Hi all. I'm new here, but have been lurking around a little and have found some helpful things on this forum already.
I am hoping that some of you might be able to help me more; perhaps to start with a little background. I am 28, and have a good life - a loving wife, a dream job, a big house etc. However, over the last 18 months I have started to seriously question my gender. Mostly secretly, I have always wanted to be/appear female, but thought I was "just a TV" (mainly since I used to get sexual kicks out of it) - it seems to run a lot deeper than that though. One thing that has really brought things to the forefront has been my introduction to online games - a place where I can be who I really want to be. Even before then I had basically stopped crossdressing (I was only ever a closet-TV anyway) since although it feels nice, I know that I look hideous - a man in a frock (sorry, but ick! :/).
Anyway, I'm rambling. I have been seeing a professional counsillor with appropriate expertise for the last 6 months, and we have explored various aspects of me, my emotional state, my childhood, etc etc. During the course of this it also became apparent that I was fairly seriously depressed, and my doctor recently put me on prozac.
There are a number of factors in my depression, but a large one is this; I seem to want to be a woman, and yet to "change" would destroy my life, terribly wound the one person I care about above all others (my wife), and would probably leave me as an ugly woman with fairly serious sexual dysfunction for the rest of my life (the latter two being trivial in comparison to the hurt I would do to my wife). There seems only one sane choice at first; to lock it away and live my life as it is. Yet, when I think that the future seems bleak and pointless (ie. depression).
What I really want to figure out is whether I am a TV who has taken the fantasy too far and will be able to go through a year or two of distress but come out the other side happy with who I am, or whether this is something deep that will continue to haunt me and I should therefore get the pain over with now, for my and my wife's sake. My counsellor is not able to answer that question for me, although I had foolishly hoped she might.
I know you will all say "that is something only you can answer", but I need more information. I need more ways to measure myself - more people to compare notes with. This is my first forray into a TS/TV forum of any sort and I could use some pointers as to where to explore further....?