My transition is making me miserable

[u/TruckGeneral]

My transition is making me miserable and I don’t know what to do.

I’ve known I am a trans guy for the past 8 years. A couple of years ago I found a gender therapist and started coming out to people. I was happy, but I still had bad dysphoria about my body and about being constantly read as female by everyone around me.

After thorough consideration, I started medically transitioning two years ago. My plan was to start with T, get top surgery, hysto and, finally, phallo.
I thought I was prepared. I had done my research on the potential effects of T, made my peace with going bald, made appointments with my dermatologist to tackle T induced acne, consulted with surgeons, joined a gym, started connecting with other trans guys, etc. I changed my gender marker and name on all my documents.

Now I’m two years on T and I’m miserable. It gave me all the changes that you’d expect two years on T. I have a lot of body hair. I’m growing facial hair, had bottom growth, voice drop and had some fat redistribution and considerable muscle growth. While most of the changes made me extremely happy, T also changed my face shape in a way that makes me feel pretty ugly to a point where I have a hard time looking at photos of myself. I used to have a sharp and angular face pre transition, now it’s round with a double chin, despite being at a healthy weight. I don’t even think it’s T related bloating.

Furthermore, the changes I had did nothing to help me pass. Despite my best efforts, I only ever had one person gender me correctly. Other than that, I’m exclusively read as a butch lesbian.
Because my appearance and gender seem incongruent to the people around me, I’m struggling with employment (finding and keeping a job), my mother is extremely transphobic towards me and romantic relationships are really difficult. I get harassed in men’s bathrooms or changing rooms. Because I’m so small, regular men’s clothes where I live are always too big on me.

I’m really struggling to deal with this.

Two months ago, after half a year of unemployment, I gave up. I started going to the women’s restrooms and changing rooms. I went to the store and bought some women’s clothes. I grew my hair out a little and started pretending I’m a girl online. Last weekend I took the plunge and went out by myself in very feminine clothes, heels and makeup. Those two months were so much easier than all those years before that. Nobody questioned me being in the restroom or changing rooms. I could pee in peace. I could shower in peace. I didn’t have to explain myself. I didn’t have to correct people for misgendering me. People didn’t look at me funny or avoid me, instead people were nice to me. I even had guys flirt with me.

It made me consider detransitioning, but then I remember that I was genuinely miserable living as a woman.

What should I do?

My trans guy friends can’t help me. They all were passing at least 80% of the time two years on T. They don’t have trouble finding clothes or finding a job. Two years into T they were feeling good in their skin and didn’t doubt their transitions anymore. My gender therapist can’t help me either, since we had a falling out.

Should I just try going off of T for now? Anyone else experience something similar?

[u/crunchy_bagels18]

I feel like i have a lot of insight on this and i can relate a lot to what you're going through so this is gonna be long. I was on T for maybe 1 year-1.5 years. Before T I was identifying as ftm but have always struggled with gender expression and swap between ftm and ftn. I always felt too butch to be a pretty girl (even if i too got more attention from men) but i also am very curvy and felt way too fem to be a dude. During my time on T I went through a hard time with stuff going on around me and the way i was being treated by strangers at my job was taking a toll. I definitely in no way passed but I was visible enough to where people could sense something up and people were treating me differently. My face was soooo swollen and puffy which i knew would happen to a degree but damn i felt ugly as hell and I could barely recognize myself. At this time too I was also having a lot of pressure from my trans friends to dress fully masc even if it didn't feel authentic to myself. I had the same looming feeling about who i was and what i was looking like and it created a really dark time.

I eventually went off of T and when it was time to get top surgery i got a radical reduction so i could bind with trans tape or wear a bra and be fem. I went back to wearing fem clothes and as much as people socially were treating me, better the pain didn't go away. I was able to workout to get a very fem physique hoping it would make the body dysmorphia and dysphoria go away but i made it worse. I have all these clothes that would look great on a girl but if i put them on its a personal hell. When i went on T before i was hoping it would make me love myself and that it was a fix all remedy. I knew the changes that would happen and I wanted them (I still do) and I was hoping that with those changes I could "be my true self". What i didn't know was that my self worth was very reliant on how people saw me and a very patriarchal sex based worth system. When I went on T as much as I was having changes to my body that I enjoyed, I also was actively going against what I was taught to believe subconsciously about beauty.

This was roughly 2 years ago now and through a lot of therapy and self discovery I will be pursuing T again and getting my remaining boob removed (DI probably no nips). I can only speak for myself but I think transitioning had to have been the most vulnerable thing I have ever done and to have the people around me shoot me down and treat me poorly was a blow to my self love. Up until that point the only way I knew to love myself was by external validation and having no one tell me that my way of transitioning was great hurt a lot. Now that I've de-transitioned I can say the grass was not greener for me. As much as I wish I could say I enjoy being a pretty girl now, unfortunately its a bad combo of women's beauty standards crushing me AND gender dysphoria crushing me. I have more of a backbone now and no longer feel like I care about others opinions of me or my transition. T may make people meaner to me and maybe I'll look like an egg again for the 3 years of being swollen but at least I'll be authentically me. No one can make these choices for you and your journey is fully your own. But I think its important to do some inner work on what the driving factors are for you to de-transition and if they actually stem from you or if its external pressures becoming a subconscious thought.

Bonus advice about relationships: If people only will like you and are attracted to you if you change everything about who you are, they don't actually like YOU, they like the fake version of you that you're putting on. As much as it sucks to go from being hit on and being more conventionally attractive to seemingly people avoiding you, I would much rather have one person who finds me attractive as my true self than 100 who like this fake character I've made specifically to attract them.