Sooo much to say here. Thank you all for welcoming me. It is amazing to me to even have a forum like this to talk openly and get advice from people with way more experience than I.
Btw, Jeanette, I liked your story, I mean, before you added the dose of reality part. Too much to ask?
Ok, some serious stuff here but I am curious to see how my story may match up to others. I am pretty long-winded once I get started so I will try to curtail that somewhat in my sexual life story....
I am in my 50s now and I will just admit that I gave myself that label on my post but I have never been sure of exactly where I fit as far as sexuality and gender. Even as a young child, as far back as my memory of sexuality goes, I seemingly felt differently than my friends. I even remember thinking maybe I was an alien because I didn't think like the other "humans". Like any young boy, I had know idea about meanings of sexuality. I think maybe I knew what "homo" meant and it was bad. I think we called each other that and at one point jokingly tried oral on each other. We laughed it all off but inside it was transforming to me. it was an overwhelming feeling to do it and those feelings never changed to this day.
As I got a little older and abandoned the idea that I was an alien...lol, I thought that maybe I was supposed to be a girl when I was born. Nobody prompted me to think that or even to fathom that there was such a thing. I felt maybe I was the only boy that ever experienced this in the entire world before. I knew to never talk about it though. My father was always making "homo" comments or something to that effect, whether he was cursing at baseball players on tv or just talking about someone he knew in a derogatory manner.
I grew up being a boy... baseball, football, fighting, girlfriends, all the while, feeling like I was hiding this secret. Not that I didn't enjoy girls, I did, I do, I just had some desires I could not suppress. As a teenager, I had some bi-experiences and would literally make an excuse to leave my girlfriend's house so I could go do that. (story for another time). I had snuck my mother's panties a few times, and that was amazing, but it was just so few and fleeting moments, and still sooo taboo to me, I never indulged dressing more than that.
As a young man, I got married, had kids, joined the military and made a career out of that so any thoughts of going in another direction were well suppressed, at least on the outside. I was a man, a manly man. I did, however, hint otherwise to my wife over the years, even having a some bi-threesomes and a few in-the-heat-of-passion drunken blurted out confessions where I fully expected to be interrogated the next day. But I never got "Hey, did you mean what you said last night? Let's talk about that."
Now, I have kids, grandkids, who don't know me any other way than I am, a man, a war hero, a role-model for any hetero-sexual young man. I feel like I have committed to that and invested way to much to change that even if that doubtful searching young boy still resides in me. If the information available today was available to me back then, I could have very well made another choice.
So, I have been experimenting lately with dressing and it has sooo rekindled my emotions and confusions. It is more than just clothes, I know that. It is transforming, freeing, exposing, emotional, natural. I don't have to summon those feelings, it comes over me like a wave. It is me matching that vision I had when I was a young boy. It is me not pretending. I mean, I don't think I am pretending to be a man. I am and I am pretty good at it (lol) but when I dress, I am not pretending that THAT isn't also part of me.
{PAUSE}
...Typing this and reading it back has made me quite emotional. I like to think I am decisive but it IS confusing, even now. Sometimes I think I am trying to convince myself. It scares me to think about just "coming out". I don't know that I will ever fully do that other than maybe to my wife (hopefully), but all this makes me wonder if I am not Jeanette 10 years removed.