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Thread: Figuring myself out

  1. #1
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    Figuring myself out

    I think I am finally figuring myself out. As a man, I have always had to kind of observe other men and take cues on how to behave from them. I've always noticed it, but I never really gave it much thought. I felt like everyone must do the same thing. I did wonder, though, why everyone seemed to just inherently know these things and they didnt really come naturally for me. My family raised me to be a man's man. And so, like a good son, I became one. I played sports, lifted weights, and even served in the military. All of these things made everyone around me happy. They were proud of me, and I even excelled in these endeavors. All the while I was crossdressing like crazy in private. I always felt ashamed of it, and I purged tons of times. I never was able to figure out why I had the urge to dress and as things progressed I became even more confused. Lingerie evolved into full outfits and experimenting with makeup. At one point I even went so far as spending all my private time en femme. I must say that that period was probably the most content I've ever been, but I still yearned for more. Eventually I got married and told my wife in an effort at full disclosure. I was met with utter disgust and rejection, and so like a good husband I agreed to counselling and to stop all together. My one counselling session was a disaster...no understanding at all! I then poured myself into pursuing manliness again and trying to be all the things that my wife wanted. Eventually, though, the urge would return and I would resist as long as i could bear, and then give in. But i always purged right after due to feeling like a failure as a man and husband. Sorry for the long story, but now we arrive at the present. The urge returned and, this time, it was more evolved than ever. I was doing a lot of reflecting and introspection and I came to the conclusion that perhaps if I had a tolerant and understanding family that my life may have been wildly different. Who would I be today if my feminine tendencies weren't oppressed so vehemently? I am now of the mind that I would not have done the majority of things I've done in my life. I think that crossdressing may have been a manifestation of the real me. What has led me to this idea is that I truly wish I were a woman. I think about it all the time and when I dress, I just feel whole. It is quite depressing actually. Crazy that I did not see it sooner. My entire life has been an act and I can't see a way to fix it without losing absolutely everything. I'm dedicated to my marriage but, God forbid, if it should fail I don't think I'd be able to pretend any longer. I'd probably have to move and sever all ties with everyone in my life, but I think I would be happy. For now, I am still settling for the few moments of sheer bliss when I find myself alone long enough to be who I was always meant to be. Whew! It was good to get all that out! Thanks for reading, Girls

  2. #2
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    You won't necessarily lose everything in your life, should you decide you need to transition. You have to be prepared to though - because sometimes that happens. And you WILL lose things - dear things - I can almost guarantee you of that, your marriage being the most probable amongst them. But you may lose friends or family ties as well. Some of us lose careers.

    Despite all that - I did it anyway. I realized, like you did, that my life was one big act, and that I'd always been a woman, and known it on some level. I'd lied to myself about it, tried to hide it, deny it, suppress it. And I failed.

    By the beginning of last year, I was so miserable that I contemplated suicide constantly. I simply could no longer live as a man, the only relief I got was crossdressing. I went to a therapist, realized that I was a woman, and more to the point, that if I didn't transition I was going to die at my own hand.

    So here I sit, typing this. I've been living the last 9 months as a woman, fulltime. I'm on hormones. I'm doing all manner of things to transition. My wife and I are divorcing - that lasted 4 months after I came out to her. I'm losing her, our home we intended to live in together for the rest of our lives, some money - but not that much else. Lots of my friends and family have stayed with me and been accepting that I am a transsexual.

    I'd recommend you see a gender therapist - a psychologist who specializes in gender. I'd especially advise this if your emotions over all this are making your life difficult in any significant way. In my case, I was about out of my mind (ask anyone here about me last year), and had I not transitioned, I'd surely have killed myself. (I made one attempt on my own life last year, prior to starting transition.)

  3. #3
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    Well, that's a tough row to hoe...I think a lot of us here have many regrets over directions we've chosen and opportunities we've missed. There's no way to go back, so we have to learn what we can and try to move forward. Easier said than done, I know.

    Stacy

  4. #4
    Member Billiejosehine's Avatar
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    I have been in your shoes and for 5 years, I juggled the desire to be my true self and what was expected of me as a man being married and having a family. I would feel guilty, ashamed, and purge; only for the feeling to comeback. There was no way of escaping who I really was and pretending to be this guy everyone expected me was falling apart. At the beginning of this year I finally accepted who I was, what I wanted, and the need to transition. Since I made that decision things have not been easy and all areas of my life (job, marriage, etc.) have been effected. At times it feels like it's the end of the world and I've lost everything, but I realize it's just my emotions and I'm still trying to hold on to an idea of I used to be. I'm afraid to leave the known for the unknown, even if I felt miserable and unhappy. All I can stay is hang in there and it's important to really ask yourself what u really want.

  5. #5
    Member devida's Avatar
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    I do want to tell you, Tara, that there are all kinds of possibilities, even if your mind right now tells you that all the ways you can be happy are closed to you. It is a real crime that people who do not fit into the social narrative of gender appropriateness are marginalized and oppressed but it does not have to be that way. You seem to be someone who, even though you may have done it for reasons of family or social pressure, did many difficult things in your life. Being a man's man is very, very difficult, especially for someone who is conscious of their non masculine gender identity and has expressed that by dressing in another gender. You can use this ability to create the life in which you can achieve happiness for yourself.

    You present yourself as somebody who has valued the opinions of others over the opinions of yourself because their opinions were more socially acceptable. You created a life in which you complied with these opinions. Let me suggest that your personal happiness, over all this time you have acceded to the happiness of others may be finally more important. Find out as much as you can about what your needs for your own happiness need to be, wake up to whether these needs can be met by your current interpersonal social environment, and work as hard as you have making everyone else happy with you making yourself happy with your own life.

    You may need to be courageous about this, but you clearly have had the courage to subsume your own needs to those of others.

    Do you have the courage to demand your own happiness?

    How long will you wait?

    Good for you for having the bravery to admit this on a kind of public forum like this. It is an important step to realizing your own life. Thank you for doing this.

    On another point entirely. Please don't assume we are all girls. Personally I object to that as much as I object to being called a dude. But you are new to the whole issue of being transgender so I totally forgive you for your assumption that every genetic male on a cross dresser forum wants to present as female. I do not, but that is part of the point of forums like this. We get to educate ourselves about the wonderful variety of gender identity and expression by understanding that each of us have a unique and valid identity that does not have to fit into the standards that other people may decide we have to have.

  6. #6
    Senior Member samantha rogers's Avatar
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    Tara,
    I am quite convinced your story is very similar to a great many, my own included. The feeling of authenticity and wholeness that you spoke of is very familiar to me, as it is, I expect, to many. Have the courage to forgive yourself for a lifetime of trying to please others at your own expense. The truth is that in that course you end up really pleasing no one. Take care of yourself, honey. But a word of caution. There are many levels of Gender Dysphoria. Not all are truly cut out to find genuine happiness in full transition. You may be and then you may find that somewhere in between is better. I would humbly suggest, as the dam of past neglect is broken open that you go slowly, savor each "first", and take your time making the big decisions.
    But I am so happy for you in stepping out of the shadows. The hardest part is accepting and embracing who you are.
    Hugs
    Sammie

  7. #7
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    Tara, excuse me if I should offer an alternative theory to understanding yourself.

    Stage One: Biology and the development of your brain's neural connections
    Very early in your life your brain develops many, many neural connections, synaptogenesis. By the time you are three years old your brain has many more neural connections than at any other point in your life. Then you begin learning things in life, making sense of the world, and your useless neural connections are pruned while others are reinforced.

    Stage Two: Making Associations during your formative years
    At this point in your young life you may have thought that girls have in better in life than boys. You may have believed your family put too much pressure on you. You felt burdened with stress, and you discovered that it was due to gender. Girls didn't have to prove they were strong, tough, or anything. Girls were rewarded just for their appearances. Girls got to play with pretty things, and had pretty clothes. It wasn't fair. The reason why you felt the pressure and distress was because of your gender.

    At this point your brain has reinforced connections between separate areas; one associated with gender identification and another associated with the contact with a woman. Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon in which activity in one sensory pathway leads to automatic and involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway. All you need now is a trigger.

    Stage 3: The Trigger is applied
    At this point, for whatever reason, you experiment with cross-dressing. When you cross-dress your brain interprets it as actual contact with a female. This causes your brain to release a host of neurotransmitters (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and others). These neurotransmitters produce sensations of well-being, pleasure, gratification, bonding, etc. It affects the reward centers of you brain, instant gratification, and thus it mimics the addiction pattern. No, you cannot make your brain stop releasing neurotransmitters. It's just how you brain is hardwired.

    The situation is - your brain is always going to interpret cross-dressing as actual contact with a female. The question is - how do you choose to respond? Some men internalize the "contact with a female" message and believe they have a female side within themselves. Other men externalize the "contact with a female" message and just see themselves as having a fetish. Like "hey, I am a real man, even when I wear a dress". In either case, cross-dressing just makes them happy.

    Some men with this condition decide to celebrate their female alter-egos as a part of "who they really are". Other men decide to limit their cross-dressing and keep it private, very, very private. There really is no right answer for all situations. You will have to talk with your wife. Tell her that cross-dressing just makes you happy. You can try to use as little cross-dressing as possible to help you get through each day - maybe just one article of clothing used discretely. You can tell your wife that you will allow her to set your limits based upon her tolerances, and you will do your very best to live within her boundaries.

  8. #8
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    Hi Tara, I'm not sure that I want to figure myself out.
    Having my ears triple pierced is AWESOME, ~~......

    I can explain it to you, But I can't comprehend it for you !

    If at first you don't succeed, Then Skydiving isn't for you.

    Be careful what you wish for, Once you ring a bell , you just can't Un-Ring it !! !!

  9. #9
    Silver Member CynthiaD's Avatar
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    TaraGirl, you just wrote the story of my life. I have some serious obligations in my male role right now though, so I'll just have to be content with the status quo.

    There are times though ...
    Last edited by CynthiaD; 05-19-2014 at 08:32 PM. Reason: Stupid spellchecker

  10. #10
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    Tara, I think that the advice to find and see a gender therapist or psychologist trained in gender issues is the best thing you can do. It's important to understand the source of your condition and get treatment, like any other medical condition. There are multiple possibilities to explain the feelings you have, and under the circumstances of your wife not being able to accept these behaviors which reflect something deep within your soul, it's important to seek help to come together to save your marriage and your sanity.

    There are individuals with cross gender personalities that use cross dressing as a means to express that aspect of themselves. If, as Samantha points out, you are one of those who is simply a man with a strong subconscious female gender identity, there may be ways to find a perfectly satisfactory balance of expression both as a man and a woman that both you and your wife can live with. I don't know your age, but many gender conflicted males live their entire lives as end-of-the spectrum men only to hit a point late in life when it finally breaks down. I speak from personal experience. A gender therapist will be able to delve into the physiological and psychological influences that are causing the compulsion to crossdress. Your wife will also benefit from counseling to open her eyes to the reality of gender variance, and learn what can and cannot be done to mitigate any damaging outcomes.

    Good luck, honey, I hope you can find happiness in the weeks and months ahead.
    Last edited by ClaraKay; 05-19-2014 at 09:07 PM.
    .

  11. #11
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    Tara,

    You sound like a lot of us. I'm just now starting to step out of the closet myself, and have been seeing a therapist for the past 3 months. Prior to going to the therapist I was pretty convinced that the only option for me was transition, and it scared me more than anything. Now I'm just trying to figure myself out. One thing that I have learned in this short period of time is take baby steps and see if it feels right and if you need to do more. It will be ok.

    Danielle

  12. #12
    MIDI warrior princess Amy Fakley's Avatar
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    Yeah, I know how you feel. It's taken me a lifetime to finally start to really come to grips with who I am, and I've still got light years to go.

    They thought they were doing me a favor when I was a kid, trying to put me on the "straight and narrow" (pun intended). I wasn't gay, but looking back, it seems pretty obvious my parents must have just been terrified that I was (they were southern-fried fundies: to them, having a gay son would have been like having Hitler for a son ... this was the 80's we're talking about).

    So what they really taught me was how to be so insanely frightened of who I was that I tried to hide it from myself, and ... that never really worked of course, but I sure came up with some convoluted rationalizations for everything and ...

    shiiiiiiii ... you know the rest of the story, girl. Seems like a whole lot of us do.

    If I'd have come of age in this era, where I could have just gone to the public library and googled "crossdresser" and learned more about what was going on with me in 10 minutes from wikipedia than it took probably 15 years to figure out on my own ... yeah ... I probably would be a completely different person, and for the better.

    It gives me hope ... if by chance one of my future grandchildren's apples doesn't fall too far from this old tree, I can scarcely imagine the world he'll grow up in. Maybe by then, nobody will give a hoot, even?
    "Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world." -Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by BLUE ORCHID View Post
    Hi Tara, I'm not sure that I want to figure myself out.
    ^this, unfortunately, is what a lot of guys here feel. But without understanding why we want to do crossdress/be women, there's no way to deal with it. Some have good ideas here, my own path of discovery on the cause of why I dress and why I feel like I want to be a woman is in my bio in the writers forum here. Link in my sig below However, few paths are the same, mine is one extreme experience during childhood that had long term permanent effects on my sexual identity, and unfortunately for me, there was no one around to help me through it, so it took me decades to figure it all out. Today we have GID therapists who can help you. Perhaps someone else on here can give you the name of someone in Tennessee.
    Some causes of crossdressing you've probably never even considered: My TG biography at:http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/...=1#post1490560
    There's an addendum at post # 82 on that thread, too. It's about a ten minute read.
    Why don't we understand our desire to dress, behave and feel like a girl? Because from childhood, boys are told that the worst possible thing we can be, is a sissy. This feeling is so ingrained into our psyche, that we will suppress any thoughts that connect us to being or wanting to be feminine, even to the point of creating separate personalities to assign those female feelings into.

  14. #14
    Platinum Member Beverley Sims's Avatar
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    Tara,
    You are not alone in the way you have lived your life, just being here may help you with decisions in the future.
    We are all patient listeners.
    Work on your elegance,
    and beauty will follow.

  15. #15
    Gold Member Alice Torn's Avatar
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    Many good posts here! It is rough, being Superman for so long. There was a paper back book written in the 1970's, named "the Hazards of being Male." By Herb Goldberg. On the cover, was a discarded Superman costume! The extreme double binds put on many boys and men. No human being can long keep up the facade! Girls normally do not have these double binds, but nowdays, girls are being pushed and pushed to be successful, beautiful, sports strs, also!!!! It is all insanity! The old recovery slogans, EASY DOES IT, ONE DAY AT A TIME, FIRST THINGS FIRST, THIS TOO SHALL PASS, are good to remember, and baby steps, one step at a time. I , and my brothers were all treated harshly by my very harsh father, but my only sister was spoiled. It is good to be a man, and it is ok to be a dresser, but we must use wisdom, and concern for family, too. I hope a compromise can be attained.

    Oh, by the way Tara, I am 60, never got to marry, and still trying to figure my self out. After a while, it may be healthy to not overthink, like i do, but accept the things we cannot change.
    Last edited by Katey888; 05-20-2014 at 01:48 PM. Reason: Consecutive posts merged - please use edit to add to existing post rather than post again..

  16. #16
    Martini Girl Katey888's Avatar
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    Tara - there's good advice here and many relevant perspectives form those who have lived a full life complete with the conflicts you're feeling now...

    I have nothing to add to that other than a little emphasis...

    A good gender therapist (or even just a good counsellor/therapist to begin with) can help you start to process these thoughts and feelings - don't delay, but get some professional experience and help with how you come to terms with these things as they are huge in terms of life impact... and remember you are not alone in this and how you feel...

    Be positive and try not to worry too much about this... It might be difficult, but many others go through what you are going through, and you are still young and have the opportunity to lead your life into an area that you want to go... You shouldn't feel constrained by the beliefs and conditioning of others who may think these are steps too far... dealing with even 'mild' TG or GD issues is important as they will never, but never, go away of their own accord...

    Finally - choose a course that makes you feel good, makes you feel right and supports who you believe you are... It's your life to live!

    Good luck...

    Katey x
    "Put some lipstick on - Perfume your neck and slip your high heels on
    Rinse and curl your hair - Loosen your hips, and get a dress to wear"
    Stefani Germanotta

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