NotExpected 06

Not What We Expected by Tiffany B. Quinn Over the next couple of days, the more I thought about the suggestion of dressing completely as a girl the less objectionable it became. I thought that I might just give it a try. Someday. Maybe soon. We’ll see.

Chapter 6

At the first of March, life at home was both good and bad.

Sandra and I continued becoming closer as friends, but with the widening apparent age difference and my definite leaning towards the female persuasion, she was starting to feel more like an older sister than a wife. We both recognized and discussed at length the change in our relationship. We still avoided talking about what it meant for our marriage. I think that we both still held out hope, slim as it might be, that there was some way to undo my changes.

Sandra, on the other hand, was quite pleased with her physical changes. She was now up to 5' 9" in height and quite willowy. She was definitely outshining your average fashion model by then. It would appear that Grandma Broussard wanted a trophy wife for her favorite grandson. We both had admitted some time ago that we believed that Grandma Broussard was behind the changes. We just never talked about the elephant in the room. That second bolt could only have come from Tom.

A few days after the psychologist suggested a change in my wardrobe, as we were getting ready for work, I was donning my normal ‘uniform’ for the day. This consisted of the most conservative female jeans that I could find and the polo shirt that we all wore at work with our department name embroidered over the left breast. I had to regularly get new shirts as I continued to shrink. I still hadn't made the jump suggested by my psychologist into all female attire.

“Andy,” Sandra said tentatively as she watched my pull my feminine jeans up over my male underwear, “I think that we need to do something more with your wardrobe.”

Due to the physical changes we both needed to go clothes shopping regularly. By this point it was apparent to all who knew or saw me that female clothes were better suited to my changing body than male clothes. We'd pick up new girl's jeans in progressively smaller sizes every couple of weeks and a few boy's shirts as I still had a flat chest and was making a vain attempt at looking male. I also had to get new shoes occasionally as my feet were shrinking. Jeans and boy’s shirts were pretty much the only clothes that I wore during this period. I was still wearing boy's underwear, but with my shrunken male bits I didn't really need them any more. Female jeans aren't made for someone wearing male underwear.

Looking in the mirror, I asked, “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“It is pretty obvious that you are wearing male underwear under those feminine jeans,” She pointed out.

‘What’s wrong with that?” I asked confused.

“It just looks wrong,” she points out. “You look like a girl trying to be a boy.”

“It’s been that way since we started buying women’s jeans,” I pointed out.

Sandra sighed in sad resignation, “The contrast has gotten more obvious the last couple of weeks. You used to look like a boy wearing girls jeans. I think that you, and I, need to accept the inevitable.”

“What do you mean?” I asked curiously, already knowing the answer.

She walks over to her underwear drawer and pulls out a package of new white cotton hipster panties and hands it to me.

“You need to start looking the part,” she sadly said. “I think that we need to accept that you are now more girl than boy. I bought these for you a couple of days ago. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to present them to you.”

“Just so you know,” I said as I accepted the package, “my psychologist thinks I need to start wearing them too. She also suggested that I get some blouses, bras, and small breast forms. She and my doctor both think that real breasts are in my future. She also suggested girl’s shoes and socks. She encouraged me to start wearing nothing but female clothing. She said that I didn't need to go girly, just some subtle changes to what I'm already wearing. No dresses, skirts or high heels. She thinks that it will help me accept the changes.”

"You wouldn't stand out so much," she sadly observed. "Everyone you meet seems to think that you are a girl anyway."

I can see something change in her eyes. It is as if she has made some decision that she has been putting off. There is almost relief there.

She embraces me with tears in her eyes, “I know that this must be hard for you. It’s hard for me. You know that I love you, don’t you?”

“I do,” I let her know, “girlfriend. And I love you.”

She gives me a squeeze, “Well, girlfriend, maybe we should do a little shopping after work instead of going to the gym.”

So that’s what we did.

And I wore panties to work that day. They actual felt much more comfortable than my male underwear.

----<0>----

When we went shopping that evening no one questioned my girl status. If any of the sales people realized that I was male, they never indicated it. I looked like a late blooming skinny teen girl with only a hint at curves.

We picked up some rather plain underwear, including white cotton panties and bras. After buying a pair of A cup breast forms, Sandra had me don one of my new bras so that we could find some tops that fit. We found a couple of suitable tops that weren't to girly. I made sure that they were in solid, not too feminine, colors. They did not hide the fact that I was wearing a bra. We also bought a pair of rather sensible shoes suitable for work and casual use and socks to go with them. She also bought me a couple of plain cotton nightgowns. I wore the shoes and one of the tops, with the requisite bra and forms, as we left the store. For the first time, there was not a stitch of male clothing on me.

Sandra had become something of a girly girl and loved to dress for maximum effect. While we were at the store that evening, we also looked through the dresses for her. As we went through the options, we discussed the pros and cons of each like two longtime girlfriends. I learned a lot more than a guy needs to know about dresses, but as an emerging girl it was something that I would probably want to know sooner than later. No one batted an eye when I accompanied Sandra into the dressing rooms as she tried on several dresses.

She ended up selecting a rather sexy dress that was barely suitable for the office. It wasn’t too short or two low, but it hugged her figure and looked ravishing on her. She looked upscale and sexy in a tasteful way at the same time. She was definitely going to be a distraction in the office if she ever gets brave enough to wear it to work. She also picked up a nice evening dress. She purchased appropriate shoes for both outfits, the heels of which were a bit higher than she would have worn six months ago.

As we were walking through the mall with our purchases, we passed an upscale lingerie store.

“You know what those new dresses need?” I asked Sandra with an evil grin.

“What?” she asked confused.

“They just scream for some lingerie to match,” I say as I incline my head to the lingerie store. The male part of me, what was left of it, could only imagine what a girl would be wearing under dresses like the ones we purchased for her. I knew that she didn’t have a lot to choose from at home. I also knew that I could enter the store as if I belonged there.

She blushed as I dragged her into the store.

We spent over half an hour in the store and ended up getting some lingerie worthy of the dresses.

She insisted that I get into the swing of things, so I walked out with a conservative, yet sexy, satin bra and panty set… in black. Sandra bought me a relatively conservative pink babydoll negligee with matching panty. I don't think that the negligee will see the outside of my drawer anytime soon.

“It will help you get into the role,” she insisted.

As we continued on our way out of the mall, I noticed that Sandra's updated figure and fashion was getting noticed. She acted as if she wasn’t aware of the appraising looks but I am pretty sure that she did. Women stared daggers at her and the men just drooled. She seemed to reveal in the attention. The looks seemed to raise her confidence and made her more self assured. I am pretty sure that she intentionally did the catwalk strut through the mall to tease all the leering males. She was flirting. The husband in me frowned and wanted her out of view knowing what all those males were thinking.

That night, as I lay waiting for sleep to overtake me, wearing one of my new cotton nightgowns, while laying next to a softly snoring Sandra, I shed a silent tear as I knew that I had now crossed a boundary. It was clear that both Sandra and I had given up the fight. We had accepted the inevitable. That meant that our marriage was doomed.

But at least I still had my best friend.

The next morning, I had my best friend coach me in the skill of shaving my legs and armpits.

-----<0>-----

As we moved further into March, I noticed that Sandra was obviously very conflicted. I was pretty sure that it had to do with the implications of my changes on our marriage and Grandma’s prophecy that implied that there’d be a new man in her life. I had no doubt that the new man would be Tom. I didn’t bring it up in our conversations and she kept the topic at arm’s length, but I was getting the impression that Sandra knew that our marriage was effectively over and that her attraction to Tom was growing. I knew that it was tearing her up inside. The guilt and conflict were obvious in her eyes and expressions. It was a heavy burden to carry. Unfortunately, I knew that she needed to be the one to broach the subject, so I just waited for her to say something.

At the beginning of March, my male bits were pretty much gone. I was a eunuch. Only a small nub of a penis remained and that had moved further down to where a clitoris is found on a woman. My balls had long since disappeared, leaving empty sacks behind. My new panties fit perfectly and I was fascinated by my new flat crotch. I still had a boyish figure, but my hips had started to fill out a little while I was continuing to lose overall body mass.

It was at the end of February that I could no longer stand to pee. It had been a challenge for the prior month but now it was an impossibility. It seemed like another part of my maleness had disappeared and I was in a funk for a couple of days. The silver lining to this problem, however, was that I can now use both hands to read while sitting on the throne. There is nothing needing directing anymore, I could just sit and release. It seemed to be a small consolation. This development was probably one of the main contributing reasons that both my psychologist and Sandra encouraged me to embrace my femininity by dressing as a girl.

About the only things missing in my outward physical transformation were a fully girlish figure, breasts and a vagina. The breast forms addressed one of those deficiencies. I suspected that those changes weren’t far away. My chest was beginning to itch a bit. As we neared the six month anniversary of our visit to Grandma Broussard, no one identified me as a boy. I also looked to be about 14 or 15 years old. Undoubtedly, I am the prophesied teen girl.

I should point out, that neither Sandra nor I had mentioned Grandma Broussard's magic to anyone other than Tom. And we didn't give him the details. That includes the doctors, our friends, coworkers, family, etc. They knew nothing about the magic. They all knew that I am morphing but they were all working from the idea that the changes are spontaneously occurring. We decided to keep it that way as no one wants a media circus. Also, the highly educated professionals would likely dismiss the idea of magic anyway. No one would believe us if we attributed the changes to magic. It was easier, and more believable, if we acted confused about a curve ball thrown at me by nature. The doctors had run every test that they can imagine, but no one had found a cause for the problem. They were still searching. The change was happening so slowly that it appeared to a natural process. So far we had been able to limit my direct exposure to the medical community. I normally only interfaced with the family doctor and psychologist. They had been consulting many other professionals, but they were taking the lead in trying to understand what was happening and why.

The concept of morphing gender is not unknown in nature. One expert pointed out that Clown fish are all born male. The most dominant males turn into females (a process known as sequential hermaphroditism). Funny that Disney did not bring that up in Finding Nemo. I'm not sure that I was a dominate male, but the process seemed to be the same for me with the addition of age regression.

In the meeting with my psychologist after I first started dressing as a girl, she asked me a question that had been on everyone's mind, including mine.

"Andy," she started, "Why do you think that you're adjusting so well to these changes?"

I had to sit back for a few minutes to formulate a reply. I had been thinking about this very question for some time.

"I'm not sure that I am," I responded thoughtfully. "I haven't let anyone see me crying when I get depressed about the changes."

"Curious," she responds, "I haven't seen any signs of depression."

I just shrugged. "It's there, from time to time. Less now than at first."

"Actually," I continue after thinking for a few more minutes. "I do have a couple of theories.

"First, I've never sweated things I can't change. I have always just found ways to make the most of situations outside my control. What good does it do to bang your head against a rock? You might find yourself in a situation beyond your control that you don't like, but there is always a silver lining somewhere and you can always find a way to adjust to it. I think the phrase is making lemonade out of lemons.

"I've always been impressed by a quote from Victor Frankl in Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning,  He said, in relation to his horrific experiences during World War II, 'The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance...'

"I am choosing to make the decision to be as happy as I can be in these circumstances.  The choice to be a victim or not is up to me. I don't want to be a victim.

"Take the infertility issue, for example. At first I was as anxious to be a parent as Sandra was. However, when it became apparent that parenthood wasn't in my future, I was ready to let it go and move on. I chose not to become miserable over something that can't be fixed. Not so with Sandra. She is needy for a baby and won't let it go. Her compulsion was causing friction in our relationship as she became progressively less happy. She wasn't happy that I gave up so soon. I tried to be supportive, but she didn't really think that I was. I tried to help her to find a silver lining in what fate has dealt us but she couldn't stop banging her head against the rock long enough to consider other options. She was getting frustrated with me when I wasn't as adamant about having a baby as she was. We were not being at all successful at making lemonade, but I was trying to. She refused to let go of the lemons. She was becoming a victim of her circumstances. Whether or not she wants to admit it, I can now see that her inability to let go was starting to eat at our marriage.

"As far as my changes go, no one could figure where this was going at first so all sorts of things were tried. There are lots of medical professionals out there who are still trying to figure out what is happening to me and why. None of the test results make sense.

"Once we saw that I was slowly morphing into a girl and there wasn't anyway to stop it, the only real solution was to quit fighting it. You suggested it last time we met. That's why I'm dressed as a girl today.

"Maybe I give up too soon, on occasion, but I have found that it is easier to go around an unsolvable problem than to beat my head against it.

"In this case, the damage is done, so what else can I do? I need to move forward in a positive way or I will become miserable. Nothing good could come from that."

"What is your other theory?" she asked with interest.

"The other theory is a version of the boiled frog scenario. How do you boil a frog? If you drop him straight into hot water he will hop out. If you put him a pot of cold water he will swim around and not notice it as you slowly turn up the heat. He has time to adjust to the temperature and doesn't notice the danger until it is too late.

"In my case the changes have been slow and subtle from day to day. I've had time to adjust. While I don't think that I could have hopped out of the pot at anytime, the slow change has probably helped me a lot. I think that if I had just woken up female one morning I would have really freaked out.

"I think that I panicked when the first hormone treatments didn't work, but at the same time, I started to see some very positive changes in my relationship with Sandra. I think that if we had continued on the path that we were on that bad things were likely to happen to our marriage. I decided that I'd rather be Sandra's girlfriend than be an unhappy ex husband."

"Now, I love Sandra in a whole new way. We have lost the married love, but that would likely have gone anyway. At least our marriage has not gone down in the flames of anger and unhappiness. What I have in its place is a deep bond that brings us both happiness. That is the silver lining."

"Most of my patients are pretty adamant about being the gender that they are most comfortable with," she points out. "I make my living helping people who have a compelling desire to be the gender that they weren't born to. They are very unhappy until things are put as right as modern medicine can make them. Even then, it is often not enough. Most of my patients would give anything to go through what you are going through. You don't seem to be too attached to being male and neither do you seem to long to be female."

"I'm not convinced that being a boy or being a girl is all that important." I told her with a shrug. "Both genders have their ups and downs. It is obviously important to many people, but not so much to me. I am just happy to be alive. There are things that I am already missing about being male and thirty two years old. But I am starting to see opportunity in restarting my life as a teenager, even if it is as a girl. There are a lot of things that I will do differently this time around when, and if, my age quits regressing. I will have the hindsight of experience this time around. It could be interesting."

"I think that your adjustment might be more related to your attitude of going around difficult problems," she observed.

"Might be," I admitted. "All the female hormones coursing through my body might also have something to do with it."

She nodded in agreement. She had something more to consider in her scholarly paper.

The question that she didn't know to ask was whether or not the magic had anything to do with my mental adjustments. Tom was pretty adamant that Grandma's magic only messes with the physical. I wondered. I figured that I would ask her about it, sometime around mid-June.

----<0>----

People were now treating me like the girl that I presented as. That included our families. Everyone had pretty much gotten used to the idea that I would soon be a girl and it wasn't a big deal anymore. I got a lot of sympathy from family, friends, and co-workers. We also heard a large number of off the wall speculations about why this was happening and what to do about it. It was, in its own way, pretty amusing. My younger sister thought it was hysterical when she found out that I was wearing panties and a bra. She had decided that I needed her assistance in learning how to be a girl. I avoided her as much as possible. Fortunately she, her husband, and toddler lived far enough away that frequent visits were inconvenient.

As Sandra and I both had known for some time, my transformation meant that there had to be another man in Sandra's near future to fulfill the prophecy. The subject was eventually broached after we had both danced around the growing elephant for weeks. By the time we finally talked about a new man for Sandra, the elephant had pretty much filled the whole room and would not be ignored. We each had very mixed feelings about this topic. Sandra felt more than a little guilty though we both knew that it wasn’t our fault. She apologized frequently for going to see Grandma Broussard saying that everything would have been fine if she had just left well enough alone.

I was not so sure that things would be so fine if we had stayed home instead of going to Louisiana.

I was not particularly excited about that idea of Sandra finding a new love interest, but we agreed that it would very likely happen. I knew that she wouldn't have to look far for a new man as the requisite new love interest had found her. I knew that Tom was going to benefit from my changes. Sandra admitted that marrying Tom was the likely outcome.

After discussing the situation at length one evening, she told me that she would prefer that things went back to the way they were. I would always be her first choice for a husband, but she admitted that Tom was not a bad second choice if she couldn’t have me. She said  that she would have to get to know him better before she would accept a marriage proposal. After some intense questioning from me, she grudgingly admitted that she was starting to fall for him, but she was quick to point out that she was still hoping that we could repair the damage inflicted on us by Grandma Broussard. Unfortunately I could see in her eyes that she really didn’t believe that we could go back. We both knew that we had effectively given up the fight to save our marriage. What I could see in her eyes was extreme turmoil.

Sandra and I had confronted Tom at one point about that spare bolt used in the ceremony. He admitted that, yes, he had sent a bolt to Grandma when she requested it. He didn't know why she had asked for it. He thought that it was strange that it had to be by his bed for a fortnight. We didn't tell him how his bolt mated with Sandra's nut. What we did tell him was that his bolt was used in the ceremony and that the results were interesting. When pressed to explain, we told him that he would find out the details when we talked with Grandma in June. He already knew that Sandra had been promised children and he knew that I was becoming less likely to give them to her. He looked cautiously optimistic at Sandra. She glowered at him but there didn't seem to be any real conviction to her glower. I could see that the thought of Tom as her new partner was not without appeal for her. However, strange as it might seem, the thought of her with Tom was not totally repulsive to me either. I would like my best friend to find the fullness of happiness I could no longer give her and that she deserved and needed. It occurred to me, during our conversation, that I actually liked Tom. He was good to, and for, Sandra. Things had definitely changed between us.

Sandra seemed to be getting more and more conflicted about our marriage relationship. I would catch her crying at odd times. She told me that she felt as if she was being unfaithful to our marriage vows now that we were no longer lovers. I could tell that she was having trouble resolving her feelings about being married to a teen girl and her growing love for Tom. I think that we both lost touch with the man I had once been.

----<0>----

One night the week after I started dressing fulltime as a girl, after having worked an unusually late evening to support a special campus event, I came home to find her curled up on the couch wearing a very conservative flannel nightgown and crying. She looked thoroughly miserable. She must have been crying for a while as she had gone through two boxes of tissues and her eyes were very puffy and red. When I came through the door, she burst into tears with renewed vigor.

I sat down and took her in my arms. A difficult thing to do when you’re half a foot shorter than you wife.

“I'm so sorry, Andy," she sobbed into my shoulder. "This is all my fault! What are we going to do!?”

"It is not your fault," I assured her, “It's Grandma Broussard's fault."

"But if I had just given up as you wanted me to," she wailed, "we never would have met her and we wouldn't be in this predicament."

"Don't worry about it, girlfriend," I sighed. "Things are good. Just different. Do you want to tell me why all the tears?"

"I've let you down," she bawled. "I feel so guilty. I don't want to hurt you. You are my best friend in the world."

"It will be alright," I tried to reassure her without any real conviction.

“I'm not sure about that anymore,” she cried even harder. “Please, just hold me.”

I didn’t get anything more out of her that night, but as I changed for bed that night, I noticed that her new evening dress was draped over a chair with the matching pumps standing near by. They had obviously been worn.

----<0>----

With all the changes in our relationship and Sandra’s growing internal conflict what happened on the morning of the six month anniversary of our visit to Grandma Broussard was unsettling but not a total surprise.

I was getting dressed for work in my now normal feminine clothes, having already taken a shower, when Sandra’s phone beeped with an incoming text message. She was in the shower getting ready for work so I casually looked at the screen to see if it was anything important. I thought maybe I'd have to tell her to shake a leg. When I read the message, I froze.

The incoming text read: "Looking forward to lunch, sweetheart. We have reservations at Sullivan's for noon. Wear something nice but sexy. Please. We will find a way through this, I promise. Love you forever. XOXO"

The message was from Tom and it was more intimate that I would have expected.

Scrolling through her messages, I saw that this wasn’t the first such text. Her replies were equally as intimate.

Sandra hadn't said anything to me about seeing Tom regularly again outside the office.