Struggling with OCD and a Past Fetish

Sounds like a bit of shame. And similar to me. I present as male and am mostly male. I crossdress sometimes and feel really female when I do. It seems almost entirely sexual, but those experiences of many MtF people kinda trip me up as well.

A MtF person is focused on their dysphoria. Someone with OCD is worried about being trans.

Some advice: don't worry about if you are trans or not. Just try to feel like you. To me, that means presenting male publicly but letting my feminine side out in private and with those I'm close with. I need to be able to feel like both a masculine guy and a feminine, pretty person. I'd never win the "what gender am I?" battle so I just say, fuck it, I'll act how I feel.

You can be a masculine dude and come home and act like a girl. It's perfectly fine. Real people own their stuff. You'd be surprised what girls are into, as well. I've never had one not interested in me crossdressing. Dynamic people love dynamic people.

Also, I wouldn't be so quick to put everything to OCD. A lot of people have OCD and never crossdress. It sounds like you sort of want it to just be a fetish... so your brain keeps bringing it up and you're trying to affirm that it is in fact just a fetish. By trying to affirm that, you're fueling the cycle. Whereas, if you just said fuck it, I'mma be who I am, regardless of where that is on the gender spectrum, the obsession with this thing would stop. Sometimes you have to submit to your fears a bit to see that they aren't all bad. I might be way off the mark here, but I've also got OCD and a history of similar thoughts. Although I crossdress more than you. It's fun.

Look into the experiences of genderfluid or bigender people. Not having to pick helped me a lot. Helped me go easy on myself and honestly, I'm more confident that I'm not a woman now than I was before. Being somewhere in the middle, I can fully embrace both sides... whereas when I was trying to "fully" be a man, the internal struggle invalidated both sides of me. I was worried about being a woman so much that I didn't feel confident in my manhood. And I knew I had maleness in me somewhere, so the woman part didn't feel right. So, interestly enough, after realizing I'm nonbinary, I'm actually more confident in my manhood, because it doesn't have to fight off other shit to stay valid.

/r/asktransgender Thread