Hi everyone, I'm new here.  I've just been having a lot of doubts and questions about transitioning.  This is going to be a wall, so I apologize now.

I've been on hormones for about two and a half months now, and everything started out great.  For a long time I had never had the option of seeing transitioning as a real possibility, so when I finally started I was ecstatic.  I could barely sleep that first night.  Now that I've had some time to get used to the idea, I've started thinking about it more critically.  Overall I believe I'm somewhere in between male and female.  There are aspects of both that I can identify with, so I'm trying to figure out where I am and if transition is the right choice.  I've always been a very masculine male, and in some ways it feels right.  I've been into weight lifting since high school, and have spent years training and competing as a strongman.  Just being a big strong man feels right, and I don't want to give up something I've enjoyed for so many years.

At the same time, I've never been able to have a significant relationship with anyone.  I've only been attracted to females, but the idea of being intimate with someone and imagining myself penetrating someone just feels wrong.  In a relationship I see myself as female and being with a male, not just for sex but any physical aspect.

For most other areas, I feel either a mix of male and female or neutral.  Like in a social setting, I don't really care how my friends see me, as long as they see ME (my personality, sense of humor, strengths, weaknesses, etc.). However, there have been signs that I lean towards female and feel comfortable with those.  I feel a sense of jealousy when I see other women or other people who have transitioned.  I have two therapists I'm meeting with now (a general therapist once a week and a gender therapist once or twice a month), and when I started talking about my doubts I just kept thinking, "Please don't tell me to stop..."

I'm just worried that it's just going to be a grass is always greener situation.  I feel like if I do transition, I'll feel about being male in the way that I currently feel about being female.  I know that this whole thing is going to take a lot of time and money and effort, and I have serious doubts about being able to pass, especially without facial surgery.

After talking with both of my therapists, we're going to continue talking about this, but they also suggested trying to reach out to see what experiences others have had.  Any advice or suggestions or relatable experiences would really be appreciated right now.  And if anyone wants me to try to expand on anything I've said just let me know.  Thanks for your help.

I think that having doubts is a pretty normal state for us, especially in mid-transition.  We are in an odd state, not here or there, and as you say, there will be days when "the grass is greener on the other side".

After a long day of being constantly misgendered, the doubts come roaring back in, along with the thoughts of detransitioning, giving up, and the inevitable end result for me.  I know just how I felt when I was in hiding, and I do not want to go back to that.  It's almost preferable to just live with all the jerks out there, rather than dive back into hiding and depression.

I do know that I can continue to improve myself going forward, and this in-between state isn't permanent.  That gives me hope, and I cling to that.

Working with your therapists is a good plan.  Try to recall how you felt before transition started, before you found a path for yourself.  Do you honestly feel that you are better off now, than then?  What would your state of mind finally be if you did abandon your transition and go back to your old life?  Especially knowing that you had turned your back on what you now have.

Only you can answer these questions.  Therapy can help you find honest answers.

Good luck out there.
- Michelle


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Welcome to Susan's Place. If you have been on HRT for a couple of months, it's possible that the blocker as done a good job of knocking your T levels down. When this happens, we lose some of the trans drive and it can change our outlook on the transition. I have seen people on the site who thought they were cured, discontinued HRT and had the full return of the feeling they had before starting HRT. It complicates matters somewhat because you have to view this from your current viewpoint as well as how you would have felt pre HRT. I can't tell you what your answer is but this might explain some of your current feelings.

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you can be physically active and be a woman. There are women in all sports.

I've seen bigger walls of text...  LOL! 

I've found that over analyzing things is a common problem.  There are no real rules to transition... More guidelines to show the paths that others have taken.  Nobody says you have to be either male or female; or even a feminine male or masculine female; heck even androgenous, gender queer, or just ambiguous...  The world is your oyster to be whatever feels right to you.  You can go for any destination you want with your life.  Anyone worth your time will only truly care about what kind of a person you are, and they wont really care about the superficial stuff.  We should all take a page from the LGB and Q community... They have figured this out long ago... Do what makes you happy and keep moving forward in that direction.

I see, once again, the irony of how TG people think in purely binary terms. The logic goes like this:
a) I don't see myself as a guy like all the guys I know are
b) Since I don't feel like a guy, I must be trans
c) If I'm trans, I must do a full social and medical transition in order to be happy

We tend to forget that "Transgender" is a very broad spectrum between Cis-Female & Cis-Male. There is lot of territory between those two. Plus, what you need to do today to help with the GD can change over time. Like your hatred of broccoli as a kid (But how can anyone not feel like a dinosaur eating little trees?) Dealing with the GD, making changes in your life and how you see yourself, is not an "All or Nothing" scenario.

In fact, thinking of it as all or nothing, is what many a sleepless, and perhaps tear filled, nights are made of. For instance, many times throughout the years I relied on low dose HRT to help me get over the GD hump. A sort of Brain-Reset I call it. The extreme GD went away and I was able to carry on my normal(ish) male life with all it's perks, and all it's downsides. The occasional much needed escape from maleness came from CD'ing

For 30 or so years I kept my life in balance. A lot changed a few years back. Today I am full dose HRT. I lived part-time as female. I have a wife, a fantastic career, and the normal moral & financial obligations I need to satisfy. I also have a body I feel good about living in. I had to undergo a lot of personal growth in the process of holding things in my life together.

Gender expression is just one of many aspects that go into making me Me. I count my blessings that my GD is not so intense that I need to transition. I just would like to. In a perfect world, I would. My world is far from perfect. Plus there is the risk put on the other aspects of Me a transition will bring.

I reside in that vast middle ground between Cis-Female and Cis-Male. No longer enjoying sleepless nights or waking up with a hangover I worked hard to try to ditch that All or Nothing thinking. Describing myself as Non-Binary makes it easier. Inside I know without a doubt I am female and always have been. No doubt there are many male aspects to me also. If I ever needed to transition socially, that male aspect will not disappear because I am in a dress.

A short funny story of sorts. Both of my therapists asked me basically the same question. "What would be different if Joanne showed up to work tomorrow?" My immediate no thought response was "Nothing" which was followed by a few exploding heads and dropped jaws when this 6ft tall bald guy shows up as a classy woman. The hair, makeup, clothes only would help to make me feel a bit more genuine.

In some ways, I think it's right that the grass is greener on the other side, always. Not because of anything that's wrong with you, per se, but because that's how society is. There's how you feel about your body, your expression, your identity, and so on...and then there are all of the expectations that society brings along with that which are kinda non-negotiable because society is big and heartless and changes slowly and doesn't care about individual people and how they're more complicated than a long list of stereotypes.

And individuals are more complicated than that. Especially trans people who have been exposed to a lot of conflicting expectations from society of how we're supposed to be, it can be really hard not to see how society's expectations for men and women give you leeway in certain ways, and restrict you in others. For some people, one or the other set mostly fit; for a lot of others, they don't.

I transitioned six years ago. I'm happy about some things: my body most of all, the way I relate to friends and lovers. And in doing that, I've gotten the things that I never would have had if I didn't transition. But the grass is greener on the other side too: I get sidelong glances for my appearance (not enough makeup! clothing too boyish!), my hobbies (a little too interested in taking apart computers), and the way I talk (talks too much! has too many opinions! talks to guys as if they're bros instead of people who want to have sex with me!). And in a perfect world, I'd be just fine with these things and so would society, but I don't get to pick and choose what society treats the people it sees as women like.

I miss that these things aren't allowed to be 'normal' for me, but like everything it's a choice of what matters most. In transition, you get some decisions that let you control how society sees you: changing your body (HRT, surgeries, hair removal, etc.), changing what you put on your body (clothing, cosmetics, accessories), and changing how you behave (voice, body language and carriage), but at the end of the day, society as it is right now gets to pick how it decides to treat you, as a consequence of the things you do choose to do.

For me, I chose to be comfortable in my body, since that was more important to me than being entirely comfortable in my social role and the expectations society had for me. Obviously, the decision is yours to make about what's most important for you, but what I would say is I don't think:

Quote from: shank1104 on January 02, 2017, 10:54:29 AMI feel like if I do transition, I'll feel about being male in the way that I currently feel about being female.

was ever true for me, because it's very different things that frustrated me about being perceived as male vs. female. Like, because of the way being male is heavily valued in Western society and the danger inherently associated with being female, I miss the fact that I felt safer on my own than I do now, which is the sort of thing that I obviously wouldn't have picked if I could, but which comes with the territory. On the other hand, before I transitioned I felt like the way I interacted with the people I attracted to was dysfunctional, and I couldn't do it right because of how my body felt like an obstacle. Frustration on both sides, but not the same thing. And in retrospect, the frustration I feel now is at least manageable, because it comes from society being wrong, not my brain being wrong. Or something.

Jen on the forums here said something really astute here a few years ago, which has stayed with me all these years: "Let peace be your compass." Transition is a frustrating process, and in an imperfect world, there are sometimes going to be times where you sacrifice one thing to feel better about another thing. My recommendation for you, and anyone, is find the things that affirm your decisions about your body, your mind, your presentation. And sometimes it'll suck because your toolkit is limited and you can't have things both ways and society is narrowminded. But if you are always moving in the direction of the things that bring you greater peace on the balance, you'll be in a better position to manage everything else, including all the things you can't control about society.