You’re welcome! Also, something I forgot: Take care of your hair. Long, well cared-for hair helps you appear more feminine. Get a professional cut and ask the person cutting your hair for advice on hair care and which cut they think is best for you. A wolf cut is often a good start. Bangs are almost always a good idea! If you have rather dry hair / scalp you can probably ditch shampoo entirely and just co-wash. Embrace curls / waves if you have them. Get your eyebrows done professionally and then pluck them yourself, maintaining the shape.

Here’s my two cents, approaching 20 months on HRT. All based on personal experience, I’m not a professional. If you disagree with some of this stuff, that’s fine, we’re not all the same.

• I’d say you can just go look for a basic women’s workout routine. Most women who work out focus on their glutes, legs and abs/core. If you don’t want to go to a gym, find Pamela Reif’s weekly workout plan on Instagram/her app and just stick to that (what I did).
• Nutrition is just as, if not more important than the workout. Eat healthy, protein-heavy and most of all: enough or more! If you starve yourself, you won’t gain. I personally eat a good 30% more than before HRT and still don’t gain weight. A burger / something unhealthy more is better than eating too little for the sake of eating “clean”. Just follow fitness nutrition advice here, there’s no special “transition diet”.
• Breast development is 100% genetics, so whatever growth you experience is just normal/correct. There’s no good or bad. Remember that cis puberty takes 5+ years and many trans women experience breast growth past year 1 or 2. When you’re a year or so in, you can look into progesterone.
• I personally ditched jeans completely a few years ago and haven’t looked back. But that isn’t a must. Make sure high-wasted things really are high-waisted, not mid-waist and just higher up than you’re used to. Real high-waist is belly button level or above. Look for ribcage jeans. Mid-waist tends to look weird on bodies that aren’t very very hourglass-curvy. The waist of a dress is often at the bottom end of your ribs. This is normal and what looks good on most people. The best fashion tip is to wear what women around you wear. Look at women your age in your area/workplace/school and just copy them. Or, even better: go shopping with female friends whose fashion style you like. Don’t order online. I know stores that just cater to women are a bit awkward if you don’t pass, but trying stuff on and feeling it etc. is so much better than shopping online. And if you’re scared: take a friend! This varies, of course, depending on where you live. I live in a left-leaning city and have never had any problems shopping in person when I didn’t pass.
• Experiment with different fabrics. I’ve grown to love velvet-y and silky things!
• Women also tend to wear more accessories than men. Rings, necklaces, chains, charms etc. Collect things you like and get used to wearing them. Rings feel weird at first if you’re not used to them, that’s normal.
• Experiment with your silhouette. Find out if you’re a big top-small bottom or a small top-big bottom kinda girl. Go big-big or small-small. Find out what you like. Use your waist and accentuate with belts. Go second-hand shopping and buy the weird clothes that spark joy. I started dressing fem 2-3 years before I started transition (so now about 4-5 years ago) and have only just found my style. Remember: cis women do this in their teenage years and are a bit ahead of you here! Don’t worry! If you’re unsure, ask a friend whose fashion you like if an outfit looks good. If you don’t have a friend like that, ask young women in second-hand shops. They’re nice, I promise.
• On behaviour: Women tend to take up less space in public (the way they sit and move). Female friendships are very different from male friendships, much more intimate and unhinged. You can tell a good female friend everything. You’re allowed and encouraged to be open with your emotions, this is nice. Confidence is key. If your behaviour is confident, people will accept you more than if you’re hesitant. Confidence is often the difference between “weird” and “mysterious/interesting”
• Bonus thought: What helped me a lot was making my apartment more “fem” and cosier. Candles, plants, plushies, softer colours. This makes me feel better and more in line with myself when I’m home.

Very interesting, thank you for sharing! It’s interesting to me that this artwork does not provoke any thought about gender in me, it’s too alien for my perception I think. I think it’s too animalistic and I need the humanoid form to relate, I’m guessing. Love how different perceptions of art are.

I’ve noticed something similar happening to me. I used to be really aware of my leg hair and shaved obsessively when I started my transition. It made me feel feminine and nice. Now, I don’t care that much anymore. I haven’t shaved them in two or three weeks I think. I’ve become more secure and confident in my identity and don’t need perfectly smooth legs to feel woman enough anymore.

Ohh I resonate a lot with this! I almost exclusively had female friends before transition already but I feel like transitioning has strengthened our bond so much! I feel like I “get” them so much more than I did before and it’s really so much nicer hanging out with women than with men. I have like 2 or 3 male friends and we aren’t very close. It’s just easier with women for me, the things they say are more interesting to me, they’re more interested in what I have to say. I keep finding that men just bore me when I meet new ones. I was at a Halloween party a few days ago and talked with a guy I met there for half an hour and my god, he started well but it was so boring after a while!! Then I connected with a woman I met there and we vibed so well and I loved talking to her and we said we’d get coffee sometime soon! A man would never, I feel like, haha. So yeah, 100% with you!

Also: Most women I meet are queer so that’s another plus! And nonbinary people are also almost always great to talk to :3

May I ask to what unit you’re referring when talking about testosterone levels? 0.8-0.9 what? I’m personally also below cis female levels (I’m at 12ng/dL) with just 5mg of CPA a day. I’m wondering if I should maybe reduce my CPA dose even further to maybe help my low libido.

Edit: nevermind I figured out you’re probably referring to nmol/L. I’ll leave the comment up anyway for future reference. (0.8nmol/L are 23ng/dL and 12ng/dL are 0.4nmol/L)

You’re welcome! If penetration is what you’re worried about, strap-ons exist. I know it’s not the same and have honestly never tried them but maybe it scratches the same itch. And also I think viagra still works when you’re on HRT, so you’re probably good and don’t need to worry about it :)

So I’m not a very sexual person, just saying that up front. My libido is very low and has always been that way, even as a teenager. For me, sex always felt very awkward when I still thought I was a man. It kinda worked, but I always liked giving oral to my gf more than anything because I felt like her being happy was way more important than me being happy. I had trouble staying hard a lot. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure that was because I didn’t feel comfortable performing as a man during sex.

Now, after 19 months on HRT (pre-op), I can’t get hard at all without a magic wand, so penetrating someone is quite unrealistic. But I also wouldn’t want to. I do however like performing a more feminine role and like receiving oral more than I did before, even if I often don’t cum from it. I just feel way better and more comfortable in my body.

All in all, for me personally(!), sex is such a small part of life that I would never ever delay a transition because of it.

Yeah he knows, it’s in my profile and I’ve offhandedly mentioned it once or twice. He just doesn’t care which is great for a change. I think it’d make me nervous and uncomfortable to not disclose that beforehand.

Thanks, Ada.

I feel like it’s had kind of a renaissance, at least around people I know. I know several people who have found their long-term partner there in the last two years. I think it might just be that there’s still just the biggest user base there. But yeah, most people there aren’t what I’m looking for, haha. I’d say I swipe right on maybe 2% of profiles.

I quite liked him! Otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten to the cuddling part on the first date, haha. I try to not date cis men these days but he got through, somehow. We had a good conversation on a dating app (tinder of all places, lol) and the date was great. He’s smart, considerate, has a very interesting job (he invents and sells game show concepts, quite successfully) and did not ask or talk about me being trans at all. He has lots of friends and is just looking for someone to do couple coded things like cuddling and short romantic trips with, which is exactly what I’m looking for as well. He’s also not strictly monogamous which I consider a plus because I don’t think I want a strictly monogamous romantic relationship right now. We had some wine in a very classy bar (his treat) and I invited him to my place because I felt like some warmth. He recognised the pictures of Grace Kelly and Liz Taylor on my wall, which I thought was very cool.

The only negative really is that I think he’s not that attractive physically, sadly. But everything else is a great fit so I’ll see where it goes or if I lose interest. There’ll definitely be a second date! If he doesn’t ghost me, which has happened before after great dates lol, but that’s just online dating.

Sublingual doesn’t work when you just take them once a day. There’s a very high spike 1-2 hours after taking them but the estrogen is absorbed very quickly after that. That’s why taking them every 8 hours or at least every 12 is recommended. I think most people who do gel do it in the morning and in the evening. Patches seem like a good alternative though. I don’t even know if they’re an option where I am, I’ll ask my endo the next time I see her.

You can find more information about the different modes of administration here: https://transfemscience.org/articles/e2-equivalent-doses/ and here: https://transfemscience.org/articles/

I do take a sublingual pill every 8 hours, so morning - afternoon - evening. It’s a bit often but you get used to it and it works well for me. I’d like to switch to injections sometime but currently can’t be bothered because they’re not that easy to get where I’m at. I might tackle that after grs.

hey, I’m in Germany as well, so if you want someone to talk to and maybe even meet, feel free to DM me :)

Oh you bet! I have a trusty blahaj (of course), my teddy bear and just ordered a polar fox a few days ago.

This, so much this!! It sounds so stupid but on bad days I buy a nice candle and curl up with a soft blanket and it helps so much!!

Ohh this resonates! It took me quite a bit of time to learn that my thoughts are valid and “normal”. I always felt like such an outcast, being the weird kid and not really fitting in with my very traditional family. I even had to learn that my opinions are actually valid! Your “now” sounds fun :) It’s really the little things that make life brighter, isn’t it?

I also have problems with moments where I stray back to reddit and even 4chan occasionally. I’m the same as you and do this when I feel sad or doubtful about my life. As the others have said, this is exactly what the hateful people there want. I don’t have any advice that hasn’t been said but what I do is just be very very conscious of that fact. They want you to come back, they want you to feel bad. You can just not do it. It’s not always easy. But making coffee, going for a walk, reading a book, doing some silly computer thing etc. are all things that make me happier than going back to those websites. They show me that I have a life worth living regardless of what people online think about me.

Self-harm and crossdressing (what I called it back then) occasionally, after years eventually started dressing in a very non-binary way in public. Think legs unshaved but with a skirt. This got me a lot of attention in public. I live in a very progressive area luckily so I didn’t get attacked (physically, at least). I also masturbated a lot. Nothing helped until I started HRT, then I got better very quickly, mostly because I allowed myself to really be a woman.