how did you know?

[Stephanie Armstrong]

Hello everyone..
Generally i identify as a crossdresser sometimes i think maybe genderfluid. However lately the idea of living as a woman full time has been progressing rapidly. Just wondering if others have experienced this in this way. Like in the last weeks its been such an intense feeling. Almost like a slap in the face.

[pamela7]

Hello Stephanie, as a late-onset CD myself, yes I did progress through as I awakened to the depths of my unconscious, then this knowing took over one day.

[Contessa]

Stephanie

I came out thinking that I was just a crossdresser also late in my life. Now I am 24/7 ts. This is because I was not able to go back and forth. I am always Contessa Even when I am in the shower. Not just when I am dressed. I wonder if any more felt that way.

Contessa

[Cristy2]

I've been asking myself the exact same question. I've had the feeling for as long as I can remember, but up until a few years ago I've been very proficient at hiding and burying it. I never explored the possibility until my best friend at the time started to embrace her femme side (sadly she developed some major health problems and died before fully transitioning over) and I started to dabble a little bit, but it has only been a year or so where the feeling has grown or better yet been allowed to grow so intense that I can no longer ignore it. At this point I'm dead center of a draw bridge that is starting to open up over a school of hungry sharks and I need to figure out which way to go before I end up falling through and becoming dinner.

[Marcelle]

Hi Stephanie,

I can't speak for anyone else but myself on this subject. I wandered to this site three years ago utterly confused due a lifetime of repression to take on the moniker of cross dresser because that is all I knew . . . I was a guy who liked to dress like a woman. As I came to accept myself more and more, I leaned into gender fluid which lasted about a month and then transitioned to living full time as a woman. Now this is not to imply that one (CDing) leads to the other (Transsexual). In my case I was always TS but needed to come to that realization in my own time and this was after two years of therapy with a gender identity specialist. Some women here have know their entire lives and have moved slowly toward their goal. It is different IMHO for everyone.

What I do read from your post is a sense of gender identity confusion. So my first question is . . . Are you seeing a gender identity therapist? If not, I highly recommend you do so as they will be able to bring order to chaos. You may discover that while you have intense feelings of presenting as a woman full time, it may not be that you are TS. When I first started discussing this topic with my therapist she asked me if my intense feeling of wanting to live as a woman 24/7 had to do with dressing and all the excitement that goes with it or was it something else? I have to admit, it threw me for a loop as I figured doesn't being a woman and dressing like a woman go hand in hand? It wasn't until a few months later when I realized that it had nothing to do with the clothes but a internal sense of self. I could be standing in public in the most gender neutral clothing, no make-up, no wig and still know in my heart I am a woman . . . people might not see me as such, but I know who I am . . . that is how I knew.

Cheers

Marcelle

[MsVal]

I too am a late onset TS.

I initially thought (hoped, actually) that I was suffering from an overactive imagination. Sadly, that wasn't the case. My anxiety increased year by year.

I then hoped that I would be no more involved than a crossdresser. That wasn't it either. My anxiety increased month by month.

I ended up in a very dark place, crying and trembling several times each week. I had to admit to myself that I am a transgender woman.

Now I am oddly at peace with myself. Our marriage lacks only the formal documentation to be over. Several of my children are done with me. I'm not to have anything to do with my grandchildren. And it's OKAY because I no longer struggle with the internal turmoil.

I did not get here because I am strong, courageous, or any other positive term. I got here because, in the words of Joy Ladin in Through the Door of Life:
"a female to male friend of mine assured me that someday, people would tell me how brave I was. 'When they say that to me,' he said 'I tell them it doesn't take much courage to run out of a burning house."


People would write that I will know if I am a transgender woman, and that I will know when to act on that. I didn't understand them at that time. I certainly do now.

This is my personal story. Others' have have had a different experience. No one is "trannier" because their journey is different.

Best wishes
MsVal