My boyfriend has Gender Identity Disorder

My boyfriend recently told me he had been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (he was diagnosed a few years ago). He tells me that he just has a hard time finding himself attractive as a male, but that he doesnt want to be a female or anything like that. My question is, is it possible that this diagnosis is really that minor? Or is it more likely that he is "testing the waters" with me? Or that maybe he isn't being honest with himself with the extent of it? Currently he says his therapist has him just working on being well-groomed as a way of dealing with it. So he shaves his body hair and takes care of his nails etc. I question it because he really enjoyed dressing as a sexy ladybug (female) for Halloween...and he wears nail polish sometimes. How honest is he being with me? Is this likely to develope into something more? Like wearing women's clothes or even having a sexual reassignment surgery?

Hi Bethany!

Here an answer from Sweden. I am a person who is not educated in health or medicine!

Firstly, I´d say your boyfriend is by now feeling so much at ease and reassured being with you that he feels he can trust you with knowledge of this Gender Identity Disorder. He has as well outright told you that "he doesn´t want to be a female or anything like that", as you wrote and I guess you can take his words here for sure.

Privately, I think that his therapist is just doing the right thing (and this treatment should work fine also with a lot of men, and women too, without any Gender Identity Disorder as a lot of people, myself included, doesn´t dress too well these days :)) and this also give evidence that your boyfriend´s problem aren´t that huge, and that sure must be a positive sign!

Here I would say, without being an expert, that I think it must be very important right now not to "stress" him into greater problems on the gender identity side. There might be a risk this would develop into something more just on reasons of pressure to "behave right". Have you thought of that he just told you that "he just has a hard time finding himself attractive as a male" and that there are a lot of things that you can do to let him know how attractive he is to you! Has he got some interests that you can support or even share?

My final recommendation, if you don´t mind, why not you both thought of taking a visit to lovely Sweden to just study our steps into a "new" male role. A lot of Swedish men develop a great interest in their more "female sides" (In Swedish, bejakar sina kvinnliga sidor) and lot of men take out their "paternal months" and are seen driving prams around town! Stockholm is also a wonderful town in summer and when the royal wedding has ocurred in June, things might slow down a bit and rest rooms would be easier to find.

Good luck to you and your boyfriend. Thanks for letting us know of this, which at least has made me somewhat think of my appearence and consider improve the way I look and appear to other!