Do I want to feel like a woman, look like, dress like or just be a woman?

[prene]

I have been thinking about this a lot.
Do I want to feel like a woman, look like, dress like or just be a woman?

I love my life and I would not like to loose anything I have now so . . .

I love feeling like one or what I think one should feel like.

I cannot even answer this one for myself.
I guess this is one of the reason this great website is here . . . to help me figure this out.

If it even matters that we figure this out.

[Kerigirl2009]

MMM good question, I think for me the answer is always changing, most times I want to feel what a woman feels, and look like a woman at the same time.
Sometimes when I have time to think, I sometimes find myself thinking I would love to be an actual woman, complete in everyway. It is frustrating sometimes. I think I would love to answer this question truthfully, I would LOVE to know what a woman is feeling and be able to capture that feeling inside of me as me.
Recently, I find myself wondering, I love the thought of being a woman however I would not want to lose my family over my feelings of gender confusion.

[Miranda09]

Well Prene, these are questions you'll have to answer on your own. It's a matter of philosophy and what YOU want to do, accomplish, or enjoy with your feminine side. All I can give you is an example...myself. I really love the feminine feelings that overcome me when I dress. I feel sexy, sometimes I think I look sexy, and even act sexy in a feminine sort of way. This doesn't really mean I want to BE a woman or even LIVE as a woman. I just want to experience what it's like to be a woman, as much as is possible. Maybe this helps?? :)

[StephanieC]

Good question. For me, I just want to live my life....do what I do, regardless of gender or dress. What I do should define me..."the essence", not the superficial. <sigh>

[sherri52]

for me it's both dress like and feel like. I can't get away with looking like although I try, and I am hetero so that should tell you I don't want to be one

[Cheshire Gummi]

I can't tell you who you are.

If you want to figure it out, try each one for a month, find your comfort zone and stick with that.

If you're comfortable with more than one, be more than one.

You will get no better advice as this thread slowly degenerates into a "Talk about yourself" exercise.

[Frédérique]

Do I want to feel like a woman, look like, dress like or just be a woman?


Hi Prene! Great shape you’ve got there…

You work in to things slowly. You dress like a woman, and you like how you look and feel, so you develop how you look, and the feelings come along for the ride. You can take it as far as you want to – there’s no limit. I don’t think you can “be” a woman simply by dressing like one, but my puny opinion is just one of many around here. I dress to feel comfortably vulnerable, which may or may not be how real women feel – I call it “voluntary emasculation.”

[baby beluga]

Be :(

[Teri Jean]

I cannot tell you how to feel but be true to yourself. I have finally come to my decission and will be moving to transition the end of the month living full time as a woman. Good luck and remember it is scary but you may be surprised as to how others take it.

Teri

[bettysmith]

I am clear that I love womens clothing , the frillier the better , always have done and always will do .

I am a man who like to cross dress in womens clothes , thats all .

I have no deisre to be a women , nor feel like on

Betty

[Deborah Jane]

I have been thinking about this a lot.
Do I want to feel like a woman, look like, dress like or just be a woman?



Only you can figure this out Prene, you have to find your own comfort zone where you are happiest, we all do this for whatever reason makes us happiest :)

[PhillyGuy2Girl]

For me I love to dress and feel like a woman. I have no desire to have a sex change plus I still like being a guy.Plus I'm 100 percent hetro.I'm usually dressed femme at home most of the time plus I sleep femme and they're times when I can't wait till I get home so I can get all femme up.


Felicity

[Lisa Gordon]

For me it is "Comfort and Vulnerability" - as already said above. But it is also the feeling of being detatched from my day to day world. A bit like having left a plane/train/bus terminal and leaving one's care's behind but not having to connect with those issues etc. that lie at the other end of the trip - a bit of wonderful limbo.

Lisa

[Kate Simmons]

Many of the GG's here will tell you they don't know what it feels like to "be" a woman either. They just know what it feels like to be themself. The hint here, whatever the situation(feeling "male", "female" or both), is to think of one's self as a person and not a "thing" per se.;):)

[Alice B]

I want to look like and feel like a woman when I'm dressed. The rest of the time just myself, even though my toe nails are painted, legs shaved and I wear ear rings. I do not feel right otherwise without these traits and am so used to them that I can be my usual male self when not dressed. That said, at some time I push the envelope a bit, but my wife usually makes the necessary comments to set me straight.

[Monica93304]

I think one important factor would be defining what your sexual preference is. That may help you.

For me, I'm leaning towards wanting to live as a woman 24/7, and getting to a pre-op stage. I realize now that I want to be with men primarily. I love the feeling of being treated like a woman in everyway. I've reached the point where I don't even want to look at myself in the mirror as a boy anymore. And I'm much more emotional as a woman.

So I guess it's different for all of us. You definately have the figure of a woman.

I don't know if my opinion helps any, but this is definately a good place for you to seek out some answers or points of view.

Hugs,

Monica.

[Barbara Dugan]

is the first time I said this just be a woman

[lahila]

of me is a little bit of wanting to be a woman and a little bit of wanting to feel like a woman, and i guess look like a woman too, lol

But i am too, like you, comfortable with my life and everything as it is, but if i could choose, i would choose being a woman, and well i guess if i could choose to change between being a man and a woman, , kind of like ranma but when ever i want and not with cold or hot water, lol, that would be the perfect situation i guess, lol but of course that will never happen, so might as well live a happy life anyway :P

[Meghan]

My whole life since I was six has been spent somewhere in this timeline:

From age 6 to about 20, I had persistent wishes to just wake up one morning as a girl. When those dreams didn't come true, I would put myself to sleep at night hoping to be forced to be a woman by someone else/something else/some circumstance.

From 21 to 25 or so, I just stopped mostly thinking about it, though I dressed when I could.

From 26 to 30, I experimented some.

From 31 to 36, I just mostly dressed on weekends and was with a man for the first of 3 times.

From 37 to several months ago, I thought I had it cured.

And now, closing in on 39, I am finally starting to accept that this is a part of who I am. There is a woman, a large representation of one within me, or some other part of my existence that pulls on me all the time. It motivates me and scares me, helps me and holds me back.

I am not really sure why...but in answer to your question, I would reply:

All of the above.

Meghan

[Sammy777]

I have been thinking about this a lot.
Do I want to feel like a woman,
look like a woman,
dress like a woman,
or just be a woman?

Well if your answer is #4 then the first three will just happen automatically.

The only person that can answer those questions for you is yourself. People can help and even guide you, but the realizations and acceptance of it all and yourself is solely up to you. :)

Personally, I don't want to just be a woman.
I want to be the woman I was meant to and should have been.
But seeing how that isn't wholly possible I guess I will just be the best woman I can possibly be given what I was born with and current scientific medical technology. :D

[simona.carina]

I think that everybody can face his/her crossdressing in a different way. I can say that, for me, is worth the thing that "I ever wished to be a woman" (I could say that I crossdress since I can remember - even preschool), but, seen that, unluckily, I could never be, I decided to keep on being a boy and crossdresser. I say that I respect those that take hormones and surgery, but I didn't feel that it was my own solution.

So, I'm the way I am ;-)!

P.S.: Meghan, I LOOOOOVE your avatar!

See ya
Simona

[Satrana]

Depends where you are on the CD/TS spectrum.

Assuming you are an "average" CD then it is principally about feeling like, and looking like a woman. That does not answer the question why? Principally it is about you as an individual being denied full expression of your whole personality. As a male you are forbidden to access feminine behaviors/feelings which is wrong because these are human qualities inherent in everyone. CDs sidestep the mental roadblock that our male conditioning erects by creating a female alter ego who is free to express these qualities to her heart's content without fear of guilt and shame and judgment from others.

So for CDs it is about the rights of freedom of expression. Along the way we also discover the delights inherent in clothes and makeup and also the fun in accessing female privileges by having others treated us as a female.

But as Denise pointed out, try not to lose sight that you are a person and you should not define yourself by a specific gender. Having seen the light of the gender divide, don't fall into the trap of believing that happiness is found by returning to the fold of the cis gendered "normality"

[Rogina B]

I love to look pretty,wear soft clothes,heels,and have cute hair.And I want the experience of the "power of the pussycat" that some women posess and use all the time. Unfortunately,that is something that can't be bought,so I can only dream!:D

[Metoo]

a very good question. not sure where I would take that. I'm 57 years and I think I'm finally coming to terms with this part of me. Sometimes I do think i would be better off as a wwomen, but know that will never happen or I know I wouldn't take such dastic steps. I have to much to lose. I do have -- what I know an accepting wife (but not yet ready for me to go out in public).mmI haven't tooken that step yet.

[Wen4cd]

Here's my homebrew of the 'psychic' answer, from all I've gathered:

Every individual is, psychologically, a hybrid of traits that are considered masculine and feminine - an even split. All hormones aside, we are all (psychologically) perfectly androgynous if we are human.

The tendency to label traits as masculine and feminine is the core issue. We are taught to repress the ones that don't match our physical sex, when there really should be no reason to.

We dress physically to feel a certain way psychologically, emotionally. It feels 'natural and right' because it *is*, and always was, both natural and right to express our full potentials. The longer one lives with repressed traits, the more 'right' it feels to finally express them.

The feminine personae we adopt are physical representations of these repressed psychological potentials, which grow through life into actual living, inner personalities. These entities encapsulate all of the natural traits we have repressed and labeled as opposite to our birth sex.

Even if one is fetish-dressing, and in no way personally 'identifies' with this entity, it still exists in unconsciousness in a more chaotic, less developed form that gets projected onto various women's 'things' which come to represent the hidden feminine figure itself.

So, in ourselves, we can come to be individuated, integrating our repressed traits back into the total picture. All it really takes to get started is to understand that the woman we dress as represents the un-lived half of our own psychic life, and to ponder on this for a while, and experiment until we find the ones that really matter to us. After this, we come to understand 'how we dress' is absolutely trivial to our real identities. We are 'both,' and simply dress as we please, by our own choice, or to affect others and their reactions to us.

The issue of 'other people' then arises, and while we know 'other people' don't actually create our core identities, we still know that most of them still treat and view men and women quite differently, which can somewhat shape our self-image. Gender then becomes no longer a question of personal identity, and more about how we wish to be perceived and treated by 'other people.'

At least that's how I view it for myself and what I perceive to be 'most' cross-dressers.

[Jamie VieJolie]

In the end I'd just like to be myself. I'd like to be able to dress in public (I can't pass) and not be hassled.

I want to do some hair removal. I don't like body hair. It's hot and uncomfortable. I have very sensitive skin.

No hormones for me. I don't want to put my body through that. I wouldn't want to have to inject them for the rest of my life either. No judgement here. I'm just talking about what's right for me.

I would just like society to get over it's very narrow-minded concepts of gender.

I just want to be me.

[tricia_uktv]

I think this is the million dollar question. How far do you go? I'm now out, open and I can pass. I am enjoying myself immensly but there is still a desire to go further inside. First though I have to do it 24/7 and I can't do that for at least a year because of children.

[Greymancd]

I know when I went to my therapist when she asked me I knew inside it was to look pretty and that was the driving force. To me everything feminine is pretty and I try and emulate it all.

[freeindress]

Having just received my first breastforms yesterday and worn them for one day gave some answers: dress like a woman to experience women's pretty clothes, then sometimes look a bit like a woman, not trying hard to pass, not be a woman, staying centered on my 40%F/60%M gender.

[Jennifer Marie P.]

Everyone is different and you have to find that out for yourself. Me I want to be a woman and feel like one.

[Jaclyn NM]

I want to look like a woman, and feel like a woman, but I don't want to be a woman, if that makes any sense.

[Katie Layne]

It's all dependent on the moment! Sometimes I want nothing more than to be a woman. To just lay naked in a tub listening to Billy Holiday with a glass of dry red wine. Other times I just want to be convincing so that I can accomplish a task while expressing my femininity. Then I find myself putting on panties sometimes and I realiZe, I'm reAlly not in the
mood at all. I feel like some briefs. I'm very proud of my masculinity just as I am my femininity. Both are equal in my eyes and each useless without the other. But I can also move through each of these thoughts in a single day. Right now I'm dreaming of lipstick and high heels!

[suchacutie]

First of all...if that avatar is you...we are all jealous !!!!

I went down this road too! My male side is quite happy and it was clearly the feel of stockings that first made me wonder. When my wife loved my legs in stockings we decided I would go another step to see how it all looked in heels.

The heels did it. The whole notion of walking in heels gave me such a feminine rush, and when my wife said we needed to buy me a dress, and then we started talking about the differences between women and men, and the psychology, and the emotions.....

Well, I just got sucked into it all a found there was a feminine person there that needed investigation. So, for me it started as a pleasant feeling with stockings and quickly shot forward to wanting to be as comfortable and happy with my feminine self as I am with my masculine self.

I guess I became incredibly selfish in that I wanted to lose nothing and have both. My wife sure doesn't want to lose any of my male self, so everyone is in agreement and it's the feminine side of existence that I want. I'm in the camp that I can't actually BE a woman. But I can be feminine, can learn to be very comfortable and success with my femininity, and learn to pop back and forth.

To answer your question, I think all of us have gone through this and from experience we have evolved to an answer to your question. You will too, I have faith :).

tina

[bridget jones]

I wish I didn't have so much body hair to shave.I wish my skin was softer.I wish I had large breast..I'm not sure about losing IT though,however I often dream and day dream about a man penetrating me as I lay as a complete woman.

[urmilaaa2008]

is the first time I said this just be a woman

I cant understand how can any body say JUST a woman, when it something so special:brolleyes:

[Jeanna]

I have been thinking about this a lot.
Do I want to feel like a woman, look like, dress like or just be a woman?

I love my life and I would not like to loose anything I have now so . . .

I love feeling like one or what I think one should feel like.

I cannot even answer this one for myself.
I guess this is one of the reason this great website is here . . . to help me figure this out.

If it even matters that we figure this out.

I believe that you aren't confused at all.You are asking all the right questions. Ponder the thought of really being a woman all of the time. It has it's draw backs, every woman I know says the want to come back as a man in their next life. I ask myself " if I were a woman permanently what would I escape to?" I'd probably end up in the transmen side of this forum in 6 months. You're on the right track
Jeanna

[Wen4cd]

I cant understand how can any body say JUST a woman, when it something so special:brolleyes:

Why? Women are just human beings like men. Compared to anything non-human, we're practically identical.

[Adelaide]

Like Miranda wrote, I LOVE the feminine feelings when I dress. I feel & look sexy. My whole body / attitude / mindset changes.... I'm a really happy person...
However, unlike Miranda, I DO want sometimes to BE a woman...it's not an escape....it's being able to experience "the other side" at its fullest... But because of family issues, I don't think that I will ever be able to go that far....
A.

[SFRobin]

For me, I would like to dress like a woman, and feel like a woman as well, without giving up entirely my male side.

[diannecourtney]

I like to feel fresh and vibrant and totally new. My breast forms worn about 60 hrs/wk and my nails one out of nine make these feelings come out all the time. Oh well ladies pouring my bod into girdles and the like are excitement beyon:):):):)d belief.

[Malori Cross]

When I get in that special Pink Way (which is almost daily!), I just want to feel more like a woman--and wear some of the great colorful, soft things they get to wear instead of the drab, unimaginative duds guys have to wear (although it's better than it used to be).

[jennifer3169]

i want so bad to be a woman all the way but i cant even get to dress near as often as i want to
jennifer

[Cathytg]

You said: "If it even matters that we figure this out. "

Right there might be the resolution to your question. I did not say "answer".

There is a growing line of thinking in contemporary spirituality which says it is all about the journey and not the end point. As I apply that to my own struggles with gender and dressing, this concept tells me that I need to focus on how well I am handling it at this exact moment. Where I have been isn't too important and where I am going is a mystery anyway.

So, right now you and I are on a journey; let's do it well.