Finding Your Way

I have the same feelings.

Hi April, I fully understand your situation, I am 54 and married. I would not want to hurt my wife, who is vehemently anti-LGBT. And though she know I have struggled in the past with my desire to live openly as a woman, she says it better be in the past, that I better be in remission. I too have to suffer the years of testosterone on my body. I too am unable to pass. But like you I feel happiest when I am able to express myself as the woman I feel like inside. But I must admit that the shame and guilt afterwards is strong. Which is made worse by a definite feminine sexuality. I haven't acted on it since marriage, but have in the past when I was single. But I would be lying if I said that I don't feel a burning desire to express myself that way. Which only adds to the shame and guilt I feel. And living in the closet can be so tiring. Living in the shadows causes me to take the moments I am alone at home, my wife works third shift on a rotating schedule, and crowd in the time to express myself as a woman to the detriment of all else. Like I love chess but instead of enjoying some online games I struggle back and forth all night with dressing up and making sure I get all back in place before my wife returns in the morning. Wanting to wear nail polish but afraid she will smell the sent of remover or not getting all of the polish out of my cuticles. What's an ol' gal to do?
Hugs
Angela

Hi April

I hear what you're saying. I understand your concerns about family. You might be surprised there. My wife has known about my alter ego for 45 years and has learned to accept it. My daughters both grew up with the knowledge that their father wore women's clothes sometimes and that he wore women's under wear all the time. But in the intervening years between their childhood and now, they've grown up. I have a son-in-law and two grandchildren who don't know at the request of my daughter.

That said; my granddaughter made a remark on Instagram while she was still in high school that surprised me, regarding the debate on trans-women using the women's restrooms. She said, "I not about bathrooms any more than it was about drinking fountains." On her 18th birthday, I took her to lunch, just she and I. I asked her about that statement and what she meant about it. She answered with a very enlightened response, and quite articulately told me that trans people deserved the same respect as others and that it was up to the rest of the world to learn the proper pronouns and use them. (Putting the onus on the cis population to get their act together.)

Since she had equated trans rights with African/American rights. I talked with her a bit about black history and how I grew up through the era of the civil rights movement. I then talked to her about the movie "Guess Whose Coming to Dinner" and explained how that movie delved into accepting your conviction when it got personal and challenged her to think about how she would feel if it was a family member.

I had intended to come out to her that day, but I didn't feel that her thinking on the matter had gotten quite to the point that it would be a good idea.

As to passing...

I've always said that I don't pass. Like you and many other, I stressed over that and tried all sorts of tricks to make it happen. Finally in desperation I decided to go the other way, I started going out in drab to second hand store and asking to try on women's clothes. I expected to be rebuffed and refused access to try on. But to my surprise, it didn't happen. Most of these people didn't even blink as they pointed out the fitting rooms. Then I tried it in a couple of mainstream stores and found out they too were more interested in making the sale than they were in just who bought the garment.

After that, I toned down the makeup to the bare minimum, lipstick and mascara, dressed in age appropriate clothes suited to the venue and went where ever I wanted to with no regard to whether I passed or not.

Back to my wife. Mind you, it took years, even decades, after her discovery of my feminine nature to the point where it didn't matter to her. And even after 40 plus years, there are some places she wants me to appear to be masculine and she still is uncomfortable being seen with me, even by strangers who will never see us again while I'm expressing my feminine nature. During those 40 plus year, I worked very hard at seeing to her needs and advancing my feminine expression in very minute increments. So it's not an easy task to get where we are in our relationship. Just as I'll never be fully transitioned, I doubt she'll ever be 100% OK with me presenting as feminine in her presence outside of our home.

So I've reached a state of equilibrium in our relationship. Being over 70, conventional sex isn't and hasn't been part of our lives for about 25 years because she's post-menopausal and has a 0 sex drive. So when I decided to start taking testosterone blockers and estrogen she was OK with that.

I'm still her husband; I've just pushed my body chemistry to the feminine side to match my internal view of myself. I've replaced all of my men's clothing with their women's counter parts, making sure that at least some of them are butch enough that people who know me as a masculine male can hang onto that image. So it is that I'm dressed every day, 24/7. I only go girly-girl when I go out alone or when I know that no one will turn up at the house.

It's a balancing act and I've become good at it.

Perhaps this story comes too late for you to implement all of it, however I hope that some of it will be useful to you and that others, who have more time can put the ideas presented into action and benefit from it.

Hugs.

Yes

April. I started to tear up at the beginning of your post and was full out crying by the time I finished it. You described exactly how I’m feeling and where I’m at. Even though I can “pass” visually I am always in fear that it’s just an emulation of the woman I am inside, not real, just a fake...and the fear overwhelms me to the point of giving up. I keep feeling that somehow I’m going to regret any choice of direction I go— so I don’t go anywhere. I’m half way between Jef and Jen, and that’s where I’ve always been as long as I can remember; too scared to be Jen and so tired of being Jef.

Yes I can understand what you feel. I don't know yet what I am going to do, I am lucky in a way, as my son and daughter in law are supportive no problems there but I have a lot of friends in a motorcycle club and I know they will not understand how I feel. It is a very macho world the MC world of bikers. So if I go and go full time as a woman I will lose my friends in the mc world for a start. I am 67, so old and that is another problem I will face I am too old for surgery, I dread talking to doctors I feel so nervous I will be attacked by former friends maybe? I don't know.

I am so nervous when going out dressed as yet I have not got makeup, clothes, in sufficient quantity to go full time. But how it all started not that long ago in my case and has just grown. were it will end I don't know but I feel next year will be when I change.

I hope I make the right decision will I wont it keeps on going on in my mind till I feel I am going mad.

I also worry about being attacked which can happen I know I should man up? not the right word I think but what to do.

I will go to the doctor but I do not look forward to it will it be the right decision who knows not me but I am being driven to go down this road right or wrong.

But I am going on now so I will stop.

sorry I went on.

Thank you so much for this posting, April. I resonate with so much of it and its make me so grateful to know that my gender journey might be similar to those of others. I could just hug you! I'm not sure about how much detail to share but let me just say that my transition seems to be less about leaving my male self behind and crossing over to my female self and more about learning to be both my female and male selves as it meets my gender identity and expression needs. Of course, the pressures to not express myself as Jess are FAR greater than those that allow me to be my male self in my life. And because of this I sometimes wonder if I am just letting fear keep me from being a full-time trans woman. Still, in wrestling with this with my therapist and in so many difficult moments it feels like I am more both/and rather than either/or when it comes to female/male.

I am 62 and in a long-term hetero marriage with two grown children. Life is good in many ways but after years of fending off moderate depression--and my caring spouse saying how hard it was to live with a depressive--I somehow knew that I needed to engage gender identity and expression issues in order to find health and happiness. (Sexual orientation issues have been on the table as well, but that is another--if, for me, intimately related story.)

It is the first day of 2021 and, like so many others, I am taking the flipping of the calendar year as a chance to be hopeful about what may be ahead for all us. Here's wishing all my TGH friends a fantastic year to come.