADD because I jump between things too quickly for serious study. I think that when things get too easy it frees my mind up to contemplate my inner identity issues.

So many commonalities here.

When I first had the thoughts that I was a female I just thought it was because of my overactive imagination. I just plain denied it. I now see how I was so wrong.

I told myself, at various points, that I "couldn't be trans" because

-I wasn't "effeminate" enough
-I was attracted to women
-I enjoyed many interests that are typically "male," like watching sports, etc.
-I was attracted to trans women and trans men... I told myself I was "just an admirer."

It took me a long time, but I finally realized NONE of that stuff mattered.

Well here's what I did and I am not proud of it and hated what I was becoming/doing:

Went to a gym - but instead of bulking up I became slimmer - which was weird, but was a blessing, since my dad used be a body builder who had huge muscular arms.
although my thighs and legs became strong and muscular  :-\

In college tried to date as many girls as I could but end up with a bad rep despite the fact that my GID combined with the fact that every girl I asked out had this weird feeling like something was not right with me, resulted in me getting rejected all the time.
one even figured out I was either gay or something which was the closest anyone has ever come to guessing my real sexual preference/gender identity.

Tried to act as manly as I could trained my body, voice, stance to be manly and slowly and painfully tried to separate myself from who I really was but only ended up getting depressed started drinking and smoking and became a shell of the person I once was. And lost several years of my life to it as a result.

a norwegian documentary about transsexualism made me realize for real that i'm not a girl already before middle school, but at the same time managed to convince me that i'd never want srs since the result wouldn't be satisfactory at all. it didn't forget to mention that you don't have to go all out in transitioning, cause that's the only option in norway. unless i find a doctor who's willing to try helping me without consulting the authorities on trans issues

while growing up i tried to be that "good girl" that my parents expected me to be. and learned the worst possible way that this is the wrong way to be a girl, it only made me vulnerable to molesters. never gave me any understanding of what it really means to be a girl, or how to naturally and unconsciously act like one

in high school i rejected many good guys, then dated the girliest guy i could find, and got totally disappointed with him. he some times would want me to take the lead and i hated it because i thought it was "wrong". and all kinds of weird things. i wasn't too open for any experimentation of that kind, since i was in denial. dominant by nature, but trying to be submissive...

and i had a kid, at a slightly young age. not long after high school... but this was probably one of the better choices i made. suddenly i didn't feel any need for relationships, and found more time to reflect upon myself and who i really am. it also gives me a feeling of having fulfilled my duties as a fertile member of society, so now i can think about doing things that would lose me my fertility without freaking out too much

I don't think that I ever really tried to convince myself I wasn't trans. I had that bit figured out fairly quickly in life. I tried to hide it though. Thought maybe it would go away. I just desperately wanted to fit in and for nobody to be the wiser. I lied to myself a lot. Played the straight male game for a little bit.

Glad I wised up.

I guess I tried the ostrich with her head in the sand approach.    When I started puberty I just fantasized about being some how magically turned into a woman.    I must have made up a gazillion day dreams.   They ranged from getting kidnapped by a woman or women who wished to turn me into one to finding a sugar daddy who made me his dream girl to volunteering for a medical experiment and giving them permission to make me as female as possible including giving me workable female genitals.   Outwardly I just stuffed it.   

Now I am the oldest in my family and usually the oldest in my play group so I went to school and drove into life without much of any kind of a life's mode.   As a child born just after the end of World War II adults had their world and children had theirs and many times the worlds did not exist in the same mentality.    My mom, dad, and stepdad knew well the life style of the wine, sex, and gambling nature of the Deadwood I grew up in before puberty kept my brother and I protected from it.    We weren't to go downtown at night.   As a family we only went to the Old Style Saloon a couple of times and my folk's idea of partying at home was a game of cards and small talk with an other couple once in a blue moon.

   I just ran in the hills, played softball on a narrow, street, and delivered newspapers.   I went out for baseball to sit on the bench and just existed as a boy scout never getting higher than first class by the time I was 19.   I was a mediocre male who day dreamed her way through life making very few connections and hardly ever getting any self satisfaction from the baseball, football, wrestling, track, where I practiced but was never quite good enough to play in many games.

  I never insisted or worked for owning a car and when I was given a 22 rifle by my step dad and later he took it back saying it wasn't his to give me, I never insisted on another.   I lived in the country and never insisted on having a BB gun to shoot at the birds.    I eventually taught myself to drive and bought my own car.    I earned my spending money delivering papers in all kinds of weather 7 days a week (male job then,  male or female now), shoveling snow, mowing grass, setting pins in a bowling alley, selling concessions at the rodeo,  etching pictures for newspaper, and mopping my stepdad's barbershop.   

   All of this didn't make me any more of a man or less of a woman.   In all of this I was a polite little girl who politely waited her turn which hardly ever came,  got no ego boost, and I lived in a daze wondering why when I put in the work,  I got so little reward, and was totally ignored by the coaches.    I spent my life trying to do things,  I had little idea of knowing how to do, and stressing myself out about not achieving an unrealistic level of success.    The adults worked with those who could, ignored those who struggled hoping they would quit which I was too block headed to do.   Maybe I was hoping the female would fade away and the male would kick in who knows. 

At home I had the female house chores of washing cloths in the old ringer washer and hanging them on the line, washing dishes, and general house keeping.   Both my stepdad and mother cooked but us kids never did.   I learned a little about cooking over campfires at boy scout camp outs. 

In high school I had two boy friends one of which was an intellectual preacher's kid and the other a mechanical, electrical whizz whose dad was a welder and auto mechanic.    At the time I thought I was one of the guys,   but I was probably the Platonic girl friend to each.   I watch my boy friend work on his car, but never jumped into work together with him.  I waited for him to ask, he never did.   I hung out with my other boy friend at his father's church and sang in the choir with him and went to youth group.    I learned to think but often felt like a tagalong.   

I did not date, except to take another girl, to my senior prom.   I was just living one life in the world an another in my head.   Others may have seen this, but I never did.   

I was picked on by the toughies but I always held my ground without fighting,  but never called names.   I lived on the edges with two other nerds.   

As far as sex goes, its fun, I like it,  but I was a wuss about it.   I am extremely shy in talking and joking about sex, a dismal failure at putting myself in a situation where sex could occur,  I am extremely shy female and ignorant in initiating sex, and I have a male sex organ.    I enjoy sex and have fun at it, but only if I feel that I am a woman in the relationship.    Sex for me evolves out of a relationship with another person which so far has only been with another female.   Sex and love for me are matters of sharing sex and not one person forcing it upon another.   However if some one I liked was sexually aggressive with me, I would surrender to it.     

I struggled like this most of my life.   I got married, had kids, worked in the female world of elementary teaching, ducking male responsibilities whenever possible.   Being married meant that I could acquire female clothing without breaking the barrier of buying them myself.  It also meant that I spent lots of time shopping with her in the female departments of stores and became more and more comfortable there.

Struggle with being female yes.   When I tried to crush my day dreaming about being a woman, it popped up in my dreams.    As I grew older I grew bolder about wearing woman's clothing under my male clothing especially during the summer while I was out of town as a state bee hive inspector.    So gradually femininity was moving from my fantasy world to my physical world and my fears and apprehensions grew less. 

It took along time to accept the fact that I was a woman and not a man.   It also took me along time to realize that there was nothing wrong with me being a woman.   Then as I have gotten older I have learned that at least with myself the world didn't care that I was a woman.   Then as of lately just being a woman as a matter of course.   Now I have not taken any hormones or had any surgeries.   I have worn woman's underclothing for at least 13 years 24/7/365.   I wear make up constantly.    I have three padded bras which have given me visible breasts which I wear 24/7/365.   I have ghost breasts like a ghost arm which an amputee still feels.   

I came to the conclusion a long time ago after my first wife left me and I was alone that it was better for me to try living and developing my femaleness in a family and in society rather than being a hermit.    If I just lived in my shell in my corner of the world I would just be a fantasy dream woman of the 1950s and live a paranoid life in fear of other people.    I am living with another female now who knew from the beginning that I preferred to dress as a female and she now accepts my public presentation as such.  Right now I think we are just friends who share a son together, but we live as a married couple with all of the ups and downs of such a relationship.

I guess I have gotten long winded as I am want to do.    I guess I just tried to ignore and live in ignorance of the fact I was a trans female and stumbled through life as a unenthusiastic male who gradually made life choices to live more in the female world until I finely surrendered to my femaleness in my middle 60's.

In many ways I have lived naive complicated life  which is grounded in a very deep liberal religious faith.   I guess every time I get into writing like this I am trying to rethink my life to put into perspective.   I envision my life as a sweet little girl, with the body of a boy,  who daintily tips her dainty toe into the male world waiting to be invited in.   Some times she dresses male and wades into the male world and daintily tests out different aspects of it,  but is so totally unwilling to commit herself to it.   She spends many years hiding her beautiful pink dress under the camouflage of maleness while she gradually over the years does a strip tease until the femaleness is revealed and the male facade is thrown away.

I gave in to my mother's constant push for me to wear make up. I wore lipstick for about 2 weeks, and I hated it. Every time I looked in the mirror, all I could see was a boy in bad drag make-up.
Everyone gave me these 'oh you look so much prettier now' comments. Pretty is not the adjective I want. All the compliments for something that made me feel so wrong.

That's poignant, Michelle, and I relate in some ways. I was born at the tail end of the post-WWII baby boomer generation, grew up in coal mine and steel mill country where anyone the least bit different was ridiculed, harassed, and frequently beaten, all with the acceptance of parents and teachers so long as no bones were broken. After all, it would "make a man" out of you, right? You learn to hide this, then suppress it, believing all the crap you're given about how anyone who thinks these thoughts is a pervert, a monster, an "abomination" before God... and so quite naturally you try to be who everyone else expects you to be. But you fail and each time you have a difficult gender dysphoria episode, it becomes harder to shove it back under a rock. I used distractions, throwing myself into the military, then into college, into my children's lives and their activities. I counted and at one point I spent 8 years involved with youth sports, 28 out of 30 days a month. I had little time for my gender dysphoria to rear its head and when it did I had an excuse - "My kids need me."

After my kids graduated and moved on with their lives, it became increasingly harder to fight myself. Then in 2010 I started yet another dysphoria episode and I couldn't shake it. I went steadily downhill until by January 2012 I was asking myself why was I even alive, to what purpose, and did I even care? I wasn't yet prepared to harm myself but having those thoughts scared me so I finally, after all these years, sought out a therapist. And the rest, as they say, is herstory. :)

I thought that it was a figment of my imagination, with a life of it's own.  It started in dreams, I would find myself talking to this man "Jack".  He was perfect, or at least I thought that was what my brain was trying to tell me "this is what you should look for in a man."  As time went on and I told my best friend, we played the whole "multiple personality" game for a while, switching between "me" and "Jack" even though I had admitted to myself in no uncertain terms that, deep down, he was just me.  However I didn't realize how true that was, just in a different context.

Over about the course of a year "Jack" had taken over more and more to the point where it had been months since I'd "switched" between him and "me".  It was actually my friend (by this point my girlfriend) who suggested that maybe I wasn't crazy, maybe I was just trans.  Everything fell into place after that.  I had always been a "tomboy", more male friends than female friends, I actually lamented over the fact that I was always "one of the guys" and that no one seemed attracted to me.  I remember briefly thinking I might be bi, as I still found men attractive (and still do lol) yet I was more interested in girls.  Looking back farther I remember wishing on stars, even trying to pray that I would wake up as a boy the next morning (this was around first grade). 

Now, looking back; I remember myself in high school almost like a different person, like a friend or a sibling who's gone now.  I honestly can't remember what it was like to be that shy, awkward girl; struggling through everyday social situations, and eventually spending almost the whole of 11th grade in voluntary silence. 

I suppose that it all came down to the first words I said that night when my girlfriend suggested it to me:  "That explains a lot..."

I'm still trying.

i used to study my face in the mirror and hate every unfeminine trait that i found. like the cleft in my chin
since i couldn't want to look manly if i were a cis woman

(Trigger alert: pregnancy etc.)

I got married to a straight man, gave birth to two children and breastfed them for a total of four years. All the while I was desperately hoping that doing each of these things would finally make me feel like a woman so I could just feel 'normal'.

The fact that I am attracted to men was also confusing; it took me a while to figure out that gender and sexuality are separate.

I also tried using make-up and wearing women's clothes whilst at work (although I always felt uncomfortable due to my dysphoria with my chest & hips); growing my hair long (not so bad because I like guys with long hair); and trying to fit into the role of wife and mother as expected of me by society - but those terms have always seemed very jarring as they don't fit me.

So I gave up on desperately trying to pretend I'm a woman and decided to be true to myself. And I have learned from experience that if doing stereotypically female things such as pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding doesn't make you feel like a woman, nothing will. And nothing ever did.

Rotton....exactly the same for me. Where are you now in terms of fighting it?

Quote from: japple on October 11, 2012, 01:53:44 AM
Rotton....exactly the same for me. Where are you now in terms of fighting it?

Oh.. It would mean creating two new threads, xD:


Whad did you do to accept you were trans?

How did you struggle to hide your trans status from people until it was the "right moment"


Starting the general therapy made me more aware of my other issues, who I wanted to be (regardless of gender) and what would improve my life by changing my presentation to others and myself (I discovered that I presented as an irascible monster acting like a insensible caveman because I was afraid of people knowing my real "softy" shelf).

The previous week I had a lifechanging experience (kind of) where I questioned my current situation and my future. Accepting that I wanted to change my life made easier to counter the GID fears, even if I can't make a true transition in all aspects.


Now the problem is that I still need to build more confidence, specially to face my family, which I still carry like a ball and chain. They are the only ones I keep acting though around, but they also are the cruellest ones. I have less problems in being accepted by the outside world and my workplace than at home. Luckily, now I have a chance of leaving the home, which was my biggest chain leading to denial. I keep saying that if I had been living on my own earlier, I'd have done something earlier instead of just waiting to break down.

I hid it all my life because I was afraid of being sent to psychologists, being treated as a failure, "straightened".... My father said "If it was true we would have seen "something". The real truth is that they don't know me at all. Can't they see that I never shared I single thought or emotion with them or the rest of the world for years? I thought "This is wrong, I must avoid thinking I want to be female, nobody can know this, other kids will beat me down even more than now. I am an only an ugly monster with delusions". Although the more I check my past, the earlier the thoughts appear.

It took me a long time to gather up the bravery to post this because it can be interpreted badly by some, perhaps wishy-washy.

To start, I constantly was reminded how attractive people thought I was as a male.  They would drone on and on about it being a waste, predominantly female friends, losing my toned body and specific anatomy.  It sounds like I am tooting my horn but it was really restrictive and agonizing process.  Like I was being warned not to go through with it or I'd destroy my future.  I'd think, "If I take the steps I want to become female will I be happy being a (possibly) not-so-cute girl and am I going to be fine with it being this way?"  Incredibly vain as it is, it was a really tough to work through.  Despite a childhood of gender variance and self-abuse, it still hadn't sunken in for me clearly.  Despite visiting a gender specialist regularly, not even then!  Yet I knew that I had the feeling that my gender wasn't congruent with my physical body.

Basically, I tried my best to convince myself that I was and would be far more attractive and successful and desirable as a male than if I were to be a female.  Incredibly.  Freakin'.  Vain.  Young people, sigh.

This went on and off through the years, resulting in stretches of girlmode and boymode, until I found some sort of safe and temporary in-between.  Stagnant I sat like this for what seemed like eons before I finally broke down and basically said, "To hell with it.  The worst mistake anyone can make is being too afraid to make one."  I stopped caring and feeling scared about possibly not looking passably female and just pushed forward.  And that's worked for me then and is working for me now.  Some days I dress/present as feminine female, others as a boyish tomboy (been asked if I was a lesbian before, gah!)  I really wish I could explain this properly, but I am not exactly clever.

On an odd and random note, my variance has had the side effect of me becoming almost exclusively attracted to other transfolk.  Male, female, or any combination.  I think there is a label for this, but I really like to avoid them because you can't sum a person up with restrictive little categories.  To me I just feel more attached and contiguous with people that share this similar struggle, relate to them more, and appreciate them more.  That isn't to say I think less of any cisgendered person!

Being comfortable in my own skin has been so very, very hard to attain and it's something that I still work on daily.

Bradley, it is not unusual to be attracted to someone who can understand you.

i knew from being young that i felt odd but i was a shy kid and from a family that just didnt talk abut such things so i became andro type teenager and avoiding any situation that demanded me to be the alpha male. i decided i must have been gay as i had a desire for the male form but that was almost right as i accepted to my self in the last couple of years that the feelings were as a woman wants a man. from being a teenager through my life i tried always to settle as a male. got tattoos.all the stuff said on here but i have realized that all the time i was spending more time trying not to slip out as a female and play act being a male. ive never had a girlfriend or been married and that makes people suspicious. untill the internet came on the scene i didnt have the real opportunities to explore my feelings with any real effort and by then i had got into a cycle of bury head in work, get depressed, no real direction in life really hiding away. i now know that that feeling of inner peace and acceptance was missing but i didnt know why.its amazing how u can drift through life knowing u arnt right but not really doing anything about it. when the internet opened up the accessibility to things i opened up my experiences expecting i was just a closet gay to be honest. well over the past 5/7 years i have realized that im not gay im transgender. i dont want to be a man and have a man, after a while i realized that i was letting my female side take over to allow me to express my feminine desires and have a man as a woman. even through those times i kept deigning it was anything more than some sort of sexual thrill i just couldnt accept it. i would be ok with it for weeks then suddenly abandon it completely when it scared the hell out of me. one trans woman i talked to said it does that but if its in you it always comes back and how right she was. funny as well a gay guy i know told me he could sense i wasnt "gay" and some others had noticed it by the way i acted.i slept  with guys but some did joke are u sure ur not a woman the way u crave a man. anyway ive denighed it too long it nearly killed me and had  made me a unstable person. im slowly learning how have confidence in who i am and not hiding it anymore. maybe ive had a hint of the inner calmness that i think has always been missing. i know id rather have a female gender than a male the male bits dont do it for me and i have tried to accept them.

I never tried to convince myself that I wasn't trans, because I always knew that I would be much happier as female and....that was that. But I did things to convince other people that I was a "normal male." Let's see:

- at 13 I covered my walls with nudie posters (little did my friends & family know that I actually wanted to BE those girls, not screw them lol)

- Wore a baseball hat (I thought I looked very tough with it on)

- Listened to hardcore punk rock

- Spoke disparagingly of gay people when I was a kid, although other kids were speaking disparagingly of ME, percieving me as gay.

I just wanted to be accepted so much, and for the harrassment and bullying to stop. But I always knew that I felt female and accepted that about myself.

Quote from: Zoey on October 30, 2012, 06:56:58 AM

- at 13 I covered my walls with nudie posters (little did my friends & family know that I actually wanted to BE those girls, not screw them lol)

Oh yeah, THe Pamela Anderson poster... I ended doing it because it was "customary". When I visited somebody's home they places were filled with al sort of hot posters... I never had that interest, I'd stick with videogame or cool cars posters.

I had posters of male movie stars & pop stars all over my bedroom walls, which helped keep me stealth because it's hardly unusual for a teenage girl to have posters of cute guys. George Michael featured quite heavily, and I was even more interested in him after he came out.

Of course, that's because I'm actually a gay transguy - but my parents didn't know that at the time! ;)

I guess my things were for myself is that I would deny doing anything feminine or reject any interest I would have in such things. I was already socially embarrassed, and I was in fear of any kind of action that would look feminine or "girly". Ranging from picking the female trainer in Pokemon to just using a purple piece of construction paper for a class project. I would reject talking to other people, especially other girls due to my own fear of society. I felt the same way out of society, when I was in my home I would try to hide the subject of girlish interests.

Eventually I came out to start experimenting with stuff when I moved to a new area where there were other feminine guys there, something my old school never had. It was more accepting there to do all of the "strange" stuff, so I decided that I would be safe if I tried some things out, and over the summer of 2011, I had started experimenting with all sorts of things from "crossdressing" to identifying myself as a girl on internet forums. I thought it ->-bleeped-<- at the time was as fake, and just considered "drag" at the time, so I felt silly doing it. I however learned the terms I needed to know in Febuary of 2012, and I was able to understand myself so much better.....even if I'm still on that journey to figure out who I am today.

i'm gonna be honest here. Being trans scared me like nothing else in my life, i think feeling like i was an incomplete person freaked me out. i denied it for probably about 5 years. i tried really hard to be a femme lesbian for a long time. lots of sex and drugs. i came out about a year and a half ago and it was the hardest, best decision of my life.

Tristan - I am still scared sh*$less.

I tried out for most of the sports in High School but flopped at all of them.
Got married and had two sons, ended in divorce after 8 years.
Got a Norton motorcycle and rode extensively.
Played drums in Rock bands and even in a Heavy Metal Punk band.
Got religion. Prayed to God to take it away.
Read the Bible, led Bible study groups.
Got married again. Another son.
Took on a career in a field that is still 98% male dominated - HVAC Service.
Became obsessed with fishing. Took up fly fishing for trout.
Took up saltwater fishing from a kayak and competed in tournaments.

I still do some of these things but when I finally slowed down recently I remembered that I always felt like I was female. Always loved the female body and the clothes that the girls could wear.

Got into bad relationships with damaged people, fell madly in love with a violent shoplifting alcoholic and lived with her for 3 years.I only loved 2 women and Claire was both of them!

Married a few times, drank a lot, had masculine jobs. I failed at it for the most part, I was pretty much broken by the time I was thirty, had to spend some time in the hospital after some self injury and then just sort of checked out of mainstream life for about 10 years before I decided I had nothing to lose anymore so I may as well give transition a shot. It couldn't be any worse than the hell I was already in. Luckily, it turned out to be the best decision I made, a shame I didn't do it decades earlier.

You name it I've tried it. I still do to this day. I'm emotionally killing myself with it.

I was diagnosed as low t and actually took testosterone cyponate for a year because I wasnt male enough. I cry to think about it. I damaged my perfectly fine androgous bod with because of listening to someone elses else's perception of who I should be.

Listen to yourself.

I played football and I also did shotput in track in high school.  I toke shop and diesel tec while in school.  I married joined army to prove that "I am a man" but just lying to myself

I think at the moment that I'm still having strong denial, as I am basically acting like a straight cis woman a lot more than I did pre-realisation because I don't want my fiancé to leave me, sabotaging the last 6 months of weight loss by overeating, and drinking a lot.

I was terrified of my thoughts and refused to explore or even acknowledge them.  I kept my hair really short because "girls have long hair, and I'm not a girl"

My (now) ex-girlfriend once suggested that it might be interesting if we could trade bodies.  Instead of admitting to thinking about body swapping all the time, I instantly said "no" and then spent the next hour hoping that I didn't answer too quickly.

Quote from: Tristan_Markus on November 01, 2012, 07:56:02 PM
i'm gonna be honest here. Being trans scared me like nothing else in my life, i think feeling like i was an incomplete person freaked me out. i denied it for probably about 5 years. i tried really hard to be a femme lesbian for a long time. lots of sex and drugs. i came out about a year and a half ago and it was the hardest, best decision of my life.

I'm really sorry I missed your post before.

Big huggggs. Jill

I tried to be a man back in high school by joining the wrestling team but quit after like a month because it was like torture to me. Then I joined the marines when I graduated high school and served in the infantry. I hated every moment of those four years. I didn't know I was transgender then but I know I hated myself and somehow wanted to change who I was. I was always uncomfortable with myself but didn't know why. It was around this time I realized I was bi with a preference towards guys but I really suppressed that fact and didn't want to face it.

I ended up buying a house because that's what a successful man would do and ended up getting really depressed, self mutilated because I didn't care about my body and hated it, and drank - all in isolation due to my bad social anxiety. I just felt like I imprisoned myself and I wanted to die about half the time.  That lasted a few years and I did a lot of introspection during that time and once I realized what I was my self-hatred just somehow lifted. I'm now living in an apartment trying to save money for surgery. I feel comfortable enough with myself to start reaching out to people and my anxiety has been improving so I'm definitely on the right path now. I'll never hurt myself again.