I felt a deep longing to experience femininity, but I couldn’t bring myself to wear a dress or put on makeup or anything because that was way too scary and thinking about my body was so distressing. Instead, I tried to experience femininity vicariously through my partners. That ended up with me in a lot of deeply codependent relationships, as well as being irrationally upset if they wanted to cut their hair, present more masc, etc.

One of the things that had me realizing that I might need to look a bit harder at the possibility of being trans is, I had a growing wishlist of clothes for my wife… And a secondary wishlist for things that weren’t her style or that she’d shot down, but I still liked. Both lists were far longer than clothes for me.