I first started seriously thinking about gender in July-ish 2017. My wife had started developing a serious relationship with her girlfriend at the time and that pushed me to actually think about plenty of feelings that I'd otherwise have just ignored. It was by that point pretty obvious that doing so just kept a distance between us that neither of us wanted and that I needed to do something about it. It wasn't fun to sit down and think about why I might feel jealous or inadequate or unhappy with myself, but I felt like I had to do something, even if that was just to be able to talk semi-constructively about those feelings with her.

Sorting through all of those feelings it occurred to me that maybe some of that was gender dysphoria? But I really didn't want to be trans, mostly because it seemed like a really hard time based on what I'd seen my trans friends go through.

For perhaps a year or so before this my wife had been calling me 'wife', I think first as a joke but by this point it just felt right. In October I wrote her a long letter that basically said "I'm not trans but I really like being your wife" and shortly thereafter I was finally like "I guess this is happening".

I got lucky in that by the time I figured it out I was in a position to do something about it pretty quickly. Things kept feeling right. I did feel some pressure to be "out" quickly since IEEE won't let you change the name on papers after they've been published and they only let you publish under your legal name. But on the other hand there's never a perfect time to come out and being done with it has taken a lot of uncertainty out of my life.

There's of course plenty more to it than that so feel free to ask more :)

HRT has been fascinating. Of course there's the expected physical changes but also I feel sensations that I hadn't felt since...I guess puberty? My skin is a lot more sensitive too; now I can feel mosquitoes biting me.

Feelings-wise, I don't think I have new emotions, but definitely the ones I do have I feel more strongly, which certainly took some getting used to. I feel more happy and content than I've ever felt before and I get to feel that way more often, but I can't say whether that's hormones or general personal improvement.