Hi everybody.
I hope this is the right place, I just need to vent.

In 2008 I discovered, that there are people out there who are trans. FTM, I never really knew, and it was like a blow to the head.
I hurried to forget this fact, or the fact that I had cried over it (why, anyway??). I actually did forget it, I got married, and never thought about trans again.
In summer 2010, out of nowhere, I realized that I was trans.
I lived as male for a year.
Just before I was supposed to start testosterone, I caved. I wanted to save my marriage.
Since November 2011 I have tried to live as female. My marriage is doing great.
I still see my therapist.

I had come to think that my "episode" of 2010/2011 was just that. An episode. Trying stuff.
But lately it is all coming back again.
I start crying for no good reason.
I practically mourn over my male life that I will never have.
Knew that it will haunt me someday, but I thought I had it locked away.

Now, I can't transition. I can't lose my husband. He is more important to me than my own happiness. And he does make me happy, too - it is just that in that time where I was living as male... I was happy. Really happy. Complete. I can't even express how complete I felt. I felt like the whole reason for my existence was to be male. Can't really describe it, other than saying that it was "me".
But the consequences were tough (of course) and ultimately the need to transition was not and is not big enough to go through with it.
Still: I long to be complete again. And I KNOW that nothing in the world can give me back that feeling.

It was such a painful and tough process to detransition (I describe it that way, because it had been a whole year, and really felt like detransitioning, even without having been on hormones).

I locked it all away, real good.
I don't want it to start all over again. This stuff ruins my life.

For some reason I just can't be the female my mom gave birth to. Why? I try so hard.
I am also not strong enough to transition, and like I said the need to do that is not as big... I just really, really, really miss feeling complete. I miss to get up in the morning and feel male. That sounds stupid, I know.
I miss to look into the mirror and to see a guy (somewhere in a chubby, curvy, female body)
I miss feeling male, but I am also scared for the feeling to come out again.

Will this go on forever? Can't I get rid of it?
I swear I was overcompensating to the moon, I tried everything.
I will never feel complete. There is no place for me to do it, and there is no time.

It's like I'm living two lives. Or I have two lives in me. And I can only live one.

Thanks for reading this. Please don't suggest transition, it really breaks my heart but I can't do it. I'd like to hear what you have to say, though.
I can't talk to my friends, because they think I'm okay again as female (they were accepting though).

This is interesting, as I have met a woman I am attracted to, whose ex-husband transitioned and they stayed together for several years before parting due to other reasons.

Have you told your husband what you are going through?  There are marriages that are strengthened through transition, not all fail. 
If you can let your man you love him and need his help coping, will he be supportive? 
If he can get into a mindset where he doesn't feel you are asking him to be gay, just atypical, that would help.

You haven't mentioned your age or children, so I assume you are in your twentys and don't have kids.  Having or wanting children would complicate things a little.

Either way, you can reassure him that nothing is going to happen overnight.

Karen.

Yeah, I came out a log time ago to my husband. He wasn't really happy about it.
Now, he is a really nice guy who is open about LGBT matters and who has homosexual friends. But his little private world is strictly heteronormative. For himself he wants kids and the heteronormative life. If I were a "friend" he would be supportive, but since I am his "wife"... there is just no way he will ever be happy with it.
It basically brought our marriage to a point where I said "Ok, forget it, I'm not transitioning."
I know that he would want me to do what I need to do to be happy. But I also want him to be happy. I believe that when people choose to marry they are responsible for each other. After all, I promised not to let him alone in this world.
Now, some people think that the cis-partner is just unwanted baggage, that can be just dropped as in "take me as I am or not at all" ... but that is really black & white. And things are seldom black and white.
He is really important to me, as important as a spouse/friend can be. I didn't marry him because I could picture my life without him. I married him because I couldn't picture my life without him. Which is why the "leave him" stuff hurts.

He would never really accept my transition. Maybe he would wait and see for a while, he would be really unhappy, and eventually he would leave.
And I fell like I could never be happy again, knowing how miserable he is feeling.

Which was why - when I detransitioned - he practically blossomed, and so did our marriage. We decided to have kids, because that has always been the plan. And I feel good about having kids. I wouldn't want to miss out on that.

I just locked it all away, and every now and then it comes back and bites me in the... uh... neck.

Also I never thought I would be one of the people who let their lives go by, not realizing their dreams, not breaking out, not breaking free. I never thought I would be a coward. It is practically a given, that I will regret stuff when I am old.
But I can't.

I will almost certainly sound harshly judgemental, but I always tried to be honourable when trying to be a bloke.  I think your husband should do the same.
My marriage ended some years before I realised my troubles were caused by undiagnosed GID, when my wife left me for her female best friend, so I have seen the bottom of the abyss.

It sounds like your husband wants you to do all the hard yards frankly.  You have put your life on hold to have a family, and do things his way, but he refuses to meet you even half way.

How wolud he react if you told him you were leaving and taking the kids, not because you want to transition, but because he is refusing to try and understand what you are going through?  He should man-up and do his bit now.

Seeing he has gay friends, has he ever considered that you could have a marriage that was different to the hetero norm, but not a typical  "gay" relationship either.  Something unique that two alone share?

Karen.

Wow Kev. Swap the M & F and you almost have me.  I gave transitioning 2 serious shots in my 20's and both times opted to try "normal". Went through a divorce when my secret was reveled. That was followed by an engagement to another woman who knew early and was accepting that got called off as setting wedding date pressure mounted, for the expected reason. Now I am married a woman to who means the world to me and to whom I offered to stop the insanity I am doing because I saw how much at times it was tearing her apart. But she always put her foot down and told me NFW! You know it never goes away. That's for sure. I spent the better part of 50 years hoping it would.

Right now I am getting by doing part-time while I work out of state. (The separation certainly has not helped keeping my gender issues at bay) My wife is supportive but obviously to me to a point. Plenty of anger and a sense of betrayal percolates under the surface. Fully transitioning is certainly out of the question considering where and for who I work for. As each month apart passes though, it gets harder and harder not to "what if..." about it.

The thing that always ends that thinking is picturing the day when we are back to somewhat of a normal life again, living under the same roof. That has always been my anchor to reality. I lover her very much and I wouldn't be 1/4 the person I am today if it weren't for her. But I feel stuck, very stuck. Sometimes even worse than that. Slipping apart as the months pass, going back to guy mode gets more emotionally painful, and feeling her distancing herself from me because of the pain and grief I am causing. That hoped for return to normal looks ever more elusive.

I wish I had a suggestion for me. If I did it would probably be useful for you too

You are trying to convince yourself that it is impossible to do what you need to be truly happy and complete. You will never succeed.

In this life, sometimes we lose people. It hurts. But, we get up the next day and keep going. Life goes on.

I sincerely wish you happiness and fulfillment.

Quote from: JoanneB on May 21, 2012, 05:35:28 PM
Wow Kev. Swap the M & F and you almost have me. 

Me too, though my situation has to do with my parents and my want to have a female partner.  I don't want to destroy my relationship with my parents, but I feel I will, especially given how different I expect to be when I transition.  I was allowing myself to become more feminine and go out often long ago, with transitioning a clear goal, and I stopped it three years ago when my mom and sister and me had to leave L.A. and move to another city which I knew I couldn't settle in (because I have to live away from my parents if I wanted to transition), and even if I go on my own, I can't truly feel freedom because of my parents.  But I've gone through three years of at many times excruciating emotional pain and bitterness and sadness because of what I felt I lost, what freedom to be female that I lost, and that I have to repress my feminine woman self, and internal refusal to just "move on" because just seeing the women's department, seeing other women and girls be feminine or girly or whatever is enough of a trigger of my feelings, and also that there are just some things you can't just "forget", things that are so integral to your soul, your being!  Yes, I've never felt as amazing as I have in my life as when I could feel and be and see myself as a woman and feel like I was always a woman! 

But reality has made it hard for me to pursue my goal because of my mom's lack of support (making the pressure on me to support myself and be fully independent hard)   and that seemingly all signs point to that my dad will be in full objection of me (he's chinese for one), and even if I become independent, it's hard for me to think of my parents being in such disapproval of me, it puts a pressure on me even if they are far away, because eventually I'd have to see them again.  The other thing is because I wish I had a female partner as support, yet what woman (straight or gay) would want to be with someone like me?  Are there seriously any women that would want to be with a transwoman that still has a male body?  If so, they are probably few and far in between.  I don't have the support base that I need, and it frustrates and saddens me.

Katelyn I recently had a friendship turn into a friendship-with-benefits for a while with an Intersex friend of mine.  It was fun, and very empowering in that it made me realise that I really am a woman, even pre-op, and so was she regardless of having similar genitalia. 

I figure that if there are Intersex and Transwomen out there who are comfortable with an anomaly, then there are logically cis-women who are too.  They may be few in number, but so are we, which evens the odds a bit.  I  only want one relationship at a time, and am prepared to persevere in looking.

Karen.

Luckily people who are seen as women seem to get a fairly wide range of "acceptable" gender presentations.  If you are certain that transitioning isn't for you, then you can still present yourself as more on the male side while living as a woman.