2. My childhood love affairs with the softness and clinging of sweaters. A sensation to which my body became addicted. My emotional solace in a lonely world.
3. My discovery of the joy of nipple rubbing, alone at the beach, at age 7.
4. Trying on mom's clothes and fragrances at age 10. One chance only.
5. My addiction to masturbation and the crushing blow, as a Catholic, finding out that it was a mortal sin. A bike ride off to church on a cold, grey Saturday afternoon, age 12, to confess and swear it all off. Half way there I realized I couldn't do it, and just turned back home, having made the decision I would masturbate when I needed to no matter what God did to me.
6. My identification with pretty girls in pretty sweaters to the point of spontaneous orgasm in an all boys boarding school. No interest in pursuing girls as a boy.
7. In college my sensual life becomes a quest for the perfect sweater in which I would masturbate my self to sleep. No dating. Questions about whether I was gay.
8. College trips to New York City and 42nd Strret where I learned I liked lesbian porn far more than gay porn, and no interest at all in heterosexual porn.
9. Two excruciating marriages. Got subscriptions to Glamour and Elle for the fragrances and articles. What's a girl's mind like. The cover of Glamour August '94 becomes my icon for what I would like to be.
10. At the end of the first marriage I put on the burnt orange sweater dress my wife left behind. Felt right.
11. During my third marriage my wife shares my sweater fetish but we never become trustingly close. I start to wear her sweaters when she's away.
12. At the end of this marriage, thinking I'm really gay, I enter a relationship with an older gay man, who can accept my baggage, insecurities, sexual timidity, and my sweater fetish. In a private moment even I found odd, while masturbating in private with a sweater, I realized that the sweaters were so important to my sexuality, that I couldn't continue with Mike unless he embraced the sweaters. He did . It was very affirming and opened me up. He provided a warm and loving space for eighteen months.
13. Michael continued watching his gay porn on the internet. I continued reading Nifty.org erotic fiction. I had been mostly into the gay stories for the last couple of years, then I found myself having incredibly powerful reactions to the transgender stories. I identified intensely with the male who transformed into a girl to have either a man or another boigirl. It dawned on me that this probably meant something. A big moment for me when over Thanksgiving 2009 I ordered my first very plain, sweater dress from Old Navy, which I loved. Soon followed by two more prettier ones, and then by some stockings. I slept in them every night when I wasn't with Michael. It felt like home both emotionally and physically.
14. I became sufficiently sure of this that I began to try to negotiate with Mike permission to dress en femme. He was surprisingly OK with any way I wanted to dress. The problem turned out to be that I wasn't OK with just dressing the part. I wanted to be his woman. I had for a while fantasized myself as his woman while making love. I grew increasingly disappointed when I couldn't openly behave as his woman. I guess it came to an end when secretly I started using some estrogen creams on my breast, the effects of which he could notice, and then one time I wore a sweater dress before making love. I guess that was enough. He dumped me a couple of weeks later.
15. Having been bounced out, I knew that I would only look for another relationship with someone, actually either male or female, but preferably female, who would accept me as transgender.
Since I was still living my work life as a male, I had to figure out how I was going to reconcile all the parts of me. I started into therapy and for the first time shared my new hopes and dreams with another person. I also dramatically increased my wardrobe from Woman Within and tried a few dates with other male to female non-op transgender persons. These were positive experiences for me even though I didn't find love. I learned that transgender MTF persons weren't attractive to me at all if they didn't change their voices as well.
16. The first person I told about my self-discovery of transgenderism was my twin brother, a psychologist. He had been immensely supportive during the end of my last marriage and with my feelings that I might be gay. He was completely accepting. In fact he reported to me a remark I had made to him in private one summer in my early 20s, which I had completely forgotten--"You know, if I had been born a girl, all my problems would be solved."
17. I started hormone therapy on August 17th, 2012, 10 days after a minor surgical procedure. It agreed with me immediately, especially for my mood. A sort of instant comfort, feeling at home. Less reactive. Less intense. More emotional. One odd side-effect was a sudden loss of taste for Starbucks coffee. (I had been a daily addict for 10 years.) This alone saved me far more than the cost of my medications. I started off with estradiol, 0.5 mg daily. I tried spironolactone, but it made me dizzy. I soon added finasteride, 5 mg daily, and had to endure some dose-related nausea (cut the dose in half for a while) followed by severe fatigue for several months after I got up to a full dose. Two years later I read that you could go up to 10 mg a day, if you couldn't tolerate spironolactone, so I did.
18. Shortly later I ran into a woman I used to see professionally when she was married. A while after her husband had died suddenly, She asked me over for dinner. This led to a few dates which went considerably better than I ever anticipated. I wasn't at all sure I wanted another woman again, but I found myself very comfortable in her presence and able to relax, just be completely open and just be my relatively quiet, shy self. She was good at drawing me out and getting me to talk. I even began to feel physically comfortable with her and liked snuggling next to her on the love seat, leaning my head into the nook of her neck. After a little while of this it became clear to both of us that we wanted to sleep together. I couldn't do it without telling her who I really was. "There's something I have to tell you. I'm transgender. You've seen that I have breasts. I am taking hormones. Is this something you can accept?" Her immediate answer, even without fully understanding was a definite 'yes'. Her follow-up questions were only to reassure herself that I was not gay. Thus begins my true life as a woman with a woman. The sex transformed immediately from the former preoccupation with erections and the quick payoff. We just cuddle forever. She is incredibly responsive to my touch, and I just last and last for her for enduring ecstasy. I have found my body and my love. The biggest difficulty is having to let her know that we are both lesbians now.
18. We now shop together. We get sweaters for each other at Goodwill. She helped me pick out mt first quality wigs. It's odd since I'm tall and she's short and a little wider in the waist, but we can actually swap and share clothes. She has taught me all I know about makeup. We have a joint plan for a five-year full transition culminating in partial sex reassignment surgery (we both want to keep the penis, just add a vagina and lose the testicles).
20. We got married in February 15th, 2014.
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