Probably won’t be hanging around here too much anymore

I will share most things, but there are some details I will not.

I was prescribed Spirolactone as an androgen blocker, and Estradiol as an estrogen. I will not discuss dosage, because there are people searching the Internet for dosage information so they can obtain medications illegally and self medicate (which is very dangerous and I don’t want to be responsible for).

My experience so far has been far beyond my expectations. In fact your comment about feeling “settled” makes a lot of sense to me now. I feel SO much better even on the initial low dosage that I question whether I really need to go much further. I feel so close to “okay” for the first time in my life that I am wondering if I would be happy just to present as a somewhat feminine man and not go all the way with transitioning to female.

At the same time, though, I am not ruling out that the improvements in emotional and mental stability could strengthen the desire to go further. I don’t know yet, I am less than two full weeks into the journey.

Physical changes have been mostly minimal. The biggest change has been a decrease in eating and a corresponding weight loss of 4 lbs. I attribute this to me being a “stress eater” and my huge drop in stress levels. I feel so much calmer, and my wife really notices it. I have also seen my eczema clear up entirely, something that has not happened in the 17 years that I have suffered from it.

My muscles, especially large muscles like quadriceps, sometimes feel a little weak like I have been exercising when I haven’t. Nothing terrible or debilitating, but I think I am starting to lose a small amount of muscle mass. Nothing that I can notice visually yet.

There are a few spots on my body where I can tell my skin has softened just a tad. Not huge differences, but I discern a very small change.

The best change, though, is a very noticeable drop in libido. It’s not gone entirely. If my “normal” baseline libido is 100%, I would say I’m around 50% right now. Most of the time I’m not thinking about or interested in sexual things, but can get there if I want to. I feel like I have control over my libido, rather than the other way around.

Spontaneous erections have stopped except for occasional nocturnal erections. I can still get hard, but it takes a bit longer. I was curious yesterday how much my ability to get an erection had changed and decided to do something I normally avoid: I tried masturbating. It took probably 3 minutes of continuous stimulation to get hard. A couple of times along the way I was losing interest and thought about stopping. The urge to keep going just wasn’t there. But I pressed on because I wanted to know if anything else had changed. It probably took another 5 minutes of stimulation to reach orgasm. The orgasm felt normal, no reduction in intensity. The level of fluid output seemed about normal, no reduction there yet.

I will say that you will have a tough time getting anything if you say you have zero interest in transitioning. Before I came out to my wife, I actually tried to just get androgen blockers and no estrogen. I told the clinic that I just wanted to reduce libido and not transition. Their response was that I didn’t meet the WPATH criteria for HRT and they referred me to a urologist. That got me nowhere.

If you don’t want to transition, I would recommend saying that you are non-binary or gender fluid or something like that. If you say you identify as male and just want reduced libido, you will get nowhere.

One thing you need to do immediately if you really want to pursue HRT is get yourself a therapist who specializes in LGBTQ stuff. Not only will they be able to guide you to the doctors in your area who are most likely to support your HRT efforts, but you will also likely need a support letter from a therapist before any endocrinologist will prescribe you anything. And most therapists will either want to see you for six months before giving such a letter, or you will need to demonstrate to them an urgent need (such as suicidal behavior due to gender dysphoria).

Once you receive a prescription, I recommend having it filled at a pharmacy that you normally don’t frequent. I wouldn’t say that I am ashamed of being transgender, but keeping people out of your business helps make life smoother. You don’t want to walk into a pharmacy where you know the people and they go to hand you a prescription for androgen blockers and estrogen and just stare at you in disbelief. I have my prescription filled at a Walgreens on the opposite side of town and use the drive-thru window.

Also, you do need to understand that you need regular blood checks, probably every 90 days. Spiro can cause potassium levels to increase, and certain forms of estrogen can be hard on the liver. So those things will always be checked as long as you are on the medications. You are also at increased risk for blood clots on some estrogen medications, and you need to consult your endocrinologist before scheduling any surgical procedures. If possible (non-emergency surgery) they will likely want you to stop HRT for a period before and after surgery.

Lastly, be aware that everyone’s body responds differently to hormones. Some people can be on full dose HRT for years and experience almost zero feminization, and others can be on a low dose trying to avoid feminization and still experience a lot of feminization. You must be prepared to deal with whatever happens. You might end up with C-cup boobs pretty quickly and not be able to do anything about it other than have surgery to remove the tissue.

So, there’s my long winded answer. Hope it helps. Don’t be afraid to ask any other questions. I will never be rude, but if you ask something I won’t discuss (like dosage) I will let you know if it is off limits.

 

No problem. Just keep in mind that it’s more of a marathon than a sprint. Getting anywhere medically is a slow moving process. Whether we are talking about the process of getting an HRT prescription, or the effects of the medications. Keep a right perspective about time and progress, and you get where you need to be.

 

Hi, Petey,
I understand your concerns, and believe me when I say that I wrestled for many years with whether or not to come out as transgender. For the very reasons you listed.

It really came down to my wife demanding to know what was bothering me so much for so long. She knew for years that I was miserable, but didn’t know why. She told me that I needed to deal with whatever it was because it was preventing me from bein the person God wants me to be and hindering me from reaching the people God wants me to reach.

It came as a bit of a shock to her to learn that being transgender is what was bothering me. Having to live with the secret of living a fake life to prop up a gender identity that wasn’t really me was killing me emotionally and spiritually. I was suicidal a lot, but hid it somewhat well. She knew I was very depressed and angry, but she didn’t really know the true depth of it.

At this point I haven’t committed to full transition. You rightly point out the impact on marriage and family. This is a huge concern for us. My wife claims she would stay with me no matter what, but I really worry about the impact on our kids and the long term effects on her if she had to live with me as a woman. I also worry about the effects on me. While I would love nothing less than to be the woman I am internally, living externally as a woman while married to a woman would put the label of lesbian on me. I am not ready to live with that, and am not sure I ever would be.

If I were to ever fully transition, I would likely choose to remain married to my wife but abstain from sex. She has told me repeatedly that she would be fine with a celibate marriage and had even wanted to be celibate for most of her life before marrying me. Since getting married and experiencing great difficulties with sex, she has said she would be happy to be celibate and live out her old dream.

So, from a sex standpoint, I think we would be okay. But I do worry about being viewed as lesbians. I really don’t consider either of us to be lesbians. Though my wife has confessed to some same sex attractions, it really isn’t a big part of who she is. And I have struggled to enjoy any kind of sex using my penis, and as my male hormone levels and sexual functions fade away, I am finding that I am not strongly interested in anything sexual. It is mildly interesting, but I could live without it.

Our kids are what I worry most about. I worry about them feeling like freaks or outcasts. I worry about them feeling confused or angry if I told them I should be their mommy instead of their daddy. They have only ever known me as daddy and it would be very difficult to understand and accept a change like that.

However, since starting HRT, my mood and emotional state has stabilized so much that my wife and kids both can’t believe the difference. My wife, of course, knows why I am easier to live with. She just tells the kids that I have been taking some medicine that makes me feel better. Which is entirely true, but she doesn’t tell them what the medications are.

For right now, I am going to try to live as best as I can without changing a lot. It’s a really difficult road. On the one hand I know that full transition would offer me the best emotional and mental health and make me feel “right”, but at the same time it exposes my family to so many risks. So, for the time being I am working with my endocrinologist to try to keep feminization to a manageable level and present socially as a man. It’s kid of the worst of both worlds, but offers the best overall compromise for my family and I.

 

Well, I think this going in a direction I don’t want. One of my nipples has become so painfully sensitive it is nearly unbearable. Just walking around and the fabric of my shirt touching it hurts. Not just a little soreness, but a stabbing pain.

Going to stop the hormones until I can see the Endo. I might see about staying on androgen blocker, but I think the estrogen is going to be hard to live with long term. We were hoping the feminization would be minimal or very slow, but it seems that things are happening pretty fast for me relative to other people.

Given the other stresses I am dealing with in life (wife is pregnant again, work stress is very high right now, money has been very tight, etc.), I think I need to either give this a rest for a while or just give up on it. I will never stop knowing who and what I am, but there are practical limits to being true to who I am. Being in pain and distraction from the needs of daily life for my family are two things can’t let slide.

 

I find it odd that even though I now only get erect when intimate with my wife, I have been thinking it would be nice to start wearing the cage again. My wife has gotten comfortable with me having erections, and yet I find that I miss having the cage suppress them. I have never liked having erections and I found the cage supplied a level of comfort during intimate times that I now miss. I don’t miss the inconvenience and discomfort of it during regular life activities, though.

 

My foray into hormone therapy has halted. I had a bad allergic reaction to one of the medications and stopped. It also coincided with a career focus shift that has a very good chance requiring me to have high security clearance for military projects in the future and if I go much further there is a good chance that I may be limiting my future.

I am sad about this, as it is hard to live as I am, but I feel I have no alternative. My body simply doesn’t agree with the medications and my future ability to provide for my family is at stake.

I stopped all hormone treatments about three weeks ago. The first two weeks I still felt calm with low libido. However, this week the testosterone has come back very strong. Very strong libido. Very aggravating. Glad to have the cage or I would be masturbating multiple times per day. The one thing I am happy about is that the soreness and sensitivity in my nipples is starting to go away. That was not fun and I won’t miss it.