Angie and Steph my heart goes out to you!!

Steph, you are at a point where you and your wife potentially face a totally cruel and unfair problem

Hopefully, you will find over time that you just can't convince yourself you are transsexual (for any reason...not sure, afraid, compartmentalization), then you are lucky indeed.
However, your feelings whereever they are now will never go away...only you know the depth of feeling...but you need to know that it will never go away..
In my experience, most people that get to the point where they are truly questioning it are transsexual, they are women, and they basically are going through hell and high water to avoid the simple fact.. i have seen this over and over again... i see it here....

If you are somehow a mixed gender, then spending time as "her" will satisfy you AND being "him" would satisfy you too...you'd have the satisfaction of knowing you are expressing your female side...does this do it for you?? does this break the cycle of GID and depression? you are lucky if it does...a self aware transsexual woman would never ever say "i need some guy time"...

some of the things mentioned in this thread are common things we talk about here and in therapy.. some of the concepts make your problem overwhelming to consider..............
do i "wish" i was female, do i "know" i am female, do i "hate" that i'm a transsexual, why me!!!???why did it take so long to think this?, on and on....an on!! ugh

You need to jettison all of that baggage right on out of your mind.. consider what a 4,5,6 yr old little "boy" goes through...internally knowing they are wrong, but not being able to understand...imagine the hoops in our heads as we try to process our situation, hanging out with all the boys where the absolute worst thing you can be is a sissy... i got beat up in middle school for crossing my legs......for me it became a wishful fantasy, for others, they "KNEW" all along (btw this is the traditional narrative but its by far not the only one), for others they compartmentalize it away to varying extents...some of us transfer our shame and anxiety to our sexuality, others don't...see what i'm saying? it means you need to look forward to what you can learn more than back to what you "thought"....it means that your memory is faulty and it has all the little tripwires you put in there yourself...

april's questions are spot on... what are your answers? perhaps the questions don't burn yet , but perhaps you have a sense they will someday...maybe thinking about your future as a guy fills you with dread...i know for me a crystallizing thought i had was me on my deathbed, and i KNEW FOR A FACT that i would regret my life, that i would feel i lived a wasted life... i was able to process that thought back to WHY i thought that, and it was a huge step for me...OMG!! This feeling is GID, i am transsexual...and then it became all about what to do about it..

What is your quality of life...you made a statement about your great life...gosh do i get that!! I had a wonderful wife, two really centered and happy teenage daughters (how many can say that!?), a great job with lots of power and responsibility and money too... i had to give it all up... "had to" is the operative word... all these wonderful things that i loved and appreciated were making my life worse... they were suffocating me, and something in my life changed (can't say exactly when) and from that point every good thing made everything worse...my quality of life was below zero and i started giving the "ts" answer to all of april's questions...

think of it this way...there truly is nothing you can do to change whether you are transsexual... if you are, you and your family are going to have to deal with it
you and your wife deserve to have a good quality of life... what can you do to have the best overall quality of life?? I only accepted my transsexuality when i realized that all those things that were so great in my life where no longer improving my quality of life, and when i thought of my wife, my mom, my kids, my job and how wonderful they were, it destroyed my quality of life..it filled me with dread!!!

sorry to be so stark... there is a way out...therapy, hugs, a loving and caring wife, and finally the epiphany of acceptance can really be a good thing... i know it sounds coldly analytical (that's me , the math major), but if you are ts...you are ts!!! it's already part of your life and most importantly your marraige...the sooner you deal with it honestly and with love, the better off you both will be!!...so keep posting!!! ask ask ask....pm folks who have thoughts that are helpful to you...