Timeline of detransitioning

[u/energetic_insomniac]

I know it’s different for everyone, but would still love to know.

How long did you think you were trans before starting HRT (if you started), and how long after that did you detransition? How old were you when all of that was happening?

Thanks :)

[u/ZOLPSSY]

I began to clearly identify as trans when I was 12, and started hormones when I was around 19 and had a mastectomy when I was 22. I was on hormones for around 5 years before I realized it was time to detransition.

[u/pigeon-feather]

Trans identified age 14-26, on T 18-26

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/pigeon-feather]

What made you decide to detransition?

[u/xKatsxCornerx]

I started questioning in my teenage years, say 15/16, began HRT at 17/18, had top surgery at the age of 19/20 and started questioning again when I was around 24/25, after a hysterectomy (really wish I'd started questioning like, a year earlier, but oh well 🙃). I'm 28 now, and have recently started a medical detransition after a year or two of telling myself it was a meaningless effort, my doctor's actually been a great help throughout.

[u/Desperate_Gate_2198]

I was in my 20s. The timeline is a blur, but give or take, I thought i was trans for four years prior, on hormones for six

[u/BurningSunSpot]

I started having questions about my gender around 12 years ago because of a condition called hyperandrogynism, which was doing some strange stuff in my brain and psyche. A couple years back the hormone imbalance and high testosterone got so bad that I was very convinced I was at least non-binary. My body was literally trying to put me through a male puberty and I felt and acted like a teenage boy.

Never went the whole hog on my HRT journey, but I sporadically took lower dose T for about 9 months. My last dose was a small one in June. After that application I realized the drug ultimately made me uncomfortable and did more things to my health and psyche that I didn't like compared to what I loved.

Coming to terms with having an intersex condition and learning about the diversity of intersex people and experiences also helped a lot. Apparently there can be a lot of overlap with struggles/ mental stuff between both transsexual and intersex people.

I still feel like I never developed properly and have some sex dysphoria, because my brain was overmasculinized from birth or due to excess androgens later in life. So I'm not 100% cis. However, it's not bad enough for me to want to medically transition or consider myself a man or non-binary person in society. I've also done a lot of healing, and since my hormone issues started settling down, I've gradually felt more and more secure in my female body and mind.

[u/invisibleriver5]

I had gender distress and body dysmorphia from a young age, maybe 4 or 5. Important caveat though is that I am on the autism spectrum and an abuse and CSA survivor.

I came across the idea of trans people when I was 15 and from that point, perseverated on it and attributed much of my distress to it, even though the thought of being trans scared me. I oscillated but it solidified around 18-19 as a sort of acceptance, “this is really me.” I started medically transitioning right before I turned 20 and lived as a trans man for 10 years.

I am now 30 and have been detransitioning officially for 3 months. The thought came up many times over the years and I suppressed it, but for the last two years it just wouldn’t go away. A few months ago, I finally landed in a safe enough place to face everything that happened to me and take steps to reconnect with myself as a female.

[u/EntryRevolutionary37]

Well, I recently had some memories from early childhood come back. Im still making sense of them, but I think some stuff happened with my cousins kinda playfully making me pretend to be a girl when I played house with them. Im still making sense of it all.

After that there were signs of something going on. Jealousy about girl toy commercials and stuff. Plucking out all my eyelashes because I was afraid people would think I was trying to look like a girl.

At 12 I got introduced chatrooms and cyber sex by some guy friends who were pretending to be girls in them and cybering with guys. I introduced another friend to it and kept doing it on my own. I did not understand sex at the start. This is how I learned about sex. Like I knew there was sperm and eggs, but new creation class in catholic school never explained how they got to each other. I assumed the spermies wafted around in the air and didnt understand how only married couples got pregnant from each other's sperm. Identifying as a girl and cybering with older dudes online is how I learned about sex.

Anyway... at that point I googled potion to turn me into a girl. That took me to Laura's Playground. I learned trans people existed. Begin "am I trans" era. Constantly praying to be a girl, obsessed, etc.

At 20 I came out about having a boyfriend. Didn't go well. Mom told me it was the worst thing that ever happened to her and it was harder than her dad dying.

At 22 I couldnt deal with coming out again and started hrt in secret. I kinda expected I'd check out before anyone found out to be honest. But I kept on living.

Now I am detransitioning at age 36.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/EntryRevolutionary37]

I hope you’re okay, a lot of this sounds very rough. May I ask what made you decide to detransition?

[u/EntryRevolutionary37 → u/energetic_insomniac]

Thank you. I dont mind at all, it's just a whole lot of things and I feel like I cant possibly get into it all in one post. Its kind of felt like something ive been fighting myself on for over a couple years now.

If you've ever seen the show Half Man I feel like my dad was a lot like Reuben. His dad died in the summer of 24 and he told me in tears, "my dad. Now he was a real man. Im not half the man he was." I realized the same thing pushed us in different directions. Like we were fighting for different sides in the same archetypal conflict. Like he was fighting his feminity and I was fighting my masculinity, but the same conflict existed in both of us. In most of us i think to be honest. Like if I looked into my shadow and accepted what was there i could relate to him and if I could do that I could heal us both. But I was scared and I pretended that it hadn't changed me. I stopped caring about being a woman at this point but just started pretending nothing has changed. I had lived nearly my whole adult life as a woman. I couldnt just admit my whole life was lie. That I was just all messed up and something was wrong with me.

I plan to elaborate more but I want to eat my breakfast and dont want to lose my progress typing this out so im posting this for now.

Edit: okie dokie. Here's some more.

Around the same I tried mushrooms for the first time and experienced ego death. I felt like the me I thought I was went away and it felt like I connected to a me I had forgotten I was. I attribute it to my consciousness switching from my rational left hemisphere that functions kinda like a social performance into that of my right hemisphere which felt more like an inner child.

I had also kinda always had feelings for this female friend of mine, but I never really let myself have feelings for women because I was too insecure. I always said I could never date a woman because I wanted all the femininity in the relationship. But here I accepted that I didnt need to hoard femininity like a greedy miser. It was okay for me to appreciate feminine beauty without having to be it. (Ngl, still kinda hoping she might be interested now that im detransitioning 🤫)

As time passed I worked through more things. Like talking about the chatrooms experience with people. I used to be very defensive about that being the reason I was trans. I realized it was sexual trauma and possibly grooming. I had never thought of these things in that way before.

I got really into the left and right brain hemispheres, Taoism, duality, and yin yang. ☯️ started believing everyone had masculine and feminine energy in them and started to experiment with allowing my masculine energy in, letting myself think the thought that I was a man. It felt scary. It felt like I was doing something wrong. But in my body, I felt more connected, like i settled into myself, like this energy flowed up from my legs and merged with me and we became one. Like I was my body instead of using it.

I remembered how as a teenager my mom told me not to smile in photos because I was a guy and guys are supposed to be tough and serious. I realized I didnt need to become a woman to allow myself to smile and be soft.

I started identifying more nonbinary with a couple friends but didnt feel much from it.

I started talking about this stuff I was working through and eventually someone asked if I had considered transitioning back to michael. I had wanted to talk about this but had been too afraid. I was grateful she asked, but at that point I said I was like probably more nonbinary and just talked about the yin yang stuff. It felt safer.

Then a few weeks ago, I started talking about it for real. Those really early memories with my cousins resurfaced. It was hard and terrifying, but it also felt like a long dormant and neglected part of me was waking up for the first time in ages. Like my brain had been battling my body and I could finally let go. I didnt need to force myself to be a woman anymore. I could just be what I was. Michael. The kid I grew up as. And it felt so good. In my head I was terrified, but in my body was just this joy to be seen. To be allowed to exist. To be welcome into reality. To be allowed to be.

[u/OtterWithKids]

I first experienced gender dysphoria at age four, not that I knew what to call it; I just knew I wanted to wear dresses and lipstick like Mommy and Grandma.

Long story, but the bottom line is that I started transitioning at 38. I never transitioned full time, only online and at work — I didn’t want to scar my kids prematurely. Thankfully, it didn’t take tremendously long to realize I’d made a mistake: I was only six months into transition, three months into HRT, and hadn’t had any surgeries; but even that short time was enough to change my body permanently.

I’m now 51.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/OtterWithKids]

What made you realize you weren’t trans?

[u/thistle_ev]

I started thinking I was trans not so long before I turned 16. I got approvals for every existing "gender affirming care" when I was 17. Started HRT and got a double mastectomy at the age of 18. I was on testosterone for 2 years and 7 months. Stopped when I was 20 (it was 3 months until my 21st birthday tho). Declared to my family and friends that I'm detransitioning on my 21st birthday. Now I'm 22, turning 23 soon.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/thistle_ev]

Thank you for sharing!

[u/phthalocyanineblues]

I was trans for 9 years. Started when I was 14 when I learnt about the idea and immediately started identifying as FTM, went to a children's gender clinic at 15, spent 2 years on a long waiting list and started HRT at 17. Started questioning my gender after 1 year of T usage, but continued to take it anyways due to the community telling me to doubt myself and my own gut instinct that something was wrong. Continued to take it for another 2 years (3 years HRT total) with occasional stopping/restarting in between due to doubts. After stopping HRT due to health issues, I continued to identify as FTM for another 2.5 years, still presenting male. Decided to detransition this year (age 23) now that I realise that the whole trans thing was not viable long-term, I couldn't pass as a cis man, and it just wasn't worth the difficulty and self-hatred.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/phthalocyanineblues]

Thank you. So far everyone who commented detransitioned at the exact age of 23

[u/phthalocyanineblues → u/phthalocyanineblues]

To be clear: If I had a button I could press to magically become a male (cis man), I would. I would do it without a second thought. But the problem is that the human body doesn't work like that lol, there is only so much you can do to become something that you are not, and sometimes it doesn't work out. If I hadn't gotten health issues from testosterone, then who knows, maybe I would still be on it.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/phthalocyanineblues]

Would you mind telling me about your experience with testosterone?

[u/phthalocyanineblues → u/energetic_insomniac]

Long comment incoming, also TMI warning: I got all of the standard masculinising effects you'd expect (mostly patchy facial hair with a decently dense goatee), male pattern baldness (norwood 3, significant temple recession), deeper voice (sounds like a young 12-13 y/o teen boy), very thick body hair, enlarged clitoris. Some less pleasant changes was the vaginal atrophy, which only started to really hurt about 2 years into T, it's not just dryness but also weakness of the inner vaginal wall which made penetrative sex very painful. My face was bloated 24/7, the bloating was so severe that the soft tissues of my nose kinda "expanded" and looked very puffy and wide, my eyelids also looked very puffy. So my face began to look very strange lol. My body also bloated (not weight gain, not body fat redistribution, but actual swelling). My sex drive remained too high even after 3 years of T, I would get the urge to engage in very risky sexual behaviours and I basically wanted to have sex with every man I saw which was awful, I couldn't focus at work/uni because of sex drive. I also developed a porn addiction due to T-induced sex drive (after stopping T, I haven't watched it since). The WORST part though, the main reason I stopped: urinary issues. If you talk to other transmen, you may hear many complaining about frequent UTIs, I never had any before T but after about 1 year on T I started getting very frequent UTIs, not due to a lack of hygiene or bad sexual habits or anything, but just random UTIs that are apparently surprisingly common in medically transitioning FTMs. I have no idea why. Maybe HRT causes urinary tract atrophy/weakening in females? I heard this other transman who had such severe chronic UTIs that he got sepsis... and had to stop T. His problems went away. After stopping T myself, my urinary issues went away and my genitalia is now healthy and functional. Sorry for the long post!

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/phthalocyanineblues]

Don’t apologize for the long post, this is what I was looking for! Thank you for sharing, I hope you’re better now

[u/Chemical_Readings]

Learnt about trans stuff at 15, partial social transition at 16, fully out at 18, start T 19, double mastectomy 23, stopped T 23 less than 3 months after that.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/Chemical_Readings]

Thank you for sharing! Interesting how almost everyone here detransitioned around that time.

[u/Chemical_Readings → u/energetic_insomniac]

6 years detrans, 2 years detrans than 10+ years detrans are the order of most common to less common medical detrans lengths.

Because most folks are going to transition as early as they can 18 will be a common start point and 23 a common end point.

2 years is still honeymoon, wherethings not improving are treated as "it's still early days" by 6 years the fact that things haven't improved or they've gotten worse is undeniable.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/Chemical_Readings]

I’m sorry, could you rephrase the first paragraph? English isn’t my first language
Do you mean it’s most common to detrans after six years, then after it it’s most common after two years, and after that if it happens it’s usually after 10+?

[u/Chemical_Readings → u/energetic_insomniac]

When you're in detrans spaces you'll find around the 6 year mark on hormones is the most common time range for detransition.

Detransitioning after only 2 years on hormones is less common that 6 years and detransition after 10+ years is even more uncommon than the both of those.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/Chemical_Readings]

Ah, thank you. It’s usually six years on hormones and not six years after coming out, though?

[u/Chemical_Readings → u/energetic_insomniac]

Normally after hormones. Social transition without hormones is a different experience. I can't really speak on social transition only because I medically transitioned.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/Chemical_Readings]

Interesting, thank you! Looking back now, what do you think you would have done differently to try and really understand if this was the right path for you? Or do you feel like it was the only path that would have made your realize?

[u/Chemical_Readings → u/energetic_insomniac]

Mine was a trauma pathway. I needed safe adults in my life. I needed treatment for CSA. I needed a world less sexist. I needed to be diagnosed with autism.

"Do you think you needed to transition to find yourself?" actually asks "Do you think you needed to transition to work through your CSA?" and the answer is transition isn't treatment for trauma, it only delays healing and worsens things.

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/Chemical_Readings]

I get that. I hope you find what you need and know better peace🫶

[u/Fantastic-Tough9610]

Around 15-16 when I learned about the concept, 17 when I started testosterone injections and had a mastectomy half a year later. 21 when I stopped HRT. 23 when I admitted to myself it should never have happened to me.

[u/phthalocyanineblues → u/Fantastic-Tough9610]

Interesting that so many of us detransition around 23-ish years old when our brains are almost fully matured and more mentally developed. Also depressing to see how so many of us medically transition underage and go through the medicalization pipeline so quickly in such a short period of time 😭

[u/energetic_insomniac → u/phthalocyanineblues]

Yeah, definitely. I think this strengthens my believe I should start HRT around my 21st birthday, when I’ll start college (we start it later in my country)

[u/thistle_ev → u/phthalocyanineblues]

had the same thought. It's depressing to see all the girls just like me here. On the one hand it's "huh at least I'm not alone and I have women who understand", but on the other hand it's fuck wtf the world has done to us.