Hi everyone,
I’m feeling incredibly lost right now and I need to get this off my chest.
Im 21 right now.
About 4 years ago I first realized I might be trans. I spent a long time in deep denial. I would go through phases where I crossdressed, only to feel disgusted with myself afterwards and purge everything. My brain kept telling me “you’ll never be a real woman anyway.” I even used to be quite hateful towards trans people, but now I realize it was just intense jealousy.
Three years ago I met my current girlfriend. In the beginning of our relationship, the dysphoria and the urge to transition completely disappeared. I honestly thought it was just a phase and that I had gotten over it. But now, after suppressing it for years, those feelings have come back stronger than ever. I’ve finally accepted that I’m trans.
The problem is my relationship. I love my girlfriend more than anything in this world. She’s genuinely the kindest person I’ve ever met and she isn’t transphobic, she always defends trans people. However, whenever I’ve dropped subtle hints, her reactions hurt a lot. She’s said jokingly things like “you're too hairy for that” or didn’t take it seriously. She has a strong preference for masculine men. She tells me how happy she is that I’m “a real man” and not feminine. Every time she says something like that, it feels like a knife to the chest, even though its her right to have a prefrence and I understand.
I don’t want to be this masculine guy. I want to be a woman. At the same time, the idea of losing her terrifies me. I love her so much that I genuinely feel like I’d rather suffer in silence than live without her. The “obvious” advice would be to break up and transition, but I can’t imagine my life without her. If I lose her, I’m scared I wouldn’t want to keep living. And it's not the honeymoon stage or anything, she is perfect for me and I love everything about her.
I’m still relatively young, so part of me has hope that if I start transitioning now, I could still become the person I want to be. But choosing between her and being myself feels impossible.
On top of that, my family is very anti-LGBT and I would probably lose most of my friends too. That realization makes me have even more respect for trans people who go through this in much harder situations.
I feel so out of place in my own body. I feel like I have to perform being a man for her, but I don’t want to be a man at all.
I don’t know what to do. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice or support would mean a lot right now.