Thank you for sharing. I wish you and your wife all the best! New, exciting happy days to come!
I was running Hospitality at the science fiction convention when she gave her last performance then made her mysterious departure (through the back hallway and my kitchen prep area, where I made sure no one was around). When he next made his appearance he was welcomed much more than he was welcomed back. I enjoyed her music, and still do, and I enjoy his music to this day.
To the OP: I figure it is our obligation to learn and adapt to what changes you are going through, but you have the greater job of making those changes and going through them. It would be trite to say I understand what you are experiencing, but you have my support. As long as you try to be you, I will do my best to see you.
All the good vibes to you and your wife, @Mollie_Magill !
I LOL’d.
Put me down for a +1 on that.
Than she was welcomed back, perhaps? I’m not making sense of this.
This. I cannot pretend to understand what gender dysphoria feels like. Hell, I’m living with an asexual cis-woman and don’t understand what that feels like. But unlike RW fantasies where someone wakes up one morning and thinks, “I’d like to be a [boy/girl],” it’s a conclusion reached after a lot of contemplation and/or soul searching and is very important to them. To diminish or worse, mock, that conclusion is the very pinnacle of boorish manners.
My job is to support them in any way I can… and unless we’re very close, not ask the questions they’ve answered a jillion times already.
In my case, it was more “Why do I never feel good? Oh. Ohhhhhh.”
Yeah, i don’t understand it, either. And I’m a non-gender-conforming woman whose kids have suggested I’m really a trans man. But i think it’s easier in our society for a woman to act masculine than for a man to act feminine. (And i am most comfortable in queer spaces, where no one is policing gender conformation.)
And it’s not as if this is uniquely hard to understand. There are lots of things other people experience that I don’t experience. I can be a little obtuse. I suspect most of us can be a little obtuse. 
Congrats on feeling good! That’s huge. (And i can totally understand that!)
Yup, 1,000%. (Patriarchy, and all that.)
It’s not that I act all the feminine, either. That was yet another little mental box I would check to prove I wasn’t trans.
Pro Tip: If you have keep proving to yourself that you’re not something, then maybe you might want to figure out why.
We’re complex beings, and there’s stuff deep in all of our psyches that we don’t understand or maybe don’t even see at all. And sometimes it can be hard to acknowledge the stuff that we do at least kinda see. But the more we’re willing to acknowledge and accept the bits and pieces we can see, the healthier we’ll be, the more on the same page with our own selves.
Anyhow, @Mollie, I’m very glad for you that you figured out why you kept on having to prove you weren’t what it turned out you were after all. May your road ahead be easier and happier on account of that. Blessings to you and your wife!
Our best wishes and good luck.
The phrase, “life shattering revelation”, caught me by surprise because I’ve always believed that a person realized their sexual orientation when they reached puberty. Did you not realize yours for all those years, or did you suppress it? I’m a little confused.
My sexual orientation has always been attraction towards women. Which is one reason why I “knew” I wasn’t trans. Growing up, everyone knew that being trans was a sub-set of being gay. I figured that since I wasn’t gay, I couldn’t be trans.
Okay, I understand. So, the “true you”, so to speak, is that of a gay female?
Thank you for being patient. 
I think so… question mark? I understand that estrogen can make tastes change, but I cannot imagine not being in love with Mrs Magill.
You grew up in an environment with more choices than i. 
Being trans wasn’t a thing, it was nearly unthinkable. But fwiw, when i first learned of it, i learned it as a separate thing from sexual orientation. And also, fwiw, a lot of my trans friends are primarily attracted to people of the same gender.
My son and i attended an event, years ago, and were sitting with a gay man we were friendly with. (Sadly, he died a couple years ago.) My son likes to wear skirts, and was wearing a long festive skirt at the event. Our friend was one of the many gay men who didn’t realize he was gay until fairly late in life. When my son got up to visit another table, our friend said, “kids today have more opportunities than i could imagine when I was that age.”
Man, I know someone who didn’t know she was gay until her 30s, well into a hetero marriage, with two kids. It blew up her life. She’s married to a woman now.
It’s one of those things that seems like you would just know, but you’re not comparing notes with anyone else, right? So maybe you assume everyone of your gender feels exactly like that. Especially if your dysphoria isn’t acute and intense the way it is for some young people. “Sure I feel kind of shitty like this, but doesn’t everyone? I’m not suicidal over it, right?” It’s just life.
There are a lot of things this applies to, not just sexuality or gender identity. There are a lot of ways we don’t really know ourselves. This is maybe a more extreme example but we all have blind spots, things we just think are normal for everyone.
I’ll bet a lot of people shuffle off this mortal coil without ever realizing the truth about themselves.
Those of us who manage to figure our shit out are the lucky ones.
Another gay guy I’m friendly with told me about realizing he was gay. He was in his mid 20s. Like, in highschool, he knew he always looked at a particular guy, but, he told himself, that guy was the big man on campus. Surely everyone looked at him. It wasn’t until a failed relationship with a woman he really liked and admired that he realized he just wasn’t into women. And only after that did he realize he might be into men.
I think these things are really hard, especially when they contradict social expectations.
I didn’t know I was bisexual until I was in my late 20s. It’s pretty common for people to not figure this stuff out until much later in life. Or, sometimes, much earlier - lots of queer people knew they were gay or trans well before puberty, too.
Reminds me of this great song, which of course has a (at that time hidden) gay subtext:
