So I am not detrans but I feel my journey to transition echos a lot of detrans sentiments. For my entire life I was not happy with being male, it was awful but I always knew that medically I couldn’t actually be female. I knew that if I had the opportunity I’d take it in a heartbeat, but to me there was no point in trying to transition if it would only ever end in failure and disappointment. Despite this as puberty changed my body my will to live drained with it, until I almost felt there was no reason for me to exist. The only thing that ever kept me going was the fact that other people cared about me, and I didn’t want to disappoint them, but even then I knew that one bad night could lead to me putting my life in danger and that would hurt people far more than the choice to transition ever could. I also remembered back to when I had such a conviction for life that I thought ending it would be impossible, and I wanted that back. So I was left with one last resort, and that was transition. Even so I still questioned whether it would be possible for me to one day deal with and come to terms with my biological reality. In the end I decided it was not going to be possible to live comfortably with my mind fully aware that I am male at all times. The only thing that allowed me to see that it was worthwhile is when it was a matter of life and death, and in all likelihood if people had me transition before that point I’d have attempted detransition and likely wouldn’t be alive to tell of this.

I think that the best thing for you to take from my story is that to transition and be satisfied, you need to know exactly what you are going to get, and know that it is the best possible option for you to take in the moment, and without taking that option you are never going to be able to live your life to the fullest. In order to not have regrets you need to be confident in the idea that any other choice you’d have made would’ve led to a worse outcome. I think a lot of trans people miss that conviction and are not living their best life because of it whether they choose to detransition or not.

I feel you. Being trans sucks and I don’t want it at all because I can’t be a woman and it’s really frustrating to be a part of such a terrible group. I also know I can’t ever medically detransition because I felt so terrible before, I still know that I need to undergo SRS for my own sake but it seems like it’ll be dangerous and still upsetting because of the insufficient results. It does sound like you have really significant sex dysphoria though, and you should definitely get help with that. If you can afford therapy you should do that too, also I usually find just talking to people who understand and will listen helps me work through a lot so making this post here is a very important step. You do have options though, while you will likely never be able to fully get rid of your sex dysphoria talking through it and exposure therapy can help you get used to and accept your body. Also if you absolutely need it you can still go back on hormones to get you to a better state of mind to be able to make your decisions more easily, don’t do that though unless you are absolutely certain you can’t figure this out now and have no other option. Your experience and your feeling now remind me a lot of how I felt before deciding to transition. Now being in transition I do feel a lot more free to think through my problems and accept that I am male. Depending on where you live though and how old you are you might be a lot more limited in your options. There always is something you can do though, you’re strong, you made it to a point where you could transition then you made the decision to detransition. You can make it through this struggle, and if you want to message me privately feel free I’d be happy to help in anyway I can.

Oh wow. Thank you so much. I am not OP but I feel like I’ve gone through similar stages as OP over the past 2 years of my life as opposed to the past 15 years of my life. I now understand why I still feel the need to get bottom surgery despite having accepted myself as a man, and accepting that I can never be a woman. It’s because I’ve always felt a sense of loss over my inability to mother a child. I just want to get bottom surgery to prevent that feeling from being triggered within me. I think that was the last step to understanding my sex dysphoria and it’s roots. I think that as a child I thought I was a girl for the first few years of my life, so I thought I’d grow up to be a woman, and I was preparing myself for that, including things like having a child. Then when I realized that I wasn’t a girl I was really upset because I felt like I should’ve been a girl because I’m supposed to be a mother at some point. I also noticed how badly men acted and I viewed men as bad and women as good. So when I realized I was going to grow up to be a man instead of a woman that made me even more upset. And the closer I got to being a man the more dysphoric I felt.

Even knowing all that I’d still choose to be a woman if such an option were presented to me so that way I could feel like I ran atoning for my privilege, can be a proper feminist, and one day fulfill my childhood dream of being a mother. As is though I feel like I can happily accept my condition as a man, and redefine it for myself to fit me, rather than letting it define me.

I’ll also put in more thought to getting SRS, because maybe I’ll be able to come to terms with my body now that I know why I’m so upset with it.

Unless you’re at risk for suicide it’s really not easy to figure that out. But if you do a lot of self reflection to figure out what your life options are and even better guided reflection with the help of a therapist, you can figure out whether or not you really have options for what to do without transitioning. It also helps a lot to know you never truly will be female no matter what you end up doing so you need to be doing this for your mental health to be in a state where you can keep up normal life functions. So if you are working or studying but dysphoria and associated anxiety and depression make it extremely difficult or impossible to do those things properly to get to the next steps in your life that might be a way to be confident in your decision. It also helps a lot to try to figure out if there are any other possible issues that could be causing the problems in your life and see if you can fix those first. Additionally if you are going to medically transition it’s important to identify your body as the source of your dysphoria and discomfort, as opposed to social structures and expectations. If you know you could 100% express yourself as you’d like and still not be satisfied with life due to your physical and biological attributes that’s another bit of evidence that you can use to strengthen your conviction.

You don’t necessarily need to be 100% certain, you just need to be confident enough to where you’d be satisfied that even if you decide that this wasn’t right for you in the future that you still feel like you made the best choice for you right now. Also if you do reach that confidence make sure you set yourself reasonable to low expectations, because in the end nothing can currently cure gender dysphoria, and so to deal with it you can only choose between a few options, and the most accepted ones are transition, or acceptance. Neither are particularly appealing but acceptance is probably more acceptable for milder dysphoria while transition is likely more acceptable for more extreme dysphoria. Alternatively you could choose to suffer through the pain if it’s mild enough but unless you know you’ll still find ways to get the most out of life that is unlikely to be the answer. You may also find that your real problem isn’t actually gender dysphoria but if it is those are likely your best options, and so deciding between those is all you need to do which should make it easier to feel confident in your choice, whichever one it may be.

Edit: I also do want to say that I personally advise against medical transition unless it is absolutely necessary. But just because I think it’s a generally bad idea doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you to absolutely not do it. All I want to do here is make sure that if you do make that decision regardless of your final outcome whether you are satisfied or choose to detransition, you feel you made the best decision and don’t feel any spite or malice towards your past self.

Well first of all I don’t think anyone should be making significant life decisions based purely off the quality of their sex life. That doesn’t mean though that you should transition. In fact based on what I am getting from your story and explanation you seem like you would likely be happiest as a GNC gay man. You say you want soft skin, a feminine appearance, to age as a woman, and to be a mother though which makes me a little less certain about what I think is the best choice for you. I think that you can achieve, to the extent that you would likely want, these things simply by allowing yourself to be GNC. If you use skin cremes you can get softer skin. You can have a more feminine appearance through different forms of self care as well as wearing clothes that mask the actual shape of your body. While you can’t age as a woman, you never would’ve been able to in the first place because transition would only feminize your body, and you don’t seem to actually desire that given you like your genitals (unless I’m wrong and you’d want take the opportunity to fully change your sex if it were presented to you). And while you can’t actually be an actual mother, you can still take on a more motherly and nurturing role for your children perhaps they’d even want to refer to you as their mother. Ultimately it’s up to you and you should do what you feel is best but you might be able to make all of what you want work in tandem.

Actually this is far too complicated of a matter for me to advise you on purely here. I keep on worrying that I’m not giving you enough information, or that I’m not presenting the information as well as I could. So if you’d like a more in depth discussion on this feel free to DM me. I care about all of my dysphoric sisters and brothers and I want nothing but the best outcomes for all of us.

I also went back and read some of your posts on the MtF subreddit and I think I could help answer some of them but I feel I’d likely be unwelcome there due to my less than enthusiastic view of transition.

I think I might have an interesting alternate answer to most here. I knew that HRT wasn’t going to give me everything I wanted since before even starting it. I knew that it was going to have a limited feminizing effect on my body and that it was going to limit further masculinization. I knew exactly what it could do, and that wasn’t all of what I wanted, I was just too scared to let my body finish male puberty on its own. I was getting suicidal over it and am not sure I would’ve lived long enough to accept the changes that testosterone brought to my body. I am happy with most of the changes from estrogen although my body has taken on a bit more of an unhealthy appearance given my core was already really skinny and now it’s only gotten skinnier. I do not regret taking HRT and I don’t think I’ll be stopping it any time soon. But the only reason why I could do this is because I had a realistic expectation of what it would do. I knew that no part of transitioning could actually do what I want, which is to make me a woman. If possible try to at the very least ensure that your friend knows and understands that the effects of HRT will never actually change their sex. Make sure they understand that they can’t go back on HRT. Make sure that they feel that they are in a place where there is absolutely no way that they can figure themselves out before either going on HRT or dying. If they are after puberty the try to slow them down because the effects if they start now won’t be different from the effects if they start 5 years from now. The only difference will be if they start 5 years from now they will have been able to better understand themselves and measure their expectations.

I don’t think that it’s right for many people to go on HRT. I think it’s incredibly rare and that I was the perfect storm of factors. First I didn’t want to transition or try to in the first place because I knew it wouldn’t actually do what I wanted for almost 4 years before starting to transition. Second I was in the middle of puberty where my sex dysphoria flew at an all time high, and was bringing up horrible thoughts. Third I was only midway through puberty so I saw hope in stopping it from progressing any further, and I was scared that any day I waited could end up being too late. All of these things came together to make me very suicidal and doubtful that I could get through puberty alive, as well as knowing exactly what to expect to prevent my mental state from declining further on hormones. Pretty much all of that and more was necessary to make transition the right choice for me at the time. Being older and having no urgency would’ve made it so I’d never transition for any reason short of actual sex change. When I was younger dysphoria wasn’t yet at a point to make me suicidal, at that point I should’ve looked into therapy. My point is try to help your friend understand that they need to learn more about themself and have time to do it. Hopefully they’ll end up deciding against transition entirely and be able to live a simpler easier life.

Wow. This is really interesting. I am seeing so many people with this general experience on this subreddit. Like I want to be a woman, but I know I can’t, so I’m struggling with a similar thing. I’ve made up my mind about transitioning and how I want to try to get rid of my sex dysphoria, but I don’t really want to have so many people believe I’m a woman. I feel like it’s making me live a lie. I never want to stop medical transition and I want trick my mind as best as possible into thinking it’s not in a male body, but that makes me feel like I’m lying to myself. It’s like an ignorance is bliss thing. If I happily stayed out of all the political trans stuff I would be ignorant and happy with my lie to the world and myself. But I had to go and get involved in politics around trans people, and now, I’m either going to be unhappy in a lie, or unhappy in truth. I feel like honesty is the best thing I can do though because I’ve always cared about the happiness of others over my own, and I think if I generally “live as” (as in using men’s spaces) and am honest about being a male, then I’ll be doing the best thing I can for women, the group which I so desperately want to be a part of. It’s just really sad because I never wanted this, but none of us did, we’re all forced/born/guided into our situation and it’s our job to make the most out of it whatever we think it is. I’m also scared, because I don’t know how men would react to someone who appears female, doesn’t have a penis, and has a hole they could penetrate and pretend is a vagina, being alone in a space with them. And I’m also frustrated because I feel like I wouldn’t have to even deal with this if it weren’t for modern transgenderism, I’d likely still be a transsexual and eventually transition without it I’d just be able to be a lot more happy. I’m scared because to most men I pass, I’m sad because I can never live the life I feel I should, and I’m frustrated because this situation should’ve never happened.

So yeah I just don’t know what to do either. Life is a mess and I wish things could just be simple for at least a moment.

I am a homosexual/asexual male. So unfortunately there isn’t really an insightful alternative that I can suggest to AGP. I think that the primary cause of my sex dysphoria is feeling like I have undeserved privilege by being in a horribly sexist group. I don’t think I’ve recovered from my observations as a young child about the horrible oppression against women by men. I have though come to accept that I am a man, I just feel like I would be more comfortable as a man if I remove my genitalia. Although I also feel like to atone for my existence as a male and to better advocate for the rights of women I’d like to be a woman. Although the general feeling is closer to “I should’ve been a woman”.