I have always been someone who accepts people, I would say that I am a very understanding person, but honestly I think that being the SO of someone considering a sex change is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I have been dating my boyfriend for a while now and he recently told me that he has always had the desire to be a female and is seriously considering surgery to become one. It has been a couple of months now and he has started to see a therapist to figure out what he needs to do, but I want to know what I need to do. I really want to be understanding and tell him that I can be with him no matter what, but I don't know if I can do this. I will never leave his life, but I just don't know if I could marry a girl. Sometimes I just fall apart over it, because I think this is the guy I want to marry, and it is so hard for me to talk to him because he is having a hard enough time to figure it out. I feel so selfish that I can't just accept it, but when I see him as a girl I just don't have the physical desire and it is so hard because it seems like we fit together so well now. He always stresses out about me leaving him, but I don't know what to tell him because I don't know what is going to happen. I just want to know how other people have handled this and what I can do to help him and myself.
Thanks,
Jocelynn

Hi Jocelynn,

As a MtF myself, I think that it would be best is for you to ether get as much information on Transsexualism.  And then have a heart to heart.  It is the hardest thing for us to tell someone we care about because half the time we can not answer the questions for ourselves.  The second thing is if you are serious about having a relationship, even if it is only being friends, you might want to consider seeing a GID therapist yourself.  Just for information.

Having an SO that is understanding and accepting is a big plus for us.  Most of the time we are lonely and to have someone in our life is a big help.

I hope that this helps somewhat.  Maybe other SOs will be able to discuss this with you.

Just one girl's opinion.

Mistress Janet

Jocelynn,

You are a loving and caring person.  Tell him that you will support him and always have a special place in your heart for him but you are not a lesbian.  Ultimately, you will need to leave him and as tough as that is, it is the best for both of you.

You can be her best girlfriend if you can work through the mind games that this situation presents.  I know you feel very confused and threatened in some ways. Think about what has been going through your friend's head for a lifetime. 

It sounds like you are a friend to treasure no matter what happens. Please... if you have any questions or needs you need to work through, make sure to post them here.  You might get exactly what you need.

Cindi

Jocelynn,
    I am IS and am in a happy marriage.My wife married me as a "man" but just a little more than 2 years ago we found out I am IS. It was buried deep inside me for a long time due to a trauma that caused my brain to work overtime to bury it to the point it was unknown to me until about 2 years ago so I was not deceiving her intentionally - I just did not realize the truth myself (story for another time). She too had a difficult time accepting until we studied it and researched it until we were cross-eyed. Then we sat and talked and talked about it and figured out how to handle it. We both agreed hiding it away was too dangerous emotionally and mentally. You see, as I buried it a lot of my personality got buried inevitabaly as well. Then there was the question of her being married to a woman, same as you have. We decided to set a few boundries in my transition. Nothing major, just that I take it slowly to let her adjust along the way. Yes, there are times I seem to kick into overdrive but then when I see her in the rearview mirror, I slow down and allow her to catch up to me. It isn't always easy to do but it sure is worth it to keep our marriage strong and us together. It can work depending on the couple. But some couples can't make it either and push their limits trying and end up enemies rather than friends, so you do have to watch your steps and keep the communication lines wide open with each other. Hope this helps even a bit,
                                     Good Luck,
                                               Kim   

Dear Jocelynn,

(very pretty name btw) First, bless you for not just throwing up your hands and bolting. I think that sometimes the pain that SO's feel is underappreciated. It even hurts me, reading your letter, but you're living it. The lack of desire you feel when you look at your special person as a female...that's very telling. I find that the body doesn't lie.

As a recovering alcoholic with many years sobriety, I can tell you that, often, when one half of a married couple sobers up, it changes everything. Please bear with me a moment here, I'll tie it in. That person doing something to arrest a life-threatening, sanity-threatening condition would seem to be an unqualifiedly good thing, and perhaps it is. But oftentimes, it is unexpectedly hard for the spouse to adjust. Everything they are used to changes. All of a sudden they are married to someone they don't quite know. Sometimes they can adjust and sometimes the marriage fails, after recovery has begun. it's not unusual at all.

And all the while, everyone is going "isn't it great?" and the spouse wants their SO to be happy and proud and relieved, as they are, and to help them. But it is a harder row to hoe than many realize. I don't think your situation is so different from that.

I hope that Cindi is right, that you can be her best gf. I know that's not what you "signed up for." I know your heart must be breaking. You seem like a woman wit an enormous heart, Jocelynn. I wish you the very best.

Stealth

my significant other-ness stems from being a parent, not a partner
so my take will be significantly different from yours but i thnk elements
are germaine to your situation

several years prior to our FtM son's recent revelation about his true gender,
our family was devastated by a crisis i had a family therapist tell me most
parents would rank worse than the death of a child..... an absolute implosion
and destruction of everything i had invested into the life of my family.....
enough heartbreak to actually form the sentence
" i dont know how i can love them anymore"
about two of my children.....

it came down to deciding that i had no choice but to love them
and to honour that by being a force in their recovery and healing...

one starts by sifting thru the pieces and discarding the now unusable dreams
and selecting the elements of reality that will serve best the building of new dreams/hopes/aspirations
and by accepting that at some point we have the right to determine what definition of (in our case) "family",
we will support and what our responsibilities to that construct will be ....


we survive to this day, reformed and reconstituted, but still a family, unique and tested to a breaking point

it is what we do for people we love and wish to have in our lives, at least from my heavily parental perspective

your situation obviously is specific to your relationship with your partner, and what it might look like after transition....
in my experience we have to let go of what was and what might have been in order to reach out and touch what still might yet be....

godspeed
amy~

First, since you can't please everyone, you have to start with pleasing yourself.  No one (other than parents to their children) should give up on their dreams, their happiness, their future for the sake of another persons dreams, happiness, and future.  Those paths are for our steps alone, and we each have to walk them as best we can.

I think this is the guy I want to marry
This might not be true, and make sure before you invest too much of yourself in the relationship.  Its one thing to be friends and support, its quite another to give yourself to the process.

I just don't know if I could marry a girl.
If you don't know, then I bet you can't.  Close your eyes and dream the dream of what you've always wanted.  What do you see?  If this ain't it, don't go forward.  In the end, if not very close to the beginning, you will not be happy.

Should he decide to go ahead, all the evidence on this board and others points to that process being all consuming for years and years.  Its hard to have a 'we' relationship with someone who is only interested in (for whatever reason) the 'me' aspect of life.

And the AA deal is not so far out of line, but for other reasons too.  First, people sometimes become as obsessed with recovery - and many will tell you that in order for it to work you have to be - as they were with the drinking and doping.  From the outside point of view, its trading one self-focused obsession for another self-focused obsession.  What the sober spouse was hoping for was to somehow 'get the person back' and what they find is that the person is still just as far away - albeit perhaps in a more healthful way, but away is away.  And, in that, they often expect the sober spouse to do it with them.  They have discovered the steps, the higher power and the rooms and expect you to incorporate that stuff into your life like they are into theirs.  If they are working the steps, so should you, if they are in an AA meeting you should be at an Al-Anon meeting, and so on.  So, in any any partner transition there are in fact two transitions, and if you don't want to change in that way, an arms length relationship might be better.

Hi, Jocelyn! I'm new here as well and going through a lot of what you are right now, with the exception that Dani and I are already married.

I can give you a little advice at least. It's probably not going to be the easiest to follow, but I do think this is really the only way to go. You *must* be totally honest. Be honest with yourself *and* with your partner. Also, don't pretend it will all just go away. It won't. It may go underground for a while, but it *will* come back. Read my post on "Looking for a place to talk". Also be honest about the relationship. There is no harm in having your partner as a friend. If you still decide to go ahead with the relationship, be advised it will not be easy.

I will applaud you for taking the first steps and asking for support. It's not easy to do it alone. I know that feeling too. One other suggestion is see if your partner's therapist is open to couple's sessions. The one Dani is going to call does this. It can help if you both talk about things.

Many *hugs*

WR

Thank you all very much for responding. It helped me just seeing what you had to say and I really appreciate it. Although I am still not sure what I am going to do (neither is he), your responses made me feel immensely better. Once again thank you all.

Hi Jocelynn... a friend told me about your post. We're in the exact same situation, so much so that my friend thought that this post was written by me.

There is a bit of difference in that I'm transsexual. I transitioned young and, today, live my life no different from any other girl (I like to think so anyway). I've never had any interest in dating a transperson; I like my men, men... period. So I met this guy about three years ago, we met through a mutual friend. He says it was love at first sight for him. He started showing interest and telling my friend he wanted to date me. She takes it upon herself to tell him about me. After some time he finally came to the conclusion that he fell for the girl he met and wanted to start a relationship. For girls like me, it really was a dream come true.

Well, to make an already long story short: As the days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months, I started having these suspicions. I started to constantly ask him if there was something he needed to tell me, hinting at something gender related. He vehemently denied anything. I started to feel like he was somehow living vicariously through me. It really bothered me. Then he started expressing that he wants to dress more "stylishly," or something to that effect. Well, here in Los Angeles, that can mean some pretty far out things. He kept saying how black nail polish is cool and blah blah blah. It honestly grossed me out. I wanted a MAN; it was just my preference but I also wanted to be the "good girlfriend" that sticks by her man. I pride myself in being accepting of other people's lifestyles, interests and preferences. I felt so guilty that I was so disgusted by how my boyfriend was presenting himself. Now, trust me, I have plenty of friends who express themselves in random ways... but I wanted MY boyfriend to be a guy... not anything "in between." I kept asking if there was anything different he felt as far as gender. He always promised no.

So anyway, here we are three years later. We actually started having problems that, at the time, seemed unrelated to all this (in hindsight, this "issue" had a role in all our problems) we ended up breaking up about two months ago; not long after, he told me. I took it hard. Look, we're entitled to our preferences. I don't judge him for wanting to go through with what he's doing. I even feel so bad for him that he had to experience this his whole life. That's so awful and I don't wish that upon my worst enemy. But I want a man. In the three years we were together, I gave him every opportunity to come clean. We were supposed to have this amazingly honest relationship -- and I was. He lied for three years whether he "came to terms with this" or not, in the end --  it was a lie. In the end, he has to do what he needs to do to make himself happy. I think we all have to be happy with ourselves before we can be happy with others but I'm mad as hell.

I was lied to and now, I'm just collateral damage. He wasted three years of my life trying to figure himself out. I'm glad he did, but I got the big F--- you. I sympathize for transsexual women; hell, I empathize with them. It's HARD to live that lie, so on that level, I wish him all the best. On a personal level, I don't want a boyfriend that becomes my girlfriend. That's way too out of my league of acceptance. He wanted to stay together, but I couldn't be more repulsed by the thought of the man I gave myself to wanting to become a girl. It's not a broad "transsexual issue," it's a personal one between me and my "boyfriend."

I guess what I'm saying is: you're entitled to how you feel. It doesn't make you a bad person by not wanting this out of your relationship. You're entitled to being happy and spending your life with exactly who and what you want as much as "he/she" does (that isn't meant to be derogatory, I'm just not sure how to address your SO as to not make you uncomfortable). If you stick around... you're a better person than I. If you leave and you two remain friends... your parents raised a wonderful person. If you leave and you're mad as hell... you're normal.

Take care, good luck... this is difficult for all parties. The important thing is: you're happy.

Hello Jocelyn:

I'm Gill , Steph's ex.  Steph and I were together for 40 years (34 of those years married).  So I do have some experience with this.  Though Steph and I decided to divorce we remain "solid" friends who still turn to each other when we need to talk about stuff.  People wonder about our relationship and wonder how we can remain friends.  I explain to them that yes we are friends and always will be but sometimes loving someone means having to let them go - as hard as that may be.

I fully supported (and still do) Steph in her decision to transition, but ultimately it came down to her living her dream (fate) and me living mine and those dreams, after transition, did not include being together.  We had to take a long hard look at our relationship and came to the conclusion that we were not happy living together.  I an not a lesbian and I wanted a relationship with a man and I was not about to have an ongoing affair outside of the marriage (not on a high horse here, it just isn't me).  It was time for me to pursue my dream.

Only you can determine what it is you want/need in this relationship.  You are young and still have a long life ahead of you.  By making the decision to end the (intimate) relationship does not mean that you do not support this persons decision to transition, you can stay friends.  From what you are saying, you are definitely in a transition yourself.  I would suggest that you need some time alone to think this through, and think long term; say in another five/ten years what do you see for yourself, where do you want to be.  Do you want to have children, will staying in this relationship allow you to realize your dreams?

I hope this helps.  If you need to talk do not hesitate to contact me.

Gill