I agree. We are all actors. When we are a teacher, we are acting as such. You will hardly see a teacher behave like a student, because deep in their mind they have told themselves they are a teacher and they will behave like such, whatever definition of teacher they have. It's the same with "man" and "woman": you can act like these characters as well.

In a way, this is the realization that saved me. Just like an actor given a few lines of text and an idea of a character, they are free to interpret it however they'd like. In this case you are even more free than someone who is a professional actor for a movie, because there is no movie director that is going to tell you that your interpretation of the character is not the kind of character they want you to play. Man and woman can mean anything you want. That is the key to solve dysphoria. There is no wrong way to be a man or woman and there is no wrong way to be yourself. You are completely free, and yet, a potential prisoner of your own interpretation. If you feel uncomfortable about the character you are portraying as, nothing prevents you from revisiting the interpretation of your character.

That is how I see it, I think we share the same viewpoint on the matter.

You have basically experienced the difference between thinking of a fantasy and trying to indulge said fantasy.

Here is the cold harsh truth: you will never ever truly live any of your fantasies like they are in your head. Sure, you can get close, but the closer you get, and the more you will realize how far you are. And if you don't believe me, you can always look at your story. You transitioned and still felt incredible jealousy towards women, because you subconsciously realized that your wish was still miles away from what you actually wanted. Mind you, this is true for everyone. Some women try pursuing the life of other women and want to be just like them, and just like you, they are constantly chasing this fantasy they will never ever obtain like they actually want, and they feel awful for it.

You can never be another person. That is impossible. Transition only served to make you realize that you can never be the women you see on the streets. You can only be yourself. The problem is that you don't want to be yourself. You don't want to exist as it stands. That is what causes all the horrible feelings, but it does not mean you can become another person entirely, that will only lead you to a path of delusion after delusion.

Work on yourself. Figure out the true reasons as to why you don't want to be. You know the answers. It is only when you accept who you are, and stop this incessant chase of trying to be someone else, that you can truly find happiness. You said you felt like you couldn't win either way, but that is not the truth. You can win, the only requirement for that is to accept yourself and be yourself. Good luck, I stand behind you :)

Being an adult doesn't mean you cannot be influenced in any way. Many people are influenced to believe things that are obviously not true. Someone's mindset can make them more vulnerable to this kind of thing. All a manipulator does is exploit someone's weaknesses to make them start believing things that the manipulator wants to make them believe. That is the whole concept behind gaslighting.

It is true that in the end, yes, we were the one taking the hormones and everything. But I think that denying there were external influences to us transitioning is completely idiotic, if not extremely dangerous. It denies that some people go out of their way to ensure people transition. That is why egg culture is a problem, because it influences people to believe they are transgender if they were to even think about gender, because, as they state: "No cis person thinks about gender this much! You must be trans!!"

There are influences and those must be recognized. From a lot of people, including affirming professionals, that may sometimes omit very vital details about transition, or lines of questioning that may benefit you, such as examining your own trauma and life to determine what makes you feel bad in your own sex.

The blame cannot be put on us entirely. Doing so is destructive.

Well, first thing to realize is that subconsciously you are already aware this is a bad idea because you decided to post in here and not in a trans sub. You want to get discouraged from it. If you were truly sure you wanted to do it and were convinced of it, you would just have not posted here in the first place. That's already something to keep in mind.

I'll tell you something a bit blunt. You are saying you were bullied and emasculated as a child. The truth is this: you cannot escape that trauma by transitioning. What transitioning will do is put that trauma in a dark dusty room and shove it there and try and forget about it. That seems fine to some people, however, everytime you walk past that room, you will be reminded of the trauma in one way or the other, until you can't ignore it anymore. Living with unresolved trauma is quite frankly one of the worst things that exists out there. It's like when you're a child and there's a monster in the closet.

However the good news is that when you manage to heal from that trauma, the need to transition will be felt a lot less. If you manage to look at your trauma of getting emasculated by peers, and thus, getting to loathe your sex for it, and manage to get closure with that, there will be a lot less to feel bad over, and it's easier to live as your birth sex. That requires therapy. A lot of it. Even if you still come to the conclusion that transition is good for you (which we don't advise here but ultimately we cannot stop you), you will already have made massive improvement. It's just a win-win at this point. So yeah, I'd really recommend to start with that, and then wonder if transition is all that worth it in the end, when you have a much more manageable relationship with your sex.

I wish you good luck and a good healing :)

Well, if that reassures anyone, they are still very much alive and currently online on Steam playing Albion Online. So that is already removing the worst case scenario.

There are a bunch of ways to contact this person, but I obviously would not share them like that in the open, and I assume they would not take kindly to being bombarded with messages no matter the intention behind them, and considering what happened in the past with people harassing them for simply sharing an experience... Yeah, I am not going to run that risk. So yeah, I think this is what matters in the end.

I think we should leave this to their close ones. and perhaps like /u/00647619 suggested, if one really wanted to reach out, to do so with closed ones, so there's already trust involved.

Well, since you said you turned to god, and I assume here you mean Christianity (which is not my own religion but I understand how spirituality can be important for anyone), I'd like to remind you of something: forgiveness is a huge part of Christianity! Not only towards others but most importantly yourself! You have to sit down and remember that your younger self was in a much different place and searched for answers in much different places than inside. And that's okay. We all make mistakes, you and I included!

Also remember that the people around you tried their best to help you, even though they did not really understand why and in retrospect perhaps didn't go the best way about it. I think it's a huge disservice to yourself if you don't forgive yourself and let resentment simmer because trust me, that just turns into something far uglier than the alternative. Do yourself a service and accept to forgive your past self for misjudging the situation a bit. Trust me, you'll come out of this as a far stronger person, I am sure!

I know it hurts, friend. I really do, and you will probably feel the aftereffects of the consequence of this decision for a good while still. Nonetheless, be sure to sit down and remember that at the end of the day, life is suffering. You experienced a certain part of suffering of life and are still suffering it. That's okay! The most important is trying your best and never giving up, as surmounting suffering is just part of this great design, right? I wish you the best of luck!

I understand the anger with therapists, I've had plenty of therapists that were really not good and only here to "get it over with". I guess I got lucky though with this current therapist, she just lets me talk and only asks me questions when I stop talking so I just talk about stuff I think about. I am in Belgium so there isn't that much problem when it comes to these subjects. I guess I am very thankful for that, to see that in my country this stuff is still very low profile.

No. I disagree with this kind of comment.

I'm not saying that the AGP/HSTS reasoning is completely wrong. There might be some sexual elements to it, sure. Why not. But saying that it's as big a reason as you imply to be is, as I stated in my essay, a major reason why there are not more males coming forward and saying "yeah, maybe that's true". Nobody wants to be labelled a pervert especially in a quest to determine who you are. Besides, again, there simply is not enough proof to determine that is actually the case. The day we have objective data looking over detrans male cases, and we can reliably establish that yes, in fact, there was inherently a sexual reason to it all, we can make that assertion for sure. It also ignores the vast plethora of reasons for a male to undergo transition in the first place. It's not helpful. At all. We need to be more open minded to additional vectors, instead of simply categorizing detrans males as some kind of wicked perverts. That's not helping anyone, not even our own cause.

It's still the same problem: you do not believe you are a woman, you want to be one. That is a major difference, because in the first case you are chasing something you know is not the truth, and in the second case, well, if you truly believe you are a woman no matter what you do, you would not need to change your body at all, since you already believe you are a woman and thus everything about you is the product of being a woman. But you do believe you need to change it, because you believe you are not a woman. That is the core issue with the vast majority of transgender people and why they are not happy in the first place, because they are allowing themselves to live a constant contradiction.

Hell, we could even live in a reality where it is possible to change your sex, if you still believe you are a man, then that is the truth. After all, your mind will still have to deal with the contradiction of explaining your past, for example, and then the contradiction will settle on the fact you were not born a woman against the fact you currently look like it is the case. You would feel like an imposter, and it would not fix anything. You cannot win this game as long as you do not solve that contradiction, and settle on what your truth is, and accept it fully, whatever that truth may be. When you reach that point, there will not be a single shred of dysphoria to be found, because there exists no contradiction.

First of all I would like to clarify that for me personally, I don't seek the support of the transgender community. I am stating that if you are questioning your transition as male, the fact that there are less outlets to do so makes it easier to "give up" the idea and go back to the trans community. I agree with you that the trans community is a quite terrible place to be in if you really want to detransition. Complete agreement here. Also to answer your other comment, I have never really identified with gay/bi communities? Perhaps when I first was questioning my sexuality sure, but it doesn't feel like a home, more just a thing that I happen to be bisexual and that's that.

Also, you know, what you say is interesting. If women are allowed more leeway to explore gender as is, without needing to do anything to do with their bodies, then the fact that there seems to be more ftms completely clashes with that assertion. I guess one could argue that there is too much leeway and not enough reasserting that it's okay to be female and toy around with gender.

Also yeah, the lack of men-centric support groups is really hurtful and it just leads to, as I said, the birth of resentful communities like the incel or mgtow community. I don't know how we can fix it because there are a lot of moving parts that makes it that way, perhaps even biological. So I don't know, I guess the only thing we can do is just establish more of these groups in the case males would like to express themselves and tell them it's completely okay to express these things.