The Runaway Train
by Elaine
© 2003
Synopsis
This is an autobiographical story of how one transsexual woman's transition went badly wrong. This is a real story about someone who lives as a woman without any way back to be the person she would like to be. She is living a lie to her boyfriend and those around her and she is inside a very lonely person. This story is given as it was told to me.
This woman was on a runaway train and although it's stopped now it's on quite unfamiliar and different tracks. Many times she had the chance to pull the alarm cord and didn't do it. Is it her fault? Yes it is but it is also the fault of her parents and the therapists who didn't question her close enough. I hope that like me you will find it interesting reading and will make you think twice about gender roles and issues.
Whatever you feel when you read this don't feel pity or sadness because that would compound the problem. I feel that this shouldn't happen again but it will and it does. There are many TS women who are doing this at this exact moment because they find the whole situation sexually exciting and that to my mind makes them like the subject of this story. A man trapped in the body of a woman. The word autogynephilia is described in www.annelawrence.com.
I have used false names to give anonymity to certain people that feature in the narrative.
Prologue
Ever been on a train and it whizzes past your station without stopping? You know the train should stop but it doesn't. If anything it seems to goes faster taking you further away from your intended destination.
Then there's the train that takes you on a journey that you didn't ever want to make. You know the kind of thing, you get on the train and then you suddenly hear an announcement about where the train is headed. Of course you instantly realise the mistake that you've made, gather your belongings and rush for the door only to find it close in your face. The train pulls out leaving you with a look of embarrassment.
Reluctantly you go back to your seat as the train pulls away down the wrong tracks. You could pull the communication cord but it says £250 fine for improper use and you're a coward at heart. You decide that you'll wait until it stops again but it's miles away from your original destination!
Or you might find yourself on what you knew was the right train and it goes a different route to what you thought or intended.
Imagine your life was like that and you found yourself on such a journey. Then every time you wanted off the train you couldn't and wouldn't stop it and you then found yourself on a non-stop express heading for a different world. For some reason the pull chord is easily within reach and yet for some reason you don't pull it. So the train thunders on until it's gone onto different tracks.
You could try complaining but no one is listening and you have no way of getting back home because you are stuck.
Stuck on a train isn't really a complete way to describe the situation in this story but it comes pretty close. In this situation, the train just doesn't stop again. The story is about a passenger forever inside a train and who has no way to ever get off.
The annoying thing is that it's my own entire fault. There's absolutely nothing I can do about it all now and it's like being in a nightmare of my own making.
Chapter 1. Early days
I haven't been able to write about these things before and I've even tried to deny this to myself many times too. All I would ask is that you try and understand my thoughts and feelings on what is a difficult and now quite painful subject.
As I sit here and type this making many mistakes with my long red painted nails touching the keyboard gently, I find these mistakes tiresome and frustrating but there is nothing that I can do about it now.
My red lips are freshly painted, my normally mascara-coated lashes are long and fluttering and I have no less than three earrings dangling from each of my pierced earlobes. I have to look down past my real D cup breasts as they strain up and down in a tight under wired bra. I know they are real breasts because the thin straps of my bra cut into my collarbones and they more than anything else are a constant reminder of my big life mistake.
On my feet I have on as usual my new pointed spike heeled boots despite being at home and my pantyhose covered hairless legs rub together easily while my long dark hair hangs right down my back.
This is my story and it's not for the faint hearted and I hope it'll warn others from doing the same thing that I did. At least not for the reasons I chose.
Describing all this will probably be very messy and maybe even freakish to those of you who feel I did the wrong thing. With this story it feels like the plug to my inner soul has finally has been opened up and is pouring out so many things I need to say. The biggest problem is deciding in what way to tell it to you. I will try to put these feelings into text clearly!
I'm not sure I really know yet how I'm really feeling deepest inside about it all myself. All I know for sure is that I have had and still have a lot of weird feelings about myself and I desperately would like to sort them out so I can make better sense of them.
The best place to begin is at the beginning and I was born nearly 30 years ago. I'm the only child of two kind loving parents. They are two wonderful people who have bent backwards to give me what I thought I always wanted. That I don't see them much these days is also part of my problems.
However I was in a mental conflict very early on in my life despite being in a loving environment with my parents and those around me. That mental conflict about all this obviously continues to this day.
My feelings started when I was about 5 or 6 when a girl called Loren arrived next door. I did identify very strongly with Loren. We spent a great deal of time together playing and I just saw everything about her as very beautiful and positive compared to myself. She was always dressing in beautiful girlish clothes and I would have loved to wear them too. Her hair was beautiful, long and went almost to her rear. My mother and her mother did a lot together too. So Loren was like a sister to me and I adored her.
I remember I was very jealous of her being a girl and I wasn't. I loved all the girl things, like her clothes, her long hair and everything about her. I'm not sure if this triggered my longing about becoming a girl but I'm sure it made a difference.
She was also very emotional, but it was OK for her to be emotional but not for me. My parents were always trying to make me tougher so crying and acting like I did wasn't tolerated!
I just was somehow obsessed with her and we spent a lot of time together at that time. We went to the same kindergarten before school. I loved playing with her and her toys. We could also spend hours just drawing or playing some board game together. Her personality was just very similar to mine in so many ways and she was also very quiet like me.
The only thing that made our lives different was probably gender. To me, her being a girl made it possible and acceptable to be and act and do the things I loved the most. So Loren had a really big influence on me.
We lost contact when they moved away from the area and I started school, the contrast was huge between me and the other boys. I seemed unable to identify with them so in the beginning I only played with the girls in my class. After a time when the teasing got stronger I became more isolated.
This obviously was noticed and when I was about 8 years old my father finally took me for a closer mental check up when they thought my self-isolation had become too strong.
Before Loren I had been telling people I was Mary so Loren didn't cause my gender identity problem, but she perhaps made it deeper. I have no memory about the time I called myself Mary so this time is a bit of a grey zone for me.
Being a doctor, my father knew some basic stuff about gender dysphoria and he thought that was what my problem was, because I had always been openly been claiming I was a girl when Loren stayed beside us and after she'd gone.
Although he and my mother must have been alarmed they did the necessary things and made sure I saw a gender therapist.
I started going to therapy sessions regularly where my first female therapist just talked about everyday stuff with me to start with. I told her about my fixation about thinking I was a girl called 'Mary'. I won't go into my therapy much deeper than this otherwise this story would be too long. I only have vague memories from here and there before I was 8 and my therapy started.
Anyway although my parents and my father in particular suspected I was a transsexual they never gave me any room to play it out before I was diagnosed as being TS by the therapists. Only after that did they reluctantly accept it as a fact and I was able to try out what dressing as a female and all this was about.
Until my diagnosis I never did or had any opportunity to do any crossdressing in female clothes. All my fantasies at that time were just happening deep inside my mind where I was constantly thinking of myself as a girl. I was imagining what that would be like. I also felt very excited about it all and wanted desperately to be a girl.
Then when my father became convinced I was TS, everything just got going according to agreed plans. I was asked about how I was feeling as the plan proceeded and all that, but I just never told them the truth! So everything kept on going.
In hindsight I have always had a strong fascination or even a powerful sexual excitement about my physical change from a male to a female. I think this was the main reason why I wanted so much to become a female.
Although I never told this to anyone, it was even existing as a powerful motive to my gender change ambitions when they began and this strong sexual feeling kept me going right through my transition. That was despite the crazy fact that I realised quite early on that I didn't really want to go through with it!
When I was at school, I was always feeling jealous of my female classmates. Around that time, my parents were always trying to encourage me to be more masculine and I think my comments about being Mary were the reason why they pushed me into those activities. I didn't feel bad about it then, I just also wanted to be normal and to avoid the bullying I had from the start of school.
Although it sounds typical, I never physically looked very boyish or masculine but I wasn't intentionally trying to act like a 'sissy' either. I really tried hard to act as was expected of me including doing male sports. Funnily enough I liked the physical activities and I even liked to play ice hockey but I wasn't tough enough and physically strong enough to be very successful at it. I liked ice hockey but not how you were supposed to act in it to be successful.
Because I was so small and girlish, I was beaten up many times on my way back home from junior school. There were a few groups of 'tough' guys who would pick on me and I had a tough time dealing with them. There was even one group of boys in my class but they did just verbal and mild physical teasing.
I tried to fight back in the beginning, but that seemed to prolong and make the situation even worse. The reason was because I was always fighting alone and never gained anything by fighting back except more punishment. Later I just tried to get away from them and I mostly locked myself into the toilets or hid myself away during breaks.
My worst problems though came from the class above and three boys in particular who shared a large part of my way home were really horrible. I was being tortured by them in all sorts of bad ways but unfortunately I never told my parents or teachers about it.
I was pushed into the water filled road ditches a few times and I just told my parents that I had stumbled into them. My school bag was destroyed once along with the schoolbooks inside it. I was punched and threatened by mostly these three bullies throughout my time in that school.
It's funny that one of them even landed in my class when he didn't graduate from his own class and had to do it all over again.
I always had excuses for my parents about why my clothes were dirty or why my nose was bleeding. I never told them the real reasons and I still don't know why I never told them!
After my diagnosis that I was TS and permission was given to start my transition I felt on top of the world mainly because of the sexual reasons.
In the beginning it was really very exciting to just be allowed to dress as a female even though the clothes I was wearing were just plain unisex. To me they were just very important and a great turn on for me. It was like a dream come true to me. This was what I had always wanted! I think I would have been happy to stay that way, just to be able to dress like a girl when I wanted. I never knew anything about the physical changes that were to come.
When that was being talked about I never really understood how serious it was, the things just sounded very exciting to me and I wanted to go on with it. Because to me at the time being female, was the thing I was doing when dressing as a girl, even in the not too feminine clothes I was given.
So when my father was talking about the need for hormones to 'better' be able to be a female, it all just sounded so natural to me.
Chapter 2. Hormones
First at age 12, I was given anti-androgen therapy for about a year before the oestrogen therapy started. I think my male puberty would have been very late even without the anti-androgens but who knows. I'll never know and I was really looking like an 8-year-old kid compared to all of my classmates who entered into puberty ahead of me. I never really grew up like the other kids in class.
Dressing in female clothes became a turn on to me slowly and I must have been in the beginning of my first year on anti androgens when I realised it was a turn on. I learned my limited way of masturbating when I was able to dress femininely, it all just was very exciting to me. But it wasn't sexually exciting in the same way as it turned out later.
Just after the age of 13 they started giving me 1mg of oestrogen orally then it was lowered to first 0.5mg and then 0.25mg daily. The anti-androgen continued too but I wasn't quite prepared for the physical effects to start so soon.
About 2 months after I started hormones it felt like the changes began very quickly and I very suddenly realised that there were many things that scared me badly.
Outwardly there were physical changes in my body that that caused me to be afraid, but at the same time it was also a huge sexual turn on for me. I used to study and admire myself in front of the mirror for hours sometimes just feeling the sexual satisfaction about the changes.
But after those sexual feelings were met, my mind would quickly change and I hated the same things that a moment earlier had been such a turn on. I know it sounds weird but I wanted to cover up myself very quickly and to avoid looking at myself. I also stopped thinking about it all until I again very soon felt the sexual desire build up again.
Although the motivation for this was sexual, I don't think I ever learned to masturbate very well like I have understood most boys do it. I didn't like touching my penis and I didn't really have any real orgasms that I can remember.
I did have wet dreams while sleeping a few times though which was very disturbing when it happened. My masturbating was just by hiding my penis as much as I could and I just pressed my genitals against the floor or anything that was handy without using my hands.
I was imagining I hated my penis so that's why I didn't want to touch it. It felt good but never managed to get much cum. I felt a sort of vibrating feeling in it when I had an 'orgasm' through a few pulsating 'beats'. Something was released, but it was clear runny stuff, nothing like the cum I have seen my current boyfriend produce for example.
The autogynephilic desire was all based on this masturbation I think, that's what got me going. I have been thinking about this now when reading about other transsexual women's experiences with their autogynephilic feelings.
I maybe had some defect in not being able to produce much in my orgasms, but those I had while sleeping must have been very rich, because my pyjama pants were usually very wet and smelly around the time before the estrogens!
Anyway the orgasms very quickly disappeared after I'd been taking the female hormones for a few months but I was able to get an erection all the way until my sex change surgery. I was able to get sexually satisfied, but my desire to masturbate also decreased probably because of the hormones.
I knew what the hormones would do to my body but I don't think I ever realised how big and dramatic the physical changes would be. That was a huge shock for me and probably for my parents too.
My original ultimate sexual fantasy goal was to become just a little bit more feminine so I could better act out the female picture of myself I was in love with. Small firm breasts like my mothers were far more exciting to me than larger ones. That was I guess the only change I was hoping for.
I was given my hormones every morning at breakfast mostly by mother. She handled the tablets but it wasn't only my hormones, she took care of all the different multivitamin mix and mineral pills which my parents always saw as very important.
I could easily have stopped taking the hormones or hide not taking them later but I didn't do it in the beginning. Later I was skipping my hormones at times, when I became too depressed. So I don't think my body got all the hormones that was prescribed for me, but I wasn't off the hormones long enough make any much difference to see how the changes proceeded. I never noticed much effect from skipping the pills later because by then the changes were complete!
The thing that aroused me sexually was myself becoming a female and the transition as such was the big turn on. At the same time this was also the thing that scared me the most when part of my mind was in horror with seeing the physical changes taking place.
Chapter 3. My body changes
The first changes after two months were that I noticed that my nipples became very tender and much larger. The actual breast growth started quite soon after. I felt like the changes happening to me were somehow unreal. That the girl in the mirror wasn't me somehow but someone else.
I was also very excited by it, but also was very, very scared that anyone in school would find out. When also my hips started to widen and my waist got smaller, I was really shocked by that. That was something I didn't expect to happen but I somehow imagined this all was possible to be undone later or reversed so I didn't panic.
It was all part of a sexual fantasy game or play for me and this power just was too strong. At least that's what I feel I was thinking back then.
I was aware of some of the other physical changes like the greater difficulty I had to get my 'orgasm' that always had been weak. But since I was able to get the erections and some kind of 'cumless' orgasm that equalled sexual satisfaction this didn't bother me too much. I was also growing a lot taller during these first 2 years on hormones but not to the size I hoped. I am still quite small.
My voice had always been feminine and after the estrogen started it never cracked. One of the things I was being teased about at school was my sissy way of speaking and sounding even before starting on the female hormones.
I have tried to search for information about this online but I haven't found any information about pre-puberty male to female transitions. The information I have seen just states that female hormones don't affect your voice nor the body structure. But in my case it effected both.
I know it has to do with starting hormones before puberty and there seems to be a huge difference in the effect if you start transition pre or post puberty. Of course my father knew all this and obviously decided that it would be best to start before puberty. He was right because no one would guess I wasn't anything other than a real live girl now.
As a kid I always had a very feminine appearance and way of talking and just being. I isolated myself from the outside world as much as I could from the moment I started school until I switched to the new school when I went there full time as a girl.
My parents also planned my change of school together with my doctor and the schools because we were due to relocate to a new area. This happened during the long summer vacation because the therapist said I needed that length of time or more in to be able to adjust to the new public gender role. I do agree with that decision still today.
However in hindsight I think I was put on the hormones about 6 to 12 months too early. I don't think I would have needed as much physical changes to be able to pass as girl in the new school. The changes by the time I changed school were very fundamental.
My breasts were already a B cup by the time I quit going as a boy to my old school. I had to bind them tightly at that time to avoid detection and it was very painful and very uncomfortable. While my breasts were growing, they always were quite sore and the binding of them was quite painful.
I locked myself in the toilet often during the last spring term in the old school to open up the binding to ease the great pain I was in. I would also rush to open up the binding as soon as I got home, or even often opened it up on my way home. This time was the toughest and one of the most confusing times in my life. I had to hide every bit of my changes in public, but I was able to dress as a female at home.
Chapter 4. Clothing
I usually changed to just jeans and T-shirt styled stuff. But in front of my parents I was always wearing a tight bra and never tight shirts. I was mostly bra less when home alone.
In those times alone during my arousal moods, I would admire my increasing femininity endlessly though one weird thing I just remembered about this time is that while I was in this erotic mood I many times decided to not hide my femininity any more. I decided during those times that I would go to school without the binding and that thought also excited me sexually.
But as always the guilt mood swing after just prevented this from ever happening which I'm glad about now. Maybe I was just deep inside somehow wishing someone would find out about me!
At that time I had 4 roles I played and wasn't happy in any of them.
1. I was seen as a 'sissy' weak boy in school
2. I was TS for my parents and the medical people
3. The sexual fantasy girl in private
4. And last the old original me hating everything about the TS stuff.
The crazy thing was these personalities or roles all had different desires!
I think for my mother, me being a transsexual was never very easy. I know she had bigger problems accepting my transsexuality than she ever admitted openly. She first wanted me to dress as a boy at home as long as I was going out as a boy to school but my father eventually set the rules about what to wear at home.
Even basic things such as buying me female clothes for home use was difficult for her. Very often she bought me stuff from the male side and I had to insist on getting real female button up shirts as she often bought ordinary male versions. Buying my first real training bra was a very traumatic thing for her too.
She didn't have me with her during the shopping because I was not yet out in public as a girl. I felt like a freak when trying them on in front of her, so we both were very uneasy and uncomfortable about the situation and it took a long time before I wanted to use them.
I never had the nerves to buy any female clothes myself as long as I was still a boy at school. I bought my first female stuff alone during the summer between the change of school when I'd just started living almost full time as a girl.
My mother had a few, in my mind at that time, quite sexy dresses that I loved to dress up in. I played with her heels, skirts and stockings. Then she had lots of A-cup bras including some with padding, but strangely she didn't wear bras herself most of the time, so I really don't understand why she had so many.
I don't think my mother noticed I had used her stuff because she never said anything or asked about it.
The bras my mother had bought for me were all in my mind ugly, very hard and plain inelastic material, most of them with very wide cups and straps too. So I didn't find my own bras sexually exciting at all.
So I used to wear her bras instead during my dress up sessions. Then when my breasts grew too large for her bras, I was quite horrified about that. I wasn't much too large for them but enough to make me feel like an elephant.
This triggered a time of 'self dieting' because I felt very fat with these large breasts hanging down from my chest and their movement really disturbed me when going without a bra. I had always found small breasts sexy and now mine weren't feeling sexy at all, only disgusting and that got me even more depressed.
Anyway I thought her bras were very sexy and feminine looking and made of soft material and were thin strapped too although they were too wide around my chest, I usually fixed that with a safety pin. I even stole one of her bras, but only wore it when dressing up.
I mostly didn't wear a bra at home until my breasts got so large that their unrestricted moving started to make me uncomfortable. Yet in my sexual playing I just loved both being bra less and bra fitted.
There were many kinds of session and mostly I did them right after getting home from school because I usually had about 3 hours of free time before my parents got home from work.
Before the HRT started, I was just fast changing into my own not so female home wear and the only extra thing I did was to use one of my mother's padded bras underneath. This gave me a huge turn on and excitement. I looked at myself in the mirror, posed and just lived in front of the mirror like a girl.
I didn't feel the guilt trips as bad before the HRT and I wasn't too happy about removing my mother's bra before my parents got home. I had no bras of my own at that time and the dressing up as a girl was just a big turn on. I generally felt very happy also in front of my parents in these clothes.
Chapter 5. Self arousal
After the start of the HRT and after I started to change physically, the sessions changed completely. After getting home I would remove the breast binding and my outer male clothes, then I would usually stand almost naked in front of a large wall mirror we had in the entrance hall. I was dressed in only my underwear to hide my penis. I sometimes also bound my penis down between my legs for a correct female look, but having an erection was very uncomfortable so I mostly didn't do it.
I sometimes did nothing else except just look and admire and was amazed by the fast appearing physical changes in me. The changes were a big turn-on as I posed and did my things in front of the mirror. I was just in love with the feminine changes I saw happening in myself. I also started to massage my breasts sometimes and especially played with my nipples, which all was more exciting that I had ever expected.
But now I also started feeling very guilty about all this and the bad feelings increased as my physical changes got more and more visible. Somehow this guilt trip didn't affect my autogynephilic fantasies. I was dressing on and off in front of the mirror and posing and just getting aroused by what I saw.
It was in a way like I was producing my own sex strip show and getting sexually aroused by it. I always felt low after having done it and I felt like a badly mentally sick criminal or something!
I did wear skirts and dresses but that started very late in my transition. I wasn't encouraged to wear them by my parents and I felt very out of place dressed in such female clothes in public in front of them since my original intention wasn't to become a female in public.
My mother always tried to delete or minimise my feminine appearance, through the kind of clothes she bought me, and how she wanted me to dress and act.
This wasn't openly so and I'm not sure she did it on purpose either but I know she was very uncomfortable with my condition and just had a hard time coping with it. Also the negative reactions that soon started to hit my parents from my relatives didn't improve the situation but we told all my relatives about me at the time of changing schools.
I talked to my parents, mostly my father about my transition, but I didn't tell him about the problems I'd had. I never told my parents about the teasing problems either, so this just followed that same line I had taken earlier.
There was very much physical openness and contact between all three of us until the time of my HRT start. After that the physical contact disappeared almost totally. I know my fast physical change made this difficult. Nakedness was not a taboo before, but through the HRT it became so.
We used to go to the public baths together until this time too but that stopped happening. I hug my mother nowadays but not very closely. I have hugged my father only just a few times and I'm very conscious about that. It isn't anything spontaneous between me and my parents but I'm hugging spontaneously other people without any problems. Only with my parents is there some kind of invisible wall between us.
They were amazed about the physical changes happening so quickly but somehow it wasn't discussed. I only understood how they felt about me through indirect comments or how they behaved.
I realise that I would have had such a good possibility to stop it all by just telling my parents about how I was feeling, but I was too scared for their reaction or consequences for me having fooled everyone this seriously!
I didn't realise that no matter what their reaction would be, I would have got out from the crazy situation I was in and still have been able to go back to live a normal male life but maybe as a crossdresser or TV.
At that time I was too shocked about the situation I had landed in, so having more feminine changes happening to me like growing my hair longer on top of the physical changes already happening then was just too disgusting to me.
I had my last boy haircut before Christmas in my final school year as a boy. So it wasn't very long by the time I finished going to school as a boy that spring. Around that Christmas time I had started to want to get longer hair mainly because of the autogynephilic feelings.
In my sexual self playing I felt turned off by my boy hairstyle and I was having problems satisfying myself when I saw myself as the 'freak' in the mirror. The real reason probably was that my libido was decreasing because of the female hormones but I didn't know about that then.
I had never talked with my doctor about what effects the hormones would have on my ability to masturbate, because they assumed I didn't have any sexual fantasies or that I would be masturbating!
There was a 'BIG' discussion with my father right after I was diagnosed as being TS. He'd accepted the diagnosis because that was what he'd expected as a result of the therapy sessions. He asked if I was OK with the diagnosis and if I really wanted to be female and a girl.
I of course said, 'yes that's what I always wanted.'
He then promised that they would give me all their support if that was what I wanted to go through and he explained about how he had planned together with my therapist how the transition would happen. He told me what he expected out of me. Also he said that everything would be OK but I would become the female I desired to be but only by following the plans that had been agreed. It all sounded unreal to me at that moment and I don't think I understood at all the seriousness of this talk like I do now.
At that time, I had never even dressed in any female clothes. After this initial discussion we talked about it again a few times over time, but after that we never had any big discussions about my transition again. Everything just happened like the plan.
The treatment was handled by my doctor who was in contact with my dad and the therapist. These three people probably talked a lot more about my transition together than any of them talked about it with me. I never was active in telling them about my true experiences and feelings so I know they didn't work with the right facts about me.
Chapter 6. Guilt trips
As my transition advanced, I got more aware of how wrong this all was but I felt such a huge shame and guilt for having fooled everyone about myself so I was too scared to tell the truth. But I always thought, 'I will tell them 'soon' but not right now!'
There were so many wasted opportunities to tell anyone about my true inner feelings.
I should have told them what I was feeling like. I know now that they would not have stopped loving me or anything like that. At that time I just was too immature to really know what to do, so I just remained silent, because I was scared for telling them, but I'm not sure what kind of consequences I was scared about.
But as things advanced and more and more changes in me happened, it became harder and harder. Eventually it became impossible for me to come out with the truth because the changes were by then irreversible.
The rapid physical changes were a very big shock for me. But the sexual desire to go on with the transition was too strong to fight along with the fear of telling my parents that the real reason was just to play out some crazy sexual fantasy and not any real desire to become female for good.
Socially I had big problems getting along at the old school. When my HRT started, things got even worse as long as I was going to school as a boy. The sissy teasing just got out of hand and I for the first time was thinking about ending my life. I don't think the teasers ever really realised that I was physically changing, because as I said I was wearing very heavy bindings to prevent it from showing. In the end I had to bind my breasts very tight with a special bra or a special vest my mother had made for me.
I was on hormones for about 18 months while going to that school. During most of the last year, the changes were huge and the hiding went on. I was given permission to quit that school, three months before the summer holiday started, because of the difficulty I was having to hide the changes.
This time was the toughest and one of the most confusing times in my life. I had to hide every bit of my changes in public but I was able to dress as a female at home. I think this is one of the reasons why I'm still feeling bad in public about my breasts.
At school I had to hide my femininity, but at home it wasn't that welcomed either to show it too much for some reason. My mother has a very small bust and it was a very big shock for her to see my bust grow so much bigger than hers in such a short time. I was almost a C cup after only two years on the hormones and she always insisted I should wear a very tight bra to try to minimise the effect.
The changes were rapid because when you start like me at a pre-puberty age and I had been on anti-androgen therapy from just before turning 12, my body was just waiting for the female hormones when I started on them a year later.
The breast growth was the most visible change but then there was the shock that my hips got very wide in a quite short time and that made me very self-conscious. At that time quite narrow jeans were in fashion and I had to buy new sets of clothes frequently especially new pants because my hips flared out.
I tried to continue wearing male jeans because I was dead scared that someone would notice if I was using female type jeans. That would have been a lot easier to do it today in these hip-hop fashion times.
Most of my physical changes developed in a bit more than two years so at 15 my 'female' puberty was more or less over. Only my breasts grew a bit more until when I was about 19. However I had a full curvy female figure that I couldn't hide any longer.
The reason in the beginning that I dressed in a unisex style was that someone not knowing about me might visit us so that I could be taken as a girl or a boy.
I wasn't allowed to grow my hair longer while I was going to school as a boy although there were some boys at my class with quite long hair. So in some ways my parents weren't very supportive to my desires but in other ways they of course were very supporting. They never tried to deny the TS diagnosis I'd been given.
In my mind, I was going trough the first serious depressions about my transitioning. In my mind I thought I probably wasn't a true transsexual and that this transitioning process was not what I really should be going through.
The sexual desire to go on with the transition was also too strong to fight. The autogynephilic arousal was so strong in me in private, I had started to dress in the most sexy clothes I found in my Mother's wardrobe since I didn't have any much of my own.
She didn't have very sexy stuff though but for me they felt like playboy clothes and I was endlessly aroused by noticing how I was filling out her clothes especially in the breast area. But always after the sexual playing, the confusion and depressed feelings about what I was doing to myself just hit me harder and harder. Somehow I just wasn't able to do anything about it.
I started to hide my femininity in public and at home with my parents however for the sexual playing I was just dying to make myself look as feminine as possible. Then when the arousal was gone I just wanted to kill myself for doing this to the male I really was inside.
So it was like a snowball effect just making the confusion bigger and harder to handle, but the autogynephilic arousal was always stronger than all the other feelings so it always won.
Some gender identity disorder experts had advised my parents not to make any special number of my gender change and part of that was to dress me in normal female clothes which in my parent's case was the unisex clothes.
I was disappointed about that but never made any big noise about wanting to dress more femininely because one part of me wasn't completely ok with my transition at all. So part of me was sort of happy for that situation. The other part of me just realised itself when I was in private and dressing up alone.
Chapter 7. Living as a girl
After I had started living fulltime as a female the male part in me realised that my possibility to live out the male in me was getting more and more limited. I was accepted completely as a girl in the new school. It was very easy without any problems and thanks to my new friendship with a girl I met called Anne, my transition to living full time as a female went very smoothly.
Although everything must have seemed fine to my parents and the therapists, inwardly I had big problems with the new situation. I was very uncomfortable and insecure in my new female role. I felt totally alien to my new public role. Anne's support and friendship was without any doubt what saved me from not collapsing mentally in this situation.
In hindsight maybe a collapse might have helped rescue me but she managed to help me and show me what I needed to do to avoid any problems with the other girls and of course the boys.
She helped me to act and cope in school as a girl and she always supported me socially in class. So I was never left alone facing a tough situation where I didn't know how to act or behave. The teachers knew about me in both schools and I have only good memories of how supportive they were. The only regret I have with them was I never told the teachers about the bullying that went on in the old school.
I was fully accepted as a female by all my class and it felt wonderful not to be bullied like before. However this made the male part in me horrified when I realised I had no way to realise that part anymore. Everyone just referred to me as Jane and saw me as a female and that really tore my inner soul apart.
I was still after starting to live full time as girl, wearing semi-male clothing most of the time, however I was taken for a girl immediately after switching to the public gender role.
I don't remember any situation where I was taken for a boy after the switch. In fact, I had been taken for a girl quite often during my last year as a boy in school, by people who didn't know me.
I never took part in physical activities after I started to transition. I was exempted from it by both schools. The cover for it was that I had a heart condition.
My clothes by this time came only from the girl's section of stores. I had no female jewellery before the public gender role switch and never had much jewellery before I met my current boyfriend. I got my first female necklace from my parents as a gift when I ended my school life as a boy. I first had my ears pierced when I turned 19 and by that time I'd finally decided I would do my best to accept my new gender role and try to live with it.
I started to feel even more frustrated inside about living as a girl full time and I was sure that I was doing a big mistake with the transition. I just couldn't stop it. I was feeling like I'd robbed myself of the chance to find out what a male life really would have been like so I started to crossdress back to a male when I was 16 and it continued until just before my sex change surgery.
I think female breasts are beautiful, and I love them in my aroused mode, But in a non sexual situation I just feel freakish about them, something that shouldn't be on my chest. If they were smaller and easier to hide, I'm sure I would feel a lot better about them. I have always liked smaller breasts. I'm pretty sure my current boyfriend Peter would feel very bad about a reduction!
I have thought about that a lot especially when I was 16 or 17 when I had depression. Breasts react to changes in hormone levels in a very strange way as I found out at that time, if you suddenly stop taking the hormones.
The longest I stayed off them was for a week or so and hormonally that's a similar situation to right after a real female gives birth. Her oestrogen level drops down and that acts as a signal for the breasts to start producing milk. There are other hormones too that make it continue and all that. So I had this happening to me and it scared me stiff.
I had for a few days not milk, but a clear milky stuff oozing out of my breasts. It wasn't much but it was enough to make my shirt damp and it freaked me out badly! I thought I had some serious disease or breast cancer or something so I went to see my doctor and he asked me if I had forgotten to take my female hormones.
I don't want that to happen again, so I haven't wanted to stop HRT again, but quitting the hormones now after all this time wouldn't really make any difference physically. But in the long term, I will need a hormone therapy to avoid osteoporosis for example. Though the hormones might just as well be androgen because I won't change my shape.
I found it strange that even this situation didn't blow my cover. I just told my doctor that I must have forgotten to take them somehow. I don't understand how my parents didn't suspect anything either because I had the hormones under my mother's supervision like I explained earlier. This was just seen as a small mishap and nothing more was talked about it.
Now thinking back about that does seem strange to me. There I was seemingly happy to be a girl and I missed a week or more of my hormone therapy and no one thought to ask why or thought it strange. I'm more comfortable about accepting breasts are part of me now, and I'm not that self conscious about dressing and catching someone staring at me but I'm not sure I will ever be able to feel ok about them.
I was horrified for the situation I found myself in and I have no strong enough words left to describe it. I felt really out of place and I had a hard time getting used to being reacted to and treated as a girl. Anne was my lifeline really.
I was always very quiet in school so I was mostly just following the discussions and not taking part unless I really had to. I felt freakish to hear the girls talk about boys, I never related to that but I just played along with it and always tried to get out of those talks.
I was very curious though to hear about the period experiences and that was a very popular subject at about this time among the girls. Also here I faked and just went along without taking active part in any talks like this.
Chapter 8. Confused
I would go out just walking around the block first during the night just to be able to feel like a male again for a moment. I didn't even have to dress very masculine, just the possibility to be 'feeling male' was enough at first.
Later I got more and more frustrated and wanted to play out the male part in me more and more. I got out dressed more often, and also started to go to places hoping people would reply to me as a male, but that didn't happen very often and just made my confusion worse.
I started to try and find out better ways of giving myself a more masculine impression but despite all this confusion I still did the autogynephilic playing as before with my new female body. I was feeling aroused about my outward signs of femininity so I was thinking that I was mentally very sick.
I felt like wanting to kill myself after I returned home from the 'male dressing' when I had to face myself and see the real physical appearance as this half female I had become. The worst situations were especially in the shower and when going to bed. In bed I felt miserable when just a simple thing like turning around in bed made me very aware of my breasts.
I feel really mad about them because of their size and the attention they often always cause. I always feel them and get continually reminded of my situation by them. They are in the way of doing things too. They don't prevent anything but still they force me to do things a bit differently than had I not had breasts. Even a game of tennis with my boyfriend is a problem.
They feel very disturbing to me in most situations except when I'm in the autogynephilic aroused mood. They are now full D cup and I think they are much too large. That also makes them just strong symbols of my femininity. As I told you earlier I felt very fat with breasts like this and I was very shy about them in public.
At the time I started as girl in school, breasts were the big focus of attention by the guys in my class. There was a lot of joking and commenting flying around at that time and it all made me more self-conscious. Once the guys wrote a list on the blackboard of the girls sorted by breast size. I was put down as the second largest which felt very freakish to me, since I always tried to hide them from being too visible.
Bra strap pulling and that sort of attention also didn't help me in feeling better about having breasts. I know I'm not that big and I'm over reacting to this but still it feels like a problem for me. While together with my current boyfriend, I have tried to get over this and I'm a lot more comfortable now about this than I have ever been before.
I don't mind wearing a bra as such because it feels much more comfortable than being bra less. But I have a problem looking at myself both in a bra and bra less, my breasts are a kind of mental taboo to me.
Again I have to say that despite all this, I still get the autogynephilic arousal for having breasts and the way they look and move, feel and all that. It all feels like I'm not looking at myself in that mood but just making the 'sex show' for myself.
I still had no power to end my transition and to all the therapists I was seeing and the doctors I just 'played' out the happy front of being in the transition and dying to get the final sex change surgery over with!
I find it hard now to understand why I never really told anyone. Because now after the surgery I know that things never improved, I was just continuing to make it more and more difficult to get out from my awful situation. At that time I never presented a male front to anyone I knew, except to some of my relatives during the school switch summer and a bit into the new school semester. After that it was impossible. Unless I showed them my penis it would be impossible to convince them I wasn't a girl. I looked like a girl and sounded like one.
I was also haunted by not having had any experience of lovemaking as a male would to a female, and I desperately wanted to have that experience before my final surgery.
I tried to get into some dance clubs dressed as a male and I had planned to hit on any girl I would be able to get. My desperate plan was I would get her so drunk that she wouldn't mind about my physical appearance just to be able to make love to her! It was a desperate plan I know and I never got into any dance place like that but just managed to get into some bars. However once inside I never had the guts to approach anyone! So this plan was never realised!
This was the time I got very depressed and was again thinking of killing myself. I wasn't able to stop the transition and I understood I would have a hard time coping with myself in the future if I didn't stop it. By this time I'd gone through my 'female' puberty long since and my body wasn't physically changing any longer. I had the female body I had wanted, except for the genitals.
I also realised though I would never ever be able to end the transition at that time and go back to live as a believable male again. Somehow I had until that moment always imagined in the back of my mind I would somehow be able to undo everything if needed and go back to my real male self again. I had just pushed away the thinking about that until then.
Chapter 9. The surgery
Everything was set for my surgery and we were just waiting for me to turn 18 to legally be able to have the sex change surgery done. I didn't have the guts to kill myself and I didn't have the power to stop my transition, so I just realised I had no other option than going on with the planned surgery so that it just happened like that!
The sex change surgery was planned so far in advance but I would have physically been ready for it when I was 15. The only thing we waited for was me to turn 18 for the legal side to say it could happen. I had realised I had played the game too far at that time and there was just no point in delaying it anymore. I never wanted to hurt my parents like I would have done if I had told the truth at that time.
I was also very alone and had absolutely no one to talk about this with.
As I said I was able to get a weak erection all the way until the sex change surgery but that wasn't something I enjoyed towards the end. I didn't see any other options for me than having the surgery and I had no other option but to swallow the pain that it was going to bring along.
At that time I decided that I would never tell my parents or anyone else about this mistake I was making because I knew that would have broken their hearts. I never wanted to hurt anyone else with this, so in that sense I saw the sex change surgery as an option to finally force myself to accept my life as a female from then on.
By then it was much too late, my breasts were almost fully developed, my hips were wide and my waist had narrowed. Because I had gone through a female puberty not only had my outline become female but my height was also much less. My skin was very soft and it's still covered with a thin female hair that looks normal for a woman. By that time I was probably chemically castrated too so even if I had stopped everything then I would never be able to father children.
I had the surgery just five days after my 18th birthday in November 1991 and the date was arranged through my father's contacts.
The surgery as such didn't make any big change in the way I was acting socially but it had a huge impact inside my mind. I thought that by having the surgery, I would finally and forever force myself to feel good about being a female. That I just had to do it and that was what I have been doing ever since with varying success!
I had given up my last bit of hope for ever being able to undo what I had started, so I just had made up my mind to have it over with no matter what I thought about it. Because there were no way I would be going to tell my parents it was a mistake at that late moment. I just hoped I was going to be able to accept my new life as a real female after the surgery.
I just felt mentally numb as the time approached for the surgery. I really didn't care any more about anything at that moment and so I just let it happen.
Mentally I still thought of myself as being male and I still do. I felt the inner me was male and the surgery really didn't change that feeling of me being male but it caused a lot of frustration though the my change in situation.
Afterwards I was physically just numb all over at first then in a huge pain that felt like I was hanging from the ceiling by my penis. It was an indescribable feeling. The first thing I thought was, 'oh great they didn't do it!' That was because I had never felt my penis physically as strong I did then. But that was just the reaction of the nerves to the big surgery of course. The same feeling someone has whose arm has been amputated and they can still feel their fingers!
I was always playing down my femininity in public and never dressed very femininely except when going to some school parties. Then I would dress a bit more femininely in a skirt and blouse with moderate heels.
I had by that time bought myself a very feminine wardrobe and in private I was always admiring my femininity dressed up in the stuff but always felt so confused by it all afterwards that I never dressed long or in public like that.
When my therapists asked about my sexual desires, I had always told them I was attracted to men and would like to be interacting as a female with a man. In reality I never had any much feelings of being sexually attracted to other males or even females, I was just somehow obsessed with myself. I still am.
The surgery was a much more painful experience than I had expected and there were a few days with great physical discomfort that caused. Then after that I suddenly had some kind of weird, horrified and aroused feeling that I had no way to ever go back to being a male any more. That I was stuck in a female body and I somehow thought it would make things easier to handle.
Chapter 10. Post Op depressions
When I got home, I was disturbed about my new body in the shower, in bed and every time it was exposed while I was in a non-sexual mood. Doing the toilet as a female is something I still today find very disturbing because I really miss the fast and easy way of urinating. I have always had big problems going to public toilets for hygienic reasons and it's so much easier and better in a standing position.
Prior to the surgery my doctor had gone trough everything linked to the surgery and post-op care and all but I wasn't paying much attention to any of that stuff before the surgery. I was just too tired mentally for the situation and really didn't care any more.
Afterwards the dilation was a very hard thing to get into. I felt so disgusted by my vagina and just the sight of it made it very hard not to collapse into self-pity. I did long painful sessions of dilating very frequently in the beginning and I was told to be very careful with my hygiene while doing this. They told me a neovagina doesn't have the 'self cleaning' system that a normal vagina has.
Well I mishandled my hygiene and got infections twice, the first time I was again taken into hospital for a week because I didn't notice and tell anyone about my physical pain in my vagina because I was in such a bad mental condition.
Slowly I got over my worst feelings about my vagina and I took better care of myself too, so this hasn't happened since.
Surgically now and cosmetically my vagina is fine. It looks very realistic and I have most of the functions that a real vagina has with a clitoris and the labia or vaginal lips.
After the surgery instead of forcing me to accept the situation, I fell into a quite deep 'inner' depression because I was just horrified for what I had allowed to happen. I was able somehow to keep up a happy front to the outer world.
I was seeing a therapist at the time before my surgery and continued sometime after, but I never told her about any of my true feelings. So the effect of the therapy was close to zero. My therapist was just focusing her attention to how to cope in the new role and other things that really didn't matter at all to me really.
I'm a bit surprised she never saw my depression and in a way I was somehow hoping she would suspect something was wrong and ask me about it but it never happened.
I don't have very high opinions about the therapists really, because I feel they should have somehow noticed my situation through the whole transitioning process. I lied to them though and so I take the blame too.
I was seeing many therapists from the very first sessions until after the surgery but they all swallowed my 'happy front' without question! Please don't think I'm blaming the therapists for this because I know I didn't play an open game with them so I really just can blame myself for it all.
I have read about the big problems many transsexuals have had with convincing the therapists to get approval for the transition, but I'm not familiar with that. In my case there were no stops in the process after it started.
It's a bit like a runaway train and after it started it never stopped so to say.
All the therapists and experts were just helping me with the transition without many thinking about how it all felt. I have no good explanation why this was the way things started rolling, but I'm sure that the fact my father is a doctor somehow had an effect on it. I think the experts were assuming my father had a larger role and responsibility in my case.
So I think they maybe didn't ever want go too deep into the screening process because they assumed my father did it. These are just my vague feelings and thoughts about it and I might be wrong but this was how I felt anyway.
So I managed to get my depression following the surgery under control somehow after a few months. I got out of the depression when I just realised there was no way to get out of the situation I was now in and the best I could do was to accept myself as female and start making a life as a female. My male side was pushed aside again but it didn't stay hidden for very long periods though.
I was still dressing down my femininity in public as much as possible and I didn't have any sexual desire about myself like I had as a pre-op. So I didn't find myself sexually exciting anymore. I hated my female body and was so confused by having to act a role in public that originally was just meant to be totally in private. And that sexual private desire wasn't there anymore.
It took a long time before I even could look closely at my new female genitals without getting upset by them and even longer before I was able to explore them sexually.
My breasts have always had a strong mental meaning for me. I had strong mixed feelings about them and by this time I was very depressed by them because they were constantly reminding me of the situation I was in.
I felt like I had a wing clipped or something. I didn't have any way to find sexual satisfaction or I didn't want to explore my 'new sexual tools' that I had been given, although my libido was also very close to zero. I just hated myself for everything I had done to myself.
In public I was still showing the 'happy front' to everyone and I even managed to finish off school. Then I got into the trade institute and passed the secretarial exam in 2 years. So the front I showed was always good.
I think I should have studied something more masculine though and I don't have any good explanation about why I didn't. My first option was to become a doctor and get into medical school but my poor school grades prevented that. I didn't even try to apply to medical school.
So I studied languages. At one time I studied on an advanced mathematics line but switched in my final year at school to a less advanced one because my energy was at that time too consumed by the discomfort I was feeling about my surgery and my situation.
I don't like mathematics very much but I started the advanced course because it would have given me a larger choice of studying options later. I guess I would have managed to complete it though if I hadn't had the mental problems I had at the time.
I like to read about science too and I am subscribe to the Scientific American. It's a great magazine and in one recent edition there was actually an article about Lynn Conway, who is a Professor of Computer Science and a TS-woman who has been post-op for a long time. Her transsexuality was described in a very positive and non judgmental way. She has a homepage too.
I also like to read about history and I follow the daily news and politics but only read more if the subjects interest me! I always skip the sport pages unless there is something specific I'm searching about.
So I had no real ambitions in life when I was 19 years old. I was still very depressed and confused about myself. I'd just ended school and locked myself out from the world as much as I could and I just felt depressed about everything. Anne had long ago decided to become a secretary, so I just hooked on to her and started studying that too. And even though we continued studying together, I had very little contact with her then.
The course was just a way to fill my life with something at the time. I had no ambitions at all right then, so getting into the secretary school wasn't that bad really it gave me something to do. If I would have had more energy at that time, I would surely have started studying something else, but I am not sure what exactly. Maybe I would have applied for university to study journalism.
I played out the role of any 'normal' female but I was careful to avoid getting close to anyone at that time. I nearly destroyed my relations with Anne too at that time and I didn't have any contact with her for almost a year. Luckily that friendship survived to this day.
Anne is very important to me still and I'm trying to support her with the illness of her son. I saw her last week at the hospital and I have been phoning her too. Anne and her husband have the support from their parents and there isn't very much I can do to help her practically. We have been talking a lot and that's the help I can give to get her thoughts focused for a while to something else.
We have actually been talking about her part in my life recently, as this has been on my mind a lot lately. She knows how important she always was to me. She is the only person I would like get all this out to but I know she would not be able to understand it. Her present situation above all other makes telling her just not possible.
Dilating is the strongest reminder of what I once was and I have many mixed feelings about dilating. The strongest one is a feeling of sadness about having put myself into this situation. Sexually aroused I do think of my vagina as being someone else's but the way it feels and sexually works is still very frustrating because you can't keep up that feeling when you actually are making love, then my vagina is just a part of me.
I have cried over it many times! It's just a combined feeling of everything negative I feel about it.
Chapter 11. Dating and relationships
I was finally able to start exploring my new sexuality about a year after the surgery and I wanted to get on with my life as a female.
I guess I have given you the impression I feel like I'm stuck in this female body now, and that's true, but it's also not that simple really. The male side in me doesn't have any possibility to pop out and realise itself now. That makes me very depressed and frustrated at times, and has even led me to consider the whole transition to be a great big mistake.
I never intended to go into any relationships at the time but I just met a guy called Ben, who was showing a very strong interest in me and we started to date.
This happened at the start of my second year of the secretarial course when I met him at a student's party. There was a lot of partying going on between the different schools and universities but I didn't party much at all. One of the most popular clubs was owned by a Business School in town and students from all the different colleges mixed there.
After my friendship with Anne had started going again and I had got out of my worst depression, I went out with her to parties every now and then. Ben was studying engineering. He was just a very kind and easy to talk to guy who didn't try to hit on me like most other guys I had met. We just started talking and that was the start of it.
This was about 18 months after my surgery and I had suppressed all my sexual feelings at the time. I wasn't sexually excited in him in any way, but I liked his company and friendship. We dated for a few weeks and I knew that I couldn't continue dating him without ending up in a sexual relation with him.
I hadn't told him about myself either and I still don't know why I didn't tell him about me before. Anyway things got out of hand and suddenly I was in the situation where he expected me to get sexually involved.
I told him truthfully I was sexually inexperienced and he told me he wasn't sexually experienced either so that kind of relaxed the situation a bit. I hoped I might be able to fool him and not have to tell him about myself before having sex. I was desperate to get the sexual experience and I wasn't thinking very clearly.
Anyway when the moment finally arrived, I was so scared and uncomfortable about everything that the first sexual intercourse attempt just failed. I just felt so bad about myself and my situation.
I was dead scared about him finding out about me and for a possible negative reaction. I was also afraid for the intercourse act itself because I was scared something inside me would break or tear. I also hated myself as a female and felt like a freak. So when I saw him naked I just freaked out. I told him I had a migraine headache and wasn't able to continue.
We were doing some kind of foreplaying, stroking and touching, but it was when he got out of his clothes I freaked. I just froze stiff in panic for what I was doing. I don't remember clearly but I think I started to cry uncontrollably and I just said I was sorry I can't do it. He tried to understand and asked if I felt ok? He asked if I had migraine or something and I just said, 'yes I have a migraine attack.'
So we continued with just hugging and touching which to me was quite new also at the time. We had been hugging before but only with our clothes on.
When he was touching my breasts I nearly screamed out with the freakiness I was feeling inside about it all. It was so bad I thought I would never be able to go through with the actual lovemaking. But the following weekend I saw him again and then it finally happened and I lost my virginity.
I just forced myself through with it and I was too upset about the situation to really remember much about what happened. I had applied non-friction gel to my vagina beforehand and just let the rest happen as it happened.
To feel him inside me was a very weird feeling but it didn't break anything or hurt at all, but making love like this made me more confused and made my doubts about myself even stronger at first. The first intercourse was just a very quick and bad experience. He barely got inside me before he got his orgasm and everything was over. I didn't have time to feel much of it really.
At that time I'd decided I had to force myself into finding out what being female really was like including the sexual part of it. So I just let things just go. He was a very sweet guy really, he never pushed anything like my current boyfriend does. Our relationship just slowly went into an erotic mode at some point and I found myself in a situation where I couldn't refuse sex with him, which also was what I wanted to try. But through all this I felt like I was mentally sick. It wasn't me it was someone else who was doing this, it was again my fantasy dictating what I was doing.
It was hard to describe what I was feeling and I didn't feel like I was being used by him. I hadn't been forced into the situation because I wanted to have that sexual experience. I had been trying to get it for so long as pre-op too and now I just didn't have any other choice than going into a sexual relationship but not as a male.
I didn't think I could go into a lesbian relation mainly for social reasons and my parents. I didn't know anyone who was lesbian and hadn't stumbled into any lesbian. I think both my personas wanted to experience what an intimate relationship would be like.
I didn't feel any sexual excitement for him being male. Sexually he was just a 'tool' for me I think. But I liked his company as a friend and he was very kind and caring and was easy to be with.
We saw each other quite often after this and made love every time we had a chance. We were both living at home at that time though I moved to a student's apartment later.
But our relationship ended before I moved into my own place. He found out about me about three months after being together sexually and it was my 'dear' uncle that managed to destroy it.
He popped in once when Ben was visiting me at my parent's place. My uncle has always insisted on calling me by my old male name and he asked me some of his nasty ironical questions that he is always throwing out at me. Something about, 'how my new life in skirts was progressing.'
I thought Ben had understood the meaning of my uncle's comments, but I later understood he hadn't. Unfortunately I rushed to try to explain it to him and that's the way it came out.
Ben wasn't able to accept me but he didn't make any big number about what he had found out either, but our relation ended anyhow. I have never heard anything from him since.
He got very angry and felt betrayed by me of course. He couldn't believe it at first, but we were able to end our relationship by talking it out without him freaking out. He really didn't want to continue our relation anyway!
During lovemaking I first tried to find something that sexually would excite me about him, but I wasn't able to feel any sexual attraction to him as a male, I was just feeling jealous that he was able to function as the male as I really should be like.
At the time I didn't like it but was hoping I could learn to like it. It was just something that I thought was part of a relation like we had. I was very confused about the situation and I was also very worried about how he would react when he found out about me. My parents were very happy for me and they liked Ben a lot too. They knew I had not told him about myself but they never pushed me about it either.
The lovemaking was just an act on my part without any sexual driven excitement or any loving feeling towards him. It was at that time I started to think about myself and the 'stuck as a female' situation I was in during lovemaking.
This somehow opened me up sexually and I found the thought of being a man stuck as female during lovemaking suddenly very exciting and arousing. This thinking made me able to function sexually in the relationship. Though after the lovemaking I always hit the deep depression about my situation but I never showed it to any of my partners.
I have had a few too many partners. After Ben I got into a time where I wanted to find out who I was and what being female was really like. I started going out with Anne quite often to parties and ended up in with a few very short and bad relations that always failed when the truth about myself came out. I never was able to time the telling about myself right and the result always freaked them out. Maybe its because I pass so well and they can't handle that I used to be a boy.
My worst experience was the guy who called my boss after he found out about me and I lost my job because of that.
I had liked most of my work-mates and I had spent time together outside work with two female colleagues at the time who I thought were my best friends. Their reaction did surprise me because most women are more tolerant of this than men. I was surprised that they didn't ask for an explanation before ignoring me.
I had loved the work and I'd been 'flirting' in a very mild way with the guys who lived at my apartment. I had just been playing 'the game' and so had those two female colleagues too who were both single. I'm sure this was probably the reason why they got so offended when they found out about me. The 'flirting' had been very innocent, but I was somehow encouraged by my two friends to act like them despite my shy personality.
When the information about me came out everything changed completely overnight. People just turned their backs on me and didn't even want to say, 'hi' or talk to me. No one even asked if the rumours were true! My boss asked me a day later about it and told me that my ex boyfriend had called and told him that I was a man. He asked me if that was true. I said, "No I'm not a man, I'm female, but I have had a gender change."
Then he started telling me how important the company's public image was and how easily it could be damaged. He asked me why I'd not told him I was a transvestite. That was his idea of what I was.
He told me also that he didn't tolerate any homosexual behaviour in his company. I was shocked to learn that my ex had called my boss but his reaction was so negative that I couldn't correct him and his stereotypical knowledge of TS things. He said, 'I was still welcome to work in his company if I obeyed the 'rules'.'
I continued working there for a week, but I was just frozen out by everyone so I couldn't continue there and just quit. Luckily I got a very good work résumé from my boss so I had no problem finding a new job.
I was the secretary for my boss doing very similar work as now, my two 'friends,' were doing sales and marketing. I didn't tell my parents about the real reason why I quit that job. I think it wouldn't be as catastrophic if the truth came out at my present work, because I'm very careful now not to 'flirt'or play with my femininity. I think the guys there would be more neutral to me now, not feel like I was trying something.
Those girls were playing the female 'game' together with me, and we joked about the 'silly' men. So when they later found out about me being a 'man' I guess that just freaked them off.
Eventually I was in a quite long relation in which I was feeling quite OK for two years. Tim knew about me and was always telling me he was OK with my past. Our relationship was very non-sexual and we were living in his apartment more or less like brothers.
I was able to dress down my femininity with him and he had an erection problem so was very rarely able to stay erect long enough to have sexual intercourse. We'd experimented with oral sex in the beginning but that had slowed down over time too. I was OK with that low sexual scene and he was OK with me too or so I thought. My parents were happy with Tim too. Unfortunately this relationship ended very surprisingly when he just told me he wanted it to end.
I later found out he had found someone else. A 'real woman' and he'd apparently thought our relationship was just too non-sexual for him. This happened just after Christmas so I was sad about that.
After this I fell into a very deep depression and was again feeling very strongly about the change. However I got myself a computer and found the TS community online. I started to look for info about TS-stuff and also especially tried to find others like me who were post-op and who had openly regretted her decision.
I found information on Female to Male TS too and I was more and more feeling that this was the best option I had. I had also been crossdressing again as a male a few times but I always ended up feeling even worse about everything after doing that!
Chapter 12. To the present day.
That's still the way I'm thinking and making it possible to be sexually involved with my current boyfriend Peter. I'm not able to love him sexually in the way a normal woman loves a man. I can only love him sexually through my mental fantasy world.
I do feel very close to him and I show my feelings to him as well as I can, but I'm pushing myself to show my feelings too. Yes I kiss him on the mouth and I like to touch and just make him feel OK about my presence. This means playing out the false female 'act' unfortunately.
I have built up my 'inner' fantasy world with more pieces and I'm able to satisfy myself sexually very well now. The regrets afterwards are still there and since I started to take androgen this has made both the sexual desire and satisfaction feeling much stronger but also the negative feeling has deepened.
The androgen has if anything strengthened the autogynephilic arousal.
I have been feeling very aroused by the 'sexy' dressing Peter has pushed me into, but I haven't been able to learn how to control the bad feelings about it. That always hits me afterwards and sometimes as early as just after I have got myself dressed in the sexy stuff.
I must be very tough to be around when this hits me. That's partly why I felt I owed him to dress like he likes best while we were out on vacation recently. If I don't get this bad feeling under control, I know it will have negative effect on our relationship. I'm a bit surprised it hasn't had any much negative consequences yet.
A typical situation between us goes a bit like this: We are about to go out dancing or to a restaurant and I feel aroused by all the dressing up and making myself ready for the evening with my make-up and hair.
Sometimes though I hit the 'down swing' as early as at the moment we step out from the house though sometimes I manage to feel OK longer and sometimes I even manage the whole evening without the 'down swing' but it always pops up in the end.
The 'down swing' is a freakish feeling I have difficulty in explaining. It's based on lots of different feelings. Basically I feel very embarrassed about myself. I feel stuck, I feel stupid, I feel like a clown who is wearing a clown costume that I can't get off or wont come off. I feel very upset about my feminine body, my look and especially the way I'm dressed if I happen to be in a more sexy outfit.
It makes me unable to function or be relaxed socially and I basically just want to disappear from public view when I'm dressed as this sexy female. All this has become much stronger with the androgen.
I think the biggest difference with the androgen is that I'm getting turned on more by the way I look and the dressing experience. But when I am looking in the mirror, I'm looking at myself like I was someone else. I mean like the girl looking back in the mirror isn't me somehow. I don't think about this as a prelude to bed later.
The 'down swing' is just suddenly waking up to reality and feeling really bad about the situation I have put myself into. I suddenly get upset for everything and it's very difficult to explain it any better. When that happens I really think my transition to a female never should have happened and it was a big mistake.
I think I would be some kind of a transvestite if I hadn't transitioned. But I think I would be able to live with that easily. I would at least not have to cope with the notion that I have abused my body in this 'bizarre' way!
I just have no possibility now to know what my life as male would have been like. I am very jealous of seeing him being and acting the male I know I really also should have been.
I don't know about how he would react exactly to me doing male things but I know he wouldn't like me to start doing typical masculine things either like fixing the car. He wants to keep his 'girlfriend' as the feminine 'bimbo' or something and I often feel like that when going along with his ideas.
I still feel very odd about my breasts. They produce very strong sexual satisfaction when touched and played with. But I can't always relax and push away my very strong freakish feelings about them either.
He loves to play with them sexually and when I'm in the right mood I absolutely love it too. My mood can change very quickly about this and sometimes I just freak out during lovemaking and feel endlessly uncomfortable for having him touching my breasts. This is when I feel trapped the most about being in the wrong body.
The rest of the lovemaking is the same with lots of mixed feelings. I can absolutely love to feel him hard inside me during sex, but I also can feel the deepest discomfort about it all and also about him sexually as a male when I think about I should be playing his part.
Because his performance doesn't do much for me sexually, I masturbate now and I still get aroused from the same stuff as I always did before. Only the way of masturbating has changed after the surgery and then I discovered my breasts at some time were good masturbating tools too. I now touch my vagina (clitoris) while masturbating when before I never touched my penis. Also like to massage my breasts and the nipples.
I have been thinking that a breast reduction might be one way of handling my situation, although I know Peter wouldn't accept it and I'm not sure my 'feminine' side in me would agree to that in the end either.
He likes my long hair and I do too because it maintains that trapped feeling, like also the long nails I have now does too. Little things like not being able to pick up coins from the table because of my nails arouses me and he likes to see that helplessness in me too.
Yet I despise myself deep inside for playing this 'bimbo act' but somehow it is also liberating me in some odd way. I think I tend to always try to find the easiest way out and it's easier to play 'stupid' and not have to think and let someone else lead you, than really take an active part in what's happening around you.
I have been trying to do things better with him. I have worked very hard to free up myself and not to 'think bad' about my female 'act', but I just am not able to get over the guilt trips about it. I think it's a way of protecting myself. I think I have in a way surrendered to the TV-person in myself and I close my eyes and try not to think of what I have done. If I'm thinking too much about myself, it just depresses me too much.
Much of this 'guilt trip' I experience is probably based on the inner notion that I really shouldn't be female and the regrets for being what I am now all plays a part in this. I'm also in love with the woman in me, but she also makes me sick for having to be her all the time.
I'm OK to be me at times but I never intended to become a female permanently and that is I guess the basic reason for all my problems.
When I look in the mirror to brush my hair or put on make-up, I can still see myself, the old boy me looking back but I also see a woman. I can't really explain how I see myself and it's very confusing. I think I see the things in me I want to see. In non aroused mood I'm just seeing through the picture in the mirror and I see my old self. When I am aroused, I'm looking at the female in the mirror and still today she doesn't feel like being me, it's someone else.
I love the woman I look like in an aroused mood, but I don't feel like 'being' her, I'm just looking at her from outside somehow. I'm getting turned on by what I see and these are the same things I think I would get turned on if I were a man looking at an attractive female.
I think I'm still me, the original boy deepest inside, whatever he then might be. It's frustrating I know! This is why I feel so sick about my female public role because it isn't what I'm feeling is the true me. It's only my fantasy role that I'm not too happy to have to share with the world.
I feel sad about what I have let happen to me, I have by now learned to live my day to day life quite well as a female without all the time feeling bad about myself, but some situations are still very upsetting to me.
Little things like walking along the path home and seeing boys playing ice hockey in the park. Suddenly I remember the way it was and become aware of myself in a very close way. I hear my heels clicking on the path so I stop walking and then I feel my breasts rise and fall as I breathe in and out. Then if it's windy my hair gets in my face and I can taste the lipstick on my mouth. Then I feel the earrings dangling against my neck and then I even feel my long eyelashes fluttering up and down.
When that happens I realise what I have done and have to hurry home. Of course I can't hurry as a man would, all I can do is quicken my steps but walking quickly or running in heels is not easy. I have been caught that way a few times and each time it has taken me a long time to get over the down mood.
Looking at my vagina is a big thing I still have problems with. Dilating is always a mental pain to do. Thank god I'm not doing it very often now, I could even stop it totally, but I'm still doing it to be on the safe side as recommended by my doctor.
I wish I had a fully working penis, but I'm not wishing I had it with this female body. I would like to be a normal male, with a normal male body. I know my desire is not possible to realise so there's no point in talking about this too much, but all I can say is I would physically want to be male and I would like to kill the side in me that wished to remain female! The other side in me is saying the same thing but the other way around!
I feel like the real me is still the original male, but that part has been pushed away by the sexual fantasy part in me, who seems to rule my life too much. When you asked about how I would like to live out the male in me through male hobbies etc, I realised I don't really know in what way I would like to be male.
Wish I would know why I feel this or why it changes in duration. I'm not feeling bad for someone saying I'm not a woman, it's more my inner self that is feeling bad for what I am now!
If I had known how this would end and had I had all the facts about what hormones do and all that then I probably would have stopped it. Well had I known and understood all the facts before the transitioning, I think I wouldn't have even started it!
Chapter 13. Living with Peter
I hope I will be able to adjust in time to my boyfriend Peter. He is very hardworking and reliable, I haven't ever been thinking he might be cheating me or anything like that. He seems happy with me even though he wants sex 5 times a week. I don't think many normal women would put up with that rate of sex but I feel I have to make the effort to keep him in my life.
The most intense sexual excitement I feel though is on my own, while I'm masturbating. I'm not doing it very often now because our sexual relationship is so intense as it is. I feel best when I'm imagining myself to be someone looking at myself from the outside. Perhaps by being my old male self. In that mode I have no problem looking at my femininity and getting aroused by it.
I've tried to explain how I'm feeling sexually about myself, and yes the self arousal plays a big part in me still. I still sometimes stop by the mirror and 'play' with myself like I did before. When doing make-up or fixing my hair the arousal is mostly there. Also feeling excited when dressed in a 'sexy' way when the mood is right. But I feel the weirdness about all this very strongly too, because I am just not able to get 'out' of this situation after the sexual arousal is over and gone.
When together with my Peter I also feel best when I imagine myself to be looking at some third person in our sexual interaction. I had lots of problems with the touching of my breasts and vagina in the beginning because it was difficult to keep up that third person fantasy going. But I manage to do it now without any problems and I think I can say I like the sexual interaction and the excitement I get out from my relationship.
I feel a kind of 'orgasm' mostly through masturbation and only a few times have I been able to feel that when making love with him. Through masturbating I can mentally get away and get myself into the right and optimal mental sexual situation and that's also when I get most sexual satisfaction.
When not alone, it's never possible to relax as much. I would like to make love less often than now, I don't have anything against his way of making love as such, he is very considerate and tries to make it sexually as good as possible for me.
But always after our sex I have this sad, weird and jealous feeling when he is able to go on as a man in his life while I'm stuck being this female I don't want to be. Often when he is making love I have the thoughts of making love to a female and that's very arousing to me.
I'm still shyer than I would like to be and I was very much sheltered by my parents, all the way until the surgery. I didn't socially interact much either and I was very scared of being found out to be TS at school, and there were some difficult questions by my classmates about why I never had to participate in the gym and still didn't seem to have any visible physical problems.
I lost many possible friendships with classmates because of this fear, so I never had many friends and still don't have many. He has a very wide social network and has lots of friends. His friends are becoming mine too but I'm still having problems being as spontaneous socially as I would like to be.
I don't think I'm solely to blame for everything, but that doesn't make much difference really. I still don't see any way to be able to tell my closest ones about this feeling.
I'm able to respond to his love making, but it's not with the true feelings I should have. It's only possible to do this through the transferred third party feelings somehow. I don't know how to explain this but in many ways I feel my body is just a 'thing' and I feel that it's not really me! So sexually I just let things go and I adapt to it rather than make a big noise about being uncomfortable especially when I have no clear idea of what and how I would like to function sexually.
I think I have a good idea about what being man involves. However I was never the kind of male I know I could have been had I not been so preoccupied by my fantasising about being female as a youngster. I also was much too shy to be able to function as a normal male.
I would like to be able to control my autogynephilic feelings a lot better than I'm able to control them now. I would like to be able to dress down my femininity and not have the autogynephilic feelings or his ideas interfering. I think I would need to find out who I really am again and that would be wonderful without having to be concerned about all the social strings and expectations attached to me like before.
I haven't talked about any masculine things I know, and I don't have much interest in stereotypical male interests, but still I know I could do good work as a male. I don't think being friendly and caring as such are typical feminine preferences, males can have those too but yes they aren't very visible in most men and other preferences like being emotional isn't accepted.
No matter what you are physically, there is always some kind of mask or act you can hide behind. I don't think there are very many people on this planet that are totally free about who they are.
I'm sure I would do crossdressing as a male, and I think I would enjoy it sexually much more than the autogynephilic arousal is giving me now. I would also be able to go back to being male after the dressing. I'm sure that would work much better for me.
I'm still hoping to be able to feel OK as a female. I don't think a physical transition back to male would solve much. It would still leave me with very big sore scars in my mind and especially physically. I will never be able to sexually function like a man.
I would remove my breasts if I could change the rest of my body too but because that's not possible the way I would like it. I'm not too interested in ending up halfway between male and female, and I don't want to be seen as a freak.
The turn on for me is still there, but not like it was before my breasts got this big. But Peter isn't thinking they are too large at all, he wouldn't mind if I had even larger ones! He has said many times that he wouldn't mind them being larger. He usually says that when I have been complaining about going bra less or about his dressing ideas.
He's feeling positive about implants but hasn't suggested implants for me seriously. One of his ex girlfriends had implants, all I know about her is that she had almost no breasts before the implants and afterwards she had a B-cup, he has just mentioned her briefly but never told me anything more about her! He's never asked if I had implants.
I do like looking at my breasts and I do find them arousing only I rather wished they were on a real girl instead of me.
I don't think or feel like I have been punishing myself. It's more a question of that I haven't had any possibility to come out about this. I know I should have told my closest about this but I wasn't able to do it or find the right moment. I never wanted anyone to get hurt by me and I know it would hurt and make a lot of problems to my closest family if I told this. I feel like I have taken a big step out of my isolation already with this. I don't think I ever will be able to tell my parents about this, nor can I ever tell Paul.
I so desperately want to be able to feel I'm a female also in my soul, but unfortunately I'm not able to feel that way all the time. This is what I want to try and get over, and I'm going to work hard for it!
Chapter 14. Reflections
I have so many mixed feelings about this and the idea of being homosexual isn't attractive to me, neither is acting out a false female act. I wasn't attracted sexually to males or females for a long time. Wanting to experience what a sexual relation is like was more a way for me to find some meaning in my life.
Once I'd realised I had no way to ever go back to being male again, I decided to learn to be a female instead. And in a way that wasn't too difficult to do since I looked like a female already. I just needed to let myself free and see where that was leading me.
When I decided to go in for a sexual relation, I was thinking in terms of being female. I wouldn't have had the guts to go into a lesbian relationship, because of my parent's attitude and also simply because I didn't know any lesbians. The relationship with Ben just happened a bit too fast and I hadn't really gone through in my mind what I really wanted sexually.
There must be lesbian places, and I could get in contact with lesbians through the Internet too, but this is something I haven't looked into very much yet.
I'm still in that same situation after Ben, because I have just had relationships with guys. I guess that makes me a male homosexual, or bisexual? However if I physically would be male I'm sure I would only be chasing females.
I feel very disturbed about my sexual relations to males. It felt wrong and I was upset about it, but I felt I just had to bear it because it's the price I have to pay to have any kind of relationship.
I know Peter wouldn't have a big problem finding a new girlfriend if he wanted. So I think I need to give him a bit more than a 'normal' girl would be ready to give him. I know it sounds crazy but I really think this is the way our relationship holds together, because the sexual part is very important to him
It felt and still feels very arousing to do the sexual playing before actually making love. I have been able to transfer my feelings into a third person kind of fantasy. It's like I'm not really the one doing this, it's just my 'fantasy' female that's involved in making love and all this with him. I'm just 'looking' at it from outside and that's how I feel aroused. I can't feel sexually aroused when thinking that I'm making love to a man.
By being passive I'm more able to focus my mind on my fantasies, when I'm active during lovemaking I'm always in my autogynephilic aroused mode. Then I'm just aroused by myself acting like a female and in that state of mind I can be very active. So I'm 'passive' if I'm not feeling very hot or sexually aroused, and then I'm just 'laying back' and focus my mind into myself and hope he gets it over with as soon as possible.
I know this sounds totally weird and I know I'm not able to explain this very well, but I'll try to put it in a nutshell. I would say that making love as a female to a male is only possible when I 'look' at the situation like being in a third person, like looking at a 'sex show' or something.
Like I said I feel sad, weird and jealous for him being able to get up and go on with his life as a guy, when I'm stuck as a female. This feeling is especially strong just after lovemaking when I have to clean my vagina. The cleaning is more time consuming and frustrating for me than for a normal female because I always have an infection risk if this isn't done properly.
I've never had any problems being without sex for even longer times, there were times when I didn't masturbate for weeks. But after the androgens were prescribed, I feel a much stronger sexual need to stimulate myself sexually. I have not had the need to press him into sex, it's always Peter who has been the one initiating it. I don't know how I would react now if we hadn't made love for a while, I think I would first satisfy my needs through masturbation.
I have always been very emotional because I cry easily. I did it before I started to transition. I was teased for it in school a lot because I easily started to cry. But being emotional is one way of letting out the pain I feel and to him it must look like I start to cry for the most minimal thing, although I really am crying and emotional for not being able to show the real cause for my distress!
It's not always visible, but I 'let' it become visible if there is something acceptable I can lock up my discomfort with. Like if I'm feeling the 'guilt trip' when out together, I can't cry just like that, then I'm able to lock it up inside me, but if there is something (even minor) happening that I openly could 'make' it into a reason for crying I just let it all out.
He tries to comfort me, and does it very eagerly, but he doesn't know the real cause for my discomfort so he sadly isn't able to give me much comfort. His comforting attempts are actually making me feel really horrible and bad at times. I feel so bad about not being able to be honest about everything with him. He has no desire to find out about what being TS really is all about anyway.
It was the situation I was in right then and the way Peter and I got along talking so well when we first met. He somehow triggered a spark in me to do flirting like I never had done before. I think partly because I was in such a deep depression before I met him, that I really was thinking he was my last hope to get my life together and get over my depressions!
I think I should ask him why he rang me back knowing that he was going to be involved with a TS. I haven't wanted to talk about that very much with him. At the time he called back he said he did like me as a person and he wanted to know everything about me. I know he likes the way I look as a female too otherwise he wouldn't want to have anything to do with me I'm sure.
I don't like oral sex at least not the giving part, and I'm not too excited about the receiving part either. Receiving oral sex is somehow showing in a very brutal way my present situation. I can't really point out what's the most disturbing thing about it. Just something in it that gets me feeling uncomfortable.
I feel strongly for him, I'm not sure what it is really. Is it pure love in my heart or as you say his decision to want to live with me. Think it's a mix of everything! I think he has a very big role in giving me a 'role' in my life good and bad! Without Peter I'm sure I would have been Lost in Space!
When he called me back after I told him I was TS, it was like I was given a second life. After his reaction I thought, 'that was it, I don't have a life.' I had fallen down in a very deep depression again and stayed off from work for 3 days and only forced myself to work when my boss wouldn't give me any more time off.
I didn't know about his extremes at the time and I just felt I desperately needed some way of feeling ok about being a female. I needed positive feedback about my femininity as I desperately wanted to get out of my regrets.
The 'down swing' is like just suddenly waking up to reality, feeling awful for the situation I have put myself into. I suddenly get upset for everything, it is very difficult to explain it better. I don't want to call it self-pity but maybe it is self-pity though that sounds very negative in my ears.
I have been close to going mad many times, and in a way I think I must be mad to have put myself into this situation!
Recently when we went on holiday, I was dressing in short one piece or 2 piece dresses and stuff that was sexier than I normally wear. The clothes weren't over the top compared to what other females were wearing. I didn't go topless at the beach like lots of girls were. I was bra less though with low cut tops but not in an overly naked way though. So I didn't resist his ideas and I did most of it with a good face. The only thing I refused was posing topless for him or being topless at the beach.
Peter reacted with a good face to, he didn't push very much, but he would have wanted me to let go my hang ups about going topless. I guess he was happy that I dressed the way he liked in the other regards and that was enough for him.
I'm sure many women wouldn't go this far along with his ideas, but as I said before I think that's one of the ways I have to keep him happy with me. I think I have to 'work' harder than real women to keep him happy.
The embarrassment I feel in public is very tough to handle, but so far I have managed. But its easier to go along with it when I know that no one knows how I'm feeling about this inside, so that helps me to live with the mixed up feelings.
I do think I'm right about the fact that I have to do a bit more than a normal female to keep his interest. If he was in the situation that he had two identical girls to decide who he wanted to date, he would pick the real woman if that was the only difference between them.
The autogynephilic feelings are what get me dressing in an over feminine way and they are also preventing me from saying out "STOP, I don't want this anymore".
I think the autogynephilic feelings are the same as the TV-personality in me so in some way I go along and do the feminine acting and dressing because the tv-part in me is aroused by it and wants it to continue. But when the sexual satisfaction is met or the autogynephilic feeling goes away, I "wake up" from this mood and that's when the down swing happens and I feel trapped.
In the downswing my tv-side suddenly just disappears and all the other feelings pop back up in my mind. In this mode I basically just freak out at myself for not being able to act the male I feel I am. This is a feeling where I get upset about anything that reminds me of my femininity, so I avoid looking in mirrors, or looking at myself while showering or going to the toilet.
Luckily I'm mostly hit by this feeling when I'm at home, but at times it happens when we are out in public at a party or something. Those situations are the worst to handle because it's not possible to avoid being reminded of your femininity when it happens at a party for example. I'm very scared of breaking down and losing control over myself.
My memory from the time I was living as a boy isn't very strong any more and I have only been able to dig up bits here and there from my past. But now through this, those memories have become stronger and clearer again to me and that helps me to hopefully better understand myself. The old memories about my life as a boy are fading, but the constant feeling that I really should be a man, is not. This feeling is more like getting stronger over time but anyway these talks with you has helped me to find back to the old memories and that is only a good thing I'm sure!
When I'm in the autogynephilic aroused mode, I just love the way I look as a female. I just 'play' mentally with myself like I think I would do if I was a man and getting involved with a female! I have the advantage that I can dress the way I would like to see a female erotically or pose like the 'male part or TV-Part' in me wants to.
I'm just basically looking at myself like it was someone else I'm looking at. This is also the reason why I go along with dressing in an over feminine way I think, because the tv-part in me gets very aroused by it and this feeling oversteps all the other feelings I have about this in my mind. I feel sexually excited about it in different ways. The mildest way is just a tingling pleasure feeling all over. It can grow to a stronger self-fixated feeling.
The stronger it gets the more I'm shutting out the outside world from my mind, I just somehow fall in to a mental dream world acting the female role and feeling very excited by it. I can be in this mind set in public with him or then in private. If in private it might include masturbation.
When I'm feeling this way I am acting very actively sexually with him so he really has no way to know how bad all this gets me feeling afterwards. The downside can last from just an hour or so up to a longer depression lasting sometimes for days.
I have no clear idea of how I would make love to a woman but for me the most important thing would be to feel a female body and just be very close to her and feel her next to me, I wouldn't mind if that would be all there is. I have been reading some lesbian stories and I can identify with that partly, but not all feelings expressed in those stories. I haven't read much of this stuff yet, and I think I will find some stories that I can identify with.
I'm always trying to imagine a situation that is sexually exciting to me too. But I am able to feel sexual satisfaction too when all my mind exercising is working, so its not a completely black situation. At times I'm able to find the way to sexual satisfaction, but at other times I just feel so empty on that point.
The feeling of not having the 'right sexual tools' is often hindering me and making me uncomfortable about letting myself go sexually. Also the constant reminder of what I should be like when seeing him is adding up on that problem.
I'm not refusing very often to go along with him his way, but I'm not totally led by him either, although I know it sounds that way very much. I sometimes refuse when I'm feeling too bad for doing it or when I'm too tired etc, but I am afraid of refusing too often.
Masturbation is the way I'm able to get an orgasm and yes it's more satisfying, because you can concentrate totally on yourself and your own feelings.
His mother is very plain and is joking about my dressing at times too and I have been so close to tell her that her son has a big part in this!
What would it have helped to tell my parents? I didn't want to tell them how difficult my sexual situation was as post-op to them, because I just hoped all the time this was going to be better soon anyway over time. I guess they imagined I would have some problems in a sexual relationship, but we never talked about it and it was just not an issue to talk about. I know they assumed I was talking about this with my therapist so that's probably why they never asked about it!
I don't like to focus sexually around my vagina, in oral sex that is happening and it makes me uncomfortable to have him down there looking at it! In normal sex you just 'feel' your way through. I somehow feel better to just try and feel the sexual stimulation and enjoy the feeling it brings without thinking that the feeling is coming from my vagina.
I can't imagine starting all over looking for a relationship, its just a too big and tough a process to go through all the acceptance and all that. I would however want to try a relationship to a female if my relation with him ends or then I would just move.
I'm also making it so much more difficult for him to understand my ever changing mood swings about the dressing issue. At times I just love to do the dressing he likes and then at other times I'm just protesting. I need to be able to control this acting a lot better somehow!
I can't ask him…"Hey how much can I change in me before you would stop loving me?"
It is like I have a sub conscience and I'm finally able to talk very openly about myself. I am dead scared of this coming out to my family or him and that's one of the reasons I don't want to open up a real life communication to you just yet! I feel I've opened up too much to be able to handle it in a real life contact, I would need the time it takes for me to get everything locked into the right places in my mind before going on to a real contact.
I have just been talking about so deep personal things about me and I know I would never have been able to open up in a real life situation!
I feel so endlessly stupid about being in the situation I am in when the downswing hits me, that's probably the strongest feeling. But it's actually a mix of many different feelings I guess. I feel angry at myself for putting me in this situation, I feel regrets, I feel dirty, freakish etc.. just all the bad things possible I guess.
Unless I would be able to go back to being physically a normal functioning male, I don't think any form of transitioning back to maleness would be able to make me happy. I still wouldn't be the man I should be after removing my breasts and starting on androgen I still would just be a crippled half male or something and that's much worse than being what I am now! So the only way I think is possible for me is to go on as a female and just be able to feel ok about that!
It's a feeling I have always had in some way or the other but it's become a lot stronger during my time together with Paul. He has somehow triggered a crazy need in myself to do the tv-part, this has never been this strong before, and I feel like losing control over myself with this. I know I should not let the "tv-behaviour" take control when it happens, but I can't stop it anyhow!
It is like a drug I guess you can say, it's escalating over time and that's easy to see when you look just one year back.
I cant get back in the aroused mode after the initial arousal dies out, because there is nothing left in my mind that finds the situation exciting…my "mind roles" has somehow switched places and only the "freaking out" feeling is on top of all other feelings!
I hate this situation and don't know how to solve it! The only way I can temporarily make it easier and push forward the down swing is to act out more of the tv-role while I'm in that aroused mode, but that also results in a deeper downswing afterwards.
I know I would be able to cope sexually with a female, but I'm very unsure about how a female would find me sexually? I think I told you about the post-op I once talked to in USA, who was a lesbian. She told me about her sexual problems with "real" females. She has had many sexual relations to females, and none of them has been very long. She said that real females don't see her 100% as a female, because she doesn't "smell" and "taste" like real females do! I never saw any pictures of her so I don't know if she other ways was able to pass very well, but she said she passed very well normally as a female.
Going in for a sexual relation with a woman feels attractive to me, but I'm very unsure if I ever would be able to satisfy a female sexually? In this regard I feel so sad that I never had the chance to find out what a sexual relation to a female as male was like!
I'm very rarely if ever trying to fight back those comments, because I just don't think it would make things any better, and my mind isn't that quick so I can respond to it in a fast and clever way, I just figure out what I should have said after the situation is over!
The only way I'm reacting to it is mostly that I show some kind of discomfort with the situation by keeping my conversation shorter than normal for example! I know it's not a good way to turn it inside this way, but that's just the way I function, unfortunately!
Well I hear comments from the others at work that I'm twisting my bosses little finger all the time, that I get my way straightened out by using my "female power" with customers etc. This is presented in a joke form, but I'm not sure it is just the "joke". They are telling me that they think I'm using unfair tools to get things going my way, but this is exactly the opposite to what I have always tried to do in this company, so it makes me a bit confused about what they really mean, or if it really is just a harmless joke.
I often overhear them talking in a macho tone about females in general, and often about me too. The most bizarre comments to me has been sometimes if I have been in a bad mood or something, then I might get comments like "watch out guys she's having her bad days!"
Some of the guys often try to show "empathy" by stepping over what I think is tasteful. Like doing over familiar touching of me or hugging or patting my butt. Sometimes that's followed by some stereotypical comments too.
But there are situations outside the office in public that's disturbing too. I just list up a few here, I know many females find this disturbing and so do I too, but I think my reaction is a bit stronger than normal. This is just describing the situation between males and females generally, it's far from an equal situation between the genders, the female is always in the weaker part!
Staring can sometimes be very upsetting. The worst I have experienced was in the bus. It continued for a few weeks. There was a guy who just kept staring at me and usually they look away when you catch them looking at you, but this guy didn't. He wasn't going with my bus every day but enough to make me feel bad and scared to take the bus every morning. He was probably mentally handicapped or something and was between 40-50. He saw where I got off the bus and I was always scared he would start following me, but luckily he never did!
In crowded places like elevators I have felt people touching me and often also tugging my hair.
My clitoris is partly stimulated during penetration in some positions better than others but I often try to imagine I'm the penetrator and that's why I prefer the positions where I'm on top of him and having better control of how deep he goes. I also have control of how he stimulates and touches my clitoris.
When I come I'm not getting any very strong orgasmic feeling, I have never felt that, not even as pre-op. But yes I feel the last bit of satisfaction is missing, its an orgasm I'm feeling that I'm sure about, but it feels like I'm not quite able to get to the real final big satisfaction point like I am sure he does.
It's a feeling that something is missing! I'm not sure this feeling will become better or stronger or if I will be able to experience the final satisfaction. I have my doubts about it and I think this is the best kind of orgasm I will be able to ever get!
Through the androgen addition I was able to get to this orgasmic point and also my sexual appetite as you know did change a lot due to the androgen. This is also a thing that gets me so sad when I see the way Peter gets his orgasms in one big go and then he's feeling satisfied, whereas I just am left hanging in the air and not able to get that same big final feeling! Getting an orgasm is very time consuming and hard work to get.
I am feeling better now than a year ago, so it's going in the right direction I think now but I need to do a lot of adjustments still!
If it happens after when get going intimately, I just try not to show it to him and I go through with the 'acting' even though I would like to just disappear. I just 'grin and bear it'!
That's why I feel so bad and 'guilty' because he is showing a lot of love for me. I think I'm able to show a lot love to him too, but I'm not sure about how 'genuine' my love is. It's partly something I have learned to do!
There is no end to this story because I am now 29 years old and already 11 years post-op. There isn't a day goes by when I don't think of my situation and what I have missed by doing this to myself.
I hope that you have been able to understand my problems and understand my situations.
Email me on Elaine.w@cwcom.net if you would like to make any comments.
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