I didn't do the poll because I didn't like how it was worded (sorry). You asked how much I *HAD* to do, and I wasn't sure what that meant...is it how much I was required to do? If so, my situation is sorta complicated.
For various reasons--but especially because I was in a long-term relationship with my straight male partner--I did not go to my therapist with an attitude of "how long till you write me a T letter?" I knew that I had lots of baggage and issues, and I figured that I would just take as long as I needed to work them out and decide whether I wanted to transition.
I saw my therapist twice a week. After about two and a half months of therapy, I hit a crisis point and fully accepted that, yes, I was really a transsexual and needed to start some kind of transitional process. I wasn't sure when I wanted to start T. I was worried for my relationship and also didn't want to transition on the job. I had good reason to believe that I wouldn't be teaching at my uni after March, so I was thinking of starting T in April. That was comfortably far in the future.
At first, I didn't tell my therapist when I was thinking of starting T. After a good deal of MY deferring and MY avoiding, HE finally asked when I wanted to start. I think that was in November, after about four months of therapy. I told him what I was thinking. And then the landscape of my life and desires started to change. Sometime around Christmas, I realized that I didn't want to wait that long. In fact, I started to feel that I COULDN'T wait that long. I thought, "Okay, maybe March." Then I started thinking March first. Then February. Then early February. I called the endo and got my first shot in mid-February, after a little over six months of therapy.
My therapist is not a gatekeeper, but he does seem to believe that the SOC exist for good reason and that they serve most people pretty well. I feel that once I made my big self-revelation, my therapist would have been quite happy to write me a letter after around three or three and a half months of therapy, but do bear in mind again that I was going in twice a week. (I know it sounds like overkill, but I was in a very bad way for months. I'm a lot better now.)
I didn't really do RLE. I had been presenting in a very masculine way for years, but RLE isn't too practical for most people.
And I should point out that I didn't have to go through therapy at all if I didn't want to. We have an informed consent clinic in my city. And I later found out that there is one therapist in town who is so free and easy with T letters that it boggles the mind. If I had gone to him/her and had been sure of what I wanted, getting a letter would have been a piece of cake. It would have taken a session or two. I know that therapists are trained to spot deception and uncertainty and all of that, but I worry that this therapist, who is still quite young, is not being careful enough.
But that's a different story.
P.S. By the way, your therapist's timetable seems excessively rigid to me if you are going in once a week. I'm no professional, but I think that the timetable should be loosely based on the SOC and strongly based on YOU. I can understand an attitude of "let's go three months and then see." But again, it depends on how often you go in and what other issues you have. For me, since I was going in twice a week, I really did have a year's worth of once-a-week therapy before I started T. But, as I indicated, I seem to be atypical among guys who don't have other mental health issues.
