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Showing posts from February, 2023

27th February - conversation with a colleague, but not THAT conversation

In the office today and a white shirt is not conducive to hiding a pink bra top under, so after two full days of feeling that feminine sensation all the time, I'm back to not.   One of my colleagues wanted to talk about her future and the team and stuff, so we went out for coffee together to talk for a couple of hours which was really good.  We have worked closely together for a few years now, so there is trust and we are pretty good friends.  This is good, but it does have the slight drawback that she can tell if I'm not feeling very positive and when I'm down.   Our conversation was quite future-focused and on my role and maybe alternatives.  We did touch on what we might do if we weren't doing this, and then she asked me what I really wanted to do and what I wish for from my future and how I can be happy.   And I really wanted to tell her! It was actually harder to stop myself from coming out, than I think it would be to have done so....

26th February - a second full day of the bra top

 I’ve done another full day of wearing the bra top under my clothes. The one I have on is a pale pink and a couple of my knickers are the same shade, so I picked one of those pairs out so I can wear a matching set. I must say, matching underwear does make a difference. Looking at myself in the mirror before hiding them under male clothes, I felt good. I know that my wife doesn’t coordinate hers or have matching sets. She has knickers and she has bras but doesn’t seem to view them collectively and I think that is probably the case for many cis women. Maybe they just don’t think about underwear as a special thing in the way trans women do because there is no novelty factor if you have always worn a bra every day since your teens, whereas for me there is a lot of significance attaching to a bra. Whatever the reason, I’m wearing matching underwear and it feels pretty and I like it.  The second full day and the conscious awareness of the band around my chest and the shoulder straps...

25th February - wearing a bra top all day

Even though I have bought a number of bras over the years and more recently a set of soft bra crop tops, I rarely have the opportunity to wear them for any length of time as the shape of them shows under clothes and not being out, I don’t have the option of risking that.  The crop tops are seamless and unpadded though so they can be hidden under a thicker male top and easily if I wear a jumper over, something which is necessary today anyway as it is pretty cold.  So today I have worn one all day to feel what it is like to have a stretchy band around my chest all the time whilst I am going about my day to day. This included mundane stuff like going to the supermarket, walking the dog, cooking, gaming and watching tv.  The experience was not uncomfortable at all. I was never not aware that I was wearing it though. Maybe that fades over time when one gets used to it. I’m not consciously aware of my socks for example so maybe after a long time of wearing a bra every day, wome...

24th February - potential chance to meet a friend en femme

I am only out to two of my friends who know me as my male persona and only one of those lives nearby. She is moving house and will soon have a place on her own in the city where I work.  This will be my first opportunity to be Nicola in person with someone who knows me rather than just strangers at a shopping centre or coffee shop.  That’s a good thing obviously and an important step but also I am a bit nervous about the idea.  I’m worried that if I interact with someone I know whilst presenting female, I might feel ridiculous or that I am putting on an act. With strangers, although they will clock me, there is no prior knowledge of who I am and my male persona. But with.someone who has known me as him for a long time, meeting female her is different.  I sort of fear that I have got this far basically living in my own head, but that it won’t bear exposure to the outside world and will come crashing down as the fantasy that it is.  Not sure when this will be able...

23rd February - talking about holidays

Today I had some time off work and went out to lunch with my wife. We got to talking about whether we might go on holiday together this year and after briefly discussing various European destinations and how we would get there (her: fly from closest airport; me: ferry/tunnel and road trip) we then touched on the place we went for honeymoon. This year will be our twentieth anniversary so seems like a good excuse for an indulgent trip to a tropical paradise.  Then I started to feel guilty. If I come out to her as trans, then the nice reminiscing trip with her “husband” becomes something else.  Could I do that to her?  If I could, then I could wear a bikini and sarong and sit on a beautiful beach enjoying cocktails in the sun.  Hmmm.   Sounds tempting doesn’t it? But seriously it just made me feel guilty that we could go on a second honeymoon and enjoy this amazing holiday but I have this secret and I want to ruin all of that by sharing my secret with her. We’ve be...

22nd February - semi femme jogging

Jogging as a girl is one of those things that I imagine and have a vision of in my head.  Today I went for a run wearing my crop top and leggings which is how I imagine myself doing it as a woman, with a nice ponytail bouncing around. In my head, I look good, my bare midriff is feminine and slim and I run easily looking confident and fresh.  In reality I have to hide the leggings under baggy male joggers, and the top under male top, my hair isn’t long enough to pony, and the only thing that bounces is my less than perfect midriff. I don’t look good or fresh, I look red-faced and sweaty and out of breath.  On the plus side though, I may have to hide what I’m wearing but I can feel them and it feels good. Leggings are super comfortable and I can understand why they are so popular. Plus I have great legs and they look really good, pity no one else gets to see.  Maybe I can use this vision of how I would like to look as motivation for more exercise.  I then, having ...

21st February - a feminine hair cut

I have been trying to grow my hair for a while to get to a point where I can feminise my look.  Today I had an appointment at the salon to get it trimmed and styled.  It is down below my ears all round and I have had it cut as a bob.  The stylist was a bit reluctant to do that, because apparently not many men have a bob. I said I don’t worry about things like that and I’m hardly one for an overly masculine presentation anyway.  I’m really happy with the results and it does look quite feminine.  My face doesn’t unfortunately so I have tried a bit of makeup this evening to see if that helps. Not as much as I would like and not enough to share a selfie anyway. As I was doing makeup, I have also repainted my toenails in pink as they had chipped and grown out, which is not surprising as I last did them at new year. If I am going to be a real girl, I’m going to have to get used to more frequent maintenance of these things.  After my despondency yesterday, it’s go...

20th February - worrying myself again

After yesterday of feeling that all the things yam doing are pointless someone responded to say that it feels routine and unexceptional because it is right.  That is a really nice thought. I would like to know that the reason I don’t feel anything special about the routine stuff anymore is because it is the right and normal thing for me as a woman.  Problem is that my head is suggesting an alternative viewpoint: that it doesn’t feel special because it’s like an addictive substance and now what I’m doing isn’t enough of a “hit” so I need to escalate my steps to get the same feeling.  What if everything that I have ever done and thought about gender has been that?  The first time I tried a skirt, gave me a sense of something but I needed more. Wearing my mother’s bras (as a teenager) was enough for a while, until it wasn’t. Then I wore one to school under my uniform which was sufficiently terrifying to up the excitement level. Later in life, going to shops and looking ...

19th February - feel like giving up again

For no particular reason I'm having another one of those days when I feel like giving up.   My life has settled into a routine of doing my small feminine things which are all good, but after seven weeks, it is just routine now.  I sometimes wonder what the point is if I'm not moving forward.  Would it matter if I put on a pair of boxers instead of knickers in the morning?  Would I be any more or less female if I did that?  I have stuck with it though, because going back on any of the things I have started feels like a failure.  And today I did wear my absolute favourite pair which are very pretty and feel great, and although that was nice, I didn't feel more of a woman because of it.  I really want to though, which makes it hard and is probably why I'm feeling a bit down now.  I can't get to the feeling I want from what I'm doing at the moment, I need to do so much more, but I am stuck and can't do those things so what am I even doing and why...

18th February - not having the conversation but at least we are talking

Lately, my wife and I have been talking more than we have in a long time and being more open about our own opinions than we have been used to do.  Not so open that I have shared all my own secrets about being trans, but it’s still good and puts us into a better place for when I ever am ready to do that.  We talk a lot about feminism and women’s rights and the wrongs of male behaviour and negative masculinity. We are both on the same page really and I think she does now accept at least that I am not one of those men and nor do I represent men as a whole.  We spent some time with her friends and one of them has found many (like a lot!) of half siblings from her biological father who seems to have spread his wild oats most liberally. Driving back we were talking about that behaviour and I observed that all men are bastards, to which she touched my hand and said not all. Which actually is the nicest thing she has said to me in a while!  On the one hand I’m obviously plea...

17th February- commenting on dresses on tv

I have for a while now tried, when watching tv with my wife to occasionally mention that I like the dress a woman is wearing in the show or how she has her hair or on her makeup.  For me, there is the classic trans feeling of both being attracted to a woman and wanting to be her, and that is where a lot of these thoughts come from.  This seems to have been established as a safe conversation area in our relationship now and we will often talk about outfits women are wearing and what we like about them or the sort of body shape they would suit.  She doesn’t seem to notice that I have perhaps an unusual level of knowledge about female clothing for a man to have. We were watching something the other day where a character was getting ready to surprise her husband for date night and I said why is she wearing a bra with an overbust corset, which is not knowledge that I would be expected to have.  As an aside, someone did once work out my secret in this way. I was away on a ...

16th February - some days it just all feels impossible

For no particular reason, today I just feel pretty hopeless about the possibility of being able to transition.  Or at least being able to do so without causing untold harm to all aspects of my life and those that I care about.  And there are always reasons why now is a bad time to come out.  I can't do it around any significant dates, because if it all goes wrong and we split up, the date will always be the reminder of when the ex-husband came out and that's not fair.  Then there are family events.  And what about the teenager's exams, not fair to cause upset in the run-up to those, or whilst waiting for results, or when getting ready to go to uni, or when at uni and needing support because they're alone in the world for the first time, or when they leave uni and get a house and job for the first time...there is never ever going to be a time that is right.   Whatever and whenever I do it is unfair on my wife, the teenager, my mother, my team at work, a...

15th February - there's lots of bad things out there

I made the mistake of spending a bit of time reading Twitter today and that has got me down.  It started innocently enough, I was feeling positive about moving forward with my transition and I read something positive from someone who had, and that was nice.  However, the majority of the content isn't that.  Most of it is people who are depressed, or who are facing discrimination, or getting involved in debate with those that seem implacably opposed to trans rights.  There's a seemingly endless stream of legislation banning treatment in different parts of the US, I didn't even know they had that many legislatures to be passing these laws. Then there is just the out-and-out hate speech.   It's a scary world out there and it's enough to make a trans girl want to hide in her closet.   One post that particularly struck my was about the regional gender identity clinic.  When my doctor refused to support any private treatment, they did offer to refe...

14th February - moving towards hormones?

I think I've mentioned before that I am a member of a Discord group with a number of trans women, all around the same stage of either knowing but stuck at the start line, or taking tentative first steps.  It's great, they're all lovely and as we're all in more or less the same boat, I relate to what we're all feeling and going through.  My only real problem is that I live in a different time-zone to the rest of the group, so tend to read conversations after they've happened, rather than able to be part of them in the moment.   This morning I saw my name had been tagged in a comment on one of the threads so I scrolled up to find the conversation.  There was a discussion of who had started hormones and who hadn't, who was doing full-dose and who was doing low-dose and then speculation as to who would be next to start.  Which is where I was tagged in as @Nicola will be next .   Now there's a thought! From where the members of the group are in our res...

13 February - thinking about my safety

There has been a lot in the news today about the death of a young trans woman in a park.  I have no right of comment on that but it has given me pause for thought.  I live in a pretty safe small town and work on a safe business park in a pretty safe small city and drive between the two in my nice safe car.  When I do step outside, as an adult male and not visibly part of any minority group, I generally don't have to think about my personal safety, I can take it for granted.  The probability of me getting attacked is sufficiently remote that I never have to give it any thought.   That is not the case for women though.  It should be, but it isn't.  As a woman, my personal safety would very much need to be something I think about.  Everything from harassment, assault, worse...  None of which I really have to worry about as a male.  My wife will frequently rant at me about the problems in society and how men treat women, and I totally a...

12th February - playing a part

Today was a friend’s birthday and the plan was to go to the pub to watch international rugby and then a curry.  As these things usually happen, the women get to all sit together and the men stand at the bar and drink beer.  I was kind of lost in the middle somewhere, unable to be one of the girls but not one of the guys either. I actually watched the game and didn’t really get involved in either conversation.  This is exactly the sort of occasion I have in mind when I talk about the social reasons why I want to be seen and accepted as a woman.  Not that I have anything against this group of men, some of them are quite nice, but I’m just not really one of them. 

11th February - I found my answer, so now what?

I have spent the past week trying to answer the question my friend put to me when we were role playing coming out to my wife: what do I actually mean when I say I am a woman.  It is multi-faceted and has emotional, social and physical elements to it. I need my body to be congruent with how I see myself. I need to be perceived as a woman to readily fit into the social groups that I feel comfortable with. On that subject, I read a post by someone that had bottom surgery a year ago, who said that she had noticed that some women who couldn’t quite accept her as one of them before, were able to once she had surgery. I have a similar feeling that I have to do it to feel genuine but it’s interesting to learn than others may make the same judgment. The final component of it is the physical and why I am drawn to having a feminine body shape, which is impossible to explain in words to anyone else but something that I can feel intensely in rare moments when I glimpse my future and feel so tot...

10th February - how can I reconcile my transness with my career

Today way a bit of a day of two halves.  It started well. International Women’s Day is soon and my firm is going to be celebrating some of its inspirational female staff and clients. I have nominated some of my team and others that I mentor and they are going to feature. Hopefully the profile will benefit them and their confidence. HR sent them emails today with the subject Congratulations on being and inspirational women! As nominator I was copied in but when I first saw that in my inbox I thought it was addressed to me. I would definitely like to be an inspirational woman.  As an aside, I don’t really approve of the corporate appropriation of things like IWD. These things are supposed to highlight the terrible inequalities around the world and how women are treated. UK business can totally do better in treating women equally but denial of education, forced marriage, rape and sexual violence, fgm and all the myriad other ways that women are mistreated are what IWD should be t...

9th February - for just a moment, I was a woman

Sorry for the oddly worded title, it is difficult to know how to convey this in a few words in a heading.  I had this brief moment today when I forgot myself and my physical reality and truly felt I was a woman. That doesn’t really convey the feeling either. I don’t know how to put it. Maybe I could describe it as  that I imagined for a brief moment that I was on the other side of transition and was physically female. Imagined is still the wrong word. I believed that I was physically female. That’s closer to what I felt. It felt real and more importantly, it felt right. I felt right.  I have mentioned far too often, to the point that I’m worried that it sounds like I have a fixation about it, which I don’t, honestly, that since the start of the year I have been wearing knickers every day and always sitting to pee. They’re the two little feminine changes that I have been able to make and maintain.  The office I work in has no urinals just actual toilets, although som...

8th February - wanting to come out to someone at work

Today was a better day, as I was back in my normal office with my team.  We have all worked closely together for a while and I can be myself with them, none of the needing to pretend that I have going to the other offices.  Not to the point that I can come to the office in a skirt obviously, and none of them know anything about me being trans, but I can behave as myself and relax.  The culture in our team is quite feminised, we're all very supportive of one another and there isn't ego or competitiveness involved like there seems to be in the other teams that are run by men.  I had a meeting with one of the team to talk about how we run things and we collaborated to find a solution that we think might work, which was a good session.   We then got talking about what I want to do with my career and whether I devote all my efforts to this team, or push for a firmwide leadership role.  I remain undecided on this, and we touched on how there are choices to b...

7th February - a not great day

I’ve had one of those fairly annoying days to be honest. Mostly work related but also because of the work the necessity to play the role of male me and fit in with expectations, all of which was a bit annoying and left me feeling not great.  One of my colleagues did comment on my hair getting longer and how I should aspire to a pony tail. I laughed it off, as it was hardly the time or place to explain that I am initially aiming to get it long enough for a bob cut but then I’m going to let it grow out until I can manage a proper femme ponytail. I very much doubt this particular colleague would ever understand any of the things I could tell him.  Joanne commented on my post from yesterday about being unable to explain why I feel the need to transition, that for her, she feels the need to make her body congruent with her mind.  I can certainly relate to that, and have probably even said something similar to that effect in my ramblings on here at some point. I wonder whether ...

6th February - inexplicable?

I wrote yesterday about how the key question of why my feelings of femininity and identification with women leads to my wanting to physically change my body to be a woman is the one thing that I can’t explain properly or at all.  A couple of people have messaged me since to say that they too have struggled to explain this either to themselves or anyone else. I’m not alone at least, but that means there are a number of us grappling with this same question and not readily able to fine the answer. So it is important.  Not that I think I am going to solve it for everyone here.  Be nice if I could go some way towards solving it for myself though.  Or does it even matter? To me, I have this feeling and have for as long as I can remember. It is therefore my truth. I don’t need to know how or why, it is just a part of who I am and I am within my rights I think to just accept that and take it for granted.  It only matters when it comes to trying to explain it to others. ...

5th February - how to explain myself?

I still don't think any of what I said yesterday properly articulates what gender means to me.  Problem is that I am not sure how I can explain it, which matters because that is the very thing that I need to do.  I can't just say "I feel like I'm a woman" and expect my wife, or anyone else for that matter, to just understand and accept that statement.   I've tried to cover the social aspects, of fitting in with women and not men, and not wanting to behave in line with a typically masculine expectation.  These things probably can make sense to others, but they are just being a non-confirming man, why do they make me a woman?  Why would I need to transition to be able to do them, given that I am saying that this is already how I feel? That is a good question, and one I have been over myself during my many many cycles of doubting whether I can really be trans.   The simple explanation is just that I always wished I was a girl.  Not for any ratio...

4 February - what does this mean?

I wrote yesterday that a bit of playful role play with a friend had turned rather serious and she had hit me with some difficult questions that I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to.  Naturally I immediately fell into yet another cycle of “this is all impossible, I should give up this whole trans nonsense idea, what was I even thinking?”!  No surprise there. Anyways… So the thing she said that I couldn’t deal with was “what does that mean?”   It hadn’t really occurred to me that some of these things need to be explained. I know what I mean when I say I feel like a woman inside and within the community of trans women I talk to online, they do too, so I take for granted that it is understood.   That isn’t necessarily the case though for non-trans people.  People who don’t obsess about their gender don’t really think about what it might feel like to be the other, or even what it feels to be the gender they are, because they just are and don’t question it. How do I ...

3rd February - roleplay got a bit serious

I was chatting on a messenger app with a close friend this morning. Well because we live in different time zones, it was my morning and her evening which is sometimes a little mismatched when it’s her Friday night with a glass of wine and my Friday morning at work with coffee. Or of course, sometimes it’s the other way around. But today it was my morning.  She knows all about me and my gender identity.  That wasn’t what we were talking about though initially, instead we were discussing the likely end of her relationship.  She then started suggesting an amusing speech to tell him it was over. I played along and gave some (hopefully) humorous responses and we played out a fictional breakup.  Then I had a go at role playing the telling-my-wife conversation.  It started light and playful and then my friend (who is a counsellor as it happens) started giving serious responses. The whole conversation turned from a game to me struggling to defend myself and justify the ...

2nd February - some good advice received

After my post yesterday about trying to find an opening to talk to my wife and the idea of dropping it into conversation in the context of chatting about a TV advertisement, I received some good advice from Lila (if you don’t know @Lila_Satori you really should!). She said, very sensibly, that changing your life in a huge way is not something to drop casually into conversation and that if something is a big deal, you have to sit down and talk about it like the big deal that it is. I can’t argue with that. Big things deserve proper consideration.  I suppose that I think that if I downplay it and am really casual about announcing it, my wife might not see it as such a big deal.  That’s not very likely to work though is it?  It is a big thing however I introduce it to conversation.  Although then I start wondering why it is such a big deal to want to change gender?  There is no real difference in saying to my wife “I think I might order these trousers” compared to ...

1 February - realistic goals for this month

Thanks to those who sent me encouraging messages after yesterday's post.  I may not have achieved everything that I hoped for in January, but I have made some steps, and those are cause for celebration, so thank you for reminding me of that.   In retrospect, my original plan was a bit ambitious.  I was hoping to get a lot done in a short space of time!  I think therefore in February, I should try to be a bit more measured and just aim to make progress on one or two key things.   In my original plan, I would be starting the hormones this month, dressing female full time at home and coming out to my parents and sibling.  I'm not in a position to be doing any of that yet.   In fact, I'm not able to do anything until I do the one big thing, tell my wife.  So really that has to be my goal for this month.  If I am able to progress in any other way, then I can view that as a bonus, but there is no point setting myself a target to do a...

31 January - one month gone, many disappointments and failures

Here I am at the end of the first month of my monumental year of starting transition.  Well, that was the plan anyway.  I feel it is more a month of things that didn't happen, rather than those that did.   The first, and biggest failure, was not talking to my wife at the outset.  Or any of the other opportunities that have arisen during the month.  That has really held back everything else.   The second big fail is not having engaged with the gender clinic, which stems from the local doctor refusing to participate in my treatment. At least I contacted them, that is something, even if their refusal became failure number three.   In my original plan, by now I should be out to wife and teenager, dressing female around the house at weekends, and approved to start hormones.  None of those have been achieved or are even near.   I don't want to only focus on the negatives and things not done though as there have been a few little...