My Journey: First Marriage;

I married a couple of years after graduating high school. This was not really because I was still trying to be the best "male" I could be. No, I got engaged because that is what "men" do when they think they have found the "ONE." We struggled, as I think most do when they are trying to go to college and run a house right out of high school. We were making do with limited funds coming in. That was until we found out she was pregnant about a year and a half after we moved in together. This is when we got married.

I did not think too much about how I still did not fit into my body in the early days of my marriage. I believe the dysphoria was still there but just a little subdued. I did talk her into letting me dress up in her clothes one time for Halloween. The year I dressed up, I had a part-time job delivering the mail for the local gas company. I dressed up in the morning and went to work. No one knew I was going to do this. Again, everyone thought that I was a new person. Everyone was shocked at how good I looked. I was flying high on good feelings all day. That night, we had a class together; when we got to class, the instructor came in looked right at me and asked if I was new to the class. I told him no and that I had just dressed up for Halloween. As he was starting class, he kept looking over at me and could not believe how real I looked. Then, one of the ladies in class was saying that her kids were missing trick-or-treating because she was there in class. Well, that was the end of class, about 10 minutes in. He said that "he could not stand in the way of trick-or-treaters." As we were walking out, I had gotten in front of the rest of the class. I had on 3" hills, and everyone was amazed that I could walk in them. The same lady who got class canceled commented, "I even had the sway of a natural woman." I thanked her and proceeded to walk out of the building, giggling the whole way out. When my fiancé and I left, we went to a bar. As we were having a drink, I leaned over to kiss her. She said I could not kiss her because I looked "too real." After that night, I started wearing her lingerie and underwear, mainly at night. Doing this would keep the feeling of wanting to be a girl (now I know it as dysphoria) quiet for a time.

I do not believe that my dressing was the primary reason we didn't last. After our second son was born, we started to fight verbally. We were together for about 8 years and got a divorce. After we divorced, I went to live with my parents.