Should I transition?

[Badtranny]

Many people contact me via my BadTranny site, sometimes they ask me this question. This is my most recent answer.


I'm humbled that you would come to me, but I'm not sure I can help you. I don't know anything about being transsexual, I just know a little about transitioning.

It's been a wonderful thing for me, but it's quite a struggle for most. How would you feel about people looking at you all the time?

Transition is really not something that comes out of a 'pro & con' list. There is no world where there are more pros than cons to do this. There is only ONE pro in my mind anyway and that is to show the world who you really are, and that is enough for me.

Is it enough for you?

[Nicole Brown]

Beautifully stated Melissa. If I were to think I knew any more than you do, which I am sure I do not, I might have suggested that they find a good gender therapist for further assistance.

[Michelle.M]

I have a friend who is in a loveless (and nearly sexless) marriage and wonders what he should do next.

"How do mean?" I ask

"Well," he replies "I'm so unhappy. Should I get a divorce?"

"Depends." I answer "How long have you felt this way?"

"15 years"

I continue, "And how many more years will you continue to live like this?"

"As long as I have to." he says.

"So, it's not all that bad, is it? I ask, and he says it's bad but agrees that he can tolerate it.

"Well, when it gets to the point where you can't tolerate it then you'll do something about it. And if that ever happens then, in that moment, you'll wonder why you wasted all these years living half a life when you've always had the ability to do something about it."

I can only speak for myself, but if I had to ask the question "Should I transition?" then the answer would have been No. As long as it's an option and not a necessity then you can always justify staying in the life you have, whether or not you're unhappy, with all of your original socialization, body parts and way of life.

But those of us for whom an incorrectly assigned gender is intolerable the question is not "Should I?" but rather "How shall I begin?"

[Badtranny]

It's a decision your heart makes, your head will decide against it every time.

[Rianna Humble]

I would try to be diplomatic, but I basically agree with Michelle M.

It seems to me if someone has to ask "Should I transition" then the answer is probably "no" because they have other things that are either as important or more important to them.

As everyone here knows, I am a firm believer in the advice "don't transition unless you need to, but if you do need to transition then don't let anything stop you".

Someone who is just asking "Should I..." almost certainly has not got to that point of need.

[Angela Campbell]

Kind of like the divorce.....should I.....I can't tell you if I should but I can tell you that I am pretty sure I will. I don't think I have a choice. Its gonna happen and I better learn how. I don't know what is in the future or what is going to happen but it is coming whether I want to or not. I don't know how deep this rabbit hole is and I cannot climb out.

The divorce....yes I didn't ask for it, I am not sure if I wanted it or not but it is happening. Final on Monday. Once it was started there was not a lot I could do about it.

[Stephanie-L]

I have to agree, it is kind if like that old joke, if you have to ask, you can't afford it. In our case, if you don't already know, and can ask the question, then you are not ready..............Stephanie

[GirlieAmanda]

As people, and especially young people are getting smarter and more informed, more and more are not wasting one more second and transitioning in their teens and twenties. Once you get into your late 20's and early thirties, it seems to get harder. You get married, you have kids, careers. It complicated things. I stupidly waited an extra 20 years fooling myself into thinking that a marriage would help me. It did not. I SHOULD have transitioned. I wish I would have. I did it finally and the results are better than I could imagined. So far so good. I am so glad I did start transition in 2011. Do you really want to say that you lost 20 years? If you are asking if you should transition, then you probably should be.

[Angela Campbell]

I am not asking the question anymore. It is going to happen. I just do not know how but the wheels are in motion and I can't stop it.

[GabbiSophia]

It's a decision your heart makes, your head will decide against it every time.

Yes but which one is correct... That is the fork in the road.

[Kaitlyn Michele]

i like the nature of your thoughts melissa...

there's alot of information is not alot of words

...i hope people get prepared to get only one thing out of transiton
...all the girly stuff that mitigates gender dypshoria while you live as a man does jack diddley when you push the button and live as a woman...

when you live as a woman, just knowing that you can feel like a whole person needs to mitigate all the other damage that tends to happen..

[Marleena]

This sounds like a dangerous question to answer for somebody else. They should know when it's time.

[Jorja]

The only person who can answer this question is the one suffering the effects of GID. Spend the time doing the homework. Know what you are getting into and what is involved with transition and finally living as the gender you prefer.

[stefan37]

the right direction when you come to the fork in the road is that which feels right. Every time I come to a crossroads when I take the turn towards transition it feels comfortable and right, I know I am heading the right way. If you would take the preliminary steps you might find you are taking the right path yourself, but to come to the cross road and stop or turn to what is known you will never know if turning back to your safe spot is the right path. Melissa mentioned in another thread at some point this crap gets real and that is so true., This is no fantasy, the losses are real and they hurt a lot.

I have found since I made my decision and acted upon it, even if I am wearing male clothes, which by the way due to the nature of my work I will be wearing male style clothes even after full transition. I have no distress. The progress I am making reinforces for me I am moving in the right direction and whether I am dressed or not has no real effect on how I feel internally. It is more for external reasons that I will wear female style clothing. Yesterday I went to breakfast with my wife and I had on a nice top, jeans and some nice Cloudwalker flats I bought for everyday use. My wife looked a little distressed so I offered to change my top to make her feel more comfortable. A couple months ago I might have been angry, distressed, but at this point I felt just as comfortable and she did appreciate it. We both at this point are just trying to enjoy each others' company. With hard work, commitment and perseverance, it will all resolve itself in a couple of years and things will settle to whatever level they will. I have no control over anything except my own transition and I am committed to be successful at it. At some point in time I will assimilate to those that do not know me and I will no longer think of myself as a tranny, Those that do know me I do not know or care what they will think.

The positive events I have experienced so far have far outweighed the negatives,even the devastating loss of my spouse as painful as it is, has positive overtones to it.

[Cheryl Ann Owens]

This is the reason, as many know, for the RLT or real life test. Sometimes it's nice to think that we'd be better off transitioning and the glory of it all clouds our thinking. I've been out to a few old girl friends who have really made me think. I'm 60, retired, married to an angel who loves and accepts me, and I could transition. My friends have been an element of RLT for me. One said, "Once you come out you really can't go back." While we can live with some of the fantasy we also have to realize that we're giving up a lot. Transition can be viewed as a selfish thing abandoning a lot of things like employment, financial security, relationships, and the list goes on. There's nothing wrong in being true to myself as my confidant, my sister-in-law has pointed out, but then again I'm torn to be true to the woman I married the second time around. There can be compromise. I can take steps to not fully transition and enjoy the best of both worlds. For instance: I've always felt incomplete without breasts. But I'm sure I could have BA and still "get away with it." It's something we're exploring. As I've said, I have a few trusted people in my life who accept and love me the way I am. It would be extremely tough for me to expect the rest of the world to accept me as a woman after many years of knowing my "original" me. I can find compromise for myself and those around me and still feel complete. Would I love to be a complete woman? YES! However, this is how I've grown and developed into a male pattern of social constructs. Kind of hard to un-ring a bell. However, if one can pass the RLT and seriously needs to make changes AND is able to withstand many challenges, then so be it. It's a tough road even for me as described. I applaud anyone who can climb that mountain.

Cheryl Ann

[emma5410]

I am three months into my RLT. Would I advise someone else to do it? It is hard to say. I am finding it a struggle and a challenge. Perhaps another person would not. I have self esteem issues and they are feeding my GD that has now returned. It is like it has regrouped and come at me from a new direction. I knew it would never go but I am surprised that it is still so strong. I transitioned out of necessity. I really felt I had no choice. There have been many positives but I feel each day is challenging and I get very tired. I also feel sort of trapped because I know I do not have a plan B. This is it. Do or die.
If I had a choice and knew what I knew now would I transition? I am not sure but maybe not.
I could not begin to say the above to people who are not trans and know me. They all assume life must be wonderful now that I am getting to be who I want to be. The problem, of course, is that I am not there yet. If I was to say one thing to anyone who has not started yet it would be that living 24/7 is nothing like living part time. Part time you can step in and out of role. You still have control over who knows and who does not. You can still escape back into the security of presenting the way you are used to and people accept without comment.
One of the great ironies is that I was always terrified that people would see the feminine in me. Now if I dressed as a man in front of my family or at work they would be shocked. It is very weird. Life has become strange.
On the plus side I do understand what is triggering the GD and I can take steps to mitigate it. Before I transitioned I felt it would kill me, or I would do the job for it, if I stayed as a male. I have had moments since when I seriously doubted I would be able to continue but I believe I will make it.

[KellyJameson]

Transitioning pushes you forward into the unknown.

I have tried to understand it by using personal experiences with physical pain.

People live in physical pain all the time but pain demands a reaction just as GD does.

The problem is the pain is qualitatively different.

If you hit your thumb with a hammer or have a toothache you know the exact source of the pain and the reason for it.

Part of the insanity of the experience of GD is the search for the source of pain.

Some people are relatively quick to arrive at the conclusion that they are not aligned with their bodies but for others it may take the best years of their life.

One reason I did not trust my own mind so kept pushing down my true identity, trying in essence to kill me as her was a fear of my motives as the "reasons" for transitioning.

The reasons for the pain and the source of the pain become tangled up in your mind.

You carry both the hammer and thumb or tooth and toothache inside your head.

The source of the pain as "identity" is a pure reason "as pain" to transition but this pain does not travel alone so you may have "other reasons" as "pain" motivating you or stopping you.

Things stopping you may be sex and relationships.

Take for example using your genitals for sex in the way that they were designed to be used.

This design as all designs comes with limitations in how the design can be used.

Our bodies were designed to procreate using pleasure as the reward system to insure the action of procreation and this pleasure is designed to be intense.

It is painful to let go of pleasure so you make a decision between the pain of letting go of sources of pleasure to be free from the pain of not living aligned with your body.

This creates huge tension inside the individual because you are now living outside of the natural relationship between pleasure and pain as guiding principles to keep you safe as a warning and to instruct as a teacher.

It leaves you with profound distrust of the basic tenets of life because you do not have its natural protections.

The pursuit of cisgender happiness leads to misery to some degree.

A great deal of transitioning is letting go of sources of physical and psychological pleasures.

Changing,risking or losing a marriage to someone you love as a source of deep and profound pleasure in all the myriad ways and forms this pleasure takes on is intensely painful.

Changing your bodies capacity for sexual pleasure and the way this pleasure is experienced and expressed.

Changing all of your social relationships from the barista at the local coffee shop to family and everyone in between.

You will now be "seen" as you know yourself to be but you will also be treated as others think a woman is meant to be "treated" for better or worse.

This may or may not "align" with your own concept of how woman are "meant" to be treated.

At first blush transitioning seems to be "irrational" because you are giving up "sources of pleasure" and this shows how profound and deep the pain of dysphoria goes.

Part of the experience of paying in pain "as the pleasure you lose" that is "painful" so you pay in pain to escape pain.

This may be why those that have been able to be sexual transition later in life.

There is a tension created between the pain of the dysphoria and the "pleasures of life" that pulls the person in two directions tearing them in half.

The dyshoria as "pain" actually increases the importance of "pleasure" to offset the pain so the person becomes "locked" into a life of needing more pleasure to douse the flames of painful dysphoria but these very pleasures than increase the pain of dysphoria by imprisoning you in a life that has become a torture chamber.

Unresolved gender dysphoria will take you into madness because the more you use life to deal with the dysphoria the more you are punished.

You must do the exact opposite of what all your impulses are telling you to do and withdraw from life as the pleasure that you find "as gender" as "body" until you change this body so that its pleasure as "body and life" does not trap you in pain.

The very definition and experience of pleasure is destroyed by not living aligned with your body.

To ask if you should transition means that somehow the person has avoided finding life's pleasures intolerable.

[melissaK]

It's a decision your heart makes, your head will decide against it every time.

Delightfully succinct. :)


(I wouldn't have gotten it last year . . . this year and living into the start of transition, I can see the accuracy of what you have said.)

[Angela Campbell]

Sometimes you know and don't want to know. Sometimes you refuse to know. Sometimes you fight it so hard you convince yourself it isn't real. When you know, you will know. Eventually it will win.

[Jennifer Marie P.]

See if its thats what you want and go from there.

[DaniG]

You must do the exact opposite of what all your impulses are telling you to do and withdraw from life as the pleasure that you find "as gender" as "body" until you change this body so that its pleasure as "body and life" does not trap you in pain.

Excellent post, Kelly. I found a lot of myself in this.

[docrobbysherry]

Nice post, Michelle! It not only applies to transitioning, but most things in life.

I know nothing about transitioning. But I have lived a long time. Don't waste your alloted time dithering.

Teddy said, "Be sure you're rite then go ahead". Not all of us r as sure of ourselves as he was tho.

Just remember, it's NEVER too late to do something u really want to do. Unless you're living in the ground. And, that time will come all too soon for most of us!

[Diane Maple]

Yea, I'm just going to basically agree with everyone else...

Should you transition???

So, for me, it wasn't the whole... "I'm a woman trapped in a man's body" or anything.... nothing dramatic like that. I am just who I am, me.
I happen to see myself as female. Pictures of me as male, just never quite looked the way I saw myself.

Was I sure I was going to transition after all of these years?
Denying myself wasn't good for me. Checking and re-checking with myself who I was and seeing a therapist to triple check...
Yea, I need to be me and look like me. Nothing else is going to work for me.

So, that was it for me.