I have been thinking that a lot of my shame about transgender thoughts in early years. I think I always felt guilty for 'wanting' to be female, 'wanting' to dress in female clothes, 'wanting' to have boobs and a vagina. I don't think I ever thought much about being driven by my body (my brain formation) to need to do these things. As I have come to terms with being trans, I feel my attitude has changed a lot. Specifically, I think all of my 'wants' were really 'needs.' My body, my brain needed to do everything trans related that I have done. It wasn't a 'want' at all. Or maybe I wanted feminine things because my body needed feminine things. I hope this makes sense. What do you think? Awe, my first poll!
Monica

I feel a need to transform to a man. My will has little to do with it. I've felt male since childhood.

My longings feel more like a want rather than a need right now, but I'm very early in my process of self-realization and transition. I've literally only been working on accepting this aspect of myself for less than a month, so I'm not real concerned; that being said, I feel like making a distinction for this may be quite divisive, as the words people use to describe their feelings change over time. If we put a qualifier on whether it's a want or need, that might be great at the surface level for diagnostics, but people vary too much and when they're already scared and uncertain, unnecessary qualifiers just make the process much more convoluted.

Just my two cents worth.

I feel like I was put on a slide 10 years ago when I found out I was trasgender. I wanted to go down the slide to meet the whole myself. I let go and went down the slide. I am now travelling too fast to break in the middle of the slide. I now feel a need to meet myself at the end of the slide. I can't stop and climb back up. I can't break an stop in the middle.

Will and need changes, just like you said.  This is me, how I feel. That is ok, your feelings are also ok. Nobody can take ones feelings away.

Years ago I thought it was a want, but it's so connected to my inner self (and always has been) that not doing it means repressing my true self, which is paralyzing socially. I need to be seen as female to be myself in public without drawing unwanted attention. If that statement is true, it's a need. If the attention is wanted as in a drag performance that's a want.
That isn't to say you can't both want and need to be female though. I need to be, and I also want to be (but I answered need)

Before I started to transition I thought it was a "want".  50 years of Wanting to be a girl.  I started to transition and stopped and had a mental breakdown. Apparently now it's a must have (need).

Both of those thought have given me great comfort now.  I don't have a choice in this I really must do this for my own sanity - thank God I want it too.  I'm sorry for the hurt I've caused my wife (it kills me every day) but we both realize I had not choice.

I have been asking myself the same question. Do I want this or do I need this? Or am I convincing myself that I need this because I want it so much? I was driving myself crazy. In the end I came to the conclusion that NO, I do not want this, and the only reason these thoughts exist in my head is because of a medical condition I have no control over. So now I am believing that is more of a need, the same way I need air. I have no control over it. If I was younger and single, I might also WANT this, but I don't, because like Denise, it kills me knowing that my need is causing hurt for my wife. Sometimes I find it difficult to distinguish between want and need, but I would have to settle on need.

Jessie

I thought much of this drive was 'want', but when I suppressed that 'want', it pretty rapidly turns corrosive, pushing my anxiety up, and threatening the return of depression.  This suggests rather strongly that it is actually a 'need'.

Simply being myself, and continuing HRT and my transition has been a massive relief.  For a mere 'want', addressing it has improved my life so much, to the point where I am now the happiest I have been in my adult life.  That's quite a change, and it suggests that measures that result in happiness and relief from severe depression and anxiety are more of a 'need' than a 'want' for me.

I am what I am, and I need to be true to myself.  Simply wanting to be myself and hiding myself away to ease the discomfort of others at the expense of my life and sanity is a poor choice, and one that I cannot make.

I really, finally know that I must be true to myself.

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I'm not sure if I could classify them as either a Want or a Need, what I do know is that a few weeks ago I had one of the most significant revelations in my life, suddenly everything clicked and I realised all along I had been female, all of the times in my life when I'd felt gender confusion went away, and I knew this was right

Mine is neither want nor need. It is simply and finally accepting what "is".

I am a woman I don't need or want to be anything

Liz

 I'm a transexual, I think like a transexual, I have the needs and wants of a transexual. And that's a perfectly normal way of being. I don't really know any different, It's how things have always been for me.

shy

I don't think it's either a need or a want.  It's simply what I am.  It is others who force the meaning of need or want by defining all this as a deviant mental choice.  It is not that at all.  It is simply a state of being which, while unusual, does not involve any choice at all.


Conform and be dull. —James Frank Dobie, The Voice of the Coyote

I am not sure that I can distinguish wants and needs in this case, and I am not sure the distinction has meaning.  In earlier years I believed it was "just" a want, and that I could set it aside.  But my inner self insisted on existing.

Now I do not feel that I am acquiring anything, so it is neither a want nor a need.  I am shedding superfluous layers.  I no longer need the prison walls that I built around myself.  I no longer need the grey drab disguise that I wore for so many years.

I am not becoming anything; I am not getting anything; there is nothing to need or want.  I am, and I will be.

Back in my early 20's before and during my 2 utter failed transition experiments I would have leaned a lot more towards "A Need". Obviously not an all consuming need, but a heck of a lot more then simply wanting to. In the late 70's early 80's being 6ft tall and big everything, as an MTF you will stand out as "One of those". Not a good thing back then. Stealth in any way shape or form was a total fantasy.

Also, just as today, I had a very good percentage of my life working up other coping strategies. Fair enough, in my later years some were not so healthy for me both physically and emotionally. Never the less, I dealt with being trans the best I knew how which was mostly "Stuffing" with some begrudging acceptance/denial mantra of "Just a CD (with a long lost dream)"

All those coping mechanisms blew up BIG Time 8 years ago. After much self reflection it was clear how I was NOT Handling being trans was the root cause of much of the dysfunction in my life and a percentage of the disasters. I may not have wanted to take on the Trans-Beast, but I need to if I wanted to have anything close to a life worth living.

Today I know there are plenty of "Need To's" I must take care of. Taking Care of Myself, my needs, my wants, is still a bit of a foreign concept. A holdover of my active denial days for dealing with GD. Ignore it and it will go away. Slacking off on HRT comes with dire, depressive disastrous consequences. The same I am learning with not presenting more often as Joanne like I used to. (Gone for now are the days of part-time living as Joanne) Both are Needs not just wants. How many other "Wants" will morph into Needs as time goes on? They'll get addressed as I walk down this path just as the ones before them were. What I needed long forgotten yesterdays ago are no more. Much of what I need today was not even a dreamed of. Tomorrow will be no different.

It's hard to draw a line between the 2.  When I was a kid, I thought there was something wrong with me, so it certainly wasn't a want then.  Over the years, I have come to the conclusion being trans is part of me.  So, while there may be some wants to this, over all, it's needs.

Tbh I don't 'want' to be a dude. There's no "wouldn't it be cooler if I were a man" thoughts, from what I've seen men have it worse in lots of ways so it feels like a step down. There's no affinity for what I was born with either.

There's just the fact I am uncomfortable with my body, I am uncomfortable having or using female anatomy, I don't get along with people easily in this skin who see me as forceful and intimidating, and I isolate and deny myself most of life's fun experiences because none of it works right from this position, I don't even want to think about the sum of the mental toll and what it's done to me and how much it's screwed up my life.

It's a want to be more comfortable. It's a need to do so before I lose my ****.

I voted "need" because the alternative is not very nice.

I think its more of a need it may be a bit hard to describe.
I hate that i was born male and i get very depressed becaus of it.
I see myself as a woman and want to live that way.
So i feel that i need to be a woman to be happy with myself and live my life.
But i still might say that i want to be a woman but thats more just the way i talk.

I've thought about this a lot lately. I'm not far into my transition at the moment and every time I think about my transition, I think in terms of "I want this...I want that".  When I actually get the the thing I wanted (like dressing permanently male, and testosterone) the thought of having to back track or detransition gives me extreme anxiety and I know I would be suicidal if that ever happened which makes think that these things were actually needs after all.

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