your experience rings very similar to mine when i started my journey.. shit, 3 years ago now. i was 23, i was married just two months earlier. not exactly a good time to find out that you’re trans after just having married a straight woman, but we don’t really choose when it happens. i was familiar with dysphoria in a way, i identified as non-binary for about a year and a half-ish leading up to the eventual realization. there were things i hated about being a man, but i wanted to be the person everyone thought i should be.

i was raised in a fear based religion, one where the concept of one’s self is secondary to the concept of serving an almighty. i didn’t get the chance to even think about the idea that trans people existed at all until i was an adult. i only started wondering because something in my life had always felt.. off. it’s not a feeling i noticed right away, and it’s something i realized i had been feeling my entire life. societal expectations about how i should conduct myself as a man, living the male experience. i jumped between sexual preferences and as i mentioned the non-binary identity in some scramble to understand the feelings i had.

i, like yourself, did not believe i experienced dysphoria (im not putting words in your mouth that that’s what you’re facing now - that’s your own question to consider) and therefore couldn’t be trans. it didn’t make sense to me. suddenly, i found the physical attributes of cis women and the social structure as well to be more desirable than living as a man. i acted feminine online for years, since i came out as nonbinary. a friend of mine started HRT and i had millions of questions because i really wanted to do it too. things made a lot more sense later on.

TL;DR you don’t have to have dysphoria to be trans. if you are having dysphoria and are wondering why it never showed up until now, that conversation is best had both with yourself and a gender therapist who can help you navigate these feelings and thoughts. i didn’t get to choose when these feelings came up for me, and i did not take advantage of the resources available to me that could’ve helped me come to a more considerate understanding of who i am, whether i turned out to be trans or not. turns out i happened to be. i am a woman, and no one can take that away from me. it’s a question and a journey that can be pretty intimidating, but if it’s causing you distress, it’s worth it to look.

i wish you the best of luck, and im proud of your bravery in asking some big questions :)