u/immortal-snail-

(Note: this may be where my writing and a lot of people’s preferences may diverge more distinctly, so I want to put that out there in order to avoid disappointment! Please feel free to scroll on by if this isn’t your thing. ^_^ Oh, and this is about ten months in.)

The day keeps replaying in my mind and I don’t know where to put it. I guess I just needed to get it off my chest, but something happened a few days ago.

Claire and I were walking down Main Street together, my hands shoved in my pockets and my shoulders drawn down in defeat.

“You don’t believe me.”

The one chance I took at truth was knocked down. But could anyone blame her?

“I believe that you believe you’re Ryan.”

She thought I had created some delusion in my mind to disassociate from Craig’s bullshit. I told her the truth a month ago and we’d spoken about this endlessly. Why was “Ryan” suddenly so feminine? (Because “he” had been in the closet his whole life and finally came out.) Why was I suddenly so masculine? (Gender is only secondary, it’s okay for anyone to be masculine.) Not sure why the sudden, simultaneous change didn’t ring any bells, but I guess, “Tina and I magically switched bodies because Craig roofied our drinks, rewrote reality, and now he’s trying to mold me into a Stepford Wife” doesn’t sound all that probable.

Claire glanced over at me. Her eyes, amber in the sunlight, searched me. She knew the defenses people build when they’re hurt; she just hadn’t seen anything like this before. I flinched when she reached over and touched my arm. Not because I didn’t want her to. God, I did. But I wasn’t supposed to. She was straight, I had Tina’s body, and Claire had already met enough liars. I used to be one of them.

We passed a storefront and I caught a glimpse of us. Two pretty women walking down the street, one with a big ass rock on a finger that I wanted to chop off.

And she was my friend. She didn’t believe I was a guy abruptly shoved into a female body. She believed I was a woman dealing with trauma, and I couldn’t even blame her for that.

“I’m serious,” her voice broke through my thoughts. “Craig is hurting you and you’re coping. I just…” she tilted her head, softening, “I don’t think you swapped bodies, Tina. You are who you are, and Craig can’t take that away from you. You’ll get out.” She was talking about domestic violence, not existential violation. “We’re going to figure this out and you’ll be free.”

I scoffed. She had no fucking idea. She wasn’t malicious or condescending. It was much worse than that: she felt bad for me, the supposed trauma-bonded victim grasping for a different reality and, worse, I kind of was.

My phone buzzed. It was Craig.

Claire went on talking, explaining how much she respected me and how I deserved better. She spoke as if I was merely dealing with a guy that tracked my location and checking account rather than tearing up the very fabric of my existence and taking a massive dump on it. Tina was right. Craig was changing.

“What?” I snapped into the phone. I was sick of his shit.

“Well that’s no way to talk to your fiancé,” Craig said in a reminder of proper Stockholm Syndrome etiquette.

“What do you want?”

“I want you,” he said simply. “Where are you?”

“I’m out.”

“With her?”

Craig identified Claire as a threat. All friends were threats, because they exhumed the Ryan buried beneath the contrivance.

“You should stop surrounding yourself with people who don’t get us,” he said. Funny, because I WAS one of the people that didn’t “get” us.

We went back and forth for a second about how I was irrational, as usual. He beat around the bush with his mind games until there was no ground left to stand on. Eventually he got around to telling me why he called.

“We need a date. You’ve been taking your time on planning and I’m becoming impatient. So we’re going to set up a goal that we can work toward, and I’m hiring a coordinator.”

Fucking wedding talk. Shirking my duties as a blushing bride to be, I haven’t made any tangible progress on this woefully arranged marriage. Fleetingly, I thought through my options: butter him up with my best seduction act, run home in compliance like a dutiful wife, and the one I chose.

“I’m not coming home.”

Claire glanced over at me. She couldn’t hear what Craig was saying, but she could read my body language. As it pertains to the ruse, this was the first time I declined to contort myself into this thing he wanted me to become. That wasn’t going to fly without consequences, and the tension in my back and sweat forming at my brow made that clear.

“Ryan,” he said softly.

My stomach dropped. He almost never called me that anymore.

“I think you’re confused,” he continued.

“No. I’m done. I have things to do.”

“You don’t mean that.” His voice was tinged with a mixture of sadness and resentment.

“I do.”

“You’re emotional right now. Claire is filling your head with garbage and you’re spiraling again.”

“I’m not spiraling. I’m just not doing this today.”

“That’s impossible. You love me,” the latter claim carried with it a sense of unease. “You’re just resisting because change scares you.”

For a split second, he doubted that, and he wasn’t particularly confident.

Maybe his power to inflict consequences was more limited than he thought. Maybe he could see that his grasp loosened every time I acted like myself, the person he claimed to want. I had a life. I had friends. Friends that were completely my own, relationships nursed from the body of a woman that no one knew. I had a job that I liked and school was going well. And that night, I had plans.

“I have to go,” I said.

“No, you don’t.” Craig was getting desperate. He’d find some way to punish me later. Maybe he’d punish Tina because he knew someone else’s suffering was a better motivator to someone with a shred of empathy, unlike him. But Tina and I both molded an existence worth living in these new lives, and we could always do it again. I didn’t care. For the first time, his power didn’t scare me. So I hung up, and spent the day with Claire before hanging out with my friends in a life that I made worth living.

It’s been nine months. Long enough for a new human to gestate, which is basically what I’ve done too. Just two decades late and in one of the worst ways possible. But it’s not all bad, I guess.

I got a new job and started school, which gives me more time away from Craig. Since Tina walked off with the benefits of years of my hard work, I figured I might as well give college another shot. At least this time I know what I’m doing. I picked a more marketable major, landed an internship, and started building something that actually feels like mine.

Now I get to act like myself over half the time. Even better, I have my own friends. Hanging with the guys is surprisingly weirder than with the ladies. Dudes think I’m “not like other girls” because of the basketball shorts, video games, and sports, but the girls think of me as just another woman.

During this time I reconnected with a girl I used to talk to. Her name is Claire. She’s cute and it bums me out that I didn’t make something of our time together when I was still myself, but she’s a good friend. She doesn’t condone “Tina’s” cheating and has no idea that I have never actually cheated in my entire life. All this probably precludes me from telling her how I feel. Worse, I forgot to take off my engagement ring one day and she practically leapt out of her skin with joy. She asked me to tell her everything: how the planning was going, if I was “so, so excited”, and if there was anything she could do to help. And then it slipped.

“I don’t want to marry him.”

She tilted her head. I could practically see the rolodex full of platitudes scrolling through her brain. Nothing cropped up.

“You don’t want to marry him? Why?”

My mouth spoke before I could think. I had no idea how much this would fuck everything up. I told her about how Craig controlled what I wore, how I behaved, and how he pushed for sex I didn’t want. I told her that he threatened me, although I had the presence of mind not to say what exactly those threats were, and that I had no idea how to get out. I cried. She held me. When I was ready, she went over strategies and statistics:

“It takes an average of seven times to leave.”

“Build a go-bag, gather your documents, stash away cash.”

“Leaving is the most dangerous part. I can help you.”

She didn’t know that helping was probably one of the most dangerous things to do. We weren’t just messing with some possessive boyfriend here. We were facing something sinister. Leaving might be dangerous for me, but my absence wouldn’t stop Craig from escalating. This wasn’t a problem escape could solve. It needed a fix and I needed someone- anyone- to be in my corner.

“I need to tell you something…”

If anyone thought Tina was crazy, I was probably about to confirm it. After months of a friendship built on lies, I wanted to tell Claire who I really was.

“I’m not Tina. I’m Ryan.”

She didn’t believe me.

(Three months later)

Hey, it’s been a while. Things have changed, some for the better, others for worse.

I’ll start with the bad stuff: This is probably permanent. I will likely spend the rest of my days as a woman with a displaced identity and crippling gender dysphoria, bereft of the friends and family I had to leave behind, and approaching the looming threat of being chained in misery via matrimony. Yeah, I’m going to be a bride. We’ll get to that later.

The better: Given that my old life is unrecoverable, I’m building a new one. It took a few weeks, but after a while I was able to leave the house outside of just scuttling like a mouse to Tina’s job. I searched through her documents and set up a savings account as her, redid her budget, enrolled in college, and moved some things around for the future’s sake. Turns out Tina’s parents bankroll her apartment, so I’m a doting daughter now too. I even made friends. I act more like myself around them, which is nice, but have to maintain Tina’s demeanor around Craig, her friends and family, and at her work. It’s like I’m living two lives.

Born one person, grown up as another. Ah, I don’t like thinking about it. I’m excellent at being Tina and that’s a mindfuck I can’t seem to overcome.

Things with Craig have been awful, and he’s getting worse. I think I mentioned last time that he demanded I wear some red dress. After the threats he pulled, I dug it out of the trash and washed it. He later arrived at the apartment to a “beautiful brunette” in a bright cocktail dress and a full face of makeup that I spent four hours reproducing from YouTube tutorials. I didn’t even let on that my ass cheeks constantly peeked out, my bra hurt my shoulders, and that the poor excuse for a dress practically cut off my circulation despite the fact that I’m tiny “in all the right places”. Craig also made sure to remind me that I’m curvy in all the right places, which turned my stomach but gave me an idea.

When he half dragged me to the bedroom in order to “take the next step”, I caressed his face, pressed my body against his, and whispered, “You’ll be the first man I’ve ever made love to.” My voice was almost exactly like a Disney princess but my body language resembled a pin-up model. I feigned innocence. “I want it to be special,” I breathed, “I want to give myself to you after you become my husband.” I looked up at him from beneath my eyelashes and I could feel the heat emanating from him.

The argument can be made that I brought this upon myself. The idea was to buy time. It wasn’t a good idea. A week later, Craig got down on one knee and proposed in the middle of an art museum. Tina loved museums. I did not. Craig is really blurring the boundary between me and her but I guess that’s his point.

With all the onlookers and my inner panic, I said yes. Now I’m looking for dresses because that’s the thing that can be stretched the longest, hopefully. When Craig is over (finally keeping distance so as to preserve my virtue) I conspicuously build Pinterest boards and look at dresses. He thinks I’m dead set on planning, and I can make that take a while, I hope.

After the red dress debacle I went to Tina. Desperate times and all that. She admitted to me that she didn’t really want to spend the rest of her life as a man, but Craig threatened to put her into an even worse body if she didn’t comply. Clearly there’s a set of different standards between us, because she gets to flit around like a flamboyant cheerleader and I’m stuck in “hot girl mode”. Of course she was more than happy to throw all of that in my face. She prattled on about how much she loved my success, strength, and how open her future is. Each bullshit celebratory statement was punctuated by her calling me “honey” and “girlie” in the most disdainful way possible. I reminded her that she could spare me some salt in the wound and she told me that this was my fault to begin with. That this wouldn’t have happened if I never told Craig about the cheating. I think she’s wrong, but I understand.

And then she said that she had no intention of ever allowing us to switch back, even if the spell materialized right in front of her.

“It did something to Craig,” she told me. “He wasn’t always like this, he was a normal, funny guy. But once he started messing with this occult stuff… it’s like it’s taking over him and I’m not opening that door for me. I’d rather be you than end up back in my body warped and evil. We’re going to have to accept this. I suggest you do so.”

I don’t want to accept this. I’m good at it, but that almost makes all of this worse.

Defeated, I went home and stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours.

I wish I could say Tina was wrong, but Craig changed drastically, and this new version of him was becoming more unhinged by the second. Maybe messing with this stuff would only make things worse for us. Maybe creating a future as Tina is the only real way to have some sort of life. Or maybe there’s another way.

Ryan here, and I hate myself.

To make things clear: no, I didn’t fuck Craig. I never thought I’d be ecstatic to experience a period, but it arrived to the rescue. The metaphorical mutilation of my manhood stared back at me in the form of blood in my underwear and whispered, “I’m here. You have seven days of excuses. Use them wisely.”

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Craig knocked on the door around seven. I hadn’t left the apartment. Whenever I manage to leave, Craig berates me for wearing jeans or sweats when I “should” be wearing sundresses. Because there is nothing better than wind freely blowing in between my legs. It’s embarrassing. Meanwhile, Tina gets to walk around in my body with makeup and pants so tight I’ll end up with no fertility. Suddenly “Ryan” calls everyone “girlie” and “babe”. But I’m stuck acting like her and every second is a humiliation ritual. Over dinner, I talked about this with Craig, asking why I got such a shit end of the deal when I never did anything wrong, and he said, “Because everything is perfect now.”

What the fuck.

And this is where I nearly threw myself off the balcony. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with Craig. I’ve reasoned with him before, pleaded, got on my knees and begged, shouted, threatened, and even tried hitting him. Nothing worked. I was “Tina” and eventually I would have to “learn to accept it”.

So I leaned into it. I led him to the bedroom, softened my voice, and cooed, “You’re right.” I choked down a gag. “I’ve been running from us because nothing has ever felt so perfect.” He reached for my hand and I flinched. I had to cover my ass so I said, “Sorry, I guess I still have to get used to your touch. We have plenty of time for that now.” I faked a smile. Every word I’d just vomited up was ripped straight from a romcom, but I thought the lies worked.

He kissed me. I kissed him back with eyes closed so he wouldn’t see the tears. Fuck this new life. Fuck this body. Fuck Craig. I want to be myself again, so I need him to spill the spell.

“But,” I frowned, “if I get to have a new body, maybe you should join the fun?” I put my hand a little too high up his thigh and touched my lips against his ear. I whispered, “What if we got a new body for you? Then we could forge our own path. Together.” His fingers circled my inner thigh. It was violating and I couldn’t even react.

He got way too close and responded, “No.”

What? I was taken aback. Did I mess it up?

“Why not?”

“I want you to love me as I am.”

“Why can’t you love me as I am? I mean was? Why do I have to be this?”

“So I can put my dick in you.”

WHAT THE FUCK.

My ruse collapsed.

“What the fuck, man? You think I fucking want this? To be some girl? Craig, I’m missing my fucking dick, my life got handed over to some cheating dumbass, and everything I ever worked for is gone so you can get your dick wet? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Craig stared at me. My mask came off but his response was a cold, eerie calm. He stood up, towering over me, and said, “You’re so emotional right now.” He raised a brow. “Are you on your period?”

Jesus. The blood flowing out of me had nothing to do with my understandable distress. I was sick of this.

“Emotional? I have someone else’s uterus!”

“You have a better life.”

No. No I didn’t. I was short and weak and saddled with an aching back from stupid boobs and long hair that got stuck in my armpits when I reached up, and I had to reach for everything because I was so fucking short. My prospects had gone from a high salary career or promising graduate program to a shitty job in a failing bookstore.

He rolled his eyes like I was the irrational one. “Tina, be honest with yourself.” I’m not fucking Tina. “You were drowning before this happened. Student debt, anxiety attacks, no real direction. You spent your entire life hiding because you’re terrified of being average.”

That knocked the air out of me because those were things I told him in confidence.

He stepped closer and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I jerked away while he went on with verbal punches to my gut. “Tina wasted this body whoring around. You’re smarter than she is. Kinder. Prettier when you stop fighting it.” He smiled. “I fixed your life.”

“You ruined my life!”

“Alright woman, I need you to understand something,” he sighed, “I have been very patient while you adjust, but I’m done entertaining tantrums.”

My stomach dropped.

“Now,” he threatened, “Your cooperation determines how difficult this gets.”

“You said you loved me.” I stuttered, toeing the line between playing a role and bewilderment.

“I do.”

“You drugged me and stole my body.”

“And I’d do it again.”

I broke out in a cold sweat. He looked around the apartment, grabbed the flowers he brought me off the kitchen counter, and dropped them in the trash.

“You’ll call me tomorrow after you calm down,” he said. “And next time I come over, I expect you to be wearing the red dress I bought you.”

After he left, I unloaded every ounce of nourishment inside of my body into the toilet, praying that I’d somehow vomit my way out of this hell I’m in. I need help.

Four weeks ago my (22M) biggest problem was graduating and figuring out how to tell my close friend that his girlfriend was cheating on him.

Craig and I have been friends since high school. Craig and his girlfriend Tina looked happy enough, but I found out the hard way that loyalty was not her forte when I walked in on her and some guy at a party. When I told Craig he thanked me and went on to disappear for a few days.

Finally he called me and asked me to help him confront Tina. He didn’t want to get sucked in by her lies and, as a witness and a friend, I could help him out.

I showed up to his apartment under the impression that I was being supportive. He passed out some drinks in order to ease the tension. Or so he said. Instead, I woke up minutes later with long hair draped across my face, a weird weight on my chest, and nothing in between my legs. I yelled in alarm, but my voice was suddenly shrill. I looked down and saw that I was in Tina’s body!

At first I thought it was some kind of psychotic break until I saw my body screaming across the apartment. I immediately clocked that it was Tina. Craig calmly explained that he performed a spell and that this was “justice”. Tina was hysterical for all of five minutes. Within days, she stopped talking about reversing anything altogether. She moved into my apartment, started using my phone, and told me that maybe this was a chance for both of us to “start over” before blocking me and taking over my life.

Meanwhile, I was trapped in the body of the woman who cheated on my friend. I was expected to act like her as a “replacement”. All the while my life came undone under her “care”. Tina told me that she was more than happy to make permanent changes to my body if I didn’t fall in line, and Craig kept saying, “The body could always be worse.” I don’t even want to know what that means. My friends stopped talking to me, anyone I tried to tell thought I was crazy, and Craig just scoffed whenever I begged him to switch me back. I was weeks away from graduating and my life was just beginning, and he gave it away!

Craig has somehow become the most disturbing part of all of this. He keeps saying, “You’re a hot woman with the mind of the most amazing person I know. Now it’s the best of both worlds!”

But for who? I was a guy and I didn’t look too shabby to begin with. Why the hell would I want to be eye-fucked by random creeps every time I leave the apartment?

Now Craig keeps showing up at Tina’s place where I’m stuck living. He brings me flowers and chocolate, fucking lingerie that goes immediately into the trashcan, and he keeps touching me. The other day he grabbed me by the ass like I’m some damn blow up doll instead of his former friend.

Every time I tell him I want my body back, he insists that I should be grateful he chose me. He calls me Tina now. My name is Ryan!

The worst part is that no one is on my side. I’ve gone to police, doctors, old friends, and even those quacks that sell crystals and books about “light magic”. They all think I’m deranged and I’m probably one more desperate plea away from an asylum.

Last night Craig showed up drunk and kissed me. I froze because I thought it might be a chance to get my life back, then he crashed in my… Tina’s bed. I slept on the couch.

This morning he said tonight we could “take things further”.

I feel sick to my stomach writing this, but I think pretending to want him might be the only way to manipulate him into giving my body back. Is there any other way? Am I completely insane for even considering this?

Hey guys, yesterday I asked if I was the asshole for enjoying my time as my boyfriend after swapping bodies, even though he was uncomfortable. After talking it out in detail, he and I came to the conclusion that we picked the wrong time to switch. He is basically having to endure pms during his first time ever as a woman and he’s also experiencing a bit of a masculinity crisis.

(By the way, has anyone gone through that here? I’m not feeling the same way in terms of my femininity because I see this as a temporary biological and social decoupling. For example, when I dressed up as a vampire for Halloween, I didn’t feel like that challenged my status as a human, if that makes sense. Any advice on that front is more than welcome.)

So I put together a pms care package: chocolate, hot pads, Midol, and cozy socks. Oh, how I pampered him! Well after a while he broke and finally felt special, and realized that it felt okay to be special. He was given a break from having to be the strong one and just received my care. And I loved caring for him! I felt like a knight in shining armor, and I love knowing what he feels like when he does that to me in our normal bodies.

Anyway, he agreed to give it a second shot in a few weeks during the best part of the month (under the condition that he cut down a tree and spends at least two hours at Lowe’s). I know it seems stereotypical, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to get back to dresses and use of the word “babe”.

Anyway, thanks for the advice. Now it’s time for me to take him out on a date!

The other day, my boyfriend told me about this new device that could transfer consciousness and swap bodies. He was curious about it and asked to try it together. Initially I wasn’t so sure. I like being me, and I think he likes being himself, but I thought it might be an interesting experience and he was excited about it, so I agreed.

We settled on a one week swap. It’s been about four days and I have to say that I am having a blast. I have my boyfriend’s strength, height, and even his jubilance. His core muscles are solid so my back doesn’t hurt, and I quickly got used to the, um, redistribution of round things, if you know what I’m getting at.

For the first twenty minutes or so of feeling “himself” up, he enjoyed the experience too. Unfortunately, the novelty quickly wore off when he came to the conclusion that he essentially “castrated” himself in favor of back pain, cramps, and a short stature for a week. (Admittedly, I did not take the date into account, which is totally my fault.)

But he didn’t castrate or degrade himself, he’s just walking around in my (super cute) shoes. I hate that we aren’t on the same page, and I feel bad for liking something that he hates so much. Worse, I don’t think he’ll give this another shot during a better time of the month and I fear he’s missing out. It is also nice being me. I’m healthy and happy, so I’m slightly hurt that he hates it so much.

AITA for having such a great time with this even though he isn’t?