Nutshell: As a child I did the girl things: dolls, cooking, sewing, pretending, board games. Not the boy things: sports, fighting, cars, etc. I used to fold my genitals to look like a girls and hope it would stick.

As an adolescent I was attracted to girls, but for cuddling and nurturing possibly more than sex (of which I had none). My first real girlfriend gave up on me in frustration. She wanted to do it. I just wanted to kiss and touch.

As a young adult I married (still am), but my sex life was (still is) more of a masturbatory fantasy. I would imagine myself as a woman having sex with myself, or with a woman. I found I mixed socially much better with women who usually accepted me as "one of the girls". I could rarely mix with "manly" men and was totally mystified about what in the h3ll they were all about. I did get along with androgynous men and gay men just fine.

There have been incidents of someone referring to a feminine quality in me and I was delighted. A couple times I have been told I was just behaving "like a man" and it was rather offensive.

As a middle age man, I prefer the company of women as peers. With rare exceptions, any social group I have been involved in has been all women but me.

If I could find a genie in a bottle I would only wish to reborn in the right body. I would not change my sexual preference and would be a lesbian.

The whole concept of "gender dysphoria" or "gender identity disorder" came as a total dopeslap a couple weeks ago. I had never really thought of my mostly repressed gender confusion as a root cause of a lot of unhappiness. When this was brought to my attention recently somehow the light came on and many incidents through my life suddenly had meaningful context.

I don't fit in with what I have found of most of the online trans-gendered community. I do not have any ambitions of cross dressing or sex change. With what I have to work with, I would be a very ugly woman. All I want to do is come to terms with who is living in my skin.

I should like to share experiences with other men like me. This is a puzzle. I don't think I could ever share myself effectively with men.

Thank you for asking...