Hi everyone,

I'm struggling a lot with the decision to transition, 100% because I feel guilt over upending the lives of the people in my family.

If you are struggling with this decision too, would you be willing to share what is holding YOU back?

If you went through this and decided to transition anyway, is there any advice you can offer regarding how you moved past your guilt/doubt/fear--whatever it may be--and followed your own path?

Thanks a lot everyone.

Quote from: Clever on April 07, 2015, 07:49:23 AM
If you went through this and decided to transition anyway, is there any advice you can offer regarding how you moved past your guilt/doubt/fear--whatever it may be--and followed your own path?

Pretending to be someone I'm not was a miserable, depressing, soul-destroying process. I wouldn't have been any good to my family (or anyone else) if I had stayed a man.

Does this help?

Quote from: suzifrommd on April 07, 2015, 07:51:44 AM
Pretending to be someone I'm not was a miserable, depressing, soul-destroying process. I wouldn't have been any good to my family (or anyone else) if I had stayed a man.

Does this help?

Yeah, I'm right in the middle of this. But I've spent so much of my life setting myself aside and sacrificing for others that these feelings are pretty much my baseline. I've gotten very good at just existing and living in discomfort if it means not rocking the boat. I really, really really want to figure out how to get past this.

Quote from: Clever on April 07, 2015, 07:59:50 AM
Yeah, I'm right in the middle of this. But I've spent so much of my life setting myself aside and sacrificing for others that these feelings are pretty much my baseline.

Do not expect much payback from others for your sacrifice. Many of them will just tell you that you should continue putting their feelings before your own comfort. How dare you embarrass them like this.....

So do not let a sense of obligation hold you back. You have tried and done your best, now it no longer works and it is time to try something else.

Quote from: Clever on April 07, 2015, 07:59:50 AMI've gotten very good at just existing and living in discomfort if it means not rocking the boat. I really, really really want to figure out how to get past this.

I did that as well. For decades I put others ahead of myself but my suffering just intensified and eventually I realised that I was going to die a sad, miserable, frustrated and unhappy person. I figured that maybe it was time to do something for myself, that I would try as much as I could to accommodate family and friends but what I really, REALLY needed to do was to accommodate myself.

I have had "friends" who gave me the "How could you do this to us?" lecture, but most of the people I know see the authentic me, the true person, the much happier person that was buried and more than a few have told me that they prefer the "new me".

Honesty pays.

I knew I wanted to transition at 17 and didn't start until I was 25 because I didn't want to upset anyone's lives. I was miserable for a very long time, until I realized that I was wasting my life trying to make life easy for other people.

You only get one shot at this life. I couldn't justify being someone else any longer.

In the end the question could be if you can somehow move past THEIR guilt, doubt and fear.

Fortunately I was never in a situation where I had to consider the consequences of my transition for family members, because I was over 40 years old and living on my own when I started, and I had no spouse or kids.
There were friends, neighbors and work colleagues, but I never wasted a second of thought on whether I would be "upending" their lives.
What actually had held me back for over 20 years was denial, then fabricated obstacles like "I am too tall", "I am too old", "I will never pass", "I might regret it" and so on. The final concern that I had was that my transition could influence the kids of my friends in a way that would harm their developing identity, but my therapist then told me this would be very unlikely.

Nobody can feel what it is like to be me, nobody is finally responsible for my wellbeing but me, nobody can make my decisions for me.

Mostly my wife and the potential reaction from my kids religious school.

Everything else is a green light.

But, as they say, to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs.

And I really hate living as a guy, so...

Similar, but over a longer period... I have always had this aversion of upsetting others, especially those closest to me, I have a very long term wife and grandkids now... So in hindsight, if I knew about GID and Dysphoria (as a tag) back before I went down the married path, I would not be where I am now.

I have, over many, many years learnt to control my Dysphoria, but it keeps coming back no matter what I do, this time its never been stronger...

So what's holding me back, I am a bit of a perfectionist, as well as not being a life destroyer, so;

Lack of work and funding (hopefully about to change)
Figuring out how to come out to my wife and Family
Actually being ready to transition fully e.g. Satisfied with body (within reason), Facial Hair and shadowing, Tracheal Shave.... and Aged and sun damaged skin (very much a vanity thing... phew!) but not limiting factor

L Katy 

what was holding me back? Letting go of a marriage that I had  struggled for over 30 years to make work.  The marriage should have gone regardless of any trans* issues, but status quo, religious and family expectations, fear of change, and the big one, uber low self esteem and lack of self-worth where what has really held me  back, not just from transitioning, but from being okay with myself.  So, between T and therapy, becoming more okay with not only existing, but also with expecting the same kind of happiness other, more confident people expect.

Guilt and voice in that order.

What's holding me back is my marriage at the moment.   I've been married over 20 years.   My wife is my best friend and my lover.  She's my high school sweetheart, and we have a great relationship, along with six kids.

She's told me if I transition,  then we are done...
I just can't continue to be male anymore, and she knows it.   She's seen my dysphoria take off exponentially last year.   With her blessing I've started low dose hrt and plan to have an orchiectomy some time next year. 

Anyway for now we're taking it one step at a time.  Will I fully transition, oh good I hope so (my health insurance will cover it), but right now I can't lose her.  So I'm heading for a more androgynous body and presentation for now.

Fear, guilt, low self worth, anxiety that no one would ever accept me and worry that I would tear appart my already fragile family. i finally realized that the way I was living was making things more difficult for my family. That the support I needed to give my friends wasn't there because i was so unhappy. I realized that the only way for me to be the strong, happy, supportive, good person I had always felts short of being, the person my loved ones deserved, was to transition. Only being honest with myself could save me.

Myself, mainly.

I have a supportive family who loves me no matter what. Thing is getting myself to feel that way about myself. There's a lot of guilt and shame in my thought cycles, and a general avoidance to talk about things regarding to what I want. And embarrassment despite being told my entire life not to be embarrassed by who and what I am. But, I'm trying to combat that with cognitive behaviour therapy. Which has worked with lessening the damage done with my general depression. The work now is getting my inner workings to accept myself. I believe I can't face the world if I'm not safe within my own mind.

Other than that, I live in a small community and worried about how transition would affect how my family is seen. Not so much myself because I've always been a 'weird person' - which I have learned to own and laugh about.

I've become more and more aware how much of my depression and anxiety is caused by dysphoria during the process of getting the rest of my mental health to a good place. How much I repressed and didn't deal with, and how that affected me regardless if I was doing my best to ignore it. And how much it came down on me when I 'cracked'. I know I need to transition, it's getting to the point of saying that's okay.

When I first came out to myself, the plan was to have "girl mode" in the evenings. It would be my secret. I was afraid of losing my job. I was afraid of losing part of my family. I was afraid for my life since I live in Alabama. I figured my neighbors would hate me. However there is an interracial couple down the road and to my knowledge have never had any problems with the rest of the neighborhood.

It didn't last long before "girl mode" in the evenings felt like I was suffocating myself. I went to work one day and had trouble breathing the whole way in. As I pulled into the parking lot I had to stop my car because I was so short of breath. It was that evening I told my parents. There was a lot of hesitation and denial on their parts, but they ultimately accepted me. I called their reaction perfectly. I talked to my second oldest sister. I suspected she would accept me. What I didn't expect was how quickly she voiced her support. I barely told her what was going on before she voiced her support. I didn't tell my other two sisters for fear of rejection until later. I got their reactions backwards but essentially correct. It hasn't been easy to be rejected by them, but overall I'm better off today than I was before even coming out to myself. I pretty much had already decided on transitioning at this time.

Now here I am about 9 months later on the road to transition and encountering mostly support and the occasional glance that I'm a horrible person. Its generally not vocal especially with the adults. I've had more trouble with the kids than the adults. One of the teenagers invaded my privacy with a camera saying that I looked like a walmart freak. I didn't acknowledge him in anyway, but I was thinking yeah pretty much the whole neighborhood shops at walmart because its the closest place to us. That was the worst. The other issues I've had is occasionally one of the kids will say something along the lines of "There's the man-lady!". I've been rejected by pretty much everyone my whole life so none of this bothers me. I'll admit the teenager with the camera bothered me for a couple of days.

Two main things really, the first of which being my ex. I need her to basically do my maths exams for me (last year of college, UK, not nice things  ) and I don't want to push her away because I don't know what her reaction would be at all.

Second is my family. Mum I think is very open to it because - bless her - she doesn't know about the relationship I had with her (to be honest, none of my family does) and she doesn't know if I'm gay because of it. I am not gay it is nice to know she is at least partially LGBT supportive. Now for the first family problem. Dad. 22 years in the British Army, Warrent Officer Class 1. Yes that makes him the type to challenge his (only) son to do better than him, wants me almost to carry our name forward. Ultimately it would destroy him to lose his only son in this way. (However two hours prior to this post, I have just applied to the army and RAF for aviation engineer based roles as backup if my uni application fails  ) Problem two in the family: my twin sister. She has autism which is getting worse and she will just not understand anything. She will question it, and question it, and question it. She may hide from me, she may act as if the male me has died and the female me is just an imposter or she may accept it. Through no fault of her own she is anti-LGBT because she simply does not understand why people are like that, just as she doesnt understand why she is different from everybody else.

Ultimately I dont want to upset the very prichriously perched apple cart    my family has decided to settle into. Hopefully I'll be leaving for university in mid-late September, join the LGBT society there, get hormones, tell family, they're all ok with it and then everyone can have tea and cake 

As it has been said before, don't waste your life trying to be someone you're not although coming out to family (as I think a large number of people would agree) is one of the hardest parts of the process. Something I'm still trying to work up the courage to do 

I hope sharing experiences helps you in some way 

Flizzy

Family.  And my weight.  I would like to get under 250 before I start HRT and that means losing a 100+ lbs.  (25 so far!)  Family is the biggest.  My wife is trying to so hard to be accepting and I think if we had had a strong marriage before my coming out, this could work.  But too many old problems are resurfacing.  This is not a healthy environment for me to transition in.

I always tend to apply the "Which Pain is Worse" question. I've been on HRT for years, know that I can pass at some level, achieved my life long dream of being seen as and accepted as a woman, yet... gender expression is not the only thing that makes me, me.

At this point in my life to feel 100% would take living it out as a woman. But the potential cost? My wife, my career, respect. Those three count for 90%. So that 10% gain can cost me 30%. Otherwise known as a net loss.

Is it worth it?

Well, fortunately for me, perhaps also for you it seems, there is another viable option. I am not a member of the "Transition or Die" club. Considered joining a few times, but never signed. Tomorrow.... I can change my mind, just as you can can. As long as I still wake up on the right side of the grass, I can, am allowed to, make changes

Purely age to be honest, I'm just not old enough to even give it a go. And christian school so 

After my earlier post, I have been thinking a lot about this... I have to say that I have not controlled my life that well, outside of work I am passive, very accommodating, enjoy company, food, wine, etc... I m also very protective over my family, including me hurting them by my Dysphoria.

At work I am very controlling (when I am employed), leading, thinking outside of the square, take risks (some calculations), but I also measure that against best interests for the company and its customers, I also am very aware and abide by Risk Management frameworks.

So I believe this is why I have always backed off transition, but having said that I did make up my mind over ten years ago to commit, as long as at my age I could get the basic body changes right... so here I am this year determined to control my life fully. First step is getting re-employed (after having a promised role with a start date mid January, but role vanished mid February), I was hoping that the contract role would see me through Laser/Electro, then get another role to keep it up, get trachea shaving done, then go PT and get Voice sorted) and onto FT... however money has dried up, although future may get better. So I find myself out of control again, just for the moment tho.

Hmmm as I have lost nearly 4 months of the year, my FT timeline date should move by a similar amount!

L Katy

Thank you to everyone who is sharing their experiences here. I recognize this can be a deeply personal topic for folks and I really do appreciate your candor. You're all awesome