Trying to accept that I am a transsexual

[steph1964]

The last couple of months have been very difficult and depressing for me, as I have been coming to terms that I am a transsexual, not a crossdresser. I have memories of wanting to be a girl when I was 4 years old, and these feelings never went away, despite how hard I tried to suppress them. I lived most of my life full of guilt and shame and it wasn’t until a year ago that I joined this site, started seeing a counselor and began to accept what I was; a crossdresser. I told my wife at that time about my crossdressing but assured her that I wasn’t gay, and did not want to transition. I only thought about when I would get a chance to dress up, but didn’t allow myself to process my feelings.

I reached the point about two months ago, when I could no longer keep my feelings in check, and I started soul searching. Once I allowed myself to feel through this process and reflect on my past, it became quickly obvious that I have always wanted to be female and I don’t remember a day when I haven’t felt this way. In the past two months my wife and I have been struggling to process this, both of us have been depressed and often in tears. We have been married for 23 years, and are best friends. I have been fighting to accept my life as it is, because I have a great marriage and a great life, yet the more I fight the more depressed I become. Why would I want to give all that I have up? And yet I am finding it more difficult every day to continue to lead my normal life. We have gone out with me dressed, something that we had never done in the past, trying to find the place where we could both be happy, but I now fear that there isn’t such a place. She said that she can’t stay married if I am full time, because she needs her husband, and I understand that.

Recently I told my counselor that I felt that I was transsexual and she told me that she knew that I was after the first couple of visits, but didn’t tell me because I needed to come to this realization on my own. During my meeting with her yesterday, she told me that I was fighting hard to keep from going down this road, but she was concerned because I was becoming more depressed and worried what would happen to me if I chose to ignore it. We did discuss what would happen if I wanted to transition and she told me that she would write me a letter for hormones if that is what I decided.

My wife’s family and our close friends know. My family live out of state so we haven’t told them yet. Everyone has been accepting, although no one has seen me dressed. But all our friends are actually my wife’s friends and their husbands, so I won’t have much support if I do chose to transition.