[bryony]

I agree with almost all of what you said, but I'm a little confused about your situation. Do you not want GRS just because you love your wife,

"Just because I love her"? I have to wonder, if you phrase the question that way, if you have been lucky enough to experience true love yet?

My definition of love includes your willingness to sacrifice anything, up to and including your life, for the person(s) that you love. (After all, a Secret Service man will take a bullet for the POTUS - and there is no love involved there!)

It works both ways, of course. In a truly loving relationship, where there are no easy answers, a couple would opt for the solution that would create the least harm for either/both of them.

...Because that's what I thought that's what transsexual was (wanting to fully transition).

My understanding of TS is based on the description by Dr Anne Vitale, who has treated over 400 TS patients. It is a condition whereby the developing foetus is exposed to the wrong amount of androgen, usually caused by stress to the mother. The brain develops as female, rather than male, resulting in gender dysphoria.

Taking cues from peer groups (we are all born naked), the female brain wants to "fit in" and be as much female as possible, in appearance at least.

I'm sure that this is a spectrum. Some TS's will have such a strong desire to become women that they will have no interest in women, and will want full GRS in order to achieve that goal.

My contention is that, if a TS is able to perform for decades as a virile husband and father, that desire cannot be too acute that GRS is essential.

All of the mental difficulties caused by having a TS brain for me are controlled by taking estrogen, or more specifically an estrogen-mimic. Most TSs, according to Dr Vitale have their anxieties reduced this way.

Whereas if I were still young and single I very likely would go "the whole hog", now that I have a loving partner, and am unlikely ever to find a replacement, I will do anything I can not to lose her, or the family life with my kids that I value above all else.

So, although a TS may want to transition, as a mature adult s/he has to accept that want/needs are driven by sensitivities and practicalities. The primary driver, in my opinion, for transition is a combination of political correctness and medical/pharma orthodoxy which does not seek (in the Anglosphere it seems) to take advantage of herbal remedies for the major difficulties experienced by TSs that makes their lives so hard to deal with.

I can cope now, and I can be happy, much happier than if I tried to look and act like a female. I would be no more successful at that than I am likely to be at disguising female breasts, probably less so.

There are many that disagree with these views, which they are entitled to do; but, as you asked, I answered. Therefore, I hope I won't be the recipient of ad-hom attacks.

B.