How has being transgender (any variation) helped your relationships?

[Kendall]

I was thinking about my current relationship, and some others that I have read. How has being transgender helped out in any relationship that you have (love, friends, family, work, or community). What has it helped bring to your relationships?

[Tiffany2]

Kendra;

  It is really to early in my journey to say much but as of right now I have a freedom from having to put up a macho "front."  Since I am married and my wife knows and understands it has brought to light reasons for past problems with my depression, frustration and emotional rollercoaster ride. She handles it far better than I thought she would. She doesn't mind being the breadwinner and me being the housewife so I guess I've been blessed there as well.

  Down the road though; who knows?

  Since I'm not out it doesn't effect much else at the present time.

  Tiffany
Posted on: October 01, 2006, 04:31:01 AM  As an afterthought; I think that it has also helped my wife as well.

  Now she knows why I can keep house, do dishes, laundry and sew better than she can. It used to bother her. Now we can laugh about it at times. She hates doing those things anyway so that part is a blessing to her. And; of course, it really helps me to have her supportive in this regardless of which direction it leads. It seems like the more she backs me the more freely we can deal with it and the more it eases the strain on both of us.

  Tiffany

[Melissa]

Interesting question.  I would have to say that it has helped in the fact that I am now acting my true self and thus make friends much easier as I really am a more outgoing person.  I always felt I was stuck with acting within the parameters of a certain character before, which I found very limiting.  Now I just act how I feel--as long as it's appropriate--and people seem to sense that I'm being real.  So I now have many more friends than I used to.  My probelm is that I probably don't pay enough attention to my friends due to time constraints and I probably should call them up a bit more, but that comes with having a lot of friends.

Melissa

[LostInTime]

Now that I have taken down some of my walls and allow people to get to know me, I have been making new friends.

I have also helped out a few friends with relationship stuff because I have seen things from both sides.  I used to be really thickheaded and unable to tell exactly what was wrong, right, and in between.  Most of the time it is just communication styles that are not in synch and that I can usually help with because both people in the relationship would talk to me and I could nudge them in the right direction here and there.  One of those couples just got married recently.    I will not take credit for that but I did help with a bump or two.