How could I not have known

Reading many of these posts has told me that most of you have been aware of your 'other self' for years, yet when my wife posed the question as to what incident made me aware of my girl side, I drew an absolute blank. No matter how much I racked my brain I could not think of a single incident except for the very weak one that I have never had a problem shopping for girl clothes with the woman in my life'
In fact, mostly the opposite seems true. For instance even my becoming aware was the result of some bedroom tomfoolery with my wife. Another thing, until discovering my girl-self I had never worn a single piece of jewelry in my life, now I just love wearing it, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, I can't get enough. So back to my titIe how could i not have known?

We are all individuals and we qll find out in our own way. It may be that hindsight is 20/20 or it may be that you are trying to hard to find an answer that doesn't exist. I don't think it matters Hornton know who you Are, as long as you know.

I'm not sure how I could have known. I remember dressing in my mom's clothes when I was in my teens and enjoying it. At the same time I thought there was something wrong with me, being a very boy/boy, yet enjoying dressing so I looked like a girl. The guilt was strong and I was very much concerned that someone would find out and I would be teased unmercifully. To my knowledge no one found out and I repressed the feelings for many years. Never completely gone but repressed to the point where I dressed very little until my children were grown and gone from the house. Still don't get to dress as much as I would like but it is easier with less people in the house. Now mostly concerned that if I dress someone will drop in and catch me so mostly limit the dressing for when I am out of town and safer. Not knowing 40 some years ago was more of a case of never hearing, or rarely hearing, of transvestites, crossdressers, or transexuals. So I had no idea what I was. Very comfortable now being a crossdresser. No desire to change and become a woman or dressing full time as a woman. Just enjoy the crossdressing occasionally. Hope that make a little sense of my feelings.

That is a hard question to answer Charlene.
I have no idea.

Hi Charlene, I'm kinda in the same boat, about 18 mo ago I went from full on guy to seriously questioning whether I'm TG (actually I only question it when I contemplate the conversation with HR, the rest of the time I sooo am) .

Might even speak to the question 'why do we do this?' posted a long time ago in a thread far, far away (OK not that long ago and probably only a quick search away) 😉

In hindsight I totally get in my case though.

Speaking to your jewelry point as well, I used to bite my nails (like since before I can remember and like SERIOUSLY bite my nails)...now I almost cry when I accidentally break one...go figure 😕

Some of us have an "Aha" moment when we first had this wonderful world revealed to us. Perhaps we were playing a dress-up game or tried on some of our mother's or sister's clothing. Others, like myself, can't point to a moment of revelation. I've been dressing off and on for many years and while I can remember many of the first times I've done it I can't clearly recall the first time I did it or wanted to do it. I just seems like something that's always been a part of me and that I've always known.

And I'm in complete agreement about jewelry. In drab I never wore any, except for a wristwatch. Now that I'm getting out more, I realize that a proper outfit needs to be accessorized.

Can be a very innocent something. I suppressed my feelings for years until one evening I got out of my girlfriend's bed and wore her very feminine pink slippers to the kitchen. That's all it took. I looked down and was hooked.

Ineke

I think lots of people, after accepting this part of themselves in whatever phase of life they happen to be, gradually realize there were signs and portents along the way. But that's all hindsight and it's easy to fit memories into whatever pattern you want to find. In the end it doesn't really matter because you're here now.

I look back through the lens of my current self and realize that if I had known that this was a thing back when I was in high school (early 1960's) I'd have gone down that rabbit hole without a qualm. But in those days it wasn't an option and all the information was suppressed or masked by lurid presentation. It was only with the advent of the internet that small populations like ours could find each other and demystify this behavior. How did you not know? Maybe nobody ever told you. Nobody was around to say, "Oh, that? That means you're transgender - it's rare but not a problem. This is how you deal with it. This is what you can expect. This is what successful transgender people look like."

Easy. Lots of people repress ideas that they don't want to face. Most boys are brought up being constantly bombarded with the idea that liking anything feminine is the worst possible thing we could do. So, we bury it into our subconscious. There's a huge amount of pressure on boys to do this; the worse insults that people say to boys are always those which question our masculinity. So it's no surprise how many men 'suddenly' discover that they like girly things somewhere down the years when something tells them it's now safe to see if they can 'get away' with it, without incurring the wrath of others.

How could I not have known what I did not know if I didn't know what I knew until I knew it? Not a Yogi Berra quote, but hindsight is 20/20. A lot of factors would contribute to our crossdressing awareness. Our parenting or how we were raised, our families, our environment, our schooling, our friends, opportunities to explore - all influenced our development, our maturity and our self-awareness.

When I was a young child in the 60's my mother always took me into the dressing rooms with her when she went shopping. She would leave my brother (5 years older than me) outside the dressing room. Her reason, so we wouldn't cause trouble while she was inside. I saw my mother in her bra and panties quite often and eventually wanted to try on these wonderful items myself and thought nothing of it when I did, it all felt so natural.

How could you have not known, and what incident made you aware of your female side????

Let's say that you are a crossdresser simply because your brain is hardwired to release feel good neurotransmitters when you feminize yourself. How does this happen? Through the process of synaptogenesis your brain makes neural connections. While your brain is capable of making new neural connections throughout your life, there are specific times when synaptogenesis is more active. These active times include infancy and adolescence. During the first three years of your life your brain is undergoing synaptogenesis at a feverish pace. By the time you are three years old your brain has about three times the neural connections as an adult. Then largely through the learning process, some neural connections are pruned, while others are reinforced. Researchers believe that this is how synesthesia occurs. Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway.

What this means is that your brain can interpret crossdressing as actual contact with a female, and respond by releasing a host of feel-good neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and others). These neurotransmitters are responsible for the sensations of well-being, comfort, pleasure, sexual gratification, and bonding.

This would also explain why some crossdressers seem to be hardwired from infancy, others get their brain hardwired during puberty, and others don't recognize their propensity for crossdressing until adulthood.

Hi TF :hugs:, I'm 73 and have been in this program for 69yrs it was always there.:daydreaming:

no incident for me...just as a four year old kid got into Mom's drawer and tried on some of her stuff...don't know why

For most of us there was not one single incident that turned us into crossdressers. In my case, I suspect it was the fact that my mother wanted a daughter, not a son and she dressed me in little girls clothes when I was an infant. I'm not blaming it on the clothes themselves, just the fact that she wished I had been born a female and made it apparent by her actions. She is no longer around so I can't ask her.