Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Just a little curious how others came to the conclusion that the real underlying problem was a mismatch in gender expression rather than just a sense of sexual attraction. My path started at 4 with crossdressing then progressed to viewing a neighbor of mine as a boyfriend and experimenting sexually as I grew up through puberty with male and female sex partners. My bisexuality has and never will go away because I'm very comfortable viewing myself as bisexual. Along the way I have always been a crossdresser and knew there was a very important component to my crossdressing both mentally and physically that was horrendously missing. I knew after puberty that my problem was that I needed the proper hormones. After puberty I was quite sexually active which at one point got extreme , but is was never satisfying, there was always the missing component of estrogen and the physical need to have the proper body irrespective of any sex involved. The crossdressing stopped making any sense to me without the proper physical anatomy to fill the dress properly. I stopped everything physically and actively stopped the dressing because it made no sense anymore because I realize at that point that the problem was my gender. I started my transition not long ago and the mental effect of estrogen has been monumental. I can't change the past , but I learning to get the most out of the present. In one sense when I was young the sexual part was so overwhelming there was no way I could of understood that gender was the issue and not sexual predisposal . In this sense there was a benefit to later transitioning even though I so wish it was sooner. Has any one come to a point in life when that light bulb goes off and shows you the difference between your sexual desires and your needs as the proper gender or is it just all bunched up together in a swirling tornado .

I have trouble separating cause and effect, because it's all a big muddle.  I grew up pretty much asexual, which caused me a lot of grief because it made me different.  I didn't lose my virginity until I was 30.

So was my attraction to crossdressing a reaction to the asexuality, or was I asexual because I was trans all along and not fitting into the male role?  Damned if I know!  I'm going to need a therapist to sort that mess out.

Yea, it's a mind boggle

For me the gender came along first so there was no confusion.  As a child I had no conception of sex or sexual attraction.


Sapere Aude

I can only speak for myself, but I'm very certain of my gender identity. Ever since I was around nine years old I knew I was a girl. I also knew that anatomically I was male with male sex organs. I knew that is how society saw me and I tried to go along with it. When it came to dating in high school, I definitely tried my hand. I was only interested in girls at the time. I'd start seeing someone, but once we got to sex I'd make up excuses and eventually stop seeing them. It wasn't that I didn't want to have sex. I just didn't want to have sex as a man. It felt wrong. As a result I remained asexual throughout my adult life. It's only now that I'm beginning to explore the subject of sex, now that my body matches much more closely to my gender. I will say that my sexual preference has shifted to men, but I knew that for some women it does. I also blame my self ignorance and adamant need to fit in as male as for my not considering dating men. Once I realized what was going on everything changed and I began to accept everything I felt, not just what I thought a man should feel.


~Evelyn

I was always very confused with my sexuality. I believe that i tried so hard to be "normal" that i would fight against my attraction to men, and would pretend that i was attrcted to women! I definetely was very mixed up, and at times would fool myself into believing that i wanted to be with a woman, when all i really wanted was to be a woman!!! I cant believe that i fooled myself for so long, i ended up never being with a woman, as i quite simply wasnt attracted to them in that way.

It wasnt until i accepted myself as a transexual that i stopped fighting against my true desires, and it was such a relief that i could accept that i am attracted to men, and i feel so free!!

I think a huge part of my confusion is that im not a gay man, but im a straight woman! So until i accepted myself as a trangendered woman, it was impossible for me to get with a guy, as the thought of being in a same sex relationship as a guy never seemed right! I need to be treated a the female in a relationship, and im so glad that now im out to everyone, that hopefully i will be able to move on with this aspect of my life!!!!

I think i quite simply could not have a relationship as a guy, as im female. So thats how i knew it wasnt just sexuality that was causing me much distress!!

xx

I've always been bi , but I had a hard time dealing with that reality and it made me asexual for a long time . I finally came to terms with my sexuality and embraced who I was and its mentally felt so much better to accept that I do desire men as much as woman and shouldn't feel ashamed of it. Being physically female is truly so important to me. It's a bummer to be so cursed , but what can you do. It's just a seemingly impossible situation that you try your best to deal with.

For me, the proof came when I started hormones.  My sex drive went to zero, and it never changed how I felt about myself.  If anything, I felt much more complete, and comfortable with who I am.  That's when I knew I could never go back to being a male. I am still more attracted to women, but now I have fantasies about male lovers. All I know is whoever I love, I want to be female.

~Terri

Hello everyone, I always wanted men, just needed the correct body to have them.  Sexuality thing?

EOM

I know that's my biggest problem. I love and fantasize men so much , but I'm not gay and I still have this atrocity .

For me from an FTM POV, I thought that it was sexuality until I had the words to describe what it actually was.

All I knew growing up was that I liked to be masculine and that I found girls attractive, so in my very limited young teenage understanding, that made me a great lesbian. It got more confusing when the concept of "stone butches" was introduced. It really fit and made sense to me, even though it didn't explain the strong negative self image I had about anything I found remotely female about myself.

But when I heard the word transgender and it was described to me how being trans can feel, it made complete sense. It immediately explained a lot of long held, deep seated feelings that I had about myself which were overwhelmingly negative, and it gave me a way to fix it. While I wasn't ready to move forward at the time in terms of transitioning, I still mentally identified as trans for years before I came out because it was the most accurate way I had found to describe myself.

As I started to take steps towards transitioning, and especially as I started to medically transition, any remaining shreds of doubt were completely removed and I knew it was 100% a gender thing and had absolutely nothing to do with my sexuality.

I've always been attracted to men. Did try to be bisexual because I had a desire to have a child, but after I became a father I quickly lost my interest in women, apart from being best friends. I wanted to be a woman since my early childhood, but for a long time thought I could cope and keep this desire to myself by being a gay bottom and doing all the "typically female" things in the relationship while being "invisible" as a transgender. I was kind of roleplaying in order to create a "safe zone" where I could feel feminine. Not so much in my outer appearance, but I always was the one cooking, cleaning, taking care of others, etc.

What made me realize that this strategy wasn't working, is that these gay relationships always failed in the end. Gay men are still gay and like to involve my male traits as well during sex, even if they are tops, which depressed me to no end. Although everything is working just fine, my genitals always were a no go area, ultimately causing these relationships to fail. I derive my sexual pleasure exclusively from being penetrated. In the end, I'm a straight girl, not a gay bottom. Big difference, I found out.

Being outside of a relationship, my sexuality was the only place I could allow myself to feel feminine. So I started dating men for sex, because I needed to have some kind of "quick fix" for my gender dysphoria. For a while my sex play became kind of extreme, which entirely disappeared after I came out and could feel feminine all the time.

all quite interesting

I considered that it was just sexuality for years and used that to remind myself that a transition was not a good idea. It wasn't until I hit a breaking point where I just couldn't take it anymore that I even tried to seriously entertain the idea that I needed to transition. Since starting, the depression I had my entire life hasn't been around anymore. I wouldn't say I know for sure and I have periods of doubt, but what I do know for sure is that transition is right for me, no matter what the reason. I probably would not be here today if I hadn't done it and I now remind myself of that when I have my doubts.

I assumed it was a sexual perversity. I thought I was not any given description, so while a symptom was cross dressing, that was just a symptom. I did not ever "Know" I was a girl. I only came to the idea of being on the transgender spectrum last year. I then thought I was a cross dresser. I started going to therapy for the first time in 50 years. I had not realized that I had severe anxiety and depression. I just thought that was how everyone felt.  However, the descriptions from other cross dressers were kind of familiar but not what I felt. I hated changing back to male clothes. Cross dressing did not relieve anxiety or depression. It ended up almost making it worse but only knowing I would have to hide or purge it all again.

I had thought last year that I was not MTF because I hadn't always known. I didn't have things in my head telling me I had to be a girl. It wasn't till I read an article online titled "That was dysphoria" , that I started thinking differently. I then realized that there is not just one narrative. In therapy, I also started remembering dressing around 8 or 9. While there might be some sexualization it was pre puberty. It should not have been something attached to sex. I started exploring more and now wish I could have had these thoughts years ago. It then became more of a gut reaction than a true realization. I was happier. Maybe it's from speaking to someone and the weight that is lifted from that, but I don't think so.

The starting of HRT has not been a religious epiphany. Partly, because I have approached it with some self introspection. I am well aware of how easily the euphoria can be felt from a placebo effect. After a few weeks, I can't say I am a new person, but the anxiety has lifted. Depression does not stay as easily. I am able to sleep better than I have in years.

Maybe more information than you needed but I think this all shows problem in gender identity and not sexuality.

Joanna

for me the effects of HRT have just built over the 2 years that I started . It's momentum that's quite enjoyable.

It's really incredible that each day longer I'm on HRT and live full time I feel so beautiful. I feel so free to my daily thoughts of just being one of the  girls. That male person just drifts farther away. To actually be living my authentic self is so mind bending. The doubts of the past keep slipping farther out of reach. I'm so much more confident that if I can do GCS it will be incredibly joyful . Being on Susan's and listening to all the successful stories of having GCS has taken so much of my doubts away. Hopefully someday I can be reporting on my success. I had doubts when I was younger about way I wished to live this way , but not anymore.

I knew pretty much as soon as it really started hitting me at age 14 that it had nothing to do with my sexuality, but it took me a LOT longer to figure out the full depths of it, along with what was attraction and what was dysphoria.

I was never attracted to men pre-transition, so that made any hypothetical confusion pretty clear. I asked myself many times "Am I gay?" and the answer was always no, so I knew it was something different from the start.

However, it did take me a while to realize that what I considered "attraction" to women wasn't the same as it was for everyone else. Like, at age 15ish, I assumed that every single AMAB person I was around was also looking at girls because they were jealous of them, and because they were imagining what it was like to be them. I NEVER knew that they weren't looking at women that way, that they were actually looking at them from a perspective of what they (with their actual bodies) wanted to do to them, or have done their own bodies by them.

It didn't matter a whole lot because my sex life was never something I enjoyed, mostly my experience with it is one of constantly trying to fight it, because it always felt wrong, and it made me objectify people who I HATED myself for objectifying. Plus there were so many aspects of gender that had nothing to do with sexuality which I was also jealous of, such as clothing options, social treatment, etc. So I knew pretty much right away that this wasn't just my sexuality talking, I really was wishing I was a girl.

I did worry that maybe my desire to transition was just a fetish, but going on HRT quickly remedied that worry, because everything else in my life that was an actual fetish (the things I used to hate myself for,) quickly disappeared right along with the testosterone. I couldn't get aroused by them anymore even if I wanted to. And yet the desire to transition stayed as strong as it had ever been.

I didn't realize the full depths of how my gender dysphoria and my sexuality have been interacting all these years, though, until about 6 months ago. I was at a point where I was trying to decide whether I wanted SRS or FFS first. And I'd always wanted SRS, but wanted to double-check my convictions, so I actually started doing some studies and experience-based tests to see if there was any way that I could ever be happy with my current anatomy if maybe I just found the right way to use it, or the right way to view it mentally. And that was when for the first time I started actually being aware that what I thought I was experiencing as "attraction" to women all these years wasn't even attraction at all, at least not what "attraction" means for every other person. I started studying what the common sexual fantasies are for cis men and cis women, and that was the first time that I realized that my experience was COMPLETELY unique. For cis men and cis women, their sexual fantasies occur in their actual bodies, or in idealized versions of those actual bodies. For me, I was NEVER myself in my own fantasies, I always had to transport myself into a female body before I felt anything. And yet disregarding that difference in gender, once I got into that body mentally, my fantasies were completely 100% normal... for a woman. And I also realized that basically all of my actual fantasies were of me in a female body being with a guy. I never had fantasies about being a guy with a girl, and rarely of being a girl with a girl. So that was when I finally, after all of those years of nothing but assumptions, finally learned the complete truth about both my gender identity and my sexuality... that I was a mostly-straight woman, and that SRS was going to remove a SIGNIFICANT hurdle that I didn't even know how much it was hindering my sex life until I started exploring it.

...After 16 years of being post-puberty, having been in an intimate relationship before, and having been on hormones for 2.5 years, FINALLY, after all that time, I knew. And I only learned because I decided to start exploring and comparing... asking serious questions like "what does a cis male feel? What does a cis woman feel? What do I feel? How did I feel when this was happening? How do cis men and women feel when these same things are happening? How therefore does all of this apply to me, and where do my experiences fit in to all of this?"

thanks, it sounds familiar

I need to feel sexy to feel sexy.  I think that's pretty normal, and cisgender people experience this all the time.  Gender dysphoria was getting in the way of my sexuality.  Still does a little, to be honest.  So yeah, there's a complex relationship between gender and sexuality in my experience.  However, my partner's gender has always been irrelevant to me.

My understanding of my gender being out of whack was entirely separate from my concept of sexual attraction. Like you, i always accepted my attraction to both genders from my earliest understanding of it, but my understanding of what i was like, gender wise was very different.

Despite everyone in my age group, generally associating the two, to me that seemed completely foreign. I had deep relationships with both men and women and ultimately married a woman, through that whole time though i had this very active understanding of me not being in the correct place gender wise. That manifested itself in both deeply profound and very superficial, but non- sexual ways throughout my life. From having the boys do my projects in wood shop, because i was afraid of the saws, to absolutely loving fashion and feminine design. I really knew i was a girl.

I've pondered this question over the past few weeks for myself. For me, I've always been sexually attracted to women, but I've never felt comfortable in the "male" role in terms of intimacy. I found this to be true when I lost my virginity at 24, which is the moment most young men remember the rest of their lives. For me it seemed a hollow physical act, without the intimacy that I craved. That was the point in my life when I started to question why I felt that way, & started to fantasize more and more about living as a woman.

It's taken me all of these years to realize that my lack of intimacy was related to the fact that I've lived my whole life as a man, when truthfully I've felt more like a woman on the inside.

This whole process of discovery has been made even more complicated by the fact that I've lived my whole life a 100% masculine male, who has never been attracted to other men. I thought my attraction to women just made my desire to be a woman just a fetish, but I now understand that's not the case at all.

This was simple for me. I'm bisexual but I wasn't able to come out for several reasons (being in the military while dadt was in effect being the biggest). As soon as I was able to, I came out and actually included men and women as dating possibilities. Since that didn't "fix my problem" on its own, I knew there was more to it than just that. The thing is, I don't really care what the gender of the person is that I'm dating. I do care what my gender is. The two were only related because I faced them around the same time when I was able to express myself more.

When I became openly bi it didn't change or explain my deep comfort in being in female clothes or my lack of understanding on why males do what they do. I look back on my life sometimes and find that my favourite characters in my favourite books and TV shows were all female. And my sexuality didn't explain why I lit up when any random person in my daily travels identified me as female.

How do you know gender is the problem and not just sexuality?

I know it just because I'm not interested at all in having any sort of new and\or different sexual experience. Sex is not my concern.

My suffering has another root, which is not "sexual". Living as "male" drived me to isolation, and "as male" I would be a very "grey" person, absolutely anonymous.

I try to explain better: i never care for my masculine appearence, I never bought a particular masculine suit in order to appear pleasant in that gender - my masculine appearence is much more close to the one of "Lieutenant Colombo", sleazy and frumpy.

As if to say to the world-society: "you want me to be a man? well, this is the roughness you will get!"

But, in doing that way, I was just despising myself, because deep down i felt a coward: i didn't fulfill the social expectation wearing a proper masculine appearance but, at the same time, i didn't had the courage to express in another way.

The only exception has been the long hair I always had since my very youth - a Rebel touch. But, when the time passes, "me-as-male" became ever more grey, and insignificant, just a boring burden, a boring and sad role play.

Meanwhile the "woman in me" started to push to come out, in order to express herself, somehow in a very strong way, and sometimes in a pretty explosive and shocking way...

But this is not a "sexual matter", all this did not happen in order to have any sexual arousal or to have any different occasional sex or a different kind of sexual relationship.

It's something deeper, it concern my very inner way to be. Going on playing the "role" of the "meaningless man" is would be just like killing me. I'm aware that "as man" i am totally hopeless, just because i'm not into that at all - i just "acted" that way in order to fulfill others expectations (family, society... etc), now I'm no more able to play that way, therefore my job and my financial situation is in suffering for this reason. I've rejected all what the sad old man built up around in order to fulfill others expectations.

... and, this way to be is very self-destructive.

Sex is not the problem, I've already had sex in so many ways, and I'm not looking for that.

My very urge now is to delete "the irrelevant sad old man" that i built up in my brain. That "sad old man" wasn't there when i was a child - i was a girl, a sensitive, noncompetitive, creative, caring and loving girl...

That "sad old man" is just like an uploaded software in my brain, it wasn't there - it has been uploaded, and now it has to be deleted, because is damaging the whole system.

Where is the "sex" in all this? Nowhere, it's an existential matter, not a sexual one.

:)

Hugs,
Aly

*English is not my first language - maybe somewhere is not perfect, but i think i wrote something of understandable ;).

Oddly enough I looked at sexuality as being a spectrum long before I thought of gender that way. I have always been comfortable with my sexuality and have resisted applying a name to it. I've dated cis-women, cis-men, trans-women, and trans-men; for lack of a better term I suppose you would call me pansexual, although I have always hated that word. I much prefer "not all that picky" or "equal opportunity slut". For me it has always been about the person, not the body they happen to inhabit.

That being said, I was never comfortable with my own body. I would look at things like the Victoria's Secret catalogue, and rather that think "she's hot, I'd like to be with her" I would think "I wish that looked that good on me". I denied that I was trans for a very long time simply because my life didn't seem to be in as much turmoil as the few trans people I did know. I told myself that I couldn't possibly be trans because I wasn't anywhere near as messed up as they were. Once I started researching beyond my small circle, the alarm bells went off, I was indeed trans.

Quote from: stephaniec on February 20, 2016, 09:45:16 AM
Just a little curious how others came to the conclusion that the real underlying problem was a mismatch in gender expression rather than just a sense of sexual attraction. My path started at 4 with crossdressing then progressed to viewing a neighbor of mine as a boyfriend and experimenting sexually as I grew up through puberty with male and female sex partners. My bisexuality has and never will go away because I'm very comfortable viewing myself as bisexual. Along the way I have always been a crossdresser and knew there was a very important component to my crossdressing both mentally and physically that was horrendously missing. I knew after puberty that my problem was that I needed the proper hormones. After puberty I was quite sexually active which at one point got extreme , but is was never satisfying, there was always the missing component of estrogen and the physical need to have the proper body irrespective of any sex involved. The crossdressing stopped making any sense to me without the proper physical anatomy to fill the dress properly. I stopped everything physically and actively stopped the dressing because it made no sense anymore because I realize at that point that the problem was my gender. I started my transition not long ago and the mental effect of estrogen has been monumental. I can't change the past , but I learning to get the most out of the present. In one sense when I was young the sexual part was so overwhelming there was no way I could of understood that gender was the issue and not sexual predisposal . In this sense there was a benefit to later transitioning even though I so wish it was sooner. Has any one come to a point in life when that light bulb goes off and shows you the difference between your sexual desires and your needs as the proper gender or is it just all bunched up together in a swirling tornado .

It seemed relitivly easy for me, considering attraction is how I figured it all out.  I was with me, and didn't like it. So then I was with woman, and loved it. But with woman one thing was missing....I wanted to be with them in a different way....As. A. Man. And so the transition began.  :-)

thanks for all the great responses, we seem to have some core similarities yet maintain or uniqueness . Great book

I would actually conflate sexuality and gender identity a lot.  I was attracted to men pre-transition, and would often automatically get feminized in my relationships with men because I am way smaller than your typical male-bodied person.

On the one hand, I had dysphoria because of things like body hair, facial hair, and my voice dropping, and on the other, I was able to ignore those things for a long time because I felt "feminine enough" in other ways.

Being in relationships with gay men was eventually what made me realize that I actually needed to live as a woman.  Although some gay guys would feminize me to a greater or lesser extent (but not usually very nicely or respectfully), they would still find me attractive for features of mine that were more masculine.  Gradually, I realized that I was repulsed by how gay men saw me, and why they found me attractive, and I started noticing my dysphoria more and more.  This got way worse by the time I turned thirty and my facial hair grew so thick that I started looking like a "man's man" in some pictures even despite my being tiny.

It was such a relief when I went on AAs, and realized that I still wanted to live socially a woman in the absence of a sex drive.  That part of my life clarified so much for me, and I remember during that period, I loved being intimate in a non-sexual way with my current bf, and being related to and seen as a woman irrespective of what we were doing sexually. 

that kind of happened to me in a way. When I was a lot younger the sex and identity thing was just a mumbo jumbo tossed together and throw in the cross dressing and it was a mess . Then I abstained from sex for quite a while and just cross dressed. I realized something very big was missing  in crossdressing . My body needed to be right and it just hurt so bad that I was so wrong. I'm glad I finally got on hormones because I would of died because I was so wrong and couldn't take it anymore. That's what's happening to me now is that the hormones are letting me see how wrong my body still is and needs the final fix. I thought I could get away with just the hormones , but the reality is  I can't and  I need the total package. I probably have known all my life that I needed GCS medically , but its a big step and I guess I've just been afraid. I'm ready to do it I just need to work things out to get there . So yea my body is messed up and I hate the way it is. It's the final round in life for me , but to be right for just a short time would be worth it.

hormones have done a great job mentally and physcally

Dear Stephanie,
Thanks for starting the thread.   I was extremely relieved to find out that I could live my life as a complete person. My sexuality was always about being female, being feminine. My fear was that that was all there was to it. It was very unsatisfying to think that I would have to have one life for female things and one life for my interaction with the world. My sex life became so painful mentally because I would be in a good (feminine) place and then wham the shame and denial would come raging back because I had to return to maleness (I thought). I guess there was one good thing that came out of it. I have absolutely no doubt now of my need for GCS. I only was able to understand this by starting transition. I found out I was able to accept myself as female in every way. Yea!!!!  As for who I desire? I am happy with my female partner. On a theoretical basis, I am getting more curious about what it would be like to be with a guy. I seem to be evolving on the subject. I am probably never going to act on that thought though.
Moni

for myself sexuality never played a part in it. I knew I was a girl for as long as I could remember. Just someone made a mistake and gave me a fire hose

For it was never about sexuality. Pre-hrt i was attracted to women, never had any real interaction with them on a social level as I was extremely shy as a male.

As child I never questioned my gender, it was only when I started puberty, did i start questioning things. I was a little jealous of the girls, i saw they were getting breasts and developing into women, and they got wear these cute outfits etc. I wanted to experience how it was like to be a girl. I started wearing pantyhose and a panties in secret after school. Later I stole a cheerleader skirt to wear as well. I would love the hours between school and when my parents got home, as I could wear my girly stuff. I was too scared to wear anything else.

Then I at 19 I was caught, a female friend arrived unexpectedly while I was wearing my skirt. She was very open minded. that was the best thing that ever happened to me. She worked at a thrift shop part time and she organized me a lovely dress and shoes etc and with her help I started cross dressing in full outfits. I think she enjoyed dressing me like a doll. I started questioning my gender, as it felt normal to be dressed as women. I would spend the weekend with her (we were never romantic) and I was only allowed to be dressed as a woman. She encouraged to me to explore my gender and i went to therapy. Hrt started at 21, and I went full time then.

I must have been on HRT about 2 years when I started my attraction to men, I always assumed I was lesbian. I was always submissive in nature. I started dating a man, it was weird at first, especially the first time he held my hand and a little weirder when he kissed me, but it also felt so right, I was meant to play the "female" role. My fears quickly disappeared and I even slept with him. That relationship ran its course and ended.

I did not date again until after SRS, I wanted the right genitals for my female role. My first relationship after SRS was a fling with a woman, but I did not find it satisfying. Then I met my current man, and everything was great, I was a straight woman. I love being his girlfriend and I have fallen deeply in love with him. I love it when he holds me at night in bed and he satisfies my needs when it comes to sex. When he proposed to me, he made me a very happy woman. I cant wait to be his wife.

congratulations, even though for me it's much later  in life being with a man is really my only dream anymore. I need to be in the right body though. I've had men before and been treated properly as a woman , but it's not enough anymore, I so much want a man to hold me properly . I'm glad for you that you have what you have and I hope I can get there. It's just my dream is getting so real and the opportunity  is there I just need to make it happen.

Well, I'm a lesbian, so... it was pretty clear to me, no way to mix them up.

And I know so many gay cis people who have no desire to transition to become straight trans people, and gay trans people like myself who would not consider not transitioning...

I'm a little late to party, sorry, was away for a bit!

For me, this was a very confusing and hard to answer question.

I crossdressed a lot as a kid. Identified as male but still did it a lot, and wished was female.

Puberty hit and I continued, actually I escalated it. First time I got off, accidentally i might add, was wearing female clothes, and the two became intertwined. Never took care of business w/o that too.

Mid 20s started wanting to go farther with dressing, wanted to go out actually. Look for ways to "pass" even tho didn't know the term back then. While doing that, found this place.

Read stories, learned about transitioning, starting looking at myself and realized things weren't working out all that well for me. I was really depressed and didn't like myself, never felt comfortable with myself or others; felt that way for a long time.

I struggled with determining if this was all a fetish, me wanting to be a girl, me being just super horny and perverted and figuring if I couldn't get with a female I'd become one, (virgin), things like that. I wasn't into guys while I saw myself as one too, that felt icky to me. This went on for a year, if not longer. In the end, figured, what I am now isn't working, hasn't worked, don't see it ever working...I wanted to be a girl, wanted breasts and all the others things since I was young, I was miserable and considering ending things; figured what did I have to lose? Took the plunge and can't ever see myself going back now.

I knew something felt a bit off about me or that I never seemed to fit in well before, but it all got handed down to me on a plate when I started to get reoccuring dreams about swapping genders. The dreams were me living my day to day life but as a woman and that got the ball rolling.

Quote from: Luna Star on February 24, 2016, 02:55:43 PM
I knew something felt a bit off about me or that I never seemed to fit in well before, but it all got handed down to me on a plate when I started to get reoccuring dreams about swapping genders. The dreams were me living my day to day life but as a woman and that got the ball rolling.

that happened to me after puberty

Quote from: stephaniec on February 24, 2016, 03:17:55 PM
that happened to me after puberty

It hit me in my early 20's after I began to read and research more about the LGBT spectrum, & I started to discover gender fiction websites like fictionmania as an outlet. I just told myself for years that becoming a woman wasn't possible, not without a ton of cosmetic/major surgery. It wasn't till the last few months that I discovered by chance after a conversation with a friend who CDs, just how effective hrt can be in gender transformation. I think that made me begin to question whether my earlier feelings about gender transformation were fetish, or a real desire.

I never really took my desire to be a woman seriously, because I wasn't sure it was even possible. Now that I know transition is possible, I've almost become infatuated with thoughts of transition. It's almost as if I have become so addicted to the idea of transition, that I can't take my mind off of it.

I guess all of this has helped me to come to realize that my desire to transition is genuine, since a fetish would not produce such as strong a conviction as to the path I'm planning to take.

This has been my problem from day 1. I feel if i just had sex with a man while cross dressing or him seeing/treating me as a woman than that would help validate my feelings. I really want to have sex with a man but i am not a gay. I cant figure out if i am truly a woman inside or of i have some weird fetish. It sucks because the more i think of these issues the more anxiety and feeling sick i get. i can a few days and have no thoughts of being a woman then all of a sudden i will go weeks reading and do all the research i can. during that time i get more and more depressed. then i have a few days and being content. its a bad cycle that i wish i had some answers 2.

Quote from: kg85621 on February 25, 2016, 03:01:27 PM
This has been my problem from day 1. I feel if i just had sex with a man while cross dressing or him seeing/treating me as a woman than that would help validate my feelings. I really want to have sex with a man but i am not a gay. I cant figure out if i am truly a woman inside or of i have some weird fetish. It sucks because the more i think of these issues the more anxiety and feeling sick i get. i can a few days and have no thoughts of being a woman then all of a sudden i will go weeks reading and do all the research i can. during that time i get more and more depressed. then i have a few days and being content. its a bad cycle that i wish i had some answers 2.

Did you consult a gender therapist ? Perhaps should you start a low dose HRT. It may help you in calming anxiety and knowing which is your true nature.

Another great thread Stephanie and please don't give yourself any grief about being attracted to men.  Like so many other respondents i have always been trans and bi or pansexual.  Before puberty my awareness of sex was limited but I still "played" with boys.  My identity, however, was that I was secretly a girl who would magically change, some day, into a mom with babies...like my own mother.

What I recognized about my sexual orientation was that gender didn't matter so much as mutual attraction or a loving bond.  What I recognized about my gender identity and nexus of orientation was that I gradually became aware of only being able to function sexually by feeling and often acting as the feminine one.  That has not changed since my transition but I do feel a more compelling attraction to men...almost in a pheromone sort of way.

Before transition I lived in the hulk of a bearded man's body and knew it was next to impossible for people to see that image was not who I really am.  I sobbed when I first told people that truth, so much better now!

Who I love=My orientation, who I am as a lover and more=My gender identity.   

For me I doubted myself so much it took hard evidence to convince me that I was really trans and not just gay/creepy. I even used my partial attraction to women as evidence that I was just deluded.

I found some text that described how some of Harry Benjamin's patients had hypogonadism. So I gave it a shot. The blood test came back with low testosrone. Despite the fact that I am pre everything and all the other results came back normal.

I suspect many of us are already part woman even before we do anything.