It's gonna take a while to get around to the actual question here. I think defining the question and putting it in context is important.
My GF and I have been living together for seven months, after courting for about a month. Tons in common, very much in love, great sex. We're in our fifties with five divorces between us.
We have been having a big roundabout regarding identity.
Her position regarding me:
You are not a man and you're not a woman. You're both and neither. You're only female in your own mind. You only act like a woman in public and everybody knows you are transgender. I knew right away and if I could tell, anybody can tell.
My position regarding me:
I am both and neither, but I am more of a woman. Like it or not, the world runs on a gender binary and challenging that is harder than being trans, not that I would if I could. I am a woman, I've always been female, even when I was learning to be male, and trying to be male. It's nature and nurture. I am female by nature, but was nurtured to be male, so there is going to be some residual effects of that nurture. I'm way more female, and behaviors and attitudes that you perceive as male are pretty typical lesbian sensibilities. If I tone down my femmyness at home, some of it is the way lesbians act and some of it is for your comfort. In public, almost nobody reads me. Everybody uses different cues to gender somebody else, and it doesn't even occur to most people to look beyond presentation, in most circumstances. You were looking at me in a totally different way, in a bar, as you were deciding whether to hit on me. Most people don't even suspect I am anything but an ordinary female, and those who suspect can never be sure, unless I cue them in.
Her position regarding her:
I've always been straight and am still straight. How ever much we interact like two women, when it comes to sex you are putting it in me, regardless of how you perceive what we are doing. It's still straight sex and I am still straight.
My position regarding her:
You may not be attracted to other women, but you are in a relationship with a woman. You might not be a lesbian, but you are in a lesbian relationship. In our society, you are either straight or you are not; you stepped outside the hetro-centric, cisgender paradigm, and that puts you somewhere on the LGBT continuum, whether you like it or not. After three divorces, you spent ten years not being in a relationship because you did not want to be in another relationship with a man. You wouldn't be, and you're not. You like the femaleness of my body. Some lesbians use strap-ons, and with some of them, only one partner straps it on. Our love-making is lesbian-normal, nothing like a straight couple ->-bleeped-<-ing; and we both been with enough straight people to know the difference.
She does not want people at work to find out. She says it is a prejudiced workplace, and it would be a disaster. I have met her parents and her sisters, and we all got along fine; but word is that I would not be welcome in her father's household. Her sisters have been out with us several times. Her kids are being weird about it. One son, partied with us and spent the night; but hasn't spoke to her since. Her other son talks to us on Facebook, but doesn't return her calls. Her daughter seems cool with it, but doesn't know how to deal with the 8 year old granddaughter.
She got a call from an ex-boyfriend the other day. He said, "There's rumors going around that you are seeing a cross-dresser." She said, "So what?" He hung up. Clearly it bothered her, and it bothered me that she didn't correct him. Yesterday, the owner of the bar that banned us for kissing/dancing came into her workplace, and asked her how cum she hasn't been in the bar. She said she doesn't live close any more, and he offered to give her a ride. He definitely knows who I am, and that me and some girl are banned; but evidently he doesn't know it's her.
She sees it that she is out to who matters about what matters, and the rest of it don't matter. I think she would be better off taking a pro-active approach, taking some control of how people find out and what they find out, rather than leaving it to chance and rumor.
I think this is too much of a Gordian-knot for people to be able to understand it, much less advise me. I believe every couple has to work out their own kinks, literally and figuratively. But I think I can get some relevant insight from the question I asked. How have other romantic partners of transpeople come out to others, and at what points in your relationships?
