CDer or a TG?

[Maggie Kay]

I did not have dress up time. I did not feel the need to go out in public dressed en femme. I don't now. However, I do wear some femme clothes 24/7 and want to increase that to 100% of my wardrobe. I also want to wear basic makeup and have my shoulder length hair styled n a nice femme style. The point is that these desires are to express the real me not to relieve stress or have a fantasy of some sort. The few male clothes I do wear are demanded by society and family but are always leaving me feeling like I am hiding. That makes me feel down. My wife one day suggested that I have "dress up time" where I doll myself up to the nines while I am alone in the bedroom for a few hours a week. I not only had no interest in it but I had this image of a preadolescent teen sneaking around in his sisters clothes. I do not mean to demean any CDer here. It was that I got no rush of "gosh that would be great" feeling about the suggestion. Rather I need to wear these clothes all the time because they are MY clothes. It is my hair, my makeup, my life. That suggestion was years ago and I never did try it.

When I saw that I had developed gynecomastia "male breasts" , unlike most males, I was overjoyed. I learned what causes it and increased those factors in my life to make them grow more. Now I have to wear a bra or I'm very uncomfortable. It was to my benefit that these meds were also relieving me of prostate problems. I also stopped losing my hair. However, I am now completely uncomfortable in the company of men. I can no longer have the same group activities with them and this has isolated me. I don't relate to or like the things they do anymore so it was not big loss.

In fact, I never felt one twinge of remorse at losing my maleness other than not wanting to disappoint my wife. She has said that she is not a lesbian and this has been a tremendous strain on her. The repercussions are obvious but we are still together and still love each other.

It would have been better for my marriage and my wife if I was a CDer. I would then be able to return to maleness most of the time. I don't have an urge to dress, I have a total compulsion to be femme. I am past the sexual years and do not want to bond to anyone else. I love my wife and she loves me in spite of my appearance. My prayer is that she will do so as I progress.

I therefore identify myself as transgender, with severe GID and yet I cannot think of myself anymore as being sick. I have to be my real self.

[Marcie Sexton]

From time to time I still have the urge to want my transition, but I will refrain for my family's sake. I know exactly what you feel and saying...My wife too explained tome that she had NO desire to be with a woman. I hope all works out for you and yours...but rest asured that there are those of us out there that understand fully...

[Kimberley]

My turn I guess. There is a lot to address here.

You present a lot of clues as to where your mind set is, and from where I sit, it appears to be TG even to the point of being non op TS. I cant say, only you can.

Okay, you and only you know how you feel. That is the key; your feelings. Sometimes we get confused by all of this and wonder to the point of driving ourselves crazy with it all and that is why I am a strong advocate of therapy. Not counselling but therapy with an accredited pdoc, one who is experienced in gender issues.

Now, let me say this about GID. I refuse to accept this as any kind of legitimate diagnosis because gender is not an illness. GID implies that we have a mental illness and thus minimalizes us instead of recognizing that we are mentally healthy with an issue of gender identification. This is IMHO a huge failing of the DSM IV. In fact, it was supposed to be removed in the last edition but for some reason was overlooked. Regardless, a GOOD and EXPERIENCED therapist will not accept it either but will only use it to promote transition within the HBSOC. Gender dysphoria okay in a pinch but not GID.

You have the support of your wife and that is excellent. She is trying to help with her suggestions but obviously it doesnt work for you. I am sure that with some brainstorming another option could be explored.

Okay, as to going out makeup and so on. Makeup is a pain. Going out is not such a big deal. I most often wear a pair of slacks or jeans and a top and no one ever notices that I am aware of. But if you want to "pass" then there is no option. I think that with your wife's help you could probably take this VERY liberating step. Please, try this for your own first step. I dont think you can really find where you stand on the continuum until you do go forward with this. As I said, start small and work your way up. That way you are never too far out of your comfort zone.

Keep us informed hon.

:hugs:
Kimberley

[ChristineRenee]

Kay Renee...I can totally relate. it's like we are living parallel lives girl! :thumbsup:

:hugs:

[ChristineRenee]

From time to time I still have the urge to want my transition, but I will refrain for my family's sake. I know exactly what you feel and saying...My wife too explained tome that she had NO desire to be with a woman. I hope all works out for you and yours...but rest asured that there are those of us out there that understand fully...Hi Marcie. I am undergoing laser hair removal surgery right now. I have already had permanent eye makeup done. I can't believe sometimes that I have even entertained thoughts of SRS...and it scares me and chills me to the bone. I don't think there is any doubt in my mind now that I should have been born a female. Yet...I am who I am. Having SRS isn't going to EVER make me a genetic female..and I understand this fully. My wife has no desire to be with a woman either. Countless times she has said to me that..."I am NOT a lesbian!" She means it too. I understand her feelings on this completely. I also understand how I am. Life can be very complicated and complex...ya know? :sad:

[Maggie Kay]

Marcie,
Thank you for the sympathy. I wonder what I would do if my family was not involved with regards to SRS. In fact, part of the reason I don't go to counseling is that I'm pretty sure that the recommendation would be to pursue this more fully so as to relieve me of my distress. I would be happier but I'm sure it would be a real shock for my family and business contacts. I'd be better off in a major way but alone and on the street with no career. I understand that many TGers end up this way. Gulp! That is a big incentive to slow down!

Kimberly,
Yes, I am fairly sure that I am according to the DSM all the way on the end or one step back at Non OP. What a concept! I feel like I'm standing on a cliff being pushed to step off into the air believing that there is a bridge right in front of me that I just cannot see. Looking back over my life, I see that I have always been in conflict. Only now do I recognize that many of my conflicts were TG based. Now I understand why I was a stay at home Mr. Mom and why I was good at it. Now I understand why I could not progress in corporate America of the 1980's because literally, I didn't have the B**ls for it!

Christine,
Nice name, BTW! I chose mine to give me the same initials as my other name. I'm still new at getting used to an overt femme identity. All this was deep inside me and I really didn't know what a TG person was until my wife told me one day. She looked it up on the Internet. Later she talked about my crossdressing and I was shocked. Me, crossdressing? Nah... Then I realized that, yes, wearing the clothes of the opposite sex is crossdressing. I just never thought about it that way. I found that clothes for men were ugly, weird, coarse and uncomfortable. I hated getting men's clothes for a gift. Shopping for clothes was always a major ordeal for me. I just hated men's departments and loved the women's sections when my wife went there for her clothes. I felt so much better just being there.

My wife is very much a practical person and really has no time for shopping or in fact most femme things. This limits what she can do for me. She avoids makeup so she cannot see me doing it. She won't wear dresses or skirts so she can't see me having one. She doesn't have her nails done so why should I be allowed to? Basically, it is kind of a role reversal. If I progress too far, she comes into conflict because I'll be more feminine than she and that is not a good thing.

[melissaK]

My wife one day suggested that I have "dress up time" where I doll myself up to the nines while I am alone in the bedroom for a few hours a week. I not only had no interest in it but I had this image of a preadolescent teen sneaking around in his sisters clothes. I do not mean to demean any CDer here. It was that I got no rush of "gosh that would be great" feeling about the suggestion. Rather I need to wear these clothes all the time because they are MY clothes.

Forgive me for just picking a piece of your post to quote. A few months ago I got a similar offer from my wife. She knows I've been a wreck and am struggling to put myself together, and she meant it as constructive. I had the same response to her offer as you had to your wife's. Perhaps foolish of me to reject the offer with sort of an all or nothing attitude.

My situation is pretty different from yours on many other points, but like you I have moved to "doing" what you've "done" - namely grind more womens clothes into my daily wear so eventually I am transgenderedly dressing 24/7 to some significant degree.

And, your comments on your wifes commitment to practicality over lipstick and the traditional fashions of femininity reminds me much of my second wife. Just being a woman doesn't imbue one with a 5th Avenue sense of fashion. My ex, a tall slender attractive blond, struggled to pull off wearing traditional female fashions - her heart just wasn't in it. I had a better sense of womens fashions than she did. (And I am not implying your wife has any cross gender issues of her own, but eventually, after our divorce my ex came out of her own closet and decided she was a lesbian, with some ftm issues. I guess I just wasn't woman enough for her. :heehee: She's a good friend to this day.)

Hugs,
'lissa

[Maggie Kay]

Melissa,
I certainly have thought that dress up time might be nice but just couldn't get past the play aspect of it. I'm not playing. On the other hand, If my family cannot bear to see me in a dress or skirt and I am too well known in my local area to go out in one, dress up time may be the only way I'll ever experience these items.

As for my wife's femininity, she is really pretty, she was selected for one of the states in the Miss America pageant in her college years. So she can do it but has no interest in it anymore. She prefers to go hiking, kayaking, play golf, garden and such. These activities don't lend themselves to being done up with makeup and nice clothes. She has been hit on by a lot of lesbians through the years but always shied away from them. Those sexual years are behind both of us now so it is no longer an issue. Now her notion is to be comfortable and that just about eliminates most feminine stuff.

[joanlynn28]

KayRaynee, you feelings match exactly those of mine, I found that yes I am truly transgendered, that I need to transition, I will transition, I am transitioning. To me CD'ing does nothing for me, I have to wear the clothes 24/7, I don't feel comfortable around other men, especially the ones I work with. I find men to be vulger, chuvanistic pigs, among other things. And I have never really ever felt like one of the guys. I can't even go to work anymore without wearing makeup or my rings, heck I even have my nails done nicely all of the time, always have nail polish on them. Because that is how I feel. To me to walk out of the house without some form of makeup on I feel like I am not totally dressed to go out into the world. I don't even know at this point if is it is because of the hormones I am taking or not but I don't even think like a man does anymore, and I question myself whither I ever did think like a man to begin with. I never looked at other woman like a guy does, I always thought of woman as being equal to me. Probable because deep down inside me I am a woman too.

[kerrianna]

You girls are very articulate about your feelings and what you are going through. It's given me some things to think about.

I do consider myself a CDer and not TG, but there is a suspicion in my mind that some of that could be to avoid dealing with Pandora's Box. My relationships, family, work, are all built on my male persona, and I am a creature of comfort zones.

But reading about how you feel about things I find an awful lot in common. I realize that I've never been comfortable as a male, never liked hanging with the boys, my best friends have all been girls, and when I do dress it feels very natural and freeing.

I'm just not sure whether tipping the scales one way is worth the pain it will cause - so I tread the middle ground and 'play' with CDing. It's very interesting to hear about your lives - it informs me on mine. :hugs:

[Maggie Kay]

This forum has helped me a lot to objectify my thoughts and to sort out a quagmire of feelings,memories and desires. The experiences and attitudes of the members have caused me to focus more clearly on one subject at a time. Yesterday, for example, I realized that I have always been the female in bed. I just never put the memories together in a cohesive way before. I was just being me and since I never was any other person I thought there was nothing unusual about it. Then because of the threads, memories of conversations with guys and the way I react to love scenes in movies, I suddenly realized that I am very different. Being different is always an unsettling notion. It can be very good or not so good. In fact, it may require being forced to change. This means that I have to sort out what being different in this new way means. Again the forum helps me do that.

I still am in deep conflict with the notion that I am essentially a woman. Why? Well, looking in the mirror and a lifetime of society and family referring to me as a man for a start. Testosterone may have distorted my features to make me appear male but I don't behave or think like one. I keep hoping for a road less traveled where I can escape the loss of family or career and still reconcile my true self. I am certainly far to leery of the medical community to consider SRS even if I could find the money to do so. However, the status quo is getting harder and harder to maintain and I fear that someday, I'll snap like a twig. It is times like this when I really wish I was a CDer.