Saturday, March 2, 2024

Who Do You Love?

Image from Freestocks 
on UnSplash



Along my lengthy transgender journey I learned the hard way I had several love affairs. 

The main one I want to refer to is the love affair with my wife and  the one with myself. Or should I say my feminine self, since I had never really liked my old male side I never asked for. I think the worst part of having two love affairs was the guilt which came with it. I think my major problem came from how much I threw myself into the process of being feminine. If I wasn't cross dressing in front of the mirror, I was spending my time studying all the girls or women around me. I am sure along the way, my wife caught me daydreaming too much and wondered why I was not paying more attention to her and our marriage.

Along with the daydreams came the frustration I felt when my wife was able to do all the things a woman does in her life. Plus, she wouldn't let me in to her world very much and she infuriated me when she wouldn't. The entire process led me to try even harder to improve my makeup and fashion ideas since at that time I was far away from realizing looking like a woman was only the very beginning of my long gender journey. At the time also, since I was putting so much time into myself, I am sure my wife felt unloved and I am surprised we made it through twenty five years of marriage. 

Much later, after she passed away, did I learn to love myself. I learned then the fact you needed to love yourself before you can love someone else was so true. Once I started to complete my transgender transition, I did start to love myself. Or, at the least, I started to have more respect for everything I had achieved in my new world I had chosen to live in.   

It was about that time I was feeling deep frustration because of the way my life was headed. Although I did enjoy the small social group of women I was apart of, I still felt I was doomed at the age of sixty to live my life alone. I found I was still a social creature and did the best I could to change the situation. Fortunately for me, my attempts at dating when I was still a guy were miserable short term failures which led me to believe I was on the right path to living as a trans woman...even if that meant living alone. As a stop gap measure, I still had my friends to hang out with.

For the most part, my experiences in the on-line dating world were failures too. I tried every combination on the sites I could afford to list on. One month I would try "man seeking man" as a transgender woman, then the next time try "woman seeking woman". Again always being up front I was transgender. The only men who responded for the most part wanted me to dress them up as a woman or let them wear my panties, so they were out. 

There was a happy ending to my on line dating woes after sifting through tons of rejections and trash, my wife Liz responded to one of my ads. She lived fairly close to me in a city I had always loved (Cincinnati) so I was interested in knowing her more. After corresponding by text initially, I finally became brave enough to talk to her on the phone. I was so insecure of my voice. From there, our first date was a local drag show at a gay venue midway between our homes. From then on we became a couple for ten plus years until we decided to get married. 

I guess the moral to my story is, the darkest moments of your life can turn around if you continue to put yourself out there. Sure it hurts and is painful to be rejected but often there can be a light at the end of the tunnel. The sad part is, you went through a transition to find your authentic self and you discovered self love and now there is no one to share it with. 

On the positive side, I am seeing an increase in wives staying with their transgender spouses when they transition. I have the utmost respect for the love expressed by these women and wish we could all experience the same. 

Friday, March 1, 2024

Go Get a Life

Photo from the 
Jessie Hart Archives...

Following all the struggles with being transgender in my life, I finally decided I was living a lie and needed to go out and find an authentic life. An existence which helped rebuild my mental health and made me feel natural. 

My struggles have been well documented here in my writings. All the times, I faced the public for the first time as a novice cross dresser and came home in tears. Finally it all led to the magical evening when I decided enough was enough and I went out to intermingle with the world for the first time as a transgender woman and not a cross dresser. The difference was I was trying to become the trans woman I always dreamed of and not just looking like a feminine person. In spite of being scared to death, I managed to make it through the evening and even started a path where I could be a regular in the venue I went to. From there I was bolder and began to check out other similar venues which were much different than the gay bars I was going to because I thought I would have a tendency to be accepted more easily. 

Along the way, I found I wasn't easily accepted in male gay venues and in all but one lesbian bar I went to, so I kept going back to where I becoming a regular was helping me to build a whole new life. Through it all, the problem I was having was while I was on the fast track to achieving my gender dreams, I still had a wife and family to deal with at the same time. In addition,  I hadn't even thought about the possibility of losing my job. I was so busy learning about life as a possible transgender woman, I had a difficult time thinking of anything else when it came to my marriage and employment. 

The gender pressure I was under kept building until I could take it no longer and changes needed to happen to save my life. I was tired of all the self destructive behavior I was subjecting myself to over the span of my life. All the times I set myself up for failure in my male life had to change and for once I needed to succeed at something I really wanted such as living as a trans woman. I found going and getting a new life was going to be scarier and at the same time more exciting than I ever imagined it being. Somehow, I managed to barely hang on to my marriage when I was sneaking out behind my wife's back to explore the world. I was lucky I didn't lose my job because I was good at what I did and the company left me alone so, for the time being, the job was a non factor in my transition. 

What I never factored in were the times when I needed to interact with the world as a woman. How would I talk and communicate primarily with other women became a priority. Getting a life took on a whole new meaning. Plus, I can't speak for the others in the transgender community (women or men) gender affirming hormones were the tipping point for me in my new life. Once I started the medications, there was to be no turning back in my gender journey.

When I went out and finally had the courage to be me, I saved my own life. For once I was a success.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Being a Gender Victim

 

Image from UnSplash

Many years ago during my years of searching for my true gender self, I spent many hours and days being a victim of my circumstances.  In other words, I felt sorry for myself wanting to follow a feminine path in life. 

Primarily, thanks to input I received from my second wife, I began to pull myself out of the victim category and accept the way I felt. My wife kept telling me I didn't know anything about being a woman (which I didn't) so I needed to find out what she meant because she was not offering any help. Sadly it wasn't until many years later following her passing away, did I learn what she meant. Obviously, since she can not speak for herself, I think she was expanding on the times when she called me "The pretty pretty princess." Those were the days when I obsessed on how I looked as a cross dresser and not how I felt as a novice transgender woman. Had I not been so narrow minded in my quest for femininity, I think now I would have spent way less time feeling sorry for myself. Why couldn't I have hobbies such as golf rather than dressing as a woman.

My life turned out to be a double edged sword about that time. Not only was I facing pressure on the home front to learn more about the basics of being a woman, at work through promotion after promotion, I was feeling increased pressure to perform there also. To help me along, the many managerial training sessions I attended gave direction on how not to be a victim.

Finally, I slowly learned to attack my problems head on and not run from them. Often by putting on a dress and feeling sorry for myself. Slowly but surely, thanks to no small part to the women I worked with, I began to look beyond how they looked into how they acted and reacted with life. The whole process made me a better person and prepared me for a future living life as a transgender woman. I was becoming so much more than "The pretty pretty princess." At the same time, not being a victim was making life so much more complex. On one hand I was making strides with my makeup and fashion and on the other I was becoming very successful in my work. In fact, it was not becoming unusual for my wife to ask for my help with her makeup when we were going out to an upscale event.  Usually, after I did help her, she felt better and I was jealous I wasn't the one in the pretty dress. 

Throughout the entire process, I found I had more courage than I had ever thought possible. Perhaps the time I spent in the military prepared me with the confidence I needed to move forward and not be a victim to my gender issues. Every time I conquered a goal I thought was unachievable, I felt more natural with my life and my mental health improved. 

I put being a victim behind me and set out to be an out and proud transgender woman.

Can You Ever Enjoy the Ride?

  Image from A. C. on UnSplash. Lately, it has occurred to me how often I did not pause to enjoy my gender journey. Perhaps it was because...