MtF HRT Week 3 - My Experience

Week 1/Background -> https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/8767449

Week 2/Last Week -> https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/9074332

Dosage:

4mg Estradiol

100mg Spironolactone

Physical effects:

I have been dealing with some acid reflux, likely from my earlier stress. That ended up dominating how I felt physically this week, and has made for a very uncomfortable week. I believe it also started to affect my inner ear, and was causing me vertigo and lightheadedness, particularly after getting up in the morning. I am now on Prilosec, it seems to be helping quite a bit, but it has taken some time to heal and start feeling ok again.

My chest has been feeling slightly more sensitive, nothing significant or externally visible, but noticeable.

Mental effects:

I’ve been a little more down this week, but attribute that mainly to how I’ve been feeling physically. I am finding myself strongly motivated to accomplish more and explore life more, but have been relatively unable to due to the vertigo. Hopefully I am getting past that now.

I had my first appointment with my primary care Dr Monday, I was quite nervous about that. My provider does not have a good record on trans issues, and I was concerned how my Dr would respond. I was worried he would try to convince me some of my other issues were being caused by the hormone change, or refuse to treat me. Things ended up going pretty well instead. He was understanding, asked some basic questions about how my sodium and potassium were being monitored, and moved past it. I don’t foresee any issues going forward with him, so that was a relief. We have decided I should resume the Methylphenidate for my ADHD, but at a significantly reduced dosage. I was on 54mg daily before HRT, but that almost immediately felt like way too much. I will be starting back on 27mg, and seeing how that works for me now. Hopefully I can report back next week on that.

My competitiveness continues to decline. I am finding myself worrying a lot less about how I compare to others and instead just wanting to be the best me I can be. That has been a welcomed change, and seems to be improving my communication and relationships across the board. I feel more genuine in my interactions, like I’m more in control of how I interact with others, and just calmer in general in social situations. I have always felt like I’ve had relatively severe social anxiety, that’s not gone completely, but it’s so much easier to manage than it was. For example, I received a last minute invitation to dinner from some family, and was able to just say “yes” to it, get ready, and go. The worry and fear just didn’t seem to present itself like it always has in the past, instead of feeling anxious about having to see everyone, I felt excited! That was really nice.

Discussion:

I’d like to start adding a topic of discussion each week, if you have any suggestions for good topics in future posts, message me and I will include them. This week, I’d like to talk a little about how this affects things with our partners/close relationships, how we manage that, and how that changes as we move forward.

Do those close to you know the real you? How did those close to you react when you told them who you are? How have your relationships changed over time as a result of coming out? What unique challenges do our relationships face?

My wife of 10 years has supported me and been by my side through everything since I first came out to her a little over a year ago, but it also has been extremely challenging for both of us, and has put some strain on our relationship. She was overwhelmed, and unsure how to handle things or really even how she felt about it for quite a while.

At first she was a little angry about it, and blamed me for not telling her about this sooner, and “lying” to her about who she was marrying. This was not fair to me at all, but also seemed like a reasonable feeling for her to have. She was quite shocked at first, and it really tested our connection and felt like we were close to failing a few times.

It’s true who I am now is not exactly who she thought I was, but it took more than I wanted to convince her that despite that, I am still me. I tried to help her understand that all the things she loved about who I am weren’t changing, that instead what was changing was the things neither of us liked about me. All she could see at first though was that the man she fell in love with wasn’t the woman I wanted to become now. She supported me anyways though, it was hard on her at times, but she never stopped trying.

There has been some conflict around it feeling like I’m challenging her own femininity. I am far more girly and feminine than her, and it seemed for a bit that it was really hard for her to feel secure in her own womanliness in a way. It was hard for her to feel comfortable helping me with some of the things I was asking for help with, like makeup or shaving, I believe partially because I was excited about those things, and to her they were more just annoying things she had to do than fun exciting stuff. She still helped as much as she could though, and taught me far more than she will ever realize.

There was, and still is, lots of confusion around what that means in regards to both of our sexual orientations. Were we suddenly lesbians? What did that mean for us? How would others react to that? Over time I think we have realized labels aren’t important. I love the person she is, she loves the person I am, and that is truly all that needs to matter for us to want to be together.

Our biggest issue though, has been around encouragement. Knowing that it was causing her stress and discomfort early on when I expressed my femininity around her, it was very difficult for me to feel ok with pushing that on her. I was desperate for her to help me feel ok with who I am and what I want. I asked her many times to encourage me, to tell me she wants me to express myself, but she was unable to. It was very difficult for her to suggest I work towards what she thought she didn’t want, but I was putting it almost entirely on her to tell me when it was ok to be myself and when it wasn’t. She never wanted that control, but I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. We fought far more often than I wanted to around this, and I was quite worried that we would never get through it.

It wasn’t until I realized that I can’t wait for someone else to tell me it’s ok to be myself that things changed. I realized I was asking her to do exactly what I was fighting against, that I was still valuing myself through the eyes of others, and asking them who it was ok for me to be, and when. I don’t want ANYONE telling me who I have to be though, that’s the entire point of my transition, finding who I am and learning to love that.

The only way forward was to accept that being true to myself was more important than anything, that if there were people in my life unwilling to accept me for myself, they shouldn’t be in my life. So I made an appointment with Planned Parenthood to discuss HRT. That was terrifying, I was very concerned about how she would respond, and at first she seemed hurt I didn’t involve her in that decision. I couldn’t though, the only person that can decide who I am is me. She came with to my appointment though, she was by my side as I finally started looking for help with this, she held my hand as I told the Dr I struggle with gender dysphoria.

Things have improved, a lot, since I made that decision. She has since realized she was still somewhat in denial of the reality of all this, and me taking the initiative and making an appointment forced her to face that and accept it. Our relationship is finally feeling somewhat stable again, and our communication around all this has gotten much better. It still not always easy, but it’s easier, and that is making it possible to grow together again.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have someone as strong as she is by my side, and look forward to learning more about ourselves and finding new ways to explore our love for each other.

I never believed any of this was possible, yet here I am doing it. Find support, reach out, you are less alone than you think.

Melissa