I’m not sure quite how to begin, but the reason for my post is to see if there is anyone else that feels as unsure about their gender as I do. At the same time I want to put down in writing a record for myself of what has brought me to this moment in my life, hopefully as a release and recognition of what I have kept to myself over the years. For what will probably be a long post I apologise.
About a week ago I had a dream that has had a major impact on my thoughts ever since. It has made me take a review of my life, which has led to a big question mark in my head. I can only actually remember a very small part of the dream, the part just before I woke up. I am standing by a mirror looking at myself, although in the reflection I cant see my face, but I have long beautiful black hair, and an extremely attractive womans body (I am actually a man!). As I look at the mirror, I can hear myself saying that “I am not going to do it”, and I can see that I am about to get undressed. I can then hear my wifes voice saying “no way, we have had to live with all of this, you are not getting away with not going through with it now”. I can then see that I am re-adjusting my dress, and getting ready to leave the room. At that point I woke up.
As I say, since then I have pretty much only had thoughts about what this dream meant and also the events in my life that have led to my feelings today. There are plenty of obvious references in it such as I do wear womens clothing all of the time, but its not so obviously feminine in that its never anything like a dress. My wife is also not really on board with this aspect of my life, although I do try to limit her exposure to it, as again my preference is not to wear dresses etc. This was the easy part of the dream to understand, but what I couldn’t figure out was if I was simply crossdressing in the dream, or was I actually a woman because I looked so perfectly female. I have always felt that I was a little different inside, but could never really put a label on that difference. I know for sure that I am different from what people expect me to be. This dream has brought into focus that I need to confront exactly what that difference is. I am almost 60 years old (wow that sounds so old!!!), I still don’t know who or what I am.
As a kid, due to my fathers profession, we moved about quite a bit, so every couple of years I needed to make new friends. Almost always it would be girls that I would initially make friends with. That’s not to say that I didn’t have very good male friends, it was just that generally I felt more comfortable with girls than boys. I cant really remember being involved in too many girly things like playing with dolls but it was just that I found it easier to make friends with girls rather than boys. I do remember just after we had moved to a new location that when I had started making new friends with the girls, my mother and father had made comments about me needing to stop playing with the girls, which I found confusing. I have never been into traditional male things like playing football, or talking about girls in a male kind of way, but I did enjoy playing games with the girls such as skipping, which my father didn’t approve of.
I do remember being attracted to my mothers underwear, trying them on and looking in the mirror, which on one occasion I was caught by my father, not a good moment! As a kid, and to be honest as an adult I did take things quite seriously, and would get upset fairly easily, this was especially so when interacting with my father who I don’t think understood why I wasn’t a traditional boy, especially when compared to my younger brother. I was not outwardly girly but I certainly wasn’t the boy he expected me to be. I was a serious, sensitive little boy who just wanted to be myself, and not what he wanted me to be.
Since I was young I have had an extreme interest in anything to do with sex but this was always kept to myself, never physically acted upon as a child (well maybe a couple of times, once with a boy and once with a girl, just showing each other what we had got between our legs). Over the years I graduated from sneeky glimpses of “Page 3 Girls” (topless models in UK newspapers) to top-shelf magazines, to hardcore magazines and then eventually the internet. When moving on to hardcore I found that sight of mens genitals was mindblowing. In fact as I write this I do remember when I was much younger, that a friend of mine had found his fathers porn stash. I remember seeing a photo of a womens face being surrounded by a number of, well you can guess what! I didn’t really know what I was looking at but it did look interesting. I do look at porn, both straight and gay a fair bit, with my concentration usually on the guys, but I don’t feel its got to the addiction stage. I have a very kinky side to me, which almost always alone, I indulge and enjoy.
I was married in my early 20’s, and in fact almost 40 years later, we are still married. What is frustrating and upsetting however is that not much more than a year into the marriage, I discovered that I was bisexual. This discovery came about in a random way.
I absolutely love guys genitals, but don’t want to get too descriptive here. Over the years although there were never many physical encounters, they have got less and less, as the fear of catching something and passing it on to my wife increased. I do feel so guilty about cheating on my wife, who I do love with all my heart, but the urge is just so great.
If I had realised I was bisexual before I got married, I would probably not have gone through with the marriage, as it has caused such anguish. I do love my wife, and am attracted to her, but being attracted to men at the same time, and needing to experience physical moments with guys has made life complicated. It creates a major guilt for being unfaithful, and rightfully so I am sure people would condemn me. I am paranoid about passing anything unpleasant on to my wife, so that very much makes me reluctant to meet many guys and thus causes much frustration for not being able to satisfy this need I have. My wife has absolutely no knowledge of this side of my life, it would kill her if she ever found out.
A couple of years into my marriage I rediscovered my interest in wearing female clothing, initially underwear, but then moving on to other garments. I don’t like to use the term crossdressing, as although initially wearing female underwear was partly sexual, it has been more a need to wear the clothes that feel “right” for me. Strangely wearing dresses has never been a big thing for me, instead I prefer to wear “stealth” clothing. This is female clothing such as jeans and t-shirts that when I am wearing them, you would have to look closely to realise that I am not wearing guy clothes. I don’t like unisex clothing, it has to be genuine girl clothing. To go out only wearing female clothing, including shoes is just so right for me, I feel myself, I feel relaxed, I feel that I am being me and not what others want me to be. I don’t have the fear of being publicly scorned and at the same time I don’t have to wear the guy clothes that I just hate wearing. I am not huge, but am on the heavier side of being overweight, which does cause some issues in clothing choice, but this dream I have had has pushed me to a resolve to try and get the weight off so that my clothing choices can widen. When at home I usually change from my male work clothing (argggggh) into leggings and not overly feminine girls t-shirts. When I first started wearing female underwear, my wife did find out, and was shocked and not at all willing to accommodate me. However over the years she has grown to accept that this is a part of me. As far as underwear goes, I am not into lacy things, its simple cotton hipsters and boyshorts that I prefer. I simply want to be comfortable, I don’t want to stand out, I just want to be me. I think the fact that I don’t go out dressed as a drag queen, and do look fairly “normal” (whatever that is) , has helped to allow my wife is to accept what I am doing. As far as makeup goes, I did experiment a little years ago, but never really got into wearing it. I do feel however, that this is something I need to revisit.
A question that has entered my head in the past, and that has come flooding back to me because of this dream is “If you could live your life again, would you want to be a female, or remain a male”. Without a doubt, or hestitation, I have always said I WANT TO BE FEMALE. I used a mobile app the other day called FaceApp, where you can upload a photo of yourself as a male, and it will create a female version of you from it. I nearly cried when I saw the result, I saw my daughter staring back at me!!! It showed me what could be. I know to be female brings many challenges in life that a male doesn’t face, such as physical things related to the female body, or life chances such as career progression, but that would be a price to pay that I could accept. To confuse things however, I don’t experience any dysphoria when it comes to my body, I am quite happy with whats down below, as I say I love mens genitals! If dysphoria extends to clothing, yes I do experience it, but even then as I have mentioned, my clothing preference is not overtly feminine. All I am sure of is that to live life as a female feels more true to myself than a life as a male.
So to finally get to the point of this post, this dream has made me take a look at myself, and ask the question “what are you?” Am I just a crossdresser, am I a guy that’s trying to convince himself that he wants to be female, am I truly somewhere on the Trans spectrum, or am I just a fake??? ☹ Gender was in the past something straightforward, you were a boy or a girl, and the idea of switching was something you only read about in the “News Of The World” But today things are different, the question of gender is being spoken about and in so many cases, acted upon. I am probably at the older end of individuals questioning their gender, but it is still something that I need to confront. Does anyone else feel like I do, how did you come to terms with it?
What I do know is that at the age I am at, I am not going to jump into a drastic change. I have lived with this for so long, and as I say I don’t suffer from any dysphoria about my body, I can certainly continue to live as I am. I am relaxed about my bisexuality, it really has nothing to do with gender. But to be able to accept for myself that my thoughts of transformation are real and not just a kink, would help me so much to understand the “difference” I feel.
As for the future, I can see myself losing the weight, wearing the clothes that make me feel like me, possibly wearing some subtle makeup, but still having the question “what if!” in my head. Thank you for being patient with me and reading this post, apologies again for its length.