I recently came out as transgender about two weeks ago, I've been journaling it on various forums and trying to learn how best to express my new gender. It's been a rough couple of weeks but it came about after a couple of years of positive experiences meeting other trans women online leading me to reflect on my own gender identity.
Long story short I came out online, then to my girlfriend and mother, then to my friends Telka and Cat who are both genderqueer themselves and the later of which is also early in transition. My girlfriend Jamie is NOT happy and has been throwing tantrums and fits, acting paranoid and jealous after a 16th month long nearly perfect relationship that suddenly changed now that I've expressed a desire to wear women's clothing.
May 4th, upon first registering to a queer friendly tabletop rpg forum.
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Hi, I go by Marxist Gamer on twitter. I found this place from seeing SomethingEllie's posts on twitter.
I'm starting to think that maybe I can relate a little bit. I am a cisman and probably wouldn't change. I love my awesome beard and all. Also I am in a relationship with the love of my life. For whatever reason I keep winding up following the trans discussion, not on purpose, I usually just follow people I think are cool and it just happens that there are a lot of transwomen who I can relate too.
I'm a little afraid to say this, because someone somewhere will find it at the worst possible time but there have been times I have wondered if could have been a woman. Perhaps I am engaging in gender stereotyping but I feel like I so rarely identify with other men, who are often mean for the sake of being men, competitive and aggressive for the sake of being aggressive and put down people as a way of showing dominance. I consider most of the sex talk guys engage in in private to be abhorrent and the street harassment to be more so. I get put down for this, called a "pussy."
I'm just musing. I'm probably not any form of trans, I just wish people of my gender were less awful, not that I was a different gender. but sometimes, I wonder.
....
I do apologize if it sounds like I am insinuating that being male requires you to be a jerk, I just feel like as a man I have always been pressured to be a jerk.
June 3rd
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So my girlfriend and I were going to go cosplaying together at a local video game arts show called GAAM but work is making her leave town for a conference. She has been putting a lot of work into her Yuna from FFX costume. So as not to let it go to waste, I'm going to be wearing her costume. I've never dressed as lady before so it should be fun.
June 7th
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Related, I've decided i might experiment with being more gender fluid but i actually don't know the first thing about women's clothing
Ellie suggest dressing in all black but that's cause she is in to nightwish.
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...I love ghost love score, pity they lost Tarja but the new lead is good too.
I like them but I live in a town that rarely gets anything other than evangelicals, country bands, and Limp Bizkit. I've actually never been to a concert of any band.
I hate living in the deep south
June 10th
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Feeling self conscious about my hair. I have male pattern baldness, if i were to switch, i have no i idea how to fix that without wearing a wig all the time. But more than that, it's just embarrassing overall.
My depression is really bad today incidentally.
June 14th
Someone suggested hormones for the baldspot
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If I go on hormones (I still have to get the whole do I have a job after transitioning worked out) I hope that happens.
June 15th
Coming out day
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I came out to my girlfriend, first about wanting to cross dress, then about the possibility that I might be trans and the cross dressing is an experiment in a new persona.
I'm actually quite terrified. She was cool with the first part but after the second part she made a comment that she is not sure and needs to talk to her therapist about it. I'm so afraid of losing her. She still went out shopping with me and helped me get nail polish and related things. She's skeptical because I have never brought it up before and I do have low testosterone but as I reflect on this more and more as I have for the past year, I'm finding more and more how alienated I am with the male identity. As I told her, I don't want to "cut my dick off" which isn't really how it works. Maybe I am being a hypochondriac and this is all for nothing, I love her more than the entire universe.
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SomethingEllie said:
You're not delusional and your low testosterone has nothing to do with anything - since we're on a private forum I'll just throw out that my rate of masturbation prior to coming out indicates I must have been boiling with the stuff. That's irrelevant to your gender identity.
*hugs
That's what I am thinking too... I am humoring this because I would like it to be true. If she were to give me an ultimatum, I could suppress it for her, I did it for this long, but the cat is out of the bag, I've taken the red pill, I come to this revelation, hard to go back, my two greatest fears are losing her and losing my job. A twitter friend did suggest maintaining two personas for a while. Maybe the old one will dominate.
There was one other time, in college, I thought of switching, the shaving was a massive pain in the ass. I also was under the mistaken impression that I also had to be with guys.
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"This will be a massive pain in the ass" was the biggest reason besides my dad that I put off coming out for so long. I think your experience reminds me a lot of mine.
Also, you're I think the seventh person I've activated. This is a really weird superpower.
Around this time and for the next few days, I bought a wig and got hooked on selfies which I used to utterly hate.
June 16th
QuoteEllie: You look really good. And the nail painting will get easier, trust me.
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That's what i am afraid of. I am comfortable dressed as a woman. Jamie is going to kill me. I don't know if i can handle losing a woman I've already bought the ring for, who I've lived with since October, for the practical reason that i can't afford to live on my own and that she means more to more than the universe.
Later
QuoteIf i take the blue pill, I'll walk the road again and come back to this point again.
I told my mom just now and while surprised she said she wants me to be happy and reassured me. That made new feel better
Jamie is NOT happy. We had a talk and she said, this isn't what she signed up for and she can't deal with it. She thinks iam trying to push her away and if i was really transsexual i would have known when iwas three. I told her i love her more than anything and I'll go to therapy for it.
I hate myself
June 17th
QuoteShe made me dinner tonight like she always does, she was sweet to me like she always is. She is my other half. And she can see how much pain i am in and is trying to cheer me up. But to her this is a phase or my way of fitting in, or a manifestation of my stress about getting married and one that is a deal breaker because it could cost both of us our jobs. Which only makes this all the more painful.
June 18th
QuoteI went to therapy today. Jamie told me that she won't accept a marriage proposal until this phase is over
....
Oh my God. She came in and demanded to know why i was doing this to her, weeping, saying that she had finally found the perfect man and he is just destroying it all. My mom is similarly displeased. I feel like a monster and a freak
All i could do was cry, saying it hurts it hurts
I am literally in a state of utter agony. I do not know where to go, what to do, or who to talk to. She came in and demanded to know why i was doing this to her, weeping, saying that she had finally found the perfect man and he is just destroying it all. My mom is similarly displeased. I feel like a monster and a freak. She wailed, I wailed, We remembered all the times we had and she said she tried to accept this but she can't she just can't as it fundamentally changes who I am as a person even though I say no matter what I am still me and she has run out of anti-anxiety meds. I am souless, broken, fearful and I have no where to go. I feel like I am dying. She feels like she is dying, she said that it feels like I am ripping her heart out through her chest and tearing it to pieces. I feel like my heart has been torn out of my chest and ripped to pieces.
The next day June 19th, I went out with Telka and Cat, like we had planned, Jamie was not cool with it and told me she had serious misgivings about it, later, while I was gone she told me she had a psychotic break and continued to give me abuse over the phone
QuoteFeeling better, out shopping with friends who are supportive. Can't find a bra grrr.
I'm afraid to go home though.
That night
QuoteWell seeing as while today i went with supportive friends to get girl clothes, Jamie gave me an ultimatum, called me a ->-bleeped-<-got, accused me of sleeping with all of them, and told me she was throwing all my stuff off the balcony if i didn't come straight home i think i have an uphill battle.
After getting home I wrote this post
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Yesterday was both an amazing day and a very bad day too. I hung out with some supportive friends, a polyamorous genderqueer couple TH and Cat. Their pronoun preference was "whatever" though we went with their assigned at birth pronouns in public. Incidentally "whatever" is also my pronoun preference for now. We went out shopping, first at a thrift store where I found this cute top that kind of sorta fit, then to Walmart where I got a bottom.
Couldn't find a bra there but baby steps. I think part of the problem is I wasn't putting them on properly. Also I'm fat so even finding men's clothes can be challenging. We shopped around a lot more, got ice cream (<not allowed> you weight watchers), went to gamestop so Cat could finally get a PS4, went to the liquor store so I could get liquor strong enough to forget my worries (I decided on a proof a high enough to be a fire hazard would be great)
After a long say went to TH and Cat's "house" which was actually a stip of land, two cows, a tiny trailer and a tent. They called it "The Land." They had big dreams of starting an off the grid farm. We couldn't hook up the PS4 because their TV was too old so we hung out, played with the dog, tried on our new clothes. I only got one outfit.
I used to hate taking selfies and now I can't stop
Cat got more than me but he's a smaller size and chatted until late, They told us about their ex TR who they loathed and the drama that came out of that, how she owes them a staggering amount of money and such. I knew TR from out changeling LARP, interesting to hear these things about her. I only had one drink since I knew I had to drive that night. But after the night before I was afraid to go home because Jamie is still angry with me. I texted Jamie that I was going to be out with them until really late.
We went to buffalo wild wings and around 12AM I got a phone call, several actually, all of them were mostly her screaming at me and then hanging up on me. This is what I posted on intan when it was happening
I went with supportive friends to get girl clothes, Jamie gave me an ultimatum [about the trans thing], called me a ->-bleeped-<-got, accused me of sleeping with all of them, and told me she was throwing all my stuff off the balcony if i didn't come straight home...
Jamie spittled more vitriol over the phone as we were waiting for the check, calling me slurs, repeatedly accusing me of sleeping with TH and Cat. They could hear my half of the conversation where I denied that vehemently and got angry, telling me I should leave her. I love Jamie so much though and this is breaking her heart. She wasn't in a rational state of mind and this was nothing personal. They came, in a separate car with me to go home, just in case she really did throw my stuff off the third floor balcony, tore up my books, and the like. Her being a librarian, destroying books would be pretty low but I couldn't predict what she was going to do.
I came in and found her in bed sleeping. TH and Cat stayed in the parking lot. My stuff was not in fact thrown from the balcony. I couldn't tell if she was sleeping or pretending to sleep, I also checked her pulse to if she was alive. She stopped pretending to sleep and we had a conversation.
I told her that her threats and ultimatum and accusations were insulting, hurtful, and not appropriate. I told her that we could have a discussion but anything we discuss now would not be constructive, given the things she said. I said this to shield myself in case she was going to get hostile again. I was able to calm her down. She said she thought me becoming trans was irresponsible and selfish and I wasn't considering the consequences and that she didn't like the person I was becoming and that this is one of my aspie obsessions. I, in the voice of the punmeister she fell in love with said, "Yeah, it sure is a real drag!" Which got her to laugh.
I told her that while I was still questioning, if I truly was trans then this is the person I have always been. That the consequences were irrelevant to whether or not I am actually trans. I told her that once I woke up to this fact it was like taking the red pill so to speak, that there is no going back, I will always have gender dysphoria an confusion. I reminder her that she as a person suffering from bipolar disorder often compared the stigmatization of the mentally ill with how people with other medical problems were treated. Telling me to try not being trans would be like telling someone with diabetes to get over it, or someone with a broken leg that it was all in their head, or telling her to stop being so depressed. It was an uncomfortable evening, but I was able to defuse the situation. Also I forgot the liquor at the house so that sucks to. I waved all clear to TH and Cat. We hugged and decided to do this again next week. They also invited me to a furry convention in Orlando in July which sounded fun but I'd have to check my calendar.
I went upstairs, and went to bed holding her.
June 20th
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Got a call from my mom, telling me I'm bringing the entire family down with my behavior and that I need to come up to memphis on the fourth so she can slap sense in to me. Also if I was trans she would have seen something. She said she would be committed or have me committed if I kept doing this.
I really shouldn't have told mom. She threatening to start drinking again (she is a recovering alcoholic) and to have me committed to a mental hospital
She always said she was a liberal, a progressive, saying she was cool with lgbt causes. Then I came out as trans.
June 21st
People called me brave
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Thank you!
Yeah, I wasn't exactly being brave by coming out. I was being foolish and impulsive since I don't keep secrets well and I massively underestimated their reaction. They expect me to make-up my mind, without even having any make-up. They want me back in the closet but I've already put some dresses in there.
We set up another meeting, Telka, Neko and I to go to our LARP but I would be playing as a female character. Jamie put her foot down and said I couldn't go out because she doesn't approve of my friends and gave me an ultimatum that if I walked out that door she would know I was cheating on her and that I would never come back. I walked out of the door and she called me on my cellphone saying I could never come back
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Welp I've been kicked out of the house and mom thinks I brought it on myself
Telka hooked me up with a roommate though so I'm safe for now.
One hour and 20 frantic voice mails later
QuoteOh she wants me to come back home now.
I'm going to give it a few days
June 22
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I came back to get my stuff and we talked. Jamie seems to have calm down, she had a long list of concerns (an actual list, it was on paper, about 4 or 5 pages) about how I'm not spending special time with her, going out and reasons she doesn't trust Telka and thusly why she has misgivings about hanging out with her and the like.
They were all good points admittedly and she talked about how she has been up all day and night worried about me and how she is willing to make this work provided I slow down and stay within the boundaries for the next month
We're going to couples therapy on wednesday evening
But as Cat pointed out when I told them that the only things I have done is picked up a wig, a few clothes and set aside one day a week for trans stuff.
But as I said, it was with someone she doesn't trust. She claimed I broke a promise by buying the wig and that she needs time to be able to process this. she seemed to understand me saying I wanted to get nail polish as if polishing my nails was the only thing I wanted to do now and that anything else was going to wait until after I actually went to the therapist.
And that the reason she threw me out, told me to never come back was that I left despite her telling me she didn't want me too and that she was sorry for freaking out but she needed me. I left because I didn't it was right for her to accuse me of having an affair or dictating whether or not I spend time with my friends.
We talked before bed just now. She admitted she just plain doesn't want me hanging out with them. These are some of the first people in a very long time, outside of significant others or internet people that I would describe as close friends. We argued and we came to a compromise where I could still hang out with them, as long as either I was home by dinner or I went out with them after dinner and not on weight watchers days or days that are for us. We need to do a monthly thing where we do something particularly special. We also agreed that I would just do cross dressing when she wasn't around except one night a week, for one month, then we'll see where we go from there.
I'm going to give her another chance. I don't think our time together, the happy time that we have lived together should just unravel after a week of conflict. I can't bear to see her experience this kind of pain.
We went out to St. Augustine, with me in boy clothes and had a good time. It suddenly occurred to me though that she has previously ordered me not to masturbate without her permission as it makes her feel inadequate. (not that I complied ;) ) As happy as the time we have had have been, I am totally lost. Its easy to say, dump that crazy woman but I just don't think I can. We've been together so long its like its part of my routine and I don't know any different.
I'll repeat advice that was given to me, which I ignored a few times, and it caused more arguments between me and my wife. Talk. A serious, make an appointment with each other, sit at the table, tv off, cell phones away, talk. Decide before this what you want. Do you want to transition? Fully or partially? You still love her?
Listen to her side too. Then you both need to decide (alone or with a therapist) if your futures are compatible. Honestly, you're in a decent position. Not married, no kids, short relationship (I'm with my wife 9 years now). It's going to hurt, but you're both in a position to still recover from splitting up if it happens.
Hmm, I hope there is more reason to stay with your girlfriend than routine comfort. If that is the only reason it isn't fair to you or her, I have to echo the sentiments that a real honest tall about expectations and plans is in order.
I think it also might do you good to really just explore your gender identity, and to do that you really can't let anyone control you, since only you can figure out exactly in which direction and how far down this rabbit hole you want to go.