You guys are the best--thanks so much. I really appreciate it. I am trying my hardest to be supportive and do think I am doing a pretty good job most of the time. I can only imagine how hard this is for my partner to be doing while maintaining a relationship with me and our son. My partner seems to feel elated with the changes, which is great. (Actually i think they are rather hot too, most of the time!). But Lance is right (thanks)--my partner's emotional distance is really messing with my self-esteem, and when I am feeling weak I go to the worse case scenario. I am doing my best to take of myself on this front and not expect my partner to, since that's the last thing she needs is a clingy partner right now. But although I am a real toughie most of the time, this has been very hard. In fact it's the hardest part of the transition for me--and it's the part that I knew the least about once we started.
Jet3, of course I have asked my partner which name/pronoun she wants me to use, but it is most definitely her choice to stick with the female for now. And I don't want to mess with 'her' complex process by second guessing her. I do check in with her regularly about it though, since things can change pretty quickly. I think in this situation she's wanting for now to take a gender queer route, and the male pronoun seems I think almost too scary right now, because despite the fact that she's really into the masculinity (as am I), the male pronoun somehow seems too....definitive? Personally I think this will change, and in fact we've talked about new names. But she's just not there yet. This whole process, from top surgery to T, has unfolded very quickly--a few months, and though she had wanted to do top surgery for a long time, she never saw that as 'transitioning'. In fact she still doesn't use the word 'transition' since it signifies a move to a stable gender on the other side, which she is not so interested in right now. Instead she uses the word 'trannifying,' since the in-between category of the ->-bleeped-<- is more attractive to her than the category of 'male.' But she's totally into the male, as I mentioned, so I do think this will change. I read somewhere that for some ftms, there is almost a series of stages: from genderqueer to ->-bleeped-<- to transman. I don't know if this is the case here, but it may be. And if she's not at the 'transman' phase yet, despite surgery and T, then you can see how the use of a male pronoun would potentially mess with the pace of her own process, which she needs to be in charge of for obvious reasons, not me (though I can signal my support, which I have).
