I thought I was fine, but...

What you're going through is hard, I know as I've experienced some of it myself (I remember struggling not to cry with joy the first time someone called me sir). The constant doubt and confliction is normal, I think, for a large portion of trans folk who are still figuring things out. But doubt, in a way, is healthy, it causes us to analyze and think through our questions to come up with the best possible answer. However, we cannot allow doubt and confusion to rule our lives and dictate our every actions. Do what makes you comfortable and happy, and don't think too deeply about what to label your feelings until you have explored all routes and you know the one that will bring you the most happiness in life. It's okay to be confused, it's okay to doubt, but don't let it make you miserable, that'll just muddle up your feelings and make them harder to understand. Accept that you are confused. Embrace it and experiment, one day you will find what makes you happy, there's no need to try and force a solution so early.

I would suggest experimenting with different pronouns if you have an accepting enough friend group, see if "she", "they", or "he" makes you feel better or more comfortable when used over long periods of time. Try different/new methods to relieve dysphoria (maybe draw a beard on yourself or something if you think you might be ftm), maybe see a gender therapist if you haven't already.

Hope this helps, I'm not the best person to be giving advice, I'm still pretty confused and ignorant...

 

This is the struggle of us conservative guys. I have this gentleman desire too. And I know your shame. But it is nothing to be ashamed of. It is an accident of nature.

Your interests don't have to be stereotypically masculine. There are artist men who never held a weapon in their hand for all their life. Nevertheless they are men.

 

It IS an accident of nature. And it needs to be corrected. But no one has to know about your dark past.

Are you religious yourself?

I am a bit pressured by them too. I feel it is my duty as a man to serve in the armed forces. And I will do it when fully transitioned but the truth is I am very sensitive to heat so I might end up being more of a burden than a warrior.

 

That has troubled me too for the longest time, especially because my grandmother who seemed more interested in my development and well being and my education than my parents were, God rest her soul, was a very religious woman.

But after everything is said and done, I have to accept that all the potential causes for my mind being feminine (that I could find) have to do with aspects that were out of my control as a child, starting as early as being in the womb. The brain wired itself this way most likely because this and that. My 2d/4d finger ratio tells a clear and scientific story about the amount of T i was (not) exposed to in the womb. My memories of childhood tell me that in my early years I had all the reasons to further embrace femininity and reject masculinity. If that is was God's plan for me, why who would He condemn me to eternal suffering if I now act out in a way that is true to my nature?

Now the outside world would say : Yeah but those were your mental defenses as a child, you had to do that to cope THEN, BUT you're all grown up now, independent and self sustaining. So change yourself now. Chose to not want what your mind wants. Sacrifice that. Rewire your brain. Chose to be happy with what you have.

Well, that is exactly is what i am doing. Was it my mission here on Earth to once i grew up rewire an already wired brain? Why? Am I not allowed to be happy with my brain being wired the way it was? It does not seem fair that we would have have this handicap, this iron ball tied to our ankle, this extra homework while everyone else can run free. So not wanting this iron ball tied to us, makes us freaks? Makes us damned? A God of love and understanding would certainly understand that's not fair.

I certainly don't plan to hurt or deceive anyone by being true to myself. Once I have accepted I was this way and I should stop considering myself a monster, I've always played with my cards face up with anyone that I didn't fear would want to hurt me. I just want to make people happy and be happy in return. I want to be accepted and not be regarded as a deviant. If people didn't think of me as a monster for having these transgender thoughts, given the choice I would happily told my parents about my feelings at an early age.

Maybe then I would have had a chance to transition in my teens then the results would have been a lot better. ( Not like now when my bones are all wrong and my body is so far down the path of masculinity the current available procedures are woefully inadequate.)

But how to have the courage at an early age, when you depend on your parents. When you think your own father might beat you to death the second he found out? How to do that when your mother is religious and would think you will go to hell ? How to do that when you yourself have internalized the voices of our parents and are convinced that you will go to hell. So you deny it. you pretend it is not there. You come to believe that you are twisted and that maybe time will straighten you out. You bury yourself is study and work and scream in you head to shout out your genuine self whenever it tries to emerge. And you hate yourself until you realize that you have become so disconnected with yourself that you truly cannot connect with other people anymore. You are on the way of becoming the twisted person that you thought you were running away from. You realize that this is not the way. It cannot be the way. It cannot be what a God of love wanted of you. You seek help. You cry. You accept it, You grow. And then you learn to love again, with the help of therapy fill in the gaps. In a way you become your own loving parent and your best friend and confident. And lo and behold, you can connect to people again!


For what is worth, I KNOW wouldn't have hesitated for one second to accept a traditional conservative woman role in a cis couple, if given half a chance. Yes that includes taking care of the house, cooking for my husband and children, giving birth, being a mother and for many is not as glamorous as a successful career, but I would have loved every last minute of it. But I cannot do that and I am a freak for even wanting it. Saying that I wish I could do it paints me as a deviant or a monster in the eyes of so many people that I love. Why? It goes against every principle embedded in me of honor and honesty and fairness. It tears at my very soul that that is the reality we live in. And the reward for carrying this weight all our lives is eternal damnation ? I cannot accept it.


(&&&)

 

I feel you. I am pretty sure I am trans (still questioning) but I don't want to do bottom surgery, just start on T and maybe get top surgery.

 

I'm pretty sure Darth Vader wouldn't like us too. And Voldemort. Tip: Do something wrong. On purpose. Make sure you don't get caught. One day you won't give a shit.

---------- Post added 5th Jan 2017 at 05:18 PM ----------

Get drunk with the "blood of Jesus" and paint some pentagrams on the wall ^^ Always fun.

 

Don't worry, God doesn't condemns people like us, it's just church which does that.

 

Thank you for reading though it all . It is a subject that I feel strongly about and can get quite passionate about Blood heats up a bit and and my English skills get funky as a consequence .

You are not twisted. The twisted person is not the transgender part of us, but rather the mock-person, the puppet, the shell they would have us become by pretending our real feelings weren't acceptable. It took me a long while to understand that, but once I did there was no going back. .
Sure they might still claim that we are the deviants, but we know better. (*hug*).

 

This thread really does things to me. I've felt many of the experiences described here for as long as I can remember, and I've always felt really isolated because of this. Although it sucks that anyone has to go through this at all, it's nice to be reminded that I'm not the only one going through it.

I never thought of it in this way before, but I also get those feelings of longing to be a "gentleman". Knowing what I truly am, this can get so frustrating. I'm aware that there's nothing I can do to change my body so there's no point in dwelling on it, but that doesn't stop me from thinking about how unfair it is that so many other guys are able to live their lives as their true selves, whereas I'm stuck in this female body of mine -- and my inability to transition means I'm stuck for good. On top of that, there are so many expectations that people place upon me as a "female" (getting pregnant, for example) but nobody realises that I'm not a female at all and that I can't stand being treated like one.

Like you, I often wonder why I have to have such desires, such longing to be something that's practically unattainable. This whole thing was part of what lead me to drop religion altogether; besides God supposedly condemning all things outside the norm, it seems downright cruel that he decides to screw around with people's lives and offer then no solution.

This is actually my first time talking about this so I don't know if I made any sense. Still, it was good to let it all out.

 

I completely agree with you on this statement.

 

It really is quite ironic. I've had that same thought many times and it makes it all the more annoying to think that while those men are doing that, people like us simply don't have the chance to be ourselves.

I used to try to act like a woman. But in the end it would never work out, and I'd always find a way to end it even before I knew I was trans. My mum insists on making me conform to society, but I really can't do that. For me it's not a matter of choice, but of necessity.

 

I run into that feeling of "Why am I doing this? Isn't it wrong and shameful?" a lot ... but less and less lately! It helped a lot that at the very beginning of coming out, the people closest to me were 100% in my corner. I know a lot of people don't get that, that I'm lucky. But the other big shift for me was one morning when I was driving to work and suddenly realized that all of the shame I associated with embodying my non-birth-gender had to do with other people. What would other people think of me, what did other people think was right, how did other people live? When I separated that out and asked myself how I would live if nobody else would give me any grief about it, I realized that I was strongly and joyfully interested in continuing to be bi-gender. The shame was all me imagining what other people believed or might think.

Since that time, the shame has been dwindling day by day, and the quiet joy has been slowly building.

 

It sure is a tangled web, as you put it. In the end it's up to you whether or not you want to transition. If you feel that it won't make you feel better about yourself then there isn't much of a point in doing it, in my opinion. People have criticised me for my own plans on not socially transitioning, but they don't understand that I would prefer not to socially transition if I'm unable to physically transition, since I'll never really be content with myself regardless.

Having said that, I can't wait to move out. My mum loves forcing me into skirts and dresses (even though she rarely succeeds) and it really feels emasculating. Nowadays I put on earrings and a touch of eyeliner just to stop her from criticising my appearance. I've got two years left of this, then it'll all be over... Oh, the relief. As for clothes, I'll just worry about that another time haha. I've got two years to wait after all.

---------- Post added 6th Jan 2017 at 07:33 PM ----------

@Sebby45