This still eats at me, and so I guess I'm venting. Right after I transitioned, (HRT and top surgery), I started dating a woman, both of us were in our twenties. After two weeks, I thought it was only fair to tell her that I was a transgender and only partway through with my transition. She accepted it immediately to my surprise, and we talked all night.

Over the next few months, we continued dating, but now and again she would come over crying because her father was telling her that people like me were perverts and always wind up "turning back". I hadn't wanted her to tell her parents, but understood when she did as she felt she was being dishonest with them. That progressed to small things, little doubts, like "I wish there was a genetic test to prove you have something wrong". I guess i just wanted to be normal so badly that I kept making excuses for these comments. I thought that it must be hard for her and she was just having a difficult time. Things got a bit better and I asked her to marry me. She accepted.

We had agreed that we wanted kids, and through AI, she got pregnant. All of a sudden, it was like a dam broke and the comments started coming out of the walls. She wished I didn't have secretions when we were intimate. Her friend, whose husband was an F to M, cheated on him and my ex told me that if she had never been with a guy with a "real" penis, she would probably do that too just to find out what it was like. By then, she knew that cheating was on my list of unforgiveables.

We moved out of state just before the baby was born so I could attend graduate school and it really hit the fan. I don't want to go into the intimate comments, but they were constant. she wouldn't go to the Dr. with me because she was afraid they would think she was a lesbian. After our son was born, she said she thought that if one of my brothers had kids, my parents would love them more because they were "really" my brothers sons whereas my son was from another man's sperm. I tired to keep it together, I didn't want to lose my son or fail in my marriage, but the final straw came one night when she was ragging on me and my son clapped his hands over his ears and ran to his bedroom crying "no! mommy no!". In our family growing up, we didn't yell, we worked out problems with discussions, so i think it really got to my ex that I wouldn't fight.

At any rate, we wound up getting a divorce and she moved back to the state we came from, taking our son. Per the law, since I wasn't in the same state, it was up to my ex whether or not to include me in decisions concerning my son's upbringing. She of course denied me those rights. Since I wasn't around, she went after my mother every time she picked  my son up to visit him. I had to take out a restraining order to keep her from verbally attacking my mother.

The divorce was about 17 years ago and my son is now in college. I've had several nice women want to date me, but i just can't bring myself to trust anyone. Is this scenerio familiar with anyone else? F to M or M to F, it doesn't matter. If anyone else went through something similar, were you able to date again? (I was married for 7 years).

Sam1234

Oh, man. I am so sorry you went through that, and that you've lived with the scars for so long. I haven't  experienced anything that drastic, but I've sure been in relationships with people who thought I was "just perfect," and who then turned out to have major problems with who I was, and I did spend about six years being pretty much celibate after one such experience. I think that's pretty common -- you just hung in there longer than many people would, which makes you a very loyal and very loving person, as far as I'm concerned. You -- or anyone -- deserve SO much better than that.

I think when we're young, many of us "need" to be with someone, or rather, we think we do. It's hard to learn that we don't need to be in a relationship and that it's OK to be single, so we "make allowances," we rush into things, and then we end up feeling like we're causing the problem -- when it's entirely on the other person.

I do understand not being able to trust people -- I learned that lesson at a very young age, from my parents' betraying my trust. It makes it incredibly hard to be open and vulnerable, which I think is essential for developing close relationships of any kind. Therapy can help a lot, and so can taking small steps: if you can date people a bit casually, without having huge expectations or going into it with a lot of emotional neediness, you can open up to them gradually, when it feels safe. I'm not even talking about telling them that you're trans -- just sharing how you feel in general, finding out how they respond to that, and learning about their vulnerabilities as well.

You might want to start by just making some new friends, through a support group for example, and hanging out, meeting for coffee, going to movies, or whatever, without any expectations of a "relationship."  It's a way to get used to opening up to people again without as much emotional risk, and it's also a way of building a support system, so that when you do start dating, you have people in your life who'll have your back: who get that it's hard (it is for anyone who hasn't dated for a couple of decades) and can give you support, even reality checks ("She said this and it weirded me out! Am I overreacting, or was that kind of icky??!" "Dude... that totally sucked!")

Good for you for venting and for sharing those feelings here -- you're a long, long way from being alone in this type of experience, Sam.

Its funny, before I transitioned, I was perfectly happy to be alone. i don't know if they still make you go through a ton of therapy before you start HRT, but you used to have to live as your intended gender for two years then have 8 months of therapy. Sometimes i think that therapy after you transition is almost more important. The surgery is the easy part. Your life has been on hold for so long that you just want to jump in and be normal. There is that year or two of "high" after you transition. Like being let out of a cage. Because my therapist had never treated a transgender before or after transition and my two of my three surgeons were new, they bypassed me on both the time and therapy. Regardless of what happened, I'm glad they did because I was at the end of my rope. I've never regretted transitioning for a single second.

Sam1234