From puberty onwards I build the walls of denial so high that it was only a couple of months ago that I was able to recognize that I'm transgender. Despite childhood dreams of falling into a puddle into a room of ballerina's costumes, a long addiction to female-focussed sissy/femdom material, and a profound inability to function as a man, I just couldn't acknowledge to myself that I'm trans.
Even now, I feel more pain over the absence of sex/relationships in my life than over gender. I have always been alone, I have never spent the night in bed with a partner, never "made a move" on anyone, never dated, but often in love or infatuation. Beyond some drunken kisses at university, I have had just one 'unpaid' sexual experience, a one-night stand eleven years ago where the woman made all the moves, but I couldn't finish. I have always masturbated anally, every day or two, for two decades, though I never imagined it to be a penis, and I am exclusively attracted to women. But I never had any male sexual drive or manner towards women. In my mid-20s I used to visit escorts, and had what I now see to be 'transex' kind of experiences in which my penis would not be involved. But for the past six years I disappeared from the physical world, and lost myself in poppers and femdom clip oblivion. Now I want to leave all that behind, and I see the way forward is to acknowledge this long-hidden gender issue.
Still, foremost in my thoughts is that my inability to form relationships with women, despite falling deeply in love with them, has caused me enormous pain throughout my life. I have long had a pattern of getting obsessed with any beautiful women I managed to become friends with (in recent years it was female housemates). I see now that I both wanted to be them, and to be with them (whether that might be as either a male or female partner). I would disappear in my perception of them; I would not have to think of my life, if I could exist one-dimensionally, no more than a viewer observing theirs. But I could not stop my emotions building up - the pain that they didn't love me (sexless as I was), and I couldn't be intimate with them, and that more years of my life were being wasted on these recurrent, entirely futile fixations. My unhappiness would boil over into a fatal falling-out, whether after three months or five years, usually at the pain of seeing them with their boyfriends, and realizing they would never love me; or that I could never be them, or their partner.
I feel such a tangling of different grief. I mourn not being male, of not being the man who I see in the mirror, of not being able to have the life the man I appear to be would have been able to have. I mourn not being able to be intimate with women, and to have missed out on physical intimacy and companionship all these years. I see how women light up when they are with heterosexual men, and I regret that I can never create this reaction in them.
Do I also mourn not being born the woman that, on some level, I am beginning to feel like I am (at least to some extent) inside? Yes, yes I do. But it feels distant. I don't currently have a strong sense of being a woman, and yet if I look back over the course of my life, I must see that the failure to recognize this essential fact, while being so miserably dependent on unavailable straight women, is what has stopped my life from developing beyond its atrophied or embryonic state.
As a result of my realization earlier this year, I have just come out to my parents as transgendered, and to my most important friends. They were all fine. I also told my GP, and he is writing to see if I can get psychosexual counselling. I do not feel like wanting to go onto any transition pathway, so soon after the realisation; and anyway, I have fatty liver so I could not currently consider hormones. But I would certainly like the chance to talk to a gender therapist. I also finally read Jan Morris's Conundrum, which has been ignored on my shelf for ten years.
I am terrified of navigating the city as visibly trans. But if I don't 'inhabit' my female brain, it seems the only option is oblivion; an early death from obesity; and increasing unhappiness. I have binged on food from puberty onwards, and my weight is currently not far off 290 lbs at 5"9.
I am terrified that accepting that this is about gender, not sex, will result in me having to give up my sex-drive, and any chance of a future sex-life. But as I cause myself enormous pain in all my dealings with attractive women, and live life without ever touching another human being, things could hardly get any worse! It would be nice if I might be able to feel for the first time like an active protagonist in my own life.
Thanks for reading. Any feedback gratefully received!
Hi Antony :icon_wave:
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V M
Welcome to Susan's Place. A quick introduction from me. I had SRS 33 years ago and have lived as a woman all these years. I came to Susan's of a small amount of information and ended up staying providing help for anybody who asked.
It sounds like you are very early exploring your feelings and have the same fear that all of us face at that point in our self discovery. The fear can be overcome but what remains to be answered is what type of life will make you comfortable in your own skin. The two options are transsexual which is what I was where I wanted everything and non binary were you find a mix of feminine and masculine that you are comfortable living with. This is something that only you will be able to answer as you explore the site.
I am providing you with two links to start with. The first is our Wiki (https://www.susans.org/wiki/Transgender) where you will learn what is it to be transgender. The second is "the transition channel" (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfO3B57E6NpIn-KsVjvmLLw) which is a bit more transsexual in structure but it will expose you to a therapy session where you can answer questions about your true feelings. As you will not be able to PM me until you reach 15 quality post, feel free to post any questions on this thread where I will see them and I will respond when I can.
Welcome Antony fan I'm new to but this site has a ton of info. And these people are so helpful
Thanks for your replies.
As requested I have read the forum guidelines. I note the restriction on sexual talk and will be careful there in future, whilst hoping that my original post was not too explicit. I have felt slightly torn between posting on a porn/masturbation -recovery forum, where they have no sympathy/understanding of trans issues, or posting on a trans forum, where talk of porn/masturbation is similarly not well-received. But I think on balance I will find more understanding here, particularly as I move towards seeing that these sexual behaviours were something I did to avoid thinking about gender.
I'm still terrified that accepting I am trans means having to 'give up' any idea of being a sexual being. And that the 'straights' will have won, merrilly at-it like rabbits, while I have such a battle just to discover and inhabit my gender and sexual identity. But no point getting stuck on this! And my addictions are so miserable they are not worth keeping hold of.
Besides, from reading trans forums, it is clear that many trans people are in relationships, just as with any type of people. My years of denial gave me a small, uncreative, and unfulfilled live, and a dependent shell of a personality, together with obesity and a lack of concern for my clothes and manner. So anything that helps me move on from that, can only increase my dating chances. But, yes, I do need to accept that I am never going to date the 21-25 year old "cis" girls I sometimes still get to meet; I won't be them, either. But viewing the world from an adult perspective, not that of a child, I need to be able to be okay with that.
I want to be able to live without sugar, flour, caffeine, alcohol, poppers, pornography. Recently I made it to twelve days without any of these except some pornography. I attend 12-Step meetings, which have their own challenges (Food meetings are full of beautiful women; sex meetings are all-male) but I see these meetings as vital to puncturing my selfishness and self-obsession. I should pray, and hand my life over to God. I need to be cautious about falling for unavailable young women, as it sets me up for relapse in all the above areas.
I am not sure if I should try to give up anal masturbation, or if I need this sexual release to keep the dysophoria at bay. I know I need to give up any kind of femdom material. I would like to give up the softcore glamour videos I also watch, because it's still pornography, still corrosive. Time to put some filters on my laptop again, perhaps. I am scared that the pleasure reward pathways in my brain are deeply grooved to this type of material, however miserable its use makes me; and that religious faith and a full life are equally little use against such addiction.
For now, I'd like to read a few more 'trans' books - I was thinking Julia Serrano's Whipping Girl which I've heard recommended, and some of the memoirs from the Guardian's top transgender books list. I need to buy some new clothes anyway, so will find a few in gender-neutral colours. I haven't worn jeans since my early 20s, so I'd like to try that again.
All in all, I just want to start inhabiting my own life.
Welcome, Antony, to a site full of information and understanding people. I hope you can find help in your difficult times.
I'm a non-binary female-bodied being.
QuoteAll in all, I just want to start inhabiting my own life.
There you go. You've got the key in your hand, if only you could find the door.
I understand wanting a healthier lifestyle, but I'm not big on giving up activities like masturbation. Find the things that give you pleasure and make you comfortable, so you can learn who you are and the best path to walk.
-- Sue
Quote from: DogSpirit on March 26, 2016, 06:43:29 AM
Welcome, Antony, to a site full of information and understanding people. I hope you can find help in your difficult times.
I'm a non-binary female-bodied being.
There you go. You've got the key in your hand, if only you could find the door.
I understand wanting a healthier lifestyle, but I'm not big on giving up activities like masturbation. Find the things that give you pleasure and make you comfortable, so you can learn who you are and the best path to walk.
-- Sue
Thanks, DogSpirit! Regarding masturbation, I think it would be a matter of learning to do it to healthy thoughts, as part of overcoming my dissociation from my body, spirit, and sexual self.
In the past really it would be eroticised grief and self-loathing, imagining a girl I liked with a male partner, or humiliating me for my inadequacy. (Projecting my own discomfort, and grief at my discomfort, at using my penis).
It would be nice instead to be able to imagine myself as a desired protagonist in sex, who could be found attractive, and who could bring pleasure to a partner. I started to read an article I saw referenced elsewhere, 'Trans Women + Sex = Awesome', which could give me some idea of what it could look like, with the right partner.
I agree with Sue. I am also a female bodied, masculine of centre person in my mid 30s.
Relationships are possible if all partners are honest with each other about their needs, wants and feelings. I am married to a wonderful cis man who I have been with for 17 years. He is nominally straight and I always worry that he will struggle with my more masculine tendencies but our problems really only escalate when I assume this and keep things to myself... when I am honest, we might argue or have an adjustment period but then we work through it... a few months ago, I was struggling to tell him that I wanted to present even more masculine... last night he was researching which binders work well for large chested persons... my unfailing advocate. Not everyone is like that but I really think being honest is your best hope of making a relationship work... assuming you want that.
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Welcome Antony!
*hugs*
You are in a good place here.. I am fairly new to the community myself, but everyone has been wonderful. We all deserve to be happy, and I think your decision to seek help and community will be a great step on your journey.
Regarding the liver.. There may be other delivery methods that wouldn't be as dangerous for it, I don't know for sure, but it would make for some good research. maybe injections? I'm sure others here have some experiences to share. All I can add is that since starting, my whole being has become calmer and at peace. I am actually happier to be alive than I knew was possible.
I can relate to the masturbation... For several years I think I had an addiction to it.. It felt good, so it was a good escape. I found that I was spending far more time with porn and webcams. At one point, I came across a webcam of a beautiful post-op transgirl the same age as me. I had an awakening of some kind, and broke down in over an hour of confusingly wonderful tears like I've never felt before. She is so beautiful.. that kind of overall beauty encompassing her smile, her body, and probably most importantly to me, her personality. She genuinely appears to be enjoying the time sharing herself with the viewers in her room. I was turned on, jealous, sad, happy, and who knows what else. I think it was then for myself that I realized that it wasn't just hot women having sex that I was attracted to, a deep envy and longing of their beauty and happiness. Since that moment, I do still browse porn, but by far not as often, and it's on my terms... I don't rely on it for anything other than a good healthy release (and to visit a certain camgirl =).
This became a lot longer than I thought it would be... but that seems to happen here to everyone at times. I think it means we are comfortable with the community. If you are familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, it kinda makes sense.. This is a good source of comfort and safety.. which leads to a feeling of belonging... and eventually personal growth.
Well wishes to you, we are here to help.
*hugs*
Andie
Thanks, Arice and Andie, for your posts!
I am thinking to go back to a 12-step group that helps people with sex/love/relationship problems, which I clearly do! I want to learn to see myself as someone that could actually date, instead of just accepting crumbs of company from overly-attractive cis-girls, usually housemates. It doesn't do me any good, I can't hide out in their lives without making myself desperately unhappy, since I fall for them! And though they might value my friendship I don't want to be their friend. I either want to be them, or be together with them, neither of which they can offer.
I also really want to stop my porn/femdom binges, which are the flipside of the unhappy contact with lovely, forever-out-of-reach straight girls, and just compound my sense of being doomed to being lonely and alone.
These 12-Step meetings can themselves be painful and triggering, as they are 99% made up of cisgendered people talking about their busy, though problematic sexual and romantic lives (As in the film 'Thanks for Sharing'). There can be very attractive cis-women there, who make me feel the pain I'm trying to overcome. But, now seeing that I am transgendered, I can be more boundaried than when I attended these meetings a few years back. The point of the meetings is to help me find a faith in a higher power, stop my pattern of addictive behaviour, make amends for my past misdeeds, and to break out of own selfishness, and end my isolation.
However clearly these meetings are something seperate from seeing a gender therapist, and participating on Susans which will be a seperate part of making sense of all this.
Andie, thanks for the suggestion regarding hormones. Since I only first allowed my conscious brain to recognize that I am trans two months ago, and I'm about 290lb, I wouldn't consider taking them until I've lost weight and talked everything through at length with a gender therapist. And, since I am unhappy, I need to work on my general ability to be happy and have a fulfilled life before I consider transition. It's good to hear, though, that a lot of the mental anguish can lift by taking hormones.
I also need to begin to establish myself in a line of work that will be transition-proof. Despite a very good arts education I was always so detached from my true self that I never was able to identify what I enjoyed doing, or to function in a business environment. So I temped, or did admin jobs, or worked for friend's companies; but never anything that really used my talents or my identity, since both were blocked to me. I hope that can change, as I stop warring with myself.
I met last night with a male friend and told him I'm trans. He is intellectual and into queer-theory and gender studies, so he was really interested! And recommended various theoreticians he thought I might benefit from reading.
I don't have that many friends, my life has been very small for years, and most people I've met in recent years have been fellows in 12-Step rooms. But I'm lucky that there's nobody that would be hostile/difficult. Though I guess I would see how that changed if/when my presentation evolves in future.
I feel I'm caught in a bind, between recovering from my addictive pattern around avoiding acknowledging that I am trans; and the risk of falling into a new addictive pattern based around thinking about it!
So, before, all day would be spent binging on Internet, news, obsession around particular women, food, caffeine, porn, which would build up into flare-ups every week or two where I'd drink and use poppers to femdom clips, and try to 'fix' my emotions through porn. I am totally disconnected from my body, isolated, and ashamed. Hardly able to work - and currently out of work and not sure what to retrain as, or if I even have the attention span to retrain as anything in my present state.
I can see that anxiety makes me relapse on these things, and a desire to deaden emotions/uncomfortable feelings. And of course being trans/not having a relationship or sex life, is the primary cause of my anxiety.
But in my current state, I can see myself now spending all my days on trans forums, news stories, etc. When really I would just like to be able to get on with living! when I currently have so little in my life.
I will definitely start going back to the 12-Step sex/love meetings because they give me a lot of people to talk to, and help me take the focus away from myself. I can talk about being trans to people there too, though they 99% cis-gendered. I don't feel ready to attend a dedicated trans support group in person yet, since I am still only just beginning to come out to myself, and present entirely as male. I have seen a few fully-transitioned women in the 12-Step rooms, however, who maybe I could talk to.
And I would like to take some steps to build a life for myself in other aspects, because right now it is empty of anything but addiction and timewasting. I should be able to find hobbies and interests, and think of a new career, etc, while finally allowing myself to acknowledge my gender dysphoria? Or it's likely to be too overpowering and I should expect to be incapacitated/ a lot worse for a while, until I am able to start working with a good gender therapist?
If I could just take some steps to 'inhabit' my female brain, and not deny it, then I think this process would be smoother.
The problem is that you are under the influence of a very powerful toxic drug - testosterone. Removing it from you system will change your drives and desire a great deal. It's removal will not eliminate your sexuality but it will make it far more controllable. This is what the blocker in the HRT package accomplishes and it will do it in as little as a few weeks. I think you should consider gender therapy as soon as possible with the goal of starting on a blocker. Estrogen can be added latter when you feel you are ready for it.
Well stated, Dena... I hadn't thought about it much myself, but yeah.. Spiro did amazing things for me. I seem to be less impulsive, less horny, and less easily agitated in general.
Antony.. *hugs* you'll make it through. :)
Thanks for your insight, Dena.
At the moment I don't see myself allowing myself to reach a point where I would consider hormones. I feel as much grief at not being a man, as at not being a woman. I feel more grief at not being able to be with a woman, than at not being a woman. Perhaps that's the effect of the testosterone on me. I wonder if I am 'genderqueer', or if this is just the effect of having been operating on tesosterone for 25 years.
I do envy those of you who had relationships, marriages, sex-lives with women. I just can't let go of the enormous grief I feel at not having had any of that. I learned from sexual experiences in my early 20s that my mind and my penis were not connected as they should have been, and I wasn't even able to make a pass on a woman or make her feel wanted. My centre of erotic-pleasure was always my backside, perhaps as my brain thought I should have female genitalia. Attracted solely to women I fell into solitary masturbatory habits, which continue to this day.
I will certainly look to see a gender therapist, though not one that would be a 'conveyor belt' putting me onto a pathway. All options would need to be open.
Right now shaving my body hair, occasionally wearing female underwear, and socially coming-out to my friends and family is enough for me. I am also doing my best to read up as much as I can on transgender thought.
So, my slightly insane plan is this -
Take testosterone supplements, join a gym, work out, give up alcohol/meat/sugar/flour, and get my weight down from 290lbs to 180lbs. Deal with the heightened libido and dysphoria through masturbation and excessive exercise.
Take Viagra to allow me to get erections, and have some sexual experiences with a few of the many delightful female sexworkers in my city, ideally involving both pegging and my penetrating them. (I have had no sexual experiences of any kind, not even kissing, in the past five years, and less than a dozen in the past ten years, and right now this gives me more grief than gender).
During this time, get underway with gender therapy.
Then if in 6 months, 12 months I do decide that male life is unbearable, at least I've given the alternative a try.
I just can't see myself giving up on masculinity without a fight, not when I only realized two months ago that I'm trans.
This might sound like a bonkers plan to you? But I think I need to go through with it, to learn for myself.
I salute you! You've made a plan and are taking action: that's samfrantastic.
As a nonbinary, I don't believe you have to give up your masculinity just to gain femininity. You can have 'em both.
-- Sue
Thanks for your support, DogSpirit!
An interesting experience today: I called into a strip club for the first time in a year or so, and sat with a pint and a newspaper, watching the stage shows. It was a quiet time of day, so dancers came up and tried their "You want private dance? I make it special dance just for you" routine. Whatever their figures were like, I found I had no interest when there was no chance of connecting with the real person there.
Then a woman of perhaps 20 sat next to me, a native of this city who said, believably, that it was in her first month in the job. She was immediately disarming, actually talking to me, and showing a real personality (laughing at my newspaper shield!). Probably it helped that, unlike with the others, we were both talking in our first languages. I felt like she immediately punctured my male front, and I was able to talk to her as if I was a woman. At the risk of repeating the classic TheOnion headline 'I Think That Stripper Really Liked Me', I think she found me quite unusual compared to the average male patron. I have experienced this before, I guess since I will never be inappropriate or touchy; I never show off or grandstand, but instead strive to find commonalities and make emotional connections - female traits!
Unlike the other dancers she didn't even mention getting a dance, we were just talking, until I suggested it. I found during the (no-contact) dance that I was a bit self-conscious, thinking how stupid my face probably looked (leering?) and that I wasn't able to look back at her with the face I might like - a female face. I found myself thinking how marvellous it would be, to be able to have penetrative sex with her, though how overwhelming too, and a little sad that my penis, without viagra, would not be responsive.
I found the talking more exciting (and therefore more scary) than witnessing the dance. I had a sense that, if not immediately, she would soon have been able to 'see me', to see that I was female, or at least not male in the manner of other men.
I could imagine having an honest rapport with her (I could imagine talking about being trans, even), and I liked her female spirit. I wished I was a woman, and her age, and that we might be girlfriends. In this world and this body, if I had more money I'd like to go back to the club and talk to her some more. But I think best not to.
It seems many people explore their sexuality and if that is how you wish to discovery your self, you should try it but I suggest you stay away from the testosterone supplements. The have health risks and if you decide to transition in a feminine direction, they may make things more difficult for you. Besides that you already appear to be producing enough testosterone for your current needs.
For me it was a good deal different as I never had a desire for the male lifestyle and when my therapist suggest I try sex, I knew it didn't have any appeal to me. My roommate on the other had, lived a very male life up to age 50 when she could no longer resist it and started her transition.
Having given it some more thought, I don't think I am transgender after all.
Instead, I have a sexual fetish/addiction, developed in puberty, which sees my fear of intimacy/performance anxiety turned into a compulsive source of arousal. In the absence of allowing myself to access my innate, calm, masculine sexuality, I can only get off by anxious thoughts of being impotent and emasculated. My masturbatory habits - caffeine, red wine, poppers, sex toys, and humiliation recordings - keeps me stuck in that state.
However there isn't a desire to be a woman behind it. Really my truest wish is that I could be a potent male, with a penis that works sexually as surely as the sun rises each morning. In my addiction I tried to tell myself I had turned impotence into something as arousing as sex with a partner; but life has been grey, a living death, with the impotence spreading into all areas of my life, days passing ineffectually and unspent.
Another sign that I'm not trans is that, on thinking I might be, my reaction was to go off to buy testosterone tablets. I am also very 'Other-focussed' when it comes to women. I find them beguiling and intoxicating, but I am not imagining myself as a woman alongside them. I'm not jealous that I can't be like them; I just wish I could be more of a man for them.
In the past week I have given up anal masturbation, and already found my humiliating thoughts more distant. I haven't used poppers in three weeks. I know I should stop drinking as well, which is irregular but takes me into the shame.
In terms of positive actions I could start, I would benefit from taking up yoga; getting a non-sexual massage; going to a 'Free Hugs' event; perhaps working with an intimacy counsellor; joining a men's group, or going back to the male sex addicts group I used to attend. And perhaps doing a bit more work with a therapist about my pubescent trauma - is this really all down to the lockerroom genital shaming I endured? Or that my father wasn't masculine enough? But I think the answer is in reshaping the future, not digging back over the past.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for all your advice in the thread. If you think I might be wrong, and I could still be trans, do let me know! But I think just very deeply ingrained psychological impotence which I turned into a fetish by a chronic porn addiction is a more likely explanation.
Hello, Antony,
It seems you're thinking things through, exploring possibilities and trying to keep an open mind.
What has struck me most in your posts is the vast loneliness. From what you write it would appear that each of the addictions you mention simultaneously attempts to fill and also tends to increase it.
A counselor's main job is not to give advice, but to help you see yourself, find a path forward and break free of vicious cycles. Groups of individuals who accept each other also function in a similar manner. I'm quite new here myself, and by no means a regular, but what I've seen is people who will listen to and do care about others. While feedback from written communication may be less immediate than face to face conversation, I think you will continue to find sympathetic ears as you search for the right path for you.
Hello Antony! I hope you have fun at Susan's and that you meet many good people here. ;D