I am sitting here feeling very confused and disillusioned. I am no longer sure that any of this transgender stuff is anything but a delusional fantasy. The thing that makes it really bitter is that I believed it all. I'd had these drives for 57 of my 61 years and my siblings say it was evident even before that. I'd been led to believe that the solution for the problem was the surgery that I had.
There are people in my life who try very hard to accept me and will even use the correct pronouns, yet it seems that the moment I start talking about a mate, it bothers them; this even among members of the GBLT set. It really confuses me. I've had the same disappointing discussion with members of this site.
This life long preoccupation with Gender Dysphoria, cost me a wife of 39 years, my three children, my job and my church. Now, I am having doubts about my own intelligence because I listened to many who said that they were transgendered.
Oh, I am very happy that I had the operation, but I am very hurt by the numbers of people who I run into that can not seem to grasp the need of a transwoman for emotional intimacy, love and eventually sexual intimacy with a Man.
What in the hell was I thinking?
If you are here entertaining your own trans fantasies, you need to find transwomen with Male mates who think that transitioning was the solution.
Comments
I know several
The thing is, a lot of the people whose aims and ideals are more congruent with mainstream society are not going to be coming here to read TG fiction. And the GLBT umbrella has always had holes in it.
Life is.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Ah Gwen
You can't worry too much about others, just go with your own thoughts and feelings with the old,.. if it hurts no-one go for it.. as a proviso.
I have some TG friends that will only consider women, others men. Personally it's more the person but then not being 'complete' as it were there's another wrinkle to work out. I have one good GG girl-friend, platonic, who gently set me up with a guy a few months back. Tentative? Who me? Well he's pretty cool, we've been out a couple of times in a just friends sort of way, which is perfectly fine by me. There'd be some serious tip-toeing around on both sides before anything else was likely, if ever. Talk about delayed teenage angst...hah.
Just gotta be true to you and all that. Wasn't there a song...'Que sera, sera...'...
Kristina
ps the evil teardrop thingie got this. Is there any way to retrieve a part written comment?
Gwen
While I'm not transgendered (although I thought I might have been at one time) what I have found is that some people in the community are very dogmatic in how they feel about things. You are either with them or you are wrong. What if you were a gay man, you would meet a LOT of people who are opposed to the needs you express. A LOT of the same people would also be turned on by the thought of two women together...so much for consistency.
One VERY important thing you say is that you are HAPPY you had the operation, so it sounds like you know you made the correct choice for yourself. Peer pressure and societal pressures can be a very strong thing, and can hold you back if you let them. People have hangups about big things and little things. In the end it is what YOU believe. If you are willing to hope and dream, you have a chance at getting what you want. If you let others rob you of hope, then you will ultimately hold yourself back.
Am I any kind of expert? No. I'm in the middle of being separated on the way to divorce. I have disabling back problems which prevents me from working. I am on a fixed income from social security. If you look at online ads of what women are looking for..successful, financially secure, not-fat...it can be discouraging. However I don't want to be alone the rest of my life, but I come with financial and physical baggage that might be hard for someone to look past. I still have hope.
And please don't get me wrong, I'm sure it is much harder in your situation, and wouldn't presume to equate them. I'm just trying to say have hope, and look to yourself for strength and positivity. Don't let others presumptions, discomforts become your own. If they are uncomfortable talking about basic human need, then find someone you can talk to about it.
I hope this doesn't overstep any boundaries or it too familiar in tone. I only mean you well.
Hugs
Alexis
Gwen. DLTBGYD
If you don't know the meaning of those letters, PM me or call me on skype. You are a good person, Gwen, and if some others can't see that you need the same intimacy as a gg does, well then they aren't worth bothering with.
There are, unfortunately, in this world, people who seem to make it their lifelong purpose to make certain no one finds happiness. Probably because they have none of their own and don't want anyone else to have what they can't have.
Rest assured that they are in the minority, although I will grant you that it doesn't seem that way when you are on the receiving end of their vitriol and scorn.
If cussing was allowed here, I'd use several 'colorful metaphors' to describe them, but I'd still probably fall short of expressing my true feelings about these 'spoilers' as I like to call them.
They aren't worth your time or concern, Gwen. Go out there and get what you want, and Sc--w those who disapprove! Non illegitimi carborundum, Gwen!
All my love and respect,
Catherine Linda Michel
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.
Gwen, it's not just your being TG although that is a factor
I am male, fifty and have only rarely dated.
It's not that I don't fancy women, I fancy them terribly but I am painfully shy and fear rejection. It's weird as I got on well with girls in grade school and still do. I have never been atracted to me sexually. As friends, yes but never because they looked hot.
Maybe its a family thing? Our parents didn't marry until their mid twenties and that after dating each other for four years. My younger sister didn't date until forty and is now enguaged for over three years. Maybe they will marry by fifty?
Being TG and having had the surgery is a complication but lonelyness is part of the human condition. I am happy your body fits your mind now. You will find someone and if not, have some fun at least. What gets me is at your age, the men can't be intersted in fathering children so wahts the big deal? A loving person is just that.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Gwen -- Don't Despair
Like you, I've had TG feelings since I was four. I imagine our life experience has been similar in that we ravished any information we could get about our condition until the internet opened huge doors for us. All of a sudden we found hundreds and thousands of kindred souls, and more material to read than we could ever digest.
It seemed like we were in a brand new ballgame of acceptance.
Then the tide began to turn. Once the internet providers didn't need the large numbers of TG people to support them they started to shut down the chatrooms. The politicians, on both sides of the aisle, stirred public opinion against alternative lifestyles in an attempt to capture the righteous right. In possibly the unkindest cut of all, the GBLT movement decided it would be politically expedient to jettison the "T" in order to get national anti-discrimination legislation passed.
You appear to be a stable person who's doing her best to weather a violent storm. I can only speculate, to try to imagine what you're going through. I would love to be in your high heels, but lack the guts. However, from the distant outside looking in, you have lost a huge part of your support system. Particularly, you've lost the "unconditional" love that comes from immediate family.
Yes -- you have been lied to, but wasn't at least a small amount of that lie the false illusion of "unconditional" love. Aren't there always "conditions"?
One of my favorite songs is "Is That All There Is?" by Peggy Lee. Give your age, I'm sure you remember it. Peggy was a North Dakota farm girl who made it big, only to sing a song about disillusionment. The farm I grew up on was only a few miles away from hers. It scared me as a college student to hear that song, as I was beginning to worry about life. That was during the year I decided the best way to avoid heartache was to swear off relationships with girls. I was miserable without them and after about five months realized that shutting out the world had solved nothing.
There are those who demand a "purity" of intent, and they might be the biggest liars of them all. Those would be the ones who say, "You should be happy with SRS purely for the transformation and not sully the experience with any sexual derivative." Their reasoning denies basic human needs.
My guess is that the definition of "transgendered" is a changing thing and that your definition may have move toward the transsexual end of that spectrum. Those who find comfort in the thought of cross-dressing would also be transgendered. Those who find comfort in reading TG fiction are also transgendered, even if they've never owned their own lingerie.
I hope you find Mr. Right. I hope for Mr. Right, that he finds you. Love is defined by the participants -- not by the spectators.
Do yourself a favor and read Wooden by John Wooden. Pay special attention to what he has to say about reputation and character.
Good luck to you. There is more to life than suffering, but I'm sure you already know that.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Well I like you ...
... just the way you are, and wish you happiness just the way you want it.
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
Hang In there Gwen My Friend
And you will find that special someone for you.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
With Friends Like Those...
...who needs enemies?
You might need yourself some new friends. Maybe stop hanging out with people who think of you as a "transwoman" instead of as a woman.
Even as a woman, there are those in society who think it's bad to seek romance at the age of 61. Talk about old-fashioned!
Gwen, you're on an equal footing with women your own age now. (i.e. post-menopausal!) So, get out there and have fun!
What were you thinking?
I wasn't there, inside your head at the time so I can only guess. I'm guessing it was something like, "They love me for who I am, and I'll still be me when I get this fixed so they'll still love me, right?" And somehow in the event, they didn't.
You, having lived with your dual nature all your life, couldn't see yourself any other way, so you knew in your heart you'd still be the same you, only happier. They, having never seen that internal struggle, having only seen the outer you as long as they'd known you, somehow couldn't see you as the same person they had loved when your outside changed in a way that to you seemed simply an affirmation of your identity but seemed like a complete about-face to them. Somehow your gender, or sex, or however you want to term it--essentially, which half of humanity you're grouped into due to relatively minor anatomical differences--overrides everything else in how most people perceive you. It's precisely why it was so important to you to do it, and also precisely why it was so hard for them to accept it.
Delusional? Not you. You are what you are. Others who can't accept that in spite of the evidence of their own eyes might be called delusional though. People mostly see what they want to see, what they expect to see, and don't like having their pat little fantasies of what the world is like intruded upon by evidence to the contrary. I tell myself it's not so much us that bothers them per se, as it is that in order to accept us for who we are they'd have to actually adjust how they think about the world and their place in it. They'd actually have to think.
As long as they can fit everything into a neat little category they're happy. But then we come along and they haven't got a convenient pigeonhole for us, so they put us in one of their pre-existing ones with a caveat--either he's a very confused (and/or perverted) boy or OK so she's a girl now but she used to be a boy which is really weird and why would anyone want to do that? Which reaction is more likely probably depends on where you live. Sounds like in your neck of the woods, the former is the rule rather than the exception.
More enlightened souls will accept you at face value and treat you with basic human dignity and respect while thinking about how to adjust their worldview so you fit in it, if they haven't already. I'm incredibly fortunate to have a number of such people in my life, including my parents, sister, and niece, along with several long-time friends. And I happen to live in what's been called possibly the most trans-friendly city on Earth, Seattle. It sounds to me as if your circle of friends and relations is sorely lacking in this contingent. If you want to seek them out, and I think you might, I've noticed they tend to be associated with activities requiring a lot of curiosity and imagination--role-playing gamers, geeks, artists, fiction writers, theatre and film folk, SF and fantasy fans (and I feel like I'm calling roll for the self-identified affiliations of frequent visitors to this site, so if I've left someone's "tribe" out I apologize). Even among these groups of course this level of enlightenment isn't universal, but it does seem to me (with no numbers to back me up) to be a lot more common.
Maybe I just believe all this because I need to. I'm just taking the first fearful baby steps along the road you've traveled and your experience isn't offering me a lot of encouragement. But I do see promising signs, even other reports from that terra incognita, that it can be different, better, and am trying to offer you that as a realistic and realizable hope too. Because you seem to really need it right now.
There Is more
Gwen
This is NOT "all there is". There definitely is more to life. Sometimes it is darn hard to find it however. We all need mates. The ‘loners’ are disillusioning themselves.
Just to keep the story straight, I’m over a decade older than you and not TG or CD (well on the exterior anyway). However I do know what that lonesome feeling is and the need to find a mate. I think the Brits have a better use of the term ‘mate’ than we Americans. For them, a mate is simply a close personal friend that will stand with you when you need it. Although a mate is usually the same sex as the person, it isn’t always, nor is it required. I’ve been married over 50 years, yet the only ‘mate’ I ever had was a male. For almost as long as I’ve been married, he was the one I could confide in and draw support from. Unfortunately, I lost him to suicide last year. Although the circumstances are not even close, when I think of the angst and agony I’ve gone thru because of my mate, who was openly known to most of my friends and co-workers, I believe I can make a fair guess at what you are having to deal with.
As both Justme and John-in-Wauwatosa have said, you’re on an even footing with the other women in your age group. I do think you need to get over the belief than you are a ‘transwoman’. You are a woman. Period, end of statement. I, too, hope you will tell the naysayers to f... off, and grab your own life with both hands. Seek that mate wherever and however you can, and if you have to ‘discard’ some along the way, do it.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I do, very deeply, understand what the loss of your immediate family, especially after 39 years, can mean. I’ve invested over 50 years, have children, grandchildren, and ggchildren, but really have nothing to replace my mate. Please don’t give up now. You’ve shown more courage than many of us to get to where you are. Keep going, and give yourself the best shot at a new life that you can.
As much as someone can who has never met you except here, I love you, and wish you all the best.
Ralph (Old Fox)