Creating Gender Tension

Image from Tim Mossholder 
on UnSplash.

 
I am aware of the natural tension which goes on between the binary genders of male and female. 

I am also aware of the added tension which goes on when a transgender woman or trans man tries to cross the gender frontier to live on the other side. For me, at least, the tension became ridiculous and ruined my mental health which was already fragile. Before I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, I was diagnosed with being bi-polar also. At the time, the diagnosis seemed to be a double-edged sword because I was wondering why I suffered from deep mood swings and blamed the swings on my gender issues. When I found I had deeper mental health issues, in many ways, it was a relief they were not tied in with my cross dressing. On the other hand, ideally, I could treat being bi-polar with medications and move on with my life.

My worry was any future therapy I might seek out, would involve the therapist attempting to tie my mental health in with my need to be a woman. Even though it was true, my gender needs did conflict with my mental health and cause tension, they were both separate entities and needed to be dealt with separately. I was fortunate in that I had two long term therapists who agreed with me, and I was treated as such.

However, my gender tension never went away, and, in many ways, I just learned to live with it. What I did was, resort to what I did when I was younger and try to cross dress my way through my transgender life. Predictably, when I was cross dressing, life was good and when I was not cross dressing, it was not. I was mean and tried to take it out on the world around me. I became so mean on occasion; I lost a job because of it. What no one understood was, I was being tougher on myself than anyone else. In typical male fashion, I was internalizing my feelings until they exploded. I even used therapy as a crutch with my second wife who had to put up with me. The best way for me to explain it is, I would never quite tell my wife what my therapist said. The prime example I can give you is, very early in my sessions with a certified gender therapist, she told me there was nothing to do concerning me wanting to be a woman. Sooner or later, I was to just have to follow my instincts.

There was no way, I could tell my wife that when I was supposed to be undergoing therapy to save our marriage. So, I ignored what the therapist told me and predictably, the gender tension continued and even became worse. I did my best to tread water and try to live a life divided between being a man part of the week and a trans woman when I could the remainder of the week. It nearly killed me as I tried my best to maintain an impossible life. My best was not good enough and I attempted an ill-fated suicide. When I woke up the next morning after taking all the pills I had and chasing them with alcohol, self-preservation kicked in and once again I made the wrong decision and resolved to purge most of my feminine fashion and make up, then go back to my male life. 

We all know the majority of gender purges don't work. Certainly, it did not work for me, even when I grew a beard to satisfy my second wife that I was not doing anything related to cross dressing at all. Once again, my gender tension rose to a very ugly level, and I was very unhappy. Little did I know, my life was due to change in a very tragic and dramatic way when in approximately six months, my wife passed away from a sudden heart attack. 

The life changing experience led me back to my feminine self and I never looked back. When I did, the gender tension I was suffering from disappeared and I felt free.