Hello, I don't quite know what the point of posting this is, other than the desire to get things out of my head. I have been thinking about this for far too long, without daring to voice it aloud. I suppose the internet is almost as good. I grew up in a very conservative religious household, where all I knew about the lgbt community was that they were all going to hell and needed my prayers. I was homeschooled, and fairly isolated from my peers for a long time. I was born female, and the expectation was that I would fill my gender role as God intended. I remember thinking as a child that maybe God had made a mistake, that I was supposed to have been a boy. But although that thought resurfaced from time to time over my childhood, it never progressed much further. I had crushes on people of both sexes growing up, though I ignored my feelings towards female friends as well as I could. Outwardly, I did my best to be the perfect daughter my parents wanted so badly. My desire to please them and God was a strong influence for many years, and I lied and smiled my way through life. I begged God to make me less broken, to heal me of my sinful desires. But nothing helped me to fully suppress them. My parents knew nothing about these struggles, but they were already plenty controlling of my life. I was put on diets, lectured for hours on imagined transgressions; anything I did was considered rebellion and satan worship, whether it was my refusal to wear dresses, or the desire to hang out with non-church friends. My life was planned out in advance, and I was always a disappointment. After spending my teenage years depressed and suicidal (which my parents ignored, despite my attempts to discuss it, until a youth minister interfered), we moved to a less secluded area when I was 18 and I was allowed to get a job. I met people who made me think of myself as a person with a right to live my own life. I left home as soon as I saw an opportunity, and never looked back. My living situation after that wasn't ideal, but it gave me a chance to think about who I was. I came out as pansexual, and after dating a few people I met a wonderful woman that I clicked with instantly. We moved in together quickly due to my state of poverty, she helped me get back on my feet, and we fell in love. I proposed to her over a year ago now, and although we still don't have enough money to get married, we make a great team and I have never questioned her love. My problem developed almost a year ago; my partner has a friend who is genderqueer and very open about sexuality in general. I still hadn't been exposed to a lot of lgbt concepts yet, other than my partner and our relationship. Transmen came up in conversation, and it hit me suddenly that perhaps the reason I never fit in my own skin was that I am a man. I freaked out internally for a while, and tried to ignore it. But I haven't been able to forget about it for more than a few hours ever since. Every day, I feel more discontent. I look back on my life and see bright, glaring signs of me being trans. I try to think about my future, and cannot see a happy future with me as a woman. But I am afraid. My partner, the woman I love and who loves me, is a lesbian. She enjoys the female form, and thinks I am beautiful; she has plenty of male friends, but beards and other masculine physical traits turn her off. The topic of transmen has come up before, and although she is accepting of everyone's gender identity, she is just not attracted to men. So that brings me to my true problem. What so I do? How so I know for sure if I am trans? I am at the very least genderqueer, but can I leave it at that? Is my longing for a male body real, or is it some product from my messed up childhood? If I am trans, should I come out to my partner and the rest of the world, or just accept it and keep it locked inside? Would transitioning even make me happy if I did it, or would I still feel displaced and trapped in a strangers body? Should I risk losing someone I love because they might stop being attractes to me if I transition? It took me over 20 years to find somebody that I feel really loves me, and the idea of losing her hurts and makes me feel horribly scared and lonely. But being someone I am not also hurts, and I have started becoming depressed again. Maybe the answer should be obvious... But either path seems to be filled with so much pain. All I want is to live a quiet, normal, happy life. Am I doomed to just sabatoge every good thing in my life? I know that nobody will have a perfect answer, but I thank you for listening to how messed up I have been feeling lately.
Nobody can tell you a way to know if you are trans for sure. You'll have to be the judge of that in the end. But a lot of what you've written, that you can't see a happy future with you as a woman, seems clear enough. Whatever you want to call yourself, your own words here look to me like a strong indicator that trying to hide away these feelings will hurt you more than pursuing them. So ask yourself what "being a man" means for you, and if that's who you want to be, and do your best to ask yourself what that might be. Also, do yourself a favor at the very least and don't fret about whether or not these feelings stem from your "messed up childhood." Your past is over and done with, and how you might have grown up under other circumstances is irrelevant to who you are now, in the present, in reality. On the possibility of transitioning: If she really loves you, won't she still love you even if you transition? You should at least have a discussion with her about this topic. Work out the particulars between you and her. She sounds like she's helped you through some tough times, and it should take more than a different body type to shatter the bonds the two of you have built together.
