What transition regret means

Transition regret is the feeling, after social or medical transition, that it was the wrong path: that the hormones, surgeries, name change or years lived in a cross-sex identity cost more than they gave, or should never have happened at all. It is an emotional and moral judgement about the past, not a clinical event, and that is the first reason it is so hard to count.

Researchers have tried to sort regret into types. A survey of gender surgeons (Narayan et al. 2021) grouped the regret their patients reported into three kinds:

• True gender-related regret: the person no longer believes they should have transitioned, often because they now identify with their sex.
• Social regret: the transition itself may still feel right, but the losses around it (family, partner, job, community) were too heavy.
• Medical regret: regret about a specific procedure because of complications, loss of sexual function or a poor result.

These categories overlap in real lives. Someone may first regret a complication, then begin to question the whole premise of transition, as several of the accounts below describe. Regret can also be partial: about one surgery but not hormones, or about the age it happened rather than the decision itself.

Regret is not the same as detransition

Public debate often treats "regret" and "detransition" as the same word. They are not. Detransition describes what someone does (stopping or reversing transition); regret describes how they feel about what happened. All four combinations exist:

Researchers have made the same distinction. A typology by Pablo Expósito-Campos (Expósito-Campos 2021) separates core detransition (driven by re-identifying with one's sex) from non-core detransition (stopping for external reasons such as health problems or discrimination while still identifying as trans), and warns that detransition should not automatically be read as "failure" or "regret". A review by Sarah Jorgensen (Jorgensen 2023) makes the same point from the other direction: not everyone who regrets takes steps to detransition, and not everyone who detransitions regrets.

The largest detransition survey to date, the DARE (Detransition Analysis, Representation, and Exploration) study of 957 people in the US and Canada (MacKinnon et al. 2025), found distinct groups. One third of participants (Class A), almost 90% of them female, had begun transition young and reported high decisional regret, mental health struggles and dissatisfaction with care; 85.4% of this group no longer identified as trans. Another group (Class B, 19.5%) described an evolving identity with little or no regret, and most of them still identified as trans. Regret, in other words, is common among detransitioners but not universal.

Detransition without regret

Some detransitioners deliberately refuse the word "regret", even while saying they would not transition again.

I don't regret my transition, but if I could do it again I certainly wouldn't. I don't live with regret because it's an unhealthy mental loop to get stuck in. That doesn't mean transitioning was the right thing for me to do, but at the time I made the best choice I could make with the knowledge I had. —verytiredcatto, detrans male

I don't regret surgery or hormones. I just realized, one day, none of this made me a man. I'm a woman. … Detransition doesn't have to mean regret. —974713privacyname, detrans female

This position is philosophically interesting. It separates the decision, judged by what the person knew then, from the outcome, judged by what they know now. It also reflects a deliberate coping strategy: refusing to dwell on regret to protect one's mental health. That is why a low score on a regret questionnaire does not show that a transition was the right call.

Regret without detransition

The opposite group is the hardest to see. People who regret their transition but keep living in it rarely appear in clinic records, trans surveys or detransition studies.

I'm post-op & a decade+ into my transition too (but FTM) … I could see how I would've made it into my 30s as a woman if I hadn't transitioned. I could've had a fine life, but the truth is my life right now isn't broken and detransing would get me absolutely nothing but more surgery and more grief. —skaridi, socially trans, regrets entire transition

Maybe it's a bit of sunk cost fallacy. If someone asked me today if I regretted my transition, I'd say no. That would be a lie. —Moonlight_Sonata_4, socially trans, regrets entire transition

That second comment points to a basic problem for research: when asked directly, some people who regret will say they don't. Some people who regret but stay later retransition or stay socially trans while dropping the beliefs that led them there. Others stay because reversing surgery is not possible.

Where the "1% regret" figure comes from

Claims that "less than 1% regret transition" are widely repeated online and in the media, and several commenters on /r/detrans say the figure influenced their own decision to transition. The figure mainly comes from three sources:

The Swedish study (Dhejne et al. 2014) defined regret narrowly as an application to legally reverse one's sex, and found that regret applications fell over the study period. The Amsterdam cohort (Wiepjes et al. 2018) identified regret only among people who had their gonads removed and whose regret was recorded at the same clinic. Critics point out that this meant hormonal detransition at the clinic, not just reported feelings (Cederblom n.d.). The meta-analysis (Bustos et al. 2021) pooled older surgical studies whose follow-up periods ranged from under one year to about eight years (Hannam n.d.).

None of these studies measured regret after hormones alone, after top surgery in adolescents, or in today's patients, who are mostly young and female. They are honest attempts to measure something in a particular population at a particular time. The problem is how they are used: as a general answer to "how many people regret transition?", which they never claimed to give.

Why low regret figures are contested

The time lag

Regret often takes years to emerge. Jorgensen's review notes that regret can take up to ten years to show in the older cohorts (Jorgensen 2023, citing Dhejne 2014 and Wiepjes 2018). In a Finnish clinic study of nine detransitioned adults (Kettula et al. 2025), the seven women all reported "major" regret, on average about seven years after transition. J. Cohn's analysis (Cohn 2023) reviewed reported times to regret or detransition across studies and found they often average 3 to 10+ years. A study with two or three years of follow-up cannot see most of the regret that will eventually happen.

Loss to follow-up

Loss to follow-up means patients who stop attending or responding drop out of the data. In regret research this is not random noise. People who regret are among the most likely to leave the clinic that treated them. In Lisa Littman's survey of 100 detransitioners (Littman 2021), only 24% had told their clinicians they had detransitioned. If three out of four people who regret never tell their clinic, a clinic-based regret rate measures only a fraction of the real figure.

I personally never spoke to my doctor or therapist again, and thus won't be counted. —Worried_Raspberry625, detrans female

A long-term follow-up of mastectomy patients (Bruce et al. 2023) found a median score of zero on the Decision Regret Scale, a standard questionnaire. But 41% of eligible patients did not respond, and median follow-up was a few years. Low regret among responders tells us little about non-responders.

Shifting definitions

Studies define regret as a legal reversal application, a request for reversal surgery, a documented hormone switch, a score on a questionnaire, or a clinician's judgement. A systematic review of detransition prevalence (Feigerlova 2025) found no standard definition across 15 heterogeneous, mostly low-quality studies. A strict definition (legal reversal, reversal surgery) will always give a smaller number than "do you wish you had not done this?".

A different population

The patients in the classic studies were mostly adult males, many with lifelong dysphoria, assessed under strict protocols. Today's referrals are mostly adolescent girls and young women, often with autism, trauma or other mental health conditions, under looser assessment (see the demographic shift). Results from one group cannot simply be applied to the other.

The 1% is about surgical regret and is taken from studies on carefully screened ("gatekept") patients who transitioned under protocols other than affirmative care. The patient populations were also adult for the most part. … The sleight-of-hand is that journalists/activists shamelessly conflate these populations with modern, youth-heavy cohorts of people receiving HRT, not surgery, or top surgery only. —Takeshold, detrans female

Self-selected samples, in both directions

Surveys of trans people, such as the US Transgender Survey, recruit people who currently identify as trans. People who stopped identifying as trans are mostly excluded, so these surveys cannot measure regret among those who left. On the other side, detransitioner surveys (Littman, Vandenbussche 2022, Littman et al. 2024) recruit from online detransition communities and over-represent people with strong negative experiences. Cohn's paper has itself been criticised for scrutinising low-regret studies more than these convenience samples. Neither kind of sample can give a population rate. That is the honest conclusion: the true rate of transition regret is unknown (Cohn 2023).

What the study archive shows

The site's study archive holds several papers that bear on regret. Together they show high rates of stopping treatment, regret clustered among detransitioners, and long delays:

• Hormone discontinuation is common. In the US military health system, about 30% stopped filling cross-sex hormone prescriptions within four years, and females were more likely to stop (Roberts et al. 2022). Stopping is not the same as regret, and the reasons were not recorded.
• Regret appears in routine primary care. A UK audit by a GP (family doctor) practice of 68 trans patients found 20% had stopped hormones, and more than half of those cited detransition or regret (Boyd et al. 2022).
• Clinic figures are probably undercounts. A UK adult gender clinic found a 6.9% detransition rate, higher than earlier UK figures. Regret was explicitly recorded in only two cases, because the information came from case notes (Hall et al. 2021).
• Detransitioners describe unmet needs around regret. In Vandenbussche's survey, coping with feelings of regret was among the main psychological needs. 70% had come to see their dysphoria as linked to other issues, and only 18% felt adequately supported (Vandenbussche 2022).
• Many felt under-assessed and under-informed. 55% of Littman's sample felt they had not been adequately evaluated before transition (Littman 2021). Most of Littman and colleagues' (2024) sample felt inadequately informed about risks and alternatives (Littman et al. 2024).
• Some harms are only discovered later. A case report describes a detransitioned woman's grief at being unable to breastfeed after mastectomy, a loss that was not covered in her consent (Gribble et al. 2023).
• Youth cohorts are still too young to judge. A Norwegian national cohort of 1,258 referred youth recorded detransition among females who started testosterone, which the authors say is likely an undercount (Nyquist et al. 2025, retracted 2026).

The psychology of regret

Delayed realisation and the "honeymoon"

Many /r/detrans accounts describe an early period of relief or euphoria (a "honeymoon"), followed years later by doubt. Several mechanisms may explain this: the novelty of change, the attention and affirmation of a new community, the sense of progress that comes from always having a next milestone, and the effects of hormones on mood. When the milestones run out, the problems that pre-dated transition are often still there.

It was almost like I was constantly chasing the next feeling of dysphoria, the next big transition milestone, and it kept me engaged and content and euphoric. It wasn't until I was essentially done with my transition and realized there was no more euphoria to be found, there was nothing left to do, and I still was not whole nor was I happy. —ghhcghbvh, detrans female

This pattern also explains why regret can grow after detransition starts, once the defences that kept it away are gone:

When I started detransitioning I had little regret, one year later and i have plenty —ghostofmontague, detrans female

Sunk cost and identity investment

The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to continue a course of action because of what has already been invested in it. Transition involves a very large investment: years of time, money, surgery, relationships ended or rebuilt, a public identity, and often a political position. Admitting regret threatens all of it at once. Commenters on /r/detrans come back to this idea again and again:

Sunk cost, pride, fear, grief — detransition means dealing with those things. Ouch. Many stick with transition to avoid that pain until they simply cannot. —freshanthony, desisted female

Closely related is cognitive dissonance: the discomfort of holding beliefs that conflict with one's actions. When someone's body has been permanently changed on the basis of a belief, giving up the belief means facing the fact that the change may have been unnecessary. Many people delay that reckoning by holding on more tightly to the belief, often with support from online communities that frame doubt as "internalised transphobia".

I experienced "regret" almost immediately when I realised what I'd let them do to me, but I stayed in a wilful delusion for years as it was too painful to accept that I'd let myself get chopped up and botched due to mental illness. —Hedera_Thorn, detrans male

This alone accounts for much of the delay seen in the research. Regret that is felt but not admitted, even privately, will not show up in any study.

Grief

Regret over irreversible change works like grief. People mourn the body they had, the voice they lost, fertility, breastfeeding, sexual function, and the adolescence or early adulthood they spent on transition. Like grief, it comes in waves and can coexist with a stable, good life.

There are still moments where grief will overwhelm me out of nowhere. I'll wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to steel again because of intense regret and grief over my mastectomy. But mostly? I'm at peace. I live comfortably in my womanhood. —mountain-flowers, detrans female

Self-blame and blame of others

Regret raises the question of who is responsible. Some detransitioners blame themselves, sometimes harshly. Others put the responsibility on clinicians, therapists and an ideology that gave a confused young person what they asked for without exploring why. Many end up holding both views: accepting their part in the decision while recognising that adults and institutions should have protected them. Littman's finding that many detransitioners felt counselling was overly positive about benefits and played down risks (Littman 2021) supports this second view, as does the broader literature on iatrogenic harm.

What detransitioners describe

The quotes below come from a small, self-selected sample of /r/detrans comments, chosen to show recurring themes, not to estimate how common they are.

Female detransitioners

Many of the women's accounts here focus on the permanent effects of testosterone (voice, facial and body hair, hair loss) and on mastectomy. The regret is often less about appearance than about having harmed a healthy body.

I just can't get over how I could have had my old face and body--which were perfectly beautiful and healthy--but I hated them so much that I was willing to do anything to get rid of them. I cannot understand why. —lundwen, detrans female

It's not about the appearance at all; it's about the fact that I needlessly harmed myself permanently. I thought I was protecting myself after sexual trauma, but in doing this I only did a grave disservice to myself. —thebestdeskwarmer, detrans female

A recurring theme is that the knowledge needed to decide well only arrived afterwards: about long-term effects, about wanting children, and about other ways of coping with dysphoria.

I wish I knew that transition was going to make my dysphoria worse not better. … I wish I knew that I would want children someday. … I wish I knew that it was possible to live without dysphoria by loving and accepting my female body. —L82Desist, detrans female

Some women describe regret coming slowly, long after a transition that seemed successful, and getting worse as health problems appeared years later:

Back then I loved it, but slowly and inch by inch the regret and "did I have to do all this?" kicked in.. not only because of my health, with the worst of it showing up years after I quit.. —DetransIS, detrans female

For more on surgical regret in women, see top surgery regret, hysterectomy and stopping testosterone.

Male detransitioners

Male accounts in this sample often centre on genital surgery or orchiectomy, the loss of fertility and libido, breast growth or implants, and a feeling of being "too far gone" to return to life as a man. Shame comes up often.

I lost my testicles to gender transition, and i am sunk in shame knowing i did this to myself. I lost muscle, energy, sexual desire. —Reasonable-Fix-6380, desisted male

Started hrt at 16, some surgeries (thank god i didn't do bottom surgery), but i ponder daily about how id have ended up if i just let myself prosper without hormones and surgery. I hold so much resentment towards my doctors, family and friends who let me do this to myself. —Aware-Resist-8655, detrans male

Several men point out that there is no script for living with this kind of regret:

I genuinely have trouble understanding how I ever thought taking cross-sex hormones and getting parts of my body removed was a good idea. And like how do you even cope with that? There's no playbook —ThrowawaySupport5840, detrans male

Men who were transitioned young describe a special kind of being stuck: their bodies developed under estrogen, so others read them as women, while they no longer believe in the identity. See estrogen and testosterone blockers in males, orchiectomy and vaginoplasty.

Trans perspectives on regret

Many trans people say they have no regret at all, and that for them the far greater risk was not transitioning. On /r/MtF and /r/ftm, a common framing is anticipated regret: the fear of looking back on a life spent not trying.

The thought of reaching the end of my life and wondering, "What if I had? Could I have finally been happy?" was more terrifying to me than the slim possibility I might be wrong. —Confirm_restart, trans woman (MTF)

Trans commenters often cite the Bustos meta-analysis, and compare transition regret favourably with regret after other operations such as knee replacement. Some also argue that detransition is morally neutral and should not be used as an argument against transition:

Detransitition is morally neutral and it's a personal choice. Nobody is a bad person for detransititioning. —esseldiji, trans man (FTM)

These experiences deserve respect: people who are content with their transition should not have that questioned. But the comparison with other surgeries does not hold up well. Studies of orthopaedic regret usually use standardised instruments, set follow-up intervals and outcomes that patients can judge (pain, mobility). Transition regret, by contrast, is measured with inconsistent tools, years before it typically appears, in populations that often stop attending. The "regret of not transitioning" framing also has a cost. It can make doubt feel like cowardice, and it pushes people to act quickly on what may be a passing or trauma-driven distress, a pattern many detransitioners describe in hindsight (see egg cracking). Some detransitioners say the same reassurance shaped their own decision:

I started T in 2013 … I bought the lie that 99% of trans people are completely happy with their decisions for the rest of their lives. —butchpeace725, detrans female

Living with regret

Regret does not have to be a life sentence. Many long-term detransitioners on /r/detrans describe moving from acute grief to a calmer acceptance. They forgive their younger selves for acting on the information they had, and put their energy into rebuilding. Common themes include:

• Self-compassion: seeing the decision as an attempt to escape real pain, not as stupidity.
• Grieving openly: naming specific losses rather than suppressing them.
• Not chasing further surgery as a fix, which some describe as repeating the original mistake.
• Connection with other detransitioners, which 87% of Vandenbussche's respondents wanted (Vandenbussche 2022).

I've learned to forgive myself for not knowing any better. I've forgiven my parents for also not knowing any better. —ghhcghbvh, detrans female

See healing and recovery and the support directory for detrans peer groups and gender-exploratory therapists.

What reduces the risk of regret

This is not medical advice. Here is what the research and detransitioners' accounts point to:

• Exploration before irreversible steps. In Finnish, UK and survey data, people who later detransitioned often had trauma, mood disorders, eating disorders, autism or unresolved sexuality that went unexamined (Kettula et al. 2025; Hall et al. 2021; Littman et al. 2024). Gender exploratory therapy aims to address these issues first, and the Cass Review, the 2024 independent review of NHS gender services for young people in England, recommended holistic assessment for young people.
• Honest informed consent, including uncertainty. Patients should be told that regret rates are unknown, that regret often appears years later, and what each intervention permanently changes (fertility, sexual function, voice, breastfeeding). See informed consent critique and fertility.
• Time. Many /r/detrans commenters say they wish someone had slowed them down. Identity can shift a lot in adolescence and early adulthood. In the largest follow-up of clinic-referred boys, 87.8% no longer had gender dysphoria by early adulthood (Singh et al. 2021; see desistance).
• Exploring gender non-conformity without medicine. Being a masculine woman or a feminine man does not require a new identity or a changed body (gender non-conformity without labels).
• Hearing the full range of outcomes. Listening to detransitioners as well as content trans people gives a more realistic picture. The video archive and /stats collect detransition timelines and experiences.

My advice to you would be to address any other issue you might have (e.g. internalised misogyny, trauma, ASD... all very common in people who turn to transition) before even considering HRT. —blthrn, detrans female (who does not regret transitioning)

References

• Littman, L., O'Malley, S., Kerschner, H. & Bailey, J. M. (2024). Detransition and Desistance Among Previously Trans-Identified Young Adults. study page.
• Boyd, I., Hackett, T., & Bewley, S. (2022). Care of Transgender Patients: A General Practice Quality Improvement Approach. Healthcare. study page, source.
• Bruce, L. et al. (2023). Long-Term Regret and Satisfaction With Decision Following Gender-Affirming Mastectomy. JAMA Surgery. source.
• Bustos, V. P. et al. (2021). Regret after Gender-affirmation Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prevalence. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open, 9(3), e3477. source.
• Cass, H. (2024). Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people: Final report. study page.
• Cederblom, J. L. (n.d.). Another day, another blatantly false piece of academic writing on transition regret. source.
• Cohn, J. (2023). The Detransition Rate Is Unknown. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page.
• Dhejne, C., Öberg, K., Arver, S., & Landén, M. (2014). An Analysis of All Applications for Sex Reassignment Surgery in Sweden, 1960–2010: Prevalence, Incidence, and Regrets. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43(8). source.
• Expósito-Campos, P. (2021). A Typology of Gender Detransition and Its Implications for Healthcare Providers. study page.
• Feigerlova, E. (2025). Prevalence of detransition in persons seeking gender-affirming hormonal treatments: a systematic review. Journal of Sexual Medicine. study page.
• Gribble, K. D., Bewley, S., & Dahlen, H. G. (2023). Breastfeeding grief after chest masculinisation mastectomy and detransition: A case report with lessons about unanticipated harm. study page.
• Hall, R., Mitchell, L., & Sachdeva, J. (2021). Access to care and frequency of detransition among a cohort discharged by a UK national adult gender identity clinic: retrospective case-note review. study page.
• Hannam, R. (n.d.). Where Does the "1% Regret Rate" for Gender Transition Actually Come From? source.
• Jorgensen, S. C. J. (2023). Transition Regret and Detransition: Meanings and Uncertainties. Archives of Sexual Behavior. source.
• Kettula, K., Puustinen, N., Tynkkynen, L., Lempinen, L., & Tuisku, K. (2025). Gender Dysphoria and Detransitioning in Adults: An Analysis of Nine Patients from a Gender Identity Clinic from Finland. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page, source.
• Littman, L. (2021). Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners. Archives of Sexual Behavior. study page.
• MacKinnon, K. R., Khan, N., Newman, K. et al. (2025). A Latent Class Analysis of Interrupted Gender Transitions and Detransitions in the USA and Canada (DARE study). Archives of Sexual Behavior. source, summary.
• Narayan, S. K. et al. (2021). Guiding the conversation—types of regret after gender-affirming surgery and their associated etiologies. Annals of Translational Medicine, 9(7), 605. source.
• Nyquist, C. B. et al. (2025). Treatment trajectories among children and adolescents referred to the Norwegian National Center for Gender Incongruence. study page.
• Roberts, C. M. et al. (2022). Continuation of Gender-affirming Hormones Among Transgender Adolescents and Adults. study page.
• Singh, D., Bradley, S. J., & Zucker, K. J. (2021). A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder. study page.
• US Transgender Survey. source.
• Vandenbussche, E. (2022). Detransition-Related Needs and Support: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey. study page.
• Wiepjes, C. M. et al. (2018). The Amsterdam Cohort of Gender Dysphoria Study (1972–2015): Trends in Prevalence, Treatment, and Regrets. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 15, 582–590. source.