I come here asking for advice and support not only for me but for the girl I love.
My girlfriend came to terms with being transgender back in February, and has been in the process of her transition since. I met her before although I didn't know her for very long before she came out, but she has been happier and more sure of herself in the few months we've been together and she has been living as a woman than she ever was. Her friends have attested to this and she herself has too.
The only thing I feel that is ruining her happiness...is her immediate family. They have been totally and unbelievably non-supportive, intolerant and have caused her to beat herself up mentally, emotionally and a few times physically. She has pretty much been disowned, is being cut off in two months, and has been forced to drop out of college (with a year and a half to go before earning her degree) and scrambling to find a job to survive. Her life hasn't been the same since she came out, but it wasn't because of her choice to transition. It was because of her parents decision to make it that way.
Recently, she came out to her grandmother and has just now been contacted by her father who is hinting that he and her mother are aware of the contact and she's going to get backlash for it. She's now feeling unsure of whether any of this is the right decision and is talking about just giving it up because she's making so many people unhappy (note that all the people she's made unhappy...are mostly her immediate family who aren't even TRYING to understand her or listen). If she makes that choice, I'm going to lose her--not just in the sense of her detransitioning...but she'll probably be forced to go back home where her parents are, go to school in a different city with no support and no contact with anyone here...who knows what they'll do. I have no trust or faith in her parents anymore and I wouldn't put it past them to completely cut off all ties with the people who love her and support her here.
I don't know what to do. There are only so many times I can tell her not to give up because her "family" are only one voice and are the ONLY people who have not been supportive (even family friends, therapists, and her old FRATERNITY have given nothing but support and love). It doesn't help that she's just started hormones and is still adjusting (hello mood swings galore), but...I'm scared I'll lose her because I don't know how to help her right now.
What do you tell someone in this situation when it feels like you've told them everything repeatedly? What am I going to do if she decides they're right for the sake of not upsetting everyone anymore and sacrifices herself and her happiness for them? I don't know what to do.
If I were speaking directly to your girl friend, I would say these things, all from personal experience.
1. You can't 'de-transision'. What is happening is her family are attempting to run her life, their way. She has taken a decision about her life and they are seeking to control it. If she give in, she will be a doormat for them, for the rest of her life. She will lose all her self confidence and the 'little episode' will be hanging over her permanently.
Families need to let go. If they won't we just have to walk away.
2. Walk away. She is not the first person who has had to walk away. Many people have to start alone. I did and many others here also. But not just because of transgender. For many reasons. The only consistance is that in each case, it was family that wanted to control.
Quote from: Chava_Aliza on April 12, 2011, 08:15:20 PM
I come here asking for advice and support not only for me but for the girl I love.
My girlfriend came to terms with being transgender back in February, and has been in the process of her transition since. I met her before although I didn't know her for very long before she came out, but she has been happier and more sure of herself in the few months we've been together and she has been living as a woman than she ever was. Her friends have attested to this and she herself has too.
The only thing I feel that is ruining her happiness...is her immediate family. They have been totally and unbelievably non-supportive, intolerant and have caused her to beat herself up mentally, emotionally and a few times physically. She has pretty much been disowned, is being cut off in two months, and has been forced to drop out of college (with a year and a half to go before earning her degree) and scrambling to find a job to survive. Her life hasn't been the same since she came out, but it wasn't because of her choice to transition. It was because of her parents decision to make it that way.
Recently, she came out to her grandmother and has just now been contacted by her father who is hinting that he and her mother are aware of the contact and she's going to get backlash for it. She's now feeling unsure of whether any of this is the right decision and is talking about just giving it up because she's making so many people unhappy (note that all the people she's made unhappy...are mostly her immediate family who aren't even TRYING to understand her or listen). If she makes that choice, I'm going to lose her--not just in the sense of her detransitioning...but she'll probably be forced to go back home where her parents are, go to school in a different city with no support and no contact with anyone here...who knows what they'll do. I have no trust or faith in her parents anymore and I wouldn't put it past them to completely cut off all ties with the people who love her and support her here.
I don't know what to do. There are only so many times I can tell her not to give up because her "family" are only one voice and are the ONLY people who have not been supportive (even family friends, therapists, and her old FRATERNITY have given nothing but support and love). It doesn't help that she's just started hormones and is still adjusting (hello mood swings galore), but...I'm scared I'll lose her because I don't know how to help her right now.
What do you tell someone in this situation when it feels like you've told them everything repeatedly? What am I going to do if she decides they're right for the sake of not upsetting everyone anymore and sacrifices herself and her happiness for them? I don't know what to do.
IMO she wasn't prepared for transition but please read on before you look away from this post. When you decide to transition you have to make transitioning the main point in your life, everything else takes a back seat. You must mentally prepare yourself for that since its not a maybe thing its an all or nothing thing and its one of the hardest things you do in your life. You run the risk of losing everything, your career, your family, your friends, your relationships, and even your life. If you do not mentally prepare yourself beforehand for the loss you will have a tough time making it. Transition is stressful enough without other people making it more stressful, its important to put people around that supportive and not waste efforts changing unsupported peoples minds, it will just cause more stress. If you are TS by the way, its not something you get rid of, if you don't do it sooner, when you do it later you will utterly hate yourself for waiting, I get sick to my stomach every time i think i could have done this at 18 instead of 31, to think of all the years i missed out.
Here is what she needs to understand and how to approach it:
The life you previously lived was fake, your parents were unaware you were a girl and conditioned you to live as a boy, despite this, you knew you were a girl, its not something that will go away, if you continue living your life as male, then your not living at all, your acting, you dont really exist in the first place, you are playing a made up characters and living other peoples hopes and dreams and not yours. The difference in dropping the act and living as yourself is like night and day. Also you are fighting yourself constantly, which makes you less capable of handling problems the world throws at you, giving you even more disadvantage in life since your fighting a war on two fronts, when you stop fighting yourself, it makes it much easier to deal with things outside.
Forget your parents for the time being and focus on transition, but be civil about it. In other words, just write a letter saying I am sorry you feel i am making the wrong decision in my life, but I know what i am and i can cite tons of facts both psychological and medical to prove that fact, and other people telling me I am not wont change it. I know your worried of the type of person i will become, but whatever it will be, it will be who i want to be not who you want me to be, when i am finished i will show you the success that is my life, and if you wish to be a part of that life the door is always open, you just have to let yourself in. (this is what i did, my parents disowned me for a time, but a year later after they saw how well my life was going on how happy i was, they took me back into there lives, its hard not to love your child, and your parents are really in fear that you will screw up your life, if you show them you wont, a lot of times they return, but of course some wont, if that is the case I am not sure they can be called parents because all they are doing is selfishly protecting themselves and ignoring the well being of their child).
Focus on your transition make it the overriding thing in your life and go back to school. If you dont have the money, get student loans, a part time or campus job, or anything you possibly can. You can transition and go to school at the same time, just surround yourself with supportive people and anyone negative, say thanks for being my friend until now, if you want to in the future let me know, bye. Don't waste any energy on swaying other people, it takes too much and you just feel depressed.
Have a goal outside of transition. Obviously there is a life after transition. Have a goal in life and use transition as just another step to that goal. For me, its to raise a family not transitioning. Everything i do now is heading toward that. While i cannot have children, i can adopted, and a found a wonderful straight man who fell in love with me and proposed (i live in stealth btw, his parents dont know i am TS, but he does but not at first). So i am well on my way to my goal, make sure she has one too.
Move forward, this is important, school, electrolysis, diet, exercise, jobs, HRT, etc... all that stuff is moving forward, don't waste time looking back, just see your future and continue to do little steps to obtain it. As long as your making even the littlest progress your still making progress, and appreciate that progress.
If your GF needs to talk, have her pm me or maybe even talk to me on yahoo, i maybe able to cheer her up, because i know how painful it is and yeah i have gone through it. Most of us have. So if she needs someone to help her feel better, just let me know.
Thank you for your advice, both of you. It hasn't been easy, and her family is still refusing to support her. She is still taking her hormones, so I can only assume she still feels it is necessary to move forward with the transition. She has said she doesn't want to "go back" in the sense of de-transitioning. She's just upset and really hurt. If she wants to I will let her read these replies and decide for herself what she wants to do. For now I can only give her love through all of this. :-\
If she doesn't transition now while she is young then sometime later in life she will hit a wall that is simply transition or die. Many if not most of us late in life transitioners can attest to this fact.
Izumi hit the nail on the head very well. Transition needs to be ones major focus. Nothing can be allowed to get in its way. Otherwise missery is the result.
This is the GF
Thank you for the comments, and I appreciate it. I have made transitioning my whole life, I have come out to everyone, my fraternity, my friends, my family, and I have not looked back. I just made a promise back in the day that I would always make my family a priority. When I was saying I wanted to go back, I never considered de-transitioning, I can't go back to a lie, I just think that maybe my family would rather be able to remember me as the person they loved than as the person I love. They have made it clear that they will never be happy again, my parents exact words, and I just am thinking that if I remove myself in the cosmic sense I could just let them move on with their lives. It sounds selfish to everyone around me, and admittedly it is, I just can't keep hurting them. I wish they could just give up and move on but to know they are out there suffering because of me just seems unfair. I can't go back but I can't keep going on.....it's just scary because this is the first time this course of action has made logical sense. I am a mechanical engineer and the numbers need to add up, and scarily, it seems that they just might be doing so. I am sorry if I am seeming all melo-dramatic and victim complex, but I really don't, this isn't a cry for help, it's just the cold hard truth. It's just sickening that I am happy causing others so much pain, I never wanted to hurt anyone, I just wanted to be happy, I just wanted to like myself, I just wanted to finally for the first time in my life be able to wake up and not be crippled with self doubt....I guess I'm selfish for putting myself before my family. I guess I thought my grandmother would be supportive, I was stupid, I was stupid to ever think I would do anything other than destroy their happiness. It just may be better to give them an ending they can support rather than a story that tears them apart.
How exactly does one person changing sex harm anouther person?
It can not. It can only bring social discomfort to anouther and that is their issue. You can not live your life tiptoeing around others feelings and opinions.
Also, out of all the people who are going to be made to feel uncomfortable how many of them would be willing to make their major life changing descisions bassed on what you want?
Quote from: Chava_Aliza on April 13, 2011, 05:15:04 PM
This is the GF
Thank you for the comments, and I appreciate it. I have made transitioning my whole life, I have come out to everyone, my fraternity, my friends, my family, and I have not looked back. I just made a promise back in the day that I would always make my family a priority. When I was saying I wanted to go back, I never considered de-transitioning, I can't go back to a lie, I just think that maybe my family would rather be able to remember me as the person they loved than as the person I love. They have made it clear that they will never be happy again, my parents exact words, and I just am thinking that if I remove myself in the cosmic sense I could just let them move on with their lives. It sounds selfish to everyone around me, and admittedly it is, I just can't keep hurting them. I wish they could just give up and move on but to know they are out there suffering because of me just seems unfair. I can't go back but I can't keep going on.....it's just scary because this is the first time this course of action has made logical sense. I am a mechanical engineer and the numbers need to add up, and scarily, it seems that they just might be doing so. I am sorry if I am seeming all melo-dramatic and victim complex, but I really don't, this isn't a cry for help, it's just the cold hard truth. It's just sickening that I am happy causing others so much pain, I never wanted to hurt anyone, I just wanted to be happy, I just wanted to like myself, I just wanted to finally for the first time in my life be able to wake up and not be crippled with self doubt....I guess I'm selfish for putting myself before my family. I guess I thought my grandmother would be supportive, I was stupid, I was stupid to ever think I would do anything other than destroy their happiness. It just may be better to give them an ending they can support rather than a story that tears them apart.
Your reasoning is flawed, if your parents committed bloody murder would you go along with them and love them unconditionally after witnessing them take the life of another human being in cold blood? what if that person was an innocent child? The world is not as black and white as you make it out to be and your death wont cause them closure or happiness. If they do actually love you and aren't being selfish then your death will only drive your family farther into unhappiness as they clash as to who's fault it was that drove you to suicide. If they don't care about you at all your death also solves nothing, because they would have forgotten about you anyway, whether you were alive or dead. In all you giving up doesn't fix anything the problems will remain, and the end you seek might not even be an end, but the start of whole new set of problems worse then the first set, for you and your family. See we don't know what happens when we die, could be worse then what your going through now, you take a 50/50 chance no matter what your beliefs, however in this world that we live, we know what to expect, we know what comes next, so in this world we have control to shape our own futures all you have to do is be willing to exercise it.
Even the statement "will never be happy again" is false. Time heals all wounds. Its true that they might want nothing to do with you, but they certainly will laugh and have fun again in the future. That phrase is what people say when they are trying to manipulate you into doing what they wish. Perhaps they have used this technique effectively in the past with some results.
You are in college now, your an adult, your family's supportive role has ended when you turned 18, now you make your own destiny. That is the role of a parent, to prepare their child for life as an adult. Some people arent as lucky as you. Its kind of like suffering from battered wife syndrome, your family is verbally and mentally attacking you and you still cling to the fact that you can save them somehow (through death), or fix them. You can't they have to fix themselves, but you can fix yourself and end that cycle of reliance on your family for your happiness and become reliant on yourself to generate that happiness. If you want a family make a new one, and a caring one, just because this one doesn't want you to be a part of it doesnt mean you cant go out and make your own that will love you. Then 20 years from now when you look at your life you will look back on this moment and think... god what was i thinking... i almost gave up this feeling of joy and happiness for the words of a people who would put their happiness and well being above that of their children.
It was easier for me i guess, i was prepared to lose my family, i knew nothing would stop me, i would make it or die trying. I knew i would cause my family stress, and at first i did, but in time they wanted me back , they brashly disowned me at first of course. In time people forget old feelings... what would your mom think if you contacted her 20 years later, with a family of your own doing well and happy. I know tons of stories like these, where for a time family disowned their child only to later change their minds. It was a struggle for me, but i made it, my life now is happier then any other point in my life prior. Like someone flipped the easy mode on my life. To think, i was ready to kill myself, if i had i would have never experienced this joy of being alive, and my mom and i wouldn't have had the same bond we share now. We talk more now then ever in my entire life and share in each other's lives as mother and daughter.
Your too quick to die, most of your life you lived as a fictional character, how about you try living first a decade or so, if it still sucks you can think of suicide then, but i got a feeling after a decade or so that will be the last thought in your head.
Also, you got someone that obviously cares about you enough to write in this forum and want to help you. Is that love not worth anything to you? What do you think your death would do to that person?
Seriously when you think about it death really isn't a solution to anything, its just you not wanting to deal with your problems, dont make it self righteous like you will be saving your family from pain, you wont, in fact the opposite is true, you will also hurt everyone else that does care for you. All your doing is saying i quit because its too hard without their help (ie I cant make it on my own) Its your way of saying F-YOU! this is what you get for hurting me, are you happy now?! Dont make it sound like anything else, because it isn't. Yeah, its painful and I have been through the very same thing.
Look, all i am saying is don't go and die before you even had a chance to actually live, the effect you think you will get, will not be how it really turns out, unless your goal is to hurt everyone that cares about you, because that is the only thing accomplished by your death.
If you want to talk, i am available, if you want to know about the pain and happiness of my life, i am willing to share, you will no doubt see similarities. The only difference is that even in the darkest times i never lost hope that things would turn out better in the end, and until all avenues of moving forward were closed permanently i would keep moving forward with that hope. Find some hope in yourself and in the people that care about you and use that to pull yourself through this, the grass is greener if you take the effort to make the walk to the pasture.
Quote from: cynthialee on April 13, 2011, 04:37:11 PM
If she doesn't transition now while she is young then sometime later in life she will hit a wall that is simply transition or die. Many if not most of us late in life transitioners can attest to this fact.
Izumi hit the nail on the head very well. Transition needs to be ones major focus. Nothing can be allowed to get in its way. Otherwise missery is the result.
I hit that wall more than a year ago. I'm 58 and I should of transitioned late in the 70's despite the inexperienced therapists and the politics of that time. Your girlfriend should decide what she wants to be and move briskly forward. I am treating both my dysphoria and possibly cancer, I would not have if I had estrogen in my system since the 70's!
Joelene
To the GF:
All I can say is that I'm sorry you're having to deal with garbage from your family.
It can get better. My wife's family didn't show up to our wedding, and wouldn't even watch our house while we were out of town for it. I think it was a combination of denial that their daughter was their daughter, that we could be recognized as a heterosexual couple, and that it was "real". I sat through too many family dinners where they would talk about things their "son" did, use the wrong pronouns, and refer to me as a "friend" of their son.
Since then, they've grown up. I'm now their daughter's husband. Things still aren't perfect, but they are getting better. And I'm glad. I'd hate them to go to the grave without the joy of seeing their daughter enjoying life.
One suggestion I have is that if some family member is supportive, their presence can make a big difference. Just by being around, their presence can apply pressure to others to accept reality.
I hope that your family one day recognizes their beautiful daughter as the gift to them that she is.
Quote from: Chava_Aliza on April 13, 2011, 05:15:04 PMI just can't keep hurting them.
You aren't hurting them. They are hurting themselves via their own judgments of you.
I recommend you meditate on this. A lot. You shouldn't feel bad that your family are hurt. You should feel pissed off. They are using your transition as an excuse for why they should live in misery and hate. They are using you as an excuse for why they should be emotionally immature.
You shouldn't feel bad for your family, you should feel ashamed of them. And they should feel ashamed of themselves.