I was just curious how many of you feel you were successful in the closet.  I guess that sucess may not be a good word but maybe content is better.  I have really closeted myself and been in denial, in the past. I was never really athletic and I threw a ball like a girl.  Still do.  But I found an interest in sports and a few other male things.  I would play with boys toys but most of the time I would much rather have been playing house or with my sisters toys.  Looking back I feel that I did an ok job of playing the role, even to the point I would forget who I was at periods of time.  Though it seemed if I had a time of releif , a break, Jessica would always come raring back. Any similar experiences?
Jessica

That's Staff Sergeant Becca to you Private.

Yeah, I was what you would call "sucessful" but I had the advantage of being in two closets. I remember the first time I kissed a man in public, I thought the world would end but...nobody noticed or cared. That was freaking hard, but nothing compared to going out dressed as a woman the first few times. It got to the point eventually that retreating into 'normalness' and 'sucess' wasn't a comfort anymore, in fact it made things worse and eventually reached critical mass.

I can't relate to the "raring back" part per se, because I never really got to know Becca. We are still getting acquainted, but more and more often now we meet at the mirror and she seems like a pretty cool chick. Wow that sounds totally disassociative, lol. I mean it in the figurative sense, not the schitzo sense!

I was pretty successful as *him*.  I liked who I was well enough and fit in pretty well - a bit effeminate and odd, but so what?  If not for my GID I would have had a pretty good life.

But gradually the pressure kept building.  I was well closeted, with the door secured pretty tightly.  My spouse knew, and my doctor and a few gay friends, but I never left the house dressed other than to go out in the garden when it was dark.

The thing that did it for me was the whole idea of being in a closet, not being open with my friends, not even my close straight friends.  I finally began telling them about being a CD, and in the process began opening up to myself.

I knew I was in trouble when I finally went out to an LGBT dance dressed as Katherine and could barely stand to dress in male clothes the next morning.

Yes, I was pretty successful in the closet, but once I dynamited the door open I am finally free.

- Kate

Different strokes for different folks, as they say.  Despite the constant drumbeat that this is all one thing, even a superficial reading of posts will tell you that it occurs on different levels with different people, and it can change over time.  So what works today, might not work tomorrow, and several here have gone FT, only to go back to where they were, kind of a 50/50 thing, cause they were really 50/50 people.  ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!

Well, for a long time I didn't know that trans people even existed.  Sure, when I was a kid I wanted to be a boy (sometimes wanted it so badly that it felt more like a need), but I was smart enough to know that I couldn't "fight nature."  I eventually accepted the fact that I was going to grow breasts and be a pretty lady.  Yeah, I hated it like hell, but I tried my hardest to accept it.

And so I did.  I gave in.  I wore dresses when I was told to dress nice, I wore makeup when I wanted to look pretty, acted like a girl, spoke like a girl, and I do love fashion, I'm not going to lie about that.  I LOVE ladies' fashion.  But even though I "gave in" to puberty, I've been a more tomboyish girl all my life.  I can fit in if I want to: be a pretty girl, a sweet girl, a girly girl...  But I'm tired of it.

I suppose I was pretty successful "in the closet," but I feel like now that I know I can be what I'm supposed to be, I can't tolerate living as a female anymore.  For me it's just a matter of pulling together the courage to come out.  I've always been aware of what other people think of me, but now it's time to get over it and get through it.

Quote from: tekla on September 07, 2009, 08:05:44 PM
So what works today, might not work tomorrow, and several here have gone FT, only to go back to where they were, kind of a 50/50 thing, cause they were really 50/50 people.  ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL!

I can't say that I've noticed posts by people who once full time, decided that they wanted to go back to their partial birth sex. (partial, meaning their mind and bodies were still not congruent)

People, from my reading of the posts, have only de-transitioned for economic reasons and for what they hope is a short duration. I don't know that I've read a post of someone who discovered they had made a grievous error in judgment by having transitioned. Sure, they might change their dressing style from conservative to casual, but typically not to the point of changing it with recrossing the gender line again. 

Again, this is only my observation. 

Well, according to the feedback I got from people around me when it became common knowledge I was trans, I was very successful in playing the male role.  But I had a good teacher, or should I say martinet. 

One lesson I learned well was how the mind of a child can be molded when they fear rejection or lack of acceptance from a parent.  Denial becomes a very effective tool.  Not to say society didn't play a part in helping train the child to become what society wanted, but my dad was a major player in making me a very "successful" male.

Julie

Quote from: juliekins on September 28, 2009, 11:53:37 AM
I can't say that I've noticed posts by people who once full time, decided that they wanted to go back to their partial birth sex. (partial, meaning their mind and bodies were still not congruent)

People, from my reading of the posts, have only de-transitioned for economic reasons and for what they hope is a short duration. I don't know that I've read a post of someone who discovered they had made a grievous error in judgment by having transitioned. Sure, they might change their dressing style from conservative to casual, but typically not to the point of changing it with recrossing the gender line again. 

Again, this is only my observation.

Well, there is/was at least one here, whom I personally think detransitioned more for religious reasons than anything else, but they do exist.

I, for one, was terrible in the closet.  Depressed, unsuccessful in my life for whatever reason, scornful of relationships, even friendships, and human sexuality brought me almost to a point of rage.  I was revolted by it.  Revolted by everything.  To be honest, I still am.  Coming "out of the closet" has meant not much to me, other than another step in the right direction.  I felt like I was wearing my heart on my sleeve for the better part of my life; I felt like my gender identity should have been translucent to everyone else, but it wasn't.  I acted how I wanted to act, I just forgot about the body I was acting through.  Needless to say, I am quite the dysfunctional human being.  I have been contrary to a fault since I was young; only now I realize I have been surrounded by women for a lot of my life, and while there's nothing wrong with that and they have brought a lot to my life, I must have felt they were forcing me to be like them, for I would immediately feel that I hated whatever they were involved with.  I'd never felt that way about the men in my life... Just saying that makes me sound like a sexist moron, but it is an unconscious thing.

To make it short, I was bad in the closet, am bad in this role, I was never okay with this.   Wish I could have enjoyed at least a little bit.

my therapist actually says theres two ways to handle gid you can correct the problem or you can recieve therapy on going to deal with the issues of not correcting it and live in the gender you were born with. he does caution though that it is a progressive illness which may only get worst with time he sited a 90 which presented with severe gid do to the fact he had never recieved counsling or was given the option to transition. i think the hardest part of the transition is all family and friend related i think if these were removed all of us would transition as soon as finances allowed. the only other real problem is public oppinion of non-friends or family and does that really matter. with 100 percent support from the people that matter the most we all would prob just move to a location were no one knew us as a male or female and viola prob resolved

I might have to revise my answer, it seems like the only person I was fooling was myself and that wasn't very convincingly.

Last night on the way home I thought of this discussion. I had spent the evening with a friend from my previous life who recently moved to the area and looked me up...and had come out to him not only as gay (by his definition) but as trans. He wasn't the least bit surprised...nobody particularly has been but I expected him to be, really. On the way home I was like, am I really that stereotypical? He said he first suspected because when we used to go out in the desert to shoot clay pigeons and jackrabbits I was more interested in the landscape and apparently I talked to the girls too much on the (rare!) trips to the strip bar. I remember those trips, I am an excellent shot and often missed the rabbit deliberately, I was there to have fun with my friends not kill things...and what can I say, those girls had fabulous outfits 

Wow, Becca, you sure hit it for me.  I really like shooting but have no interest in hunting.  And I hated the strip clubs because the girls always looked like they had to disconnect from themselves to do the act, meanwhile evying them the clothes and their bodies. 

When I was still trying to fit in as male, I had a number of people tell me I looked at things like a girl does - intending it to be a big insult, but I always took a secret pleasure in it.  

Gee, I wonder why it took me so long to accept that I am TS?   Just a late bloomer.

- Kate

i am a very good and bad actor.  I was very good at hiding my emotions and even put a smile on my face when inside i feel like crying, but i was a very bad actor as a male. 

maybe the fact that i had a pretty late puberty made me seem different than others or helped with not being a good male actor?

Remind me when i was trying to act like a man and was taking some box class (shadow box only- no real box where people did hurt each other); the instructor  did often change the box partner i had from male to female. ^_^