Lies and betrayal: how the others see the fact you are saying to them you are TG

[Ive]

Hello everyone,

(yes, today I am on fire)
Some months ago, I started to say to my mother that I discovered why I was feeling all that I felt for all my life, and started coming out as transgender girl.
During all my life I was very confused about what I felt, and starting from a certain point, I tried to react and hide the feelings of sadness and disgust I had about myself, as well tried not to see my attraction to boys.
One of the things that my mother said to me, when I said all this to her (my mother always gave me a lot of care, and was always a lot - also too much - worried about me), was: "Where all this is coming from? How could you lie to me all this time?". She looked not believing, and betrayed, in a some sense.

Also, since I came to terms with my gender dysphoria, I started fearing that my friends could say the same: "You told me lies all this time, you betrayed me". Eventually, a couple of friends went away, implicitly saying this to me.
Is that really a betrayal? I think not...
Yesterday I read a post about friendship, and friends dropping you when coming out to them as TG. I think that, on one side, one can feel his/her feelings for the TG person change, and I think this is normal. But, betrayed? That sounds too much to me.

Did this happen to you, too?
What do you think about it?

Kisses,
Ive

[josie76]

When it comes to a SO yes they will feel that way.
I'm sorry your mom reacted like that. That is so rough. I don't think it would be right for a friend to feel that way. Yes they may get react and they might pull away especially if they are male and have any society ingrained homophobia. I don't have any personal experience as I don't have "friends" outside of work acquaintances. I will not be able to come out to them. When the time comes I will have to simply change employment to something more urban related.

[LiliFee]

Yes, this happens, sadly. Maybe their feelings of having been betrayed have got more to do with them than you, but still.... Some significant others do feel like that. Especially spouses.

When I started transitioning, my then girlfriend (now ex) told me she felt betrayed in the way we had been making love. As it was classic heterosexual love, very vanilla. Even though it was something I did, it never really felt good, to the point that I was consciously betraying myself when sleeping with her. Of course after some time, the situation became untenable and I was forced to come out.... In the beginning, she was very respectful and sweet, but as time progressed, she became ever sourer. Asking questions about me lying to her, and at a certain point I also had to tell her I had been betraying myself as well.

In the end, most people have (very) firm beliefs about gender, with it being immutable and binary. Gender serves as a basic category that helps people to make sense of a complicated world, and shaking this 'immutable truth' up will make some people feel betrayed. It starts with your own self-betrayal, and after coming out it spreads to others. What matters is that these are BELIEF SYSTEMS being challenged, it's similar to a child finding out Santa isn't real. Something very solid and tenable suddenly becomes flexible, loses its rigidity and has to be questioned. This then requires lots of energy, empathy towards the people involved and frankly: a confrontation with one's own fears and doubts about life.

Because the binary system still is a stereotype. It's a construct that people cling to when wanting for life to be 'simple', for whatever reason. This construct gets fed by their own fears. Hence the feelings of betrayal.

There is no easy way to go about this, and to make things clear for you: some of us have lost contact with their entire families over these issues. I have lost my girlfriend, with whom I had dreams to have children, settling down and living a long life together. Don't get me wrong, there were other reasons involved and she's anything but a bigot, but still. What matters in the end, is that you stay true to yourself. Don't betray who YOU are, that's far worse than shaking up somebody's rigid or old-fashioned ideas about how life ought to be (in their eyes).

Chin up!  🙂

[AngieT]

Time will heal many/most wounds.  You just need to persist through the early, contentious periods. 

Do people feel betrayed?  Some do, yes.  That said, I often look upon my years of self repression as a sign that I did what I could to live up to their expectations.  I put everything into being who others wanted me to be, and ultimately ended up as someone I despised because, despite it all, I wasn't true to the one person where it mattered most... to myself. 

Transition was undoubtedly the most challenging period of my life, but it was also the most satisfying experience.  People mourned for the person that they thought they lost, not realizing that the person they loved continued to live within me.  That person wasn't gone, she was just reborn, and like a butterfly I finally felt beautiful and free to live to my full potential.  Not surprisingly, some who were "stand-offish" eventually came around, admitting that after watching me for a while, agreed that the changes I had endured were an indisputable positive step forward for me. 

Have faith.  Believe in yourself.  Follow your dreams.  Don't give up hope. 

[KathyLauren]

Maybe their feelings of having been betrayed have got more to do with them than you, but still.... Some significant others do feel like that. Especially spouses.

I think that this is true: feeling betrayed in this situation is an attempt to deflect the attention in the conversation.  As the transgender person in the room, you are going to be the centre of attention, and many people are uncomfortable with someone else being the centre of attention.  They want the attention for themselves.  By portraying themselves as wounded by your transition, they invalidate your needs and make themselves appear as the needy one.

Which is not to say that a spouse does not have valid concerns.  "Will you still love me?", "Will you seek out a new partner?", even "What will the neighbours think?" are all valid concerns that need to be addressed.  But "You betrayed me" is not a valid concern unless there was deliberate deception.

However that is just logic.  Few people react logically when they receive surprising news.  The first reaction is usually "I am under attack. I need to defend myself."

I am truly fortunate to have a wife who saw the situation logically.  It helped that she already had a soft spot for transgender people.

And I planned what I was going to say with a view to preventing a defensive blowback.  I started with a bit of a preamble to let her know that something heavy was coming down, just enough that she'd be relieved that it wasn't a deadly illness rather than offended.  And I made sure to tell her, within the first few moments, that I had no intention of leaving her.

Not everyone is as lucky as me, and there will be some people who just will not respond to logic.  That may happen to me as I start to come out in my community.  I remind myself that I have deceived no one except myself.  I have behaved honourably to everyone I know.  As soon as I became aware of the situation, I worked at coming out, and I continue to do so as expeditiously as I can.  If anyone has a problem with that, it is their problem, not mine.

[Sophia Sage]

You are taking away the person they thought they knew, and replacing them with someone else.

Of course they feel betrayed.  Because you weren't being your true self with them.  Didn't trust them.

Not to say this is fair, or that it's something to take to heart, because it's so difficult to accept the truth about ourselves in the first place.  But from the perspective of other people, of course it makes sense. 

The thing is, very few people from your former life will ever see the real you.  They have these old pictures in their heads, and those pictures aren't easy to dislodge or replace.  And this will continue to affect how they relate to you, and hence how they gender you.  I eventually found most of my former relationships (friendships, primarily) to be intolerable, because even those who were "accepting" were incapable of treating me like any other woman.  There's always the implied asterisk. 

[AngieT]

The thing is, very few people from your former life will ever see the real you.  They have these old pictures in their heads, and those pictures aren't easy to dislodge or replace.  And this will continue to affect how they relate to you, and hence how they gender you.  I eventually found most of my former relationships (friendships, primarily) to be intolerable, because even those who were "accepting" were incapable of treating me like any other woman.  There's always the implied asterisk.

This is so, so true.  Throughout transition you'll have those that don't accept you, those who do accept you, and those who won't know unless you tell them. 

Those in the first group can be heartbreaking, but for me, cutting them completely out of my life was imperative to find happiness. 

Those in the second group may take time to warm up, and may occasionally "slip" and use improper pronouns, etc., but many do come around in time.  Despite their accepting you for who you are though, many will continue to mourn the loss of the old you. 

The third group was my lifeblood, and the reason I've moved to five distinctly different regions and states in the past 13 years.  They'll accept you for who you are, without bias for who you were before. 

For me, group three is the people I choose to surround myself with, with a few occasional family members in group two to round things out.  (all the people who knew me from before live in a different state thousands of miles away)

[jentay1367]

Where all this is coming from?

Yeah....that one's the kicker. I got that. How can you have hidden this for all this time?  Love that. Well, based on all the love and acceptance I'm receiving, it's no wonder I just didn't blurt it all out when I was 10 years old! Not!
     The irony is that most can't understand why we kept it secret and of course, once we divulge the secret, in many instances, we find out exactly why we kept it a secret for so long. As someone once stated "transitioning isn't for sissies". Isn't that the truth. This is the toughest thing you'll ever do. In it's most perfect incarnation, it's very, very, very hard. For some, bless them, it's a nightmare.

[Tessa James]

It was clear to me as a teenager during puberty that my feelings about being a girl were not acceptable to anyone I knew and in fact were a factor in being bullied and ostracized.  I did my best to man up, reject and hide my shadow girl and considered myself so weird that my survival required it.  Of course I knew i was way different and lacked the knowledge or strength to articulate those feelings.  I felt alone, shameful and was complicit in my silence.  Decades of that repression helped others see me in a one dimensional light.  After coming out several friends asked "why didn't you tell me?" They did feel reasonably hurt that I could not confide in them.

The truth felt so awful that I did not share it and also did my best to censor it from conscious thought.  I could not allow myself or own the truth until focused therapy helped me to finally accept myself.  Some of us are slow learners and some people will never fully accept our identity.  I find that unsurprising when considering how long it took to accept myself.

[AnxietyDisord3r]

Yeah....that one's the kicker. I got that. How can you have hidden this for all this time?  Love that. Well, based on all the love and acceptance I'm receiving, it's no wonder I just didn't blurt it all out when I was 10 years old! Not!

Yup!

Actually, I did blurt it out at a young age and got bullied and shamed by my parents for years about it. Now they wonder why I have no contact with them. I still feel like there's something wrong with being me, as irrational as that is.

[JoanneB]

I like simple, Transphobia, plain and simple. It is real, it is there, even in people who, in the abstract, are OK with it. But when it hits home, it's a different story. Then there are those that start out OK with it, as long as you don't really change. But when it starts becoming all too real then they cut and run.

It is really easy for someone else to say "Why didn't you tell me...", or "You lied all this time to me" or any other variation on that theme. But coming out to them you DID tell them, when you started to feel reasonably sure of your feelings. I can see some sense of "Betrayal" because you didn't talk about these weird feelings with them earlier. But, to what end? How could they possibly help except to try to convince you it's crazy, when you already went down that road a hundred times. When you know pretty sure that hitting your head with that hammer is going to hurt.... Why would try it to see for sure?