I'm going to couch this by saying that I agree fully with what you're saying here. Transition is a last-ditch effort that should be reserved until no other option is viable. The first two years of transition are particularly difficult and often come at great cost. (It cost me three jobs, one parent, and a serious relationship, but I'm starting to make a return on my investment, so to speak.) If you can possibly avoid it, by all means avoid it.
As for surviving bouts of GID I absolutely recommend expressing yourself in whatever limited capacity you can. This is not a case analogous to a recovering alcoholic -- crossdressers report intense relief upon expressing their feminine side. Find a safe space to let it out and do it - if not, the feeling will well up and wreck havoc on the other facets of your life.
That being said, I've popped by the non-op part of this forum a few times and keep seeing your name and this thread come up. Avoiding the GID issue is perfectly healthy, but if the avoidance becomes a driving force in one's life it may be time to reevaluate the purpose for avoiding the issue. The echo chamber doesn't take into account past history, after all, and that's of vital importance in a non-op thread. I've read your blog and understand your position - in fact, I think I still have your contact info in my gchat window somewheres - but I worry.
I spent four years fighting GID after a stunted first attempt to transition. In doing so I dragged a long-term girlfriend through the mud and left her emotionally drained and broken, cheated on her with men, went through life in a depressed haze, lost a job because I was too distracted by GID to function, and generally was a miserable excuse for a man. Yes, transition broke a lot of things. But looking back they were things that were never built on solid ground to begin with. I never liked women, but dated them to help allay GID. (I was a user.) I didn't like being macho, but did it to make myself feel masculine. I knew I liked guys, so I sneaked around my girlfriend's back to be with them and felt disgusting afterward. I knew I couldn't be a girl, and spent a good deal of time and meditation trying to avoid the fact that transition was just a few phone calls away, all the time. All tenets of a life that could have been avoided had I just listened to the screaming baby.
Taking the baby analogy you've put forth a bit further, some parents fear letting the baby grow up. Perhaps the baby will grow to display the mistakes of the parents in all their glory; perhaps the baby will have learning deficiencies that will limit the baby's future; perhaps the baby may be bullied or harassed and the parents feel powerless to protect their darling child. The response is to rein the baby in on a tight leach, never allowing it to explore, to grow, to fall into itself. THe baby cries harder, and the parents wonder why it continues to cry even though they feed it and care for it and love it so much that they would happily die so the baby may never feel a day of suffering.
Babies cry because they have no words to communicate. (Interesting fact of the day: in this regard baby sign has been proven to reduce tantrums because it gives kids a way to communicate simple concepts like "I want milk" or "I'm tired" without resorting to crying.) Calming a crying baby comes down to a simple task: find out what's wrong and fix it, if its fixable. Babies cry because they have no words to tell you otherwise.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, or dislike what you are saying, or anything of the sort. I'm only concerned that you may, as another poster said, be searching for an excuse to snuff the baby out, post after post. I worry that your approach to this may not be healthy. (The fact that you see your GID, post a transition attempt, as that of a recovering alcoholic is distressing, to say the least.) Are you seeing a therapist? not a gender therapist, specifically, but somebody who is monitoring your mental health? There are some things an online forum can only offer suggestions for conquering, and this is most definitely one of them.
(I want to stress that I'm not trying to attack you - I'm just a bit of a mother hen when it comes to people's well-being. Too many people try what you're trying and end up dead; it's better to be cautious and nagging than to be sorry later.)
