After reading a few reports of how breast buds can be quite sensitive and painful when starting out I was wondering if they stay tender if you don't go all the way into developing larger breasts?

If one stopped trying to increase at around stage 1 or 2 would the buds eventually soften up after you stop using PM? How long do they stay tender?

Figure 3 in this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5010345/  is of interest. It shows the budding mass typical of male gyne differentiated to the adult female breast.

My current condition, which I have previously attributed to having been given a course of dutasteride, doesn't conform to the budding form shown. The palpable mass I feel inside myself is more like a doughnut shape within the breast without specific thickening behind the nipple. It feels more like the shape shown for the female form, if the lobules formed a palpable mass different to the rest of the breast density.

Maybe I've just got pseudognecomastia after all, even though I'm not particularly overweight.

Wellborn,  what I feel sounds exactly like what you said.  A doughnut shape mass.  It is a a pretty good sized doughnut that gives my chest a fairly feminine look.  I attributed the doughnut shape to started and stopping PM so many times. I completely stopped taking PM many months ago.  After losing thirty pounds during the summer the doughnut shape didn't decrease in size at all.  

I wish I knew what was going on inside me.  Am I stuck in a Tanner stage 2? Are they still just breast buds? Are they still breasts?  What do we have?